A man of wide general culture, master of three or four modern, as well as the cla.s.sic, languages, a mathematician, a writer of beautiful, clear English, although it is not his mother tongue, he carries it with the modesty, the broad-minded tolerance, the easy urbanity that always adorn, though they by no means always accompany, the profession of the scholar; and one is better able to understand after some years"
acquaintance with such a man, after falling under the authority of his learning and the charm of his courtesy, the wonderful power which the society he belongs to has wielded in the world. If such devotion to the instruction of the ignorant as was described at the mission on the middle Kobuk be praiseworthy, by how much the more is one moved to admiration at the spectacle of this man, who might fill with credit any one of half a dozen professional chairs at the ordinary college, gladly consecrating his life to the teaching of an Indian school!
Hearing an interest expressed in the ma.s.sacre which took place at Nulato in 1851, Father Jette offered to accompany us to the site of that occurrence, about a mile away. It stands out prominently in the history of a country that has been singularly free from bloodshed and outrage, and its date is the notable date of the middle river, as the establishment of the post at Fort Yukon by the Hudson Bay Company in 1846 is the notable date of the upper river. They are fixed points in Indian chronology by which it is possible to approximate other dates and to reach an estimate of the ages of old people.
[Sidenote: THE NULATO Ma.s.sACRE]
Much has been written about the Nulato ma.s.sacre, and the accounts vary in many particulars. The Russian post here was first established by Malakof in 1838. Burned during his absence by the Indians, it was re-established by Lieutenant Zagoskin of the Russian navy in 1842. The extortions and cruelties of his successor, Deerzhavin, complicated by a standing feud between two native tribes, and probably having the rival powers of certain medicine-men as the match to the mine, brought about the destruction of the place and the death of all its inhabitants, white and native, by a sudden treacherous attack of the Koyukuk Indians. It happened that Lieutenant Barnard of the British navy, detached from a war-ship lying at Saint Michael to journey up the river and make inquiries of the Koyukuk natives as to wandering white men, survivors of Sir John Franklin"s expedition, who might have been seen or heard of by them, was staying at the post at the time and perished in the general ma.s.sacre. His grave, with a headboard bearing a Latin inscription, is neatly kept up by the Jesuit priests at Nulato.
In the last few years the river has been invading the bank upon which the old village stood, and as the earth caves in relics of the slaughter and burning come to light. Old copper kettles and samovars, b.u.t.tons and gla.s.s beads, all sorts of metal vessels and implements have been sorted out from charred wood and ashes, together with numerous skulls and quant.i.ties of bones. One of the most interesting of these relics was a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton from an official coat, with the Russian crowned double-headed eagle on the face, and on the back, upon examination with a lens, the word "Birmingham."
Half the day serving for our day of rest this week, we were up and ready to start early the next morning, but so violent a wind was blowing from the southeast that we decided to remain, and the clatter of the corrugated iron roof and the whirling whiteness outside the windows made us glad to be in shelter. As the day advanced the wind increased to almost hurricane force, and the two-story house in which we lay began to rock in such a manner as to make the proprietor alarmed for his dwelling.
There was an "independent" trading-post at this village which seemed to present an object-lesson in rapacity and greed. There was not an article of standard quality in the store; the clothing was the most rascally shoddy, the canned goods of the poorest brands; the whole stock the cheapest stuff that could possibly be bought at bargain prices "outside," yet the prices were higher even than those that prevail in Alaska for the best merchandise. Loud complaints are often made against the commercial corporation which does the great bulk of the business in interior Alaska, yet if the writer had to choose whether he would be in the hands of that company or in the hands of an "independent" trader, he would unhesitatingly cast in his lot with the company. The independent trader makes money, sometimes makes large money, and makes it fairly easily, but the calling seems to appeal mainly, if not wholly, to men of low character and no conscience. There are few things that would redound more to the benefit of the Indian than a great improvement in the character of the men with whom he is compelled to do business.
The wind had subsided by the next morning and had been of benefit rather than injury to us, for it had blown the acc.u.mulated new snow off the old trail so that it was possible to perceive and follow it. But what was our surprise to find, with the recollection of that rattling roof and swaying building fresh in our minds, that ten miles away there had been no wind at all! The snow lay undisturbed on every twig and bough from which the gentlest breeze would have dislodged it. One never ceases to wonder at what, for want of a better word, must be called the _localness_ of much of the weather in Alaska--though, for that matter, in all probability it is characteristic of weather in all countries. The habit of continual outdoor travel gives scope as well as edge to one"s observation of such things which a life in one place denies. That wind-storm had cut a clean swath across the Yukon valley. Yet it seems strange that so violent a disturbance could take place without affecting and, to some extent, agitating the atmosphere for many miles adjacent.
