Alaska Part 34

Absolute stillness was about us; there was not one faintest sound of nature; no plash of water, nor sough of wind, nor call of a bird. It was so still that it seemed like the beginning of a new world, with the birth of mountains taking place before our reverent eyes, as one after another dawned suddenly and goldenly upon our vision.

Every time we had stopped on the trail we had heard harrowing stories of saddle-horses or pack-horses having missed their footing and gone over the precipice. The horses are so carefully packed, and the packs so securely fastened on--the last cinch being thrown into the "diamond hitch"--that the poor beasts can roll over and over to the bottom of a canyon without disarranging a pack weighing two hundred pounds--a feat which they very frequently perform.

The military trail is, of necessity, poor enough; but it is infinitely superior to all other trails in Alaska, and is a boon to the prospector.

It is a well-defined and well-travelled highway. The trees and bushes are cut in places for a width of thirty feet, original bridges span the creeks when it is possible to bridge them at all, and some corduroy has been laid; but in many places the trail is a mere path, not more than two feet wide, shovelled or blasted from the hillside.

In Alaska there were practically no roads at all until the appointment in 1905 of a road commission consisting of Major W. P. Richardson, Captain G. B. Pillsbury, and Lieutenant L. C. Orchard. Since that year eight hundred miles of trails, wagon and sled roads, numerous ferries, and hundreds of bridges have been constructed. The wagon road-beds are all sixteen feet wide, with free side strips of a hundred feet; the sled roads are twelve feet wide; the trails, eight; and the bridges, fourteen. In the interior, laborers on the roads are paid five dollars a day, with board and lodging; they are given better food than any laborers in Alaska, with the possible exception of those employed at the Treadwell mines and on the Cordova Railroad. The average cost of road work in Alaska is about two thousand dollars a mile; two hundred and fifty for sled road, and one hundred for trails. These roads have reduced freight rates one-half and have helped to develop rich regions that had been inaccessible. Their importance in the development of the country is second to that of railroads only.

The scenery from Ptarmigan Drop down the Tsina River to Beaver Dam is magnificent. Huge mountains, saw-toothed and covered with snow, jut diagonally out across the valley, one after another; streams fall, riffling, down the sides of the mountains; and the cloud-effects are especially beautiful.

Tsina River is a narrow, foaming torrent, confined, for the most part, between sheer hills,--although, in places, it spreads out over low, gravelly flats. Beaver Dam huddles into a gloomy gulch at the foot of a vast, overhanging mountain. Its situation is what Whidbey would have called "gloomily magnificent." In 1905 Beaver Dam was a road house which many chose to avoid, if possible.

The Tiekel road house on the Kanata River is pleasantly situated, and is a comfortable place at which to eat and rest.

For its entire length, the military trail climbs and falls and winds through scenery of inspiring beauty. The trail leading off to the east at Tonsina, through the Copper River, Nizina, and Chitina valleys, is even more beautiful.

Vast plains and hillsides of bloom are pa.s.sed. Some mountainsides are blue with lupine, others rosy with fireweed; acres upon acres are covered with violets, bluebells, wild geranium, anemones, spotted moccasin and other orchids, b.u.t.tercups, and dozens of others--all large and vivid of color. It has often been said that the flowers of Alaska are not fragrant, but this is not true.

The mountains of the vicinity are glorious. Mount Drum is twelve thousand feet high. Sweeping up splendidly from a level plain, it is more imposing than Mount Wrangell, which is fourteen thousand feet high, and Mount Blackburn, which is sixteen thousand feet.

The view from the summit of Sour-Dough Hill is unsurpa.s.sed in the interior of Alaska. Glacial creeks and roaring rivers; wild and fantastic canyons; moving glaciers; gorges of royal purple gloom; green valleys and flowery slopes; the domed and towered Castle Mountains; the lone and majestic peaks pushing up above all others, above the clouds, cascades spraying down sheer precipices; and far to the south the linked peaks of the Coast Range piled magnificently upon the sky, dim and faintly blue in the great distance,--all blend into one grand panorama of unrivalled inland grandeur.

Crossing the Copper River, when it is high and swift, is dangerous,--especially for a "chechaco" of either s.e.x. (A chechaco is one who has not been in Alaska a year.) Packers are often compelled to unpack their horses, putting all their effects into large whipsawed boats. The halters are taken off the horses and the latter are driven into the roaring torrent, followed by the packers in the boats.

