A Woman who went to Alaska Part 5

Whether we had struck a rock, or only a sand-bar, we never knew, for the ship's men laughed and evaded our questions; but the pa.s.sengers believed that the boat had touched a reef or rock, hidden, perhaps, beneath the surface of the sea.

By daylight the animals had been removed to a barge, and soon after breakfast the Nome pa.s.sengers were taken ash.o.r.e in like manner, for the surf was so heavy on the beach, and there being no docks or wharves, it was impossible for a large steamer to get nearer.

Away in the distance to the north lay the famous new gold camp of Nome. Stretched for miles along the beach could be seen the little white tents of the beach miners, back of which lay the town proper, and still back, the rolling hills now partly covered with snow. Not a tree or shrub could be seen, though we strained our eyes through a strong gla.s.s in an effort to find them. A few wooden buildings larger than the rest were pointed out as the Alaska Commercial Company's warehouses and offices, near where the loaded barges were tossed by the huge breakers toward the beach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ESKIMOS.]

Pa.s.sengers now went ash.o.r.e to visit the camps, but to my great disappointment I was not allowed to do so on account of the tremendous surf. When, after watching others, seeing their little boats tossed like c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.ls upon the sands, and hearing how thoroughly drenched with salt water many of the people were while landing, I gave it up, and remained on board.

For five days we lay anch.o.r.ed outside, while stevedores loaded supplies from the "Bertha" on barges towed ash.o.r.e by the side-wheeler "Sadie."

For hours the wind would blow and the breakers and surf run so high that nothing could be done; then at sundown, perhaps, the wind would die away, and men were put to work unloading again. The calls of those lifting and tugging, the rattle of pulleys and chains, never were stilled night or day if the water was pa.s.sably smooth, and we learned to sleep soundly amid all the confusion.

Next morning the steamer "Cleveland" cast anchor near the "Bertha."

Presently we saw a small boat lowered over the side and two women were handed down into it, four men following and seating themselves at the oars. The ship on which the women had first sailed had been wrecked on St. George's Island; from there they were rescued by the revenue cutter "Bear," transferred to the "Cleveland," and were now going ash.o.r.e at Nome, their destination. As they pa.s.sed us we noticed that they sat upright in the middle of the lifeboat, the hoods of their cloaks drawn quite over their heads. We were told that one of these women had come to meet her lover and be married, and we felt like cheering such heroism.

Next day the bodies of several men were picked up on the beach near town. They had started for Cape Prince of Wales in a small boat and been overtaken by disaster. Many were dying of fever on sh.o.r.e, and nurses, doctors and drugs were in great demand.

Many tales of interest now reached our ears, but not many can here be given.

One of the first American children to open his eyes to the light of day in this bleak and barren place--Nome City--was Little Willie S. His parents lived in a poor board shack or house which his father had built just back of the golden beach sands. Here the surf, all foam-tipped, spread itself at the rising and falling of the tides, and here the miners toiled day after day washing out the precious gold.

It was here that Willie's papa, soon after the baby came, sickened and died. He had worked too long in the wind and rain, and they laid him under the tundra at the foot of the hill.

For a time the baby grew. The mother and child were now dependent upon the community for support, but the burly and generous miners did not allow them to want. Willie was a great pet in the mining camp; the men being delighted with a peep of his tiny, round face and pink fingers.

The little child could have easily had his weight in gold dust, or anything else, had he wanted it. Big, shining nuggets had already been given him to cut his teeth upon when the time came, but that time never came.

Willie died one day in his mother's arms, while her hot tears fell like rain upon his face.

Then they laid him to sleep beside his papa under the tundra, where the shining wheat-gold clung to the moss roots and sparkled as brightly as the frost and snow which soon covered everything.

When spring came Willie's mamma found the baby's tiny grave, and put wild flowers and gra.s.ses upon it, and there they nodded their pretty heads above the spot where Willie and his papa quietly sleep.

Pa.s.sengers for San Francisco were now coming on board with their luggage. Several men were brought on board on spring beds, being ill with no contagious disease. A box containing the body of a man, who had shot himself the day before, was placed upon the hurricane deck, lashed down, and covered with tarpaulins. Strong boxes of gold bullion, with long, stout ropes and boards attached in case of accident, were stowed away in as safe a place as could be found. Copies of the first issue of the "Nome News" were bought at fifty cents a copy; size, four pages about a foot square. Beach sand and pebbles, were handed about in many funny receptacles,--pickle jars, tin cans, flour sacks,--any old thing would do if only we had the pleasure of seeing the golden sand.

One night about three o'clock the barge brought the last pa.s.sengers and freight. The water was smooth, the moon shone brightly, there was no wind, and the captain and his mate gave their orders in quick, stern tones. They were in haste to leave. They had lingered here too long already. All were soon hustled on board; the "Sadie" and her barges moved away; we took a last, long look at Nome as she stretched herself on the golden sands of the beach under her electric lights; the "Bertha"

whistled, stuck her nose into the rollers and steamed away.