[Sidenote: SNOW GLa.s.sES]
So, sometimes in snow-storm, sometimes in wind, always on snow-shoes and often hard put to it to find and follow the trail at all, we struggled on for two or three days more, sleeping one night at a wood-chopper"s hut, another in a telegraph cabin crowded with foul-mouthed infantrymen sent out to repair the extensive damage of the recent storm and none too pleased at the detail, we plodded our weary way up that interminable river. At last we met the mail-man, that ever-welcome person on the Alaskan trail, and his track greatly lightened our labour. By his permission we broke into his padlocked cabin that night by the skilful application of an axe-edge to a link of the chain, and were more comfortable than we had been for some time. Past the mouth of the Koyukuk, past Grimcop, past Lowden, past Melozikaket to Kokrine"s and Mouse Point, we plugged along, making twenty-two miles one day and thirty another and then dropping again to eighteen. The temperature dropped to zero, and a keen wind made it necessary to keep the nose continually covered. At this time of year the covering of the nose involves a fresh annoyance, for it deflects the breath upward, and the moisture of it continually condenses on the snow gla.s.ses, which means continual wiping. A stick of some sort of waxy compound to be rubbed upon the gla.s.s, bought in New York as a preventive of the deposit of moisture, proved entirely useless. In this respect the Esquimau snow goggle, which is simply a piece of wood hollowed out into a cup and illuminated by narrow slits, has advantage over any shape or kind of gla.s.s protection. A French metal device of the same order that is advertised in the dealer"s catalogues was found to fail, perhaps owing to a wrong optical arrangement of the slits. It caused an eye-strain that brought on headache. But if that principle could be scientifically worked out and such a device perfected, it would be a boon to the traveller over sun-lit snow, for it would do away with gla.s.s altogether, with its two chief objections--its fragility and its opacity when covered with vapour.
[Sidenote: SNOW-BLINDNESS]
The indispensability of some eye protection when travelling in the late winter, and the serious consequences that follow its neglect, were once again demonstrated at Mouse Point. The road-house was crowded with "busted" stampeders coming out of the Nowikaket country. There had been a report of a rich "strike" on a creek of the Nowitna, late the previous fall, and a number of men from other camps--some from as far as Nome--had gone in there with "outfits" for the winter. The stampede had been a failure; no gold was found; there was much indignant a.s.sertion that no gold ever _had_ been found and that the reported "strike" was a "fake," though to what end or profit such a "fake" stampede should be caused, unless by some neighbouring trader, it is hard to understand; and here were the stampeders streaming out again, a ragged, unkempt, sorry-looking crowd in every variety of worn-out arctic toggery, many of them suffering from acute snow-blindness. It is surprising that even old-timers will go out in the hills for the whole winter without providing themselves with protection against the glare of the sun which they know will inevitably a.s.sail their eyes before the spring, yet so it is; and this lack of forethought is not confined to the matter of snow gla.s.ses: the first half dozen men we received in Saint Matthew"s Hospital at Fairbanks suffering from severely frozen feet were all old-timers grown careless.
Father Ragarou, another Jesuit priest of another type, reached the road-house from the opposite direction about the same time we did, and I was interested in watching his treatment of the inflamed eyes. Upon a disk of lead he folded a little piece of cotton cloth in the shape of a tent, and, setting fire to it, allowed it to burn out completely. Then with a wet camel"s-hair brush he gathered up the slight yellow residuum of the combustion and painted it over the eyes, holding the lids open with thumb and finger and drawing the brush through and through. An incredulous spectator, noticing the sacred monogram neatly stamped upon the disk of lead, made some sneering remark to me about "Romish superst.i.tion," but remembering the Jesuit"s bark, and recalling that I had in my writing-case at that moment a letter I had brought all the way from the Koyukuk addressed to this very priest, begging for a further supply of a pile ointment that had proved efficacious, I held my peace.