The horses apparently make no effort to reach the opposite sh.o.r.e, but use their strength desperately to hold their own in the swift current, fighting against it, with their heads turned pitifully up-stream. Their bodies being turned at a slight angle, the current, pushing violently against them, forces them slowly, but surely, from sand bar to sand bar, and, finally, to the sh.o.r.e.

It frequently requires two hours to get men, horses, and outfit from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, where they usually arrive dripping wet. Women who make this trip, it is needless to say, suffer still more from the hardship of the crossing than do men.

In riding horses across such streams, they should be started diagonally up-stream toward the first sand bar above. They lean far forward, bracing themselves at every step against the current and choosing their footing carefully. The horses of the trail know all the dangers, and scent them afar--holes, boulders, irresistible currents, and quicksand; they detect them before the most experienced "trailer" even suspects them.

I will not venture even to guess what the other two women in my party did when they crossed dangerous streams; but for myself, I wasted no strength in trying to turn my horse's head up-stream, or down-stream, or in any other direction. When we went down into the foaming water, I gave him his head, clung to his mane, leaned forward in the saddle,--and prayed like anything. I do not believe in childishly asking the Lord to help one so long as one can help one's self; but when one is on the back of a half-swimming, half-floundering horse in the middle of a swollen, treacherous flood, with holes and quicksand on all sides, one is as helpless as he was the day he was born; and it is a good time to pray.

According to the report of Major Abercrombie, who probably knows this part of Alaska more thoroughly than any one else, there are hundreds of thousands of acres in the Copper River Valley alone where almost all kinds of vegetables, as well as barley and rye, will grow in abundance and mature. Considering the travel to the many and fabulously rich mines already discovered in this valley and adjacent ones, and the cost of bringing in grain and supplies, it may be easily seen what splendid opportunities await the small farmer who will select his homestead judiciously, with a view to the accommodation of man and beast, and the cultivation of food for both. The opportunities awaiting such a man are so much more enticing than the inducements of the bleak Dakota prairies or the wind-swept valleys of the Yellowstone as to be beyond comparison.

Major Abercrombie believes that the valleys of the sub-drainage of the Copper River Valley will in future years supply the demands for cereals and vegetables, if not for meats, of the thousands of miners that will be required to extract the vast deposits of metals from the Tonsina, Chitina, Kotsina, Nizina, Chesna, Tanana, and other famous districts.

The vast importance to the whole territory of Alaska, and to the United States, as well, of the building of the Guggenheim railroad from Cordova into this splendid inland empire may be realized after reading Major Abercrombie's report.

We have been accustomed to mineralized zones of from ten to twelve miles in length; in the Wrangell group alone we have a circle eighty miles in diameter, the mineralization of which is simply marvellous; yet, valuable though these concentrates are, they are as valueless commercially as so much sandstone, without the aid of a railroad and reduction works.

If the group of mines at b.u.t.te could deflect a great transcontinental trunk-line like the Great Northern, what will this mighty zone, which contains a dozen properties already discovered,--to say nothing of the unfound, undreamed-of ones,--of far greater value as copper propositions than the richest of Montana, do to advance the commercial interests of the Pacific Coast?

The first discovery of gold in the Nizina district was made by Daniel Kain and Clarence Warner. These two prospectors were urged by a crippled Indian to accompany him to inspect a vein of copper on the head waters of a creek that is now known as Dan Creek.

Not being impressed by the copper outlook, the two prospectors returned.

They noticed, however, that the gravel of Dan Creek had a look of placer gold.

They were out of provisions, and were in haste to reach their supplies, fifty miles away; but Kain was reluctant to leave the creek unexamined.

He went to a small lake and caught sufficient fish for a few days'

subsistence; then, with a shovel for his only tool, he took out five ounces of coa.r.s.e gold in two days.

In this wise was the rich Nizina district discovered. The Nizina River is only one hundred and sixty miles from Valdez. In Rex Gulch as much as eight ounces of gold have been taken out by one man in a single day.

The gold is of the finest quality, a.s.saying over eighteen dollars an ounce.