A more majestic old body of water than Behring Sea would be hard to find; and we remember it with thanksgiving, for we had no storms or rough weather during the eight hundred and fifty miles to Unalaska.

Right glad was I that we were fortunate in having a pleasant little party of eight or ten persons, and our evenings were spent in visiting, spinning yarns, and singing songs, while some hours each day were pa.s.sed on the hurricane deck. Here we became familiar with the sea phrases commonly used, and watched the old salts "bracing the mast arms,"

"hoisting the jibs," or "tacking," and could tell when we had a "cross sea," a "beam sea," or a "sou' wester." As we neared Unalaska on the Aleutian Islands, the sea became rough, and we had more wind, but we joyfully sighted high hills or rocks to the east, and bade good-bye to old Behring. For three and a half days he had behaved well, and never will we quietly hear him maligned.

Unalaska, sweet isle of the sea! How beautiful she looked to our eyes which had only seen water for days! Its bold and rocky cliffs, its towering peaks snow capped; its sequestered and winding valleys, and bright, sparkling waterfalls; its hillsides in all the artistic shades of red, brown, yellow, green, purple, black and white; its water in all the tints of blue and azure, reflecting sky that looked

"As though an angel in his upward flight, Had left his mantle floating in mid-air."

All, all, greeted the eye of the worn voyager most restfully.

Cl.u.s.ters of quaint red buildings were soon seen nestling under the mountain--that was Dutch Harbor, and a mile farther on we arrived at the dock at Unalaska. We would be here twenty-four hours taking on fresh water, coal, and food, they told us, and we all ran out like sheep from a pen, or school children at intermission. We drank fresh water from the spring under the green hillside; we bought apples and oranges at the store, and furs of the furrier; we rowed in a skiff and scampered over the hills to Dutch Harbor; we watched jelly-fish and pink star-fish in the water; we saw white reindeer apparently as tame as cows browsing on the slopes; we visited an old Greek church, and were kept from the very holiest place where only men were allowed to go, retaliating when we came to the cash box at the door--we dropped nothing in; we climbed the highest mountain near by, and staked imaginary gold claims after drinking in the beauties of the views which encompa.s.sed us; we snapped our kodaks repeatedly, and then, having reached the limit of our time and strength, wended our way back to the steamer now ready to sail.

Leaving the harbor, we all stayed on deck as long as possible trying to fix the grandeur of the scenery in our minds so it could not slip away, and then Priest Rock was pa.s.sed, we had turned about eastward, and were in Unimak Pa.s.s. Here the wind blew a gale from the west, on account of which we were obliged to go below to our staterooms after watching the sailors lash everything on the hurricane deck well down in case of storm. After a few hours we left the Pa.s.s, with its precipitous cliffs, its barren and rocky slopes, its cones of extinct volcanoes, its rough and deep water, and headed due southeast for "Frisco."

Many unpleasant people and things we found on board as we proceeded, for not all of these had been left at Nome; but with a philosopher's fort.i.tude we studied to overlook everything disagreeable, and partly succeeded. That our efforts were not a complete success was due partly, at least, to our early education and large stock of ideality, and we were really not so much to blame.

The remainder of our journey was somewhat monotonous, broken only by drunken brawls at midnight on deck, waking us from sound slumbers; or the sight of a whale spouting during the day. Sometimes a breeze would spring up from the wrong direction, rolling us for a few hours, causing us to prefer a reclining posture instead of an upright one, and giving our complexions a still deeper lemonish cast; sometimes we were well inclined to feed the fishes in the sea, and did not; but at all times we were thankful that matters were no worse.

Then, after many days out from Unalaska we began to look for land.

Seagulls and goonies had followed in the wake of our ship, and rested themselves each day aloft in the rigging. Sails were now and then seen in the distance, like the spreading white wings of enormous swans gliding quietly over the bosom of the deep, and we realized that we were nearing land. In the darkness one night there came to us a little white boat containing three men,--one was a pilot to guide us safely through the beautiful Golden Gate; the light on Point Bonita was sighted--we were almost home.

We were now six weeks out from Dawson and twenty-one days from Nome; we had no storms, accidents or deaths on board, and carried five hundred pa.s.sengers, as well as three million dollars in gold. I had been away from home four months without a day's illness, and during my trip through Alaska had traveled seventy-five hundred miles, nearly one-half of this distance alone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNALASKA.]

CHAPTER VII.

GOING TO NOME.

One beautiful day in the spring of 1900 I sailed again for Alaska--this time for Nome from San Francisco. An English family consisting of the mother, one son and a daughter were to accompany me, and we had spent weeks in making our preparations. We were taking supplies of clothing, food, tents and bedding sufficient to last until some of our numerous plans of work after our arrival brought in returns. My hope was to meet my father there, for he had written that he thought he should go to the new gold fields, where he could do beach mining.