Whether it be an oxide or a carbonate, or some salt that is formed by the combustion, I am not chemist enough to know, but I saw man after man relieved by this application. Even the scoffer was convinced there was merit in the treatment, though stoutly protesting that "them letters"
had nothing to do with it; which n.o.body took the trouble to argue with him. My own custom--we are all of us doctors of a sort in this country--is to instil a few drops of a five-per-cent solution of cocaine, which gives immediate temporary relief, and then apply frequent washes of boric acid, bandaging up the eyes completely in bad cases by cloths kept wet with the solution. But I do not know that it brings better result than the lead treatment. Certainly it is a matter in which an ounce of any sort of prevention is better than a pound of any sort of cure. The affection is a serious one, being nothing more or less than acute ophthalmia; the pain is very severe, and repeated attacks are said to bring permanent weakness of the eyes. Smoked gla.s.ses or goggles,[A]
veils of green or blue or black, even a crescent eye-shade cut out of a piece of birch-bark or cardboard and blackened on its under-side with charcoal, will prevent the hours and sometimes days of torture which this distemper entails.
[Sidenote: HORSES AND MULES]
For a few miles we had the trail of the stampeders, but when that crossed the river we put on our snow-shoes and settled to the steady grind once more. A day"s mush brought us to "The Birches," and another to Gold Mountain. Between the two places there was a portage, and the trail thereon, protected by the timber, was good. We longed for the time when all trails in Alaska shall be taken off the rivers and cut in the protecting forest. But we had gone but a mile along this good trail when our hearts sank, for we saw ahead of us a procession of army mules packing supplies from Fort Gibbon to the telegraph repair parties. We pulled out into the snow that the mules might pa.s.s, and the soldiers said no word, for they knew just how we felt, until the last soldier leading the last mule was going by, and he turned round and said: "And her name was Maud!" It was in the height of Opper"s popularity, his "comic supplements" the chief dependence of the road-houses for wall-paper. The reference was so apposite that we burst into laughter, but there was nothing funny about the devastation that had been wrought.
That good trail was all gone--the bottom pounded out of it--and nothing was left but a ploughed lane punched full of sink-holes. We had no trouble following the trail on the river after this encounter, but it had been almost as easy going to have struck out for ourselves in the unbroken snow of the winter. It is hard to make outsiders understand how a man who loves all animals may come to hate horses and mules, particularly mules, in this country. Our travelling is above all a matter of surface. Distance counts and weather counts, but surface counts for more than either. See how fast we came across the Seward Peninsula in the most distressing weather imaginable! A well-used dog trail becomes so hard and smooth that it offers scarce any resistance to the pa.s.sage of the sled, and for walking or running over in moccasins or mukluks is the most perfect surface imaginable. The more it is used the better it becomes. But put a horse on that trail and in one pa.s.sage it is ruined. The iron-shod hoofs break through the crust at every step and throw up the broken pieces as they are withdrawn. With mules it is even worse; the holes they punch are deeper and sharper. Neither man nor dog can pa.s.s over it again in comfort. One slips and slides about at every step, the leg leaders and ankle sinews are strained, the soles of the feet, though hardened by a thousand miles in moccasins, become sore and inflamed, and at night there is a new sort of weariness that only a horse-ruined trail gives. As a rule, the dog trail is of so little service to the horse or mule that it were as cheap to break out a new one in the snow, and it is this knowledge that exasperates the dog musher. So there is not much love lost between the horse man and the dog man in Alaska.
[Sidenote: ARMY POSTS AND NATIVES]
At last, after a night at "Old Station," we came in sight of Tanana, where is Fort Gibbon, the one the name of the town and the post-office, the other the name of the military post and the telegraph office. The military authorities refuse to call their post "Fort Tanana" and the postal authorities refuse to allow the town post-office to be called "Fort Gibbon," so there they lie, cheek by jowl, two separate places with a fence between them--a source of endless confusion. A letter addressed to Fort Gibbon is likely to go astray and a telegram addressed to Tanana to be refused. Stretching along a mile and a half of river bank, and beginning to come into view ten miles before they are reached, the military and commercial structures gradually separate themselves.
Here to the left are the ugly frame buildings--all painted yellow--barracks, canteen, officers" quarters, hospital, commissariat, and so on. Two clumsy water-towers give height without dignity--a quality denied to military architecture in Alaska. To the right the town begins, and an irregular row of one and two story buildings, stores, warehouses, drinking shops, straggle along the water-front.