There is an abundance of timber suitable for building houses and for firewood on all the creeks. There is water at all seasons for sluicing, and, if desired, for hydraulic work.

CHAPTER XXVI

The famous Bonanza Copper Mine is on the mountainside high above the Kennicott Valley, and near the Kennicott Glacier--the largest glacier of the Alaskan interior. This glacier does not entirely fill the valley, and one travels close to its precipitous wall of ice, which dwindles from a height of one hundred feet to a low, gravel-darkened moraine.

From the summit of Sour-Dough Hill it may be seen for its whole forty-mile length sweeping down from Mounts Wrangell and Regal.

The Bonanza Mine has an elevation of six thousand feet, and was discovered by the merest chance.

The history of this mine from the day of its discovery is one of the most fascinating of Alaska. In the autumn of 1899 a prospecting party was formed at Valdez, known as the "McClellan" party. The ten individuals composing the party were experienced miners and they contributed money, horses, and "caches," as well as experience. The princ.i.p.al cache was known as the "McCarthy Cabin" cache, and was about fifteen miles east of Copper River on the trail to the Nicolai Mine.

The Nicolai had been discovered early in the summer by R. F. McClellan, who was one of the men composing the "McClellan" party, and others.

Another important cache of three thousand pounds of provisions was the "Amy" cache, thirty-five miles from Valdez, just over the summit of Thompson Pa.s.s.

The agreement was that the McClellan party was to prospect in the interior in 1900 and 1901, all property located to be for their joint benefit.

The members of the party scattered soon after the organization was completed. Clarence Warner, John Sweeney, and Jack Smith remained in Valdez for the winter, all the others going "out to the states."

In March of 1900 Warner and Smith set out for the interior over the snow. There was no government trail then, and the hardships to be endured were as terrific as were those of the old Chilkoot Pa.s.s, on the way to the Klondike. The snow was from six to ten feet deep, and their progress was slow and painful. One went ahead on snow-shoes, the other following; when the trail thus made was sufficiently hard, the hand sleds, loaded with provisions and bedding, were drawn over it by ropes around the men's shoulders. From two to three hundred pounds was a heavy burden for each man to drag through the soft snow.

Climbing the summit, and at other steep places, they were compelled to "relay," by leaving the greater portion of their load beside the trail, pulling only a few pounds for a short distance and returning for more.

By the most constant and exhaustive labor they were able to make only five or six miles a day.

They replenished their stores at the "Amy" cache, near the summit, and in May reached the "McCarthy Cabin" cache. Here they found that the Indians had broken in and stolen nearly all the supplies.

When they left Valdez, it was with the expectation that McClellan, or some other member of the party, would bring in their horses to the McCarthy cabin, that their supplies might be packed from that point on horseback,--the snow melting in May making it impossible to use sleds, and no man being able to carry more than a few pounds on his back for so long a journey as they expected to make.

However, McClellan had, during the winter, entered into a contract with the Chitina Exploration Company at San Francisco to do a large amount of development work on the Nicolai Mine during the summer of 1900. He returned to Valdez after Warner and Smith had left, bringing twenty horses, a large outfit of tools and supplies, and fifteen men--among them some of the McClellan prospecting party, who had agreed to work for the season for the Chitina Company.

When this party reached the McCarthy cabin, they found Warner and Smith there. An endless dispute thereupon began as to the amount of provisions the two men had when the Chitina party arrived,--Warner and Smith claiming that they had five hundred pounds, and the Chitina Company claiming that they were entirely "out of grub," to use miner's language.

Warner and Smith demanded that McClellan should give them two horses belonging to the McClellan prospecting party, which he had brought. This matter was finally settled by McClellan's packing in what remained of Smith and Warner's provisions to the Nicolai Mine, a distance of nearly a hundred miles.

McClellan, as superintendent of the Chitina Company, used, with that company's horses, four of the McClellan party's horses during the entire season, sending them to and from Valdez, packing supplies.

In the meantime, upon reaching the Nicolai Mine, on the 1st of July, Warner and Smith, packing supplies on their backs, set out to prospect.

The Chitina Company, in the famous and bitterly contested lawsuit which followed, claimed that they were supplied with the Chitina Company's "grub"; while Smith and Warner claimed that their provisions belonged to the McClellan party.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by J. Doody, Dawson