I was not above doing any honest work, and felt confident that I could make my way if I could gain an entrance into that country. The English people were all workers, and I had known them for ten years or more.

Our steamer was the good ship "St. Paul," belonging to the Alaska Commercial Company, and was advertised to sail on May twenty-fifth. When I laughingly called the attention of one of the owners of the ship to the fact that that date fell upon Friday, and many persons objected to sailing upon that day, he postponed the starting of the "St. Paul" to May twenty-sixth, and we left the dock on Sat.u.r.day afternoon amid the cheers and hand-waving of thousands of people who had come to see the big boat off for Nome.

The steamer was well fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of s.p.a.ce above or below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and the ship was well manned.

I was now much gratified to learn that there were many on board whom I had met before; that the steward, stewardess and several of the waiters had been on duty on the steamer "Bertha" during my trip out from Alaska the fall before, while I was upon speaking terms with a dozen or more of the pa.s.sengers with whom I had traveled from the same place. Of pa.s.sengers we had, all told, four hundred and eighty-seven. Of these thirty-five were women. There was only one child on board, and that was the little black-eyed girl with her Eskimo mother and white father from Golovin Bay whom I had seen at St. Michael some months before, and who was now going back to her northern home. She wore a sailor suit of navy blue serge, trimmed with white braid, and was as coy and cunning as ever, not speaking often to strangers, but laughing and running away to her mother when addressed.

From the day we sailed from San Francisco until we reached Nome I missed no meals in the dining salon, a pace which my English friends and others could not follow, for they were uncomfortably ill in the region of their digestive apparatus for several days. I slept for hours each day and thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

During the nine days' sail from San Francisco to Unalaska, a distance of two thousand three hundred and sixty-eight miles, I studied well the pa.s.sengers. We had preachers on board, as well as doctors, lawyers, merchants and miners, and there were women going to Nome to start eating houses, hotels and mercantile shops. There were several Swedish missionaries; one, a zealous young woman from San Francisco, going to the Swedish Mission at Golovin Bay.

This young person was pretty and pleasant, and I was glad to make her acquaintance as well as that of three other women speaking the same tongue and occupying the next stateroom to mine. The last named were going to start a restaurant in Nome. As they were sociable, jolly, and good sailors for the most part, I enjoyed their society. They had all lived in San Francisco for years, and though not related to each other, were firm friends of long standing and were uniting their little fortunes in the hope of making greater ones.

The young missionary was a friend to the other three, and I found no better or more congenial companions on board the ship than these four honest, hard-working women, so full of hope, courage and good sense as well as Christianity. Little did I then think that these people, placed by a seeming chance in an adjoining stateroom, were to be my fellow-workers and true friends, not only for the coming months in that Arctic land to which we were going, but, as the sequel will show, perhaps for years to come.

Not many days had pa.s.sed when we found that we had on board what few steamers can boast of, and that was an orchestra of professional musicians among the waiters. These were men going, with all the others, to seek their fortunes in the new gold fields, working their pa.s.sage as waiters on the ship to Nome, where they intended to leave it. Three evenings in the week these musicians, with the help of several singers on board, gave concerts in the dining salon, which, though impromptu, were very enjoyable.

A sweet and trained singer was the English girl of our company, and she sang many times, accompanied by the stringed instruments of the musicians, much to the delight of the a.s.sembled pa.s.sengers. When she sang, one evening, in her clear sympathetic voice the selection, "Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight," there was not a dry eye in the room, and the mind of many a man went back to his old home and praying mother in some far distant state, making him resolve to write oftener to her that she might be comforted with a knowledge of his whereabouts and welfare. These evenings were sometimes varied by recitations from an elocutionist on board; and a practised clog dancer excited the risibles of the company to the extent that they usually shouted with laughter at his exhibition of flying heels.

Day after day pa.s.sed. Those who were continually seasick had diversion enough. It was useless for us to tell them a pathetic tale of some one, who, at some time, had been more ill than they, because they would not believe a word of it, and it was equally useless to recommend an antidote for mal de mer such as theirs. "No one was ever so ill before,"

they said. They knew they should die and be buried at sea, and hoped they would if that would put an end to their sufferings. We tried at last to give them comfort by recommending out of former experiences ship's biscuit, dry toast and pop-corn as remedies, but only received black looks as our reward. We then concluded that a diet of tea, coffee and soup was exactly such a one as the fishes would recommend could they speak, these favorite and much used liquids keeping up a continual "swishing" in one's interior regions, and causing one to truthfully speak of the same as "infernal" instead of internal. But they were all tree physical as well as free moral agents and decided these things for themselves.

At last we entered the j.a.pan current and the weather was warmer and more enjoyable. On Monday, June fourth, we saw from the deck a few drifting logs and a quant.i.ty of seaweed, and these, with the presence of gulls and goonies flying overhead, convinced us that we were nearing land.