Unlike most towns in interior Alaska, Tanana does not depend upon an adjacent mining camp. It owes its existence first to its geographical position as the central point of interior Alaska, at the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers. Most of the freight and pa.s.senger traffic for Fairbanks and the upper river is transshipped at Tanana, and extensive stocks of merchandise are maintained there. The army post is the other important factor in the town"s prosperity, and is especially accountable for the number of saloons. Not only the soldiers, but many civilian employees, are supported by the post, and when it is understood that three thousand cords of wood are burned annually in the military reservation, it will be seen that quite a number of men must find work as choppers and haulers for the wood contractors. Setting aside the maintenance of the telegraph service, which has already been referred to, it may be said without unfairness that the salient activities of the army in the interior of Alaska are the consumption of whisky and wood.
There is no opportunity for military training--for more than six months in the year it is impossible to drill outdoors--and the officers complain of the retrogression of their men in all soldierly accomplishments during the two years" detail in Alaska. Whether the prosperity of the liquor dealer be in any real sense the prosperity of the country, and whether the rapid destruction of the forest be compensated for by the wages paid to its destroyers, may reasonably be doubted.
Three miles away is a considerable native village where the mission of Our Saviour of the Episcopal Church is situated, with an attractive church building and a picturesque graveyard. The evil influence which the town and the army post have exerted upon the Indians finds its ultimate expression in the growth of the graveyard and the dwindling of the village.
This point at the junction of the two rivers was an important place for the inhabitants of interior Alaska ages before the white man reached the country. Tribes from all the middle Yukon, from the lower Yukon, from the Tanana, from the upper Kuskokwim met here for trading and for general festivity. It is impossible nowadays to determine when first the white man"s merchandise began to penetrate into this country, but it was long before the white man came himself. Such prized and portable articles as axes and knives pa.s.sed from hand to hand and from tribe to tribe over many hundreds of miles. Captain Cook, in 1778, found implements of white man"s make in the hands of the natives of the great inlet that was named for him after his death, and they pointed to the Far East as the direction whence they had come. He judged that they had been brought from the Hudson Bay factories clean across the continent.
There are many Indians still living who remember when they saw the first white man, and some were well grown at the time, but diligent inquiry has failed to discover one who ever saw a stone axe used, though some old men have been found who declared that their fathers, when young, used that implement. Traces have been discovered of the importation of edge-tools from four directions--from the mouth of the Yukon; from the Lynn Ca.n.a.l, by way of the headwaters of the Yukon; from the Prince William Sound, by way of the headwaters of the Tanana; as well as from the Hudson Bay posts in the Canadian Northwest, by way of the Porcupine River.
When the Russians established themselves at Nulato in 1842, and the Hudson Bay Company put a post at Fort Yukon in 1846, Nuchalawoya, as Tanana was called, became the scene of commercial rivalry, and it is said that by the meeting of the agents and voyageurs of the two companies at this point the ident.i.ty of the Yukon and Quikpak Rivers was discovered.
The stories that linger with the village ancients of the great numbers of Indians who used to inhabit the country are doubtless based upon recollections of the gathering at old Nuchalawoya, when furs were brought here from far and wide, when there was no other place of merchandise in mid-Alaska. Now almost every Indian village has a trader and a store. That the race has diminished, and in most places is still diminishing, is beyond question, but that it was ever very largely numerous the natural conditions of the country forbid us to believe.
[Sidenote: WHISKY-PEDDLERS]
During the Reverend Jules Prevost"s time at Tanana--and he was in residence in the year of this journey--from careful vital statistics kept during two periods of five years each, the race seemed barely to be holding its own; but since that time there has been a considerable decline, coincident with the increase of drunkenness and debauchery at the village when Mr. Prevost"s firm hand and watchful eye were withdrawn. The situation tends to grow worse, and while one does not give up hope, for that would mean to give up serious effort, the outlook for the Indians at this place seems unfavourable. Two hundred soldiers, six or eight liquor shops,--the number varies from year to year,--three miles off a native village of perhaps one hundred and fifty souls, and dotting those intervening miles cabins chiefly occupied by "bootleggers"
and go-betweens--that is the Tanana situation in a nutsh.e.l.l. The men desire the native girls, and the liquor is largely a lure to get them.
Tuberculosis and venereal disease are rife, and the two make a terribly fatal combination amongst Indians.
It was good to enjoy Mr. and Mrs. Prevost"s hospitality, and it was good to speak through such an admirable interpreter as Paul. Something more than intelligence and knowledge of the languages are required to make a good interpreter; there must be sympathy and the ability to take fire.
With such an interpreter, leaping at the speaker"s thoughts, carrying himself entirely into his changing moods, rising to vehemence with him and again dropping to gentleness, forgetting himself in his identification with his princ.i.p.al, there is real pleasure in speaking to the natives who hang upon his vicarious lips. On the other hand, one of the most intelligent mission interpreters in the country is also so phlegmatic in disposition, so lifeless and monotonous in his speech, and particularly so impa.s.sive of countenance, that he reminds one of Napoleon"s saying about Talleyrand: that if some one kicked him behind while he was speaking to you his face would give no sign of it at all.
[Sidenote: CHENA AND FAIRBANKS]
It is not necessary to write much detail of the two-hundred-mile journey to Fairbanks up the Tanana River. The trail was then wholly on the river, but now it has been taken wholly off, as every Alaskan musher hopes some day will be done with all trails. The region about the mouth of the river and for some miles up is one of the windiest in the country, and there is always troublesome crossing of bare sand-bars and of ice over which sand has been blown. The journey hastens to its close; men and dogs alike realise it, and push on willingly over longer stages than they had before attempted.
Two days from Tanana we were luxuriating in the natural hot springs near Baker Creek, wallowing in the crude wooden vat, when "Daddy Karstner"
had shovelled enough snow in to make entering the water possible, and emerging ruddy as boiled lobsters. It was a beautiful and interesting spot then, with n.o.ble groves of birch and the finest grove of cottonwood-trees in Alaska--all cut down now--all ruined in a plunging and bounding and quite unsuccessful attempt to make a "Health Resort" of the place for the "smart set" of Fairbanks. It is a scurvy trick of Fortune when she gives large wealth to a man with no feeling for trees.
We spent Sunday there and roamed over the curious domain, snow-free amidst all the surrounding snow, rank in vegetation amidst the yet-lingering winter death; and then we wallowed again.
Tolovana, Nenana, and then one long run of fifty-four miles, the longest and last run of the winter, and--Chena and Fairbanks. But just before we reached Chena, as we pa.s.sed the fish camp where the dogs had been boarded the previous summer, Nanook stopped the whole team, looked up at the bank and gave utterance to his p.r.o.nounced five barks on the descending scale. None of the other dogs seemed to notice or recognise the place, but Nanook said as plainly as if he had uttered speech: "Well, well! there"s where I spent last summer!"
We reached Fairbanks on the 11th of April, in time for Good Friday and Easter, after an absence of four months and a half--with the acc.u.mulated mail of all that period awaiting me. The distance covered was about twenty-two hundred miles, three fourths of it on foot, more than half of it on snow-shoes. At Chena I had called up the hospital at Fairbanks on the telephone, and the exchange operator had immediately recognised my voice and bidden me welcome; but when I reached Fairbanks, a light beard that I had suffered to grow during the winter made me unrecognisable by those who knew me best. So effectually does a beard disguise a man and so surely may his voice identify him.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] This was written before the writer learned the superior protection afforded by _amber_ gla.s.s.
CHAPTER VI
THE "FIRST ICE"--AN AUTUMN ADVENTURE ON THE KOYUKUK
IT is not attempted in this narrative to give separate account of all the journeys with which it deals. That would involve much repet.i.tion and tedious detail. Our long journey has been described from start to finish, taking the reader far north of the Yukon, then almost to the extreme west of Alaska, and then round by the Yukon to mid-Alaska again.
It is proposed now to give sketches of such parts of other journeys as do not cover the same ground, and they will lie, with one exception, south of the Yukon. While visiting many of the same points every winter, it has been within the author"s good fortune and contrivance to include each year some new stretch of country, sometimes searching out and visiting a new tribe of natives, and blazing the way for the establishment of permanent missionary work amongst them. To these initial journeys belongs a zest that no subsequent travels in the same region ever have; there is a keen interest in what every new turn of a trail shall bring, every new bend of a river; there is eagerness rising with one"s rising steps to excitement for the view from a new mountain pa.s.s; above all, there is deep satisfaction coupled with a sense of solemn responsibility in being the first to reach some remote band of Indians and preach to them the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are few men nowadays on the North American continent to whom that privilege remains.
A period of nearly three years elapses between the beginning of the journey that has already been described and the short sketch of a journey that follows. Many things had happened in those three years. It had been the happy duty of the writer to return to the Koyukuk late in the winter of 1906-7, empowered to build the promised mission for the hitherto neglected natives of that region. Pitching tent at a spot opposite the mouth of the Alatna, with the aid of a skilled carpenter and a couple of axemen brought from the mining district above, and the labour of the Indians, the little log church and the mission house were put up and prepared for the two ladies--a trained nurse and a teacher--who should arrive on the first steamboat. The steamboat that brought them in carried him out on its return trip, and the next year was spent in the States making known the needs of the work in Alaska and securing funds for its advancement.
[Sidenote: DOCTOR GRAFTON BURKE]
On my return I brought with me a young physician, Doctor Grafton Burke, as a medical missionary, and a half-breed Alaskan youth, Arthur, who had been at school in California, as attendant and interpreter. A thirty-two-foot gasoline launch designed for the Yukon and its tributaries was also brought and was launched at the head of Yukon navigation at Whitehouse. The voyages of the _Pelican_ on almost all the navigable waters of interior Alaska do not belong to a narrative concerned solely with winter travel, but her maiden voyage ended in an unexpected and rather extraordinary journey over the ice which is perhaps worth describing. After the voyage down the Yukon, and up and down the Tanana, it was purposed to take the boat up the Koyukuk to the new mission at the Allakaket, where dogs and gear had been left, and put her in winter quarters there. The delays that a.s.sociate themselves not unnaturally with three novices and a four-cylinder gasoline engine, had brought the date for ascending the Koyukuk a little too late for safety, though still well within the ordinary season of open water. The possibility of an early winter closing the navigation of that stream before the _Pelican_ reached her destination had been entertained and provided against, though it seemed remote. Three dogs, needed anyway to replace superannuated members of the team, had been bargained for at Tanana and accommodations for them arranged, and a supply of dog fish stowed on the after deck of the launch. But when we went to pay the arranged price and receive the dogs, the vender"s wife and children set up such a remonstrance and plaintive to-do that he went back on his bargain and we did not get the dogs. There was no time to hunt others, to linger was to invite the very mishap we sought to guard against, so we pulled out dogless, reached the mouth of the Koyukuk on the 17th of September and, having taken on board the supply of gasoline cached there, turned our bow up the river the next morning. For five days we pushed up the waters of that great, lonely river, and by that time we were some twenty-five miles above Hogatzakaket, three hundred and twenty-five miles from the mouth and one hundred and twenty-five miles from the mission, at the camp of a prospector who had recently poled up from the Yukon. We woke on board the launch the next morning to find ice formed all around us and ice running in the river. The thermometer had gone to zero in the night.
[Sidenote: THE RUNNING ICE]
A very brief attempt to make our way against the running ice showed the danger of doing so, for the thin cakes had knife-edges and cut the planking of the boat so that she began to leak. Then there came to me with some bitterness that I had earnestly desired a thin steel armour-plating at the water-line, but had allowed myself to be persuaded out of it by her builders. So again my forethought had been of no avail--though, of course, lightness of draught _was_ the first consideration. We put back to the camp and proceeded to flatten out and cut up all the empty cans and tinware we could find and nail it along the water-line of the boat, but the prospector persuaded us to wait a day or two. He had never seen a river close with the first little run of ice. He looked for a soft spell and open water yet. It was foolish to risk the boat against the ice. So we waited; and night after night the thermometer fell a little lower and a little lower, until presently a sheet of ice stretched across the whole river in the bend where we lay.
We were frozen in. The remote possibility we had feared and sought to guard against had happened. Navigation had ceased on the Koyukuk at the earliest date anybody remembered, the 23d of September. Three days more had surely taken us to the mission where they had long expected us; now we should have to make our way on foot, without dogs, on the dangerous "first ice," as it is called, taking all sorts of chances, pulling a Yukon sled, with tent and stove, grub and bedding, "by the back of the face."
But first there was the launch to pull out and make snug for the winter and safe against the spring break-up. A convenient little creek mouth with easy grade offered, which was one of the reasons I had not pushed on the few more miles we could have made. Here were eligible winter quarters; farther on we might have trouble in putting the boat in safety; here also was a kindly and capable man willing to a.s.sist us.