Alaska Part 59

Men of the highest character and address have been placed at the head of the various stations,--men with the business ability to successfully conduct the company's important interests and the social qualifications that would enable them to meet and entertain distinguished travellers through the wilderness in a manner creditable to the company. Tourists, by the way, who go to Alaska without providing themselves with clothes suitable for formal social functions are frequently embarra.s.sed by the omission. Gentlemen may hasten to the company's store--which carries everything that men can use, from a toothpick to a steamboat--and array themselves in evening clothes, provided that they are not too fastidious concerning the fit and the style; but ladies might not be so fortunate.

Nothing is too good for the people of Alaska, and when they offer hospitality to the stranger within their gates, they prefer to have him pay them the compliment of dressing appropriately to the occasion. If voyagers to Alaska will consider this advice they may spare themselves and their hosts in the Arctic Circle some unhappy moments.

Yukon summers are glorious. There is not an hour of darkness. A gentleman who came down from "the creeks" to call upon us did not reach our hotel until eleven o'clock. He remained until midnight, and the light in the parlor when he took his departure was as at eight o'clock of a June evening at home. The lights were not turned on while we were in Dawson; but it is another story in winter.

Clothes are not "blued" in Dawson. The first morning after our arrival I was summoned to a window to inspect a clothes-line.

"Will you look at those clothes! Did you ever see such whiteness in clothes before?"

I never had, and I promptly asked Miss Kinney what her laundress did to the clothes to make them look so white.

"I'm the laundress," said she, brusquely. "I come out here from Chicago to work, and I work. I was half dead, clerking in a store, when the Klondike craze come along and swept me off my feet. I struck Dawson broke. I went to work, and I've been at work ever since. I have cooks, and chambermaids, and laundresses; but it often happens that I have to be all three, besides landlady, at once. That's the way of the Klondike.

Now, I must go and feed those malamute pups; that little yellow one is getting sa.s.sy."

She had almost escaped when I caught her sleeve and detained her.

"But the clothes--I asked you what makes them so white--"

"Don't you suppose," interrupted she, irascibly, "that I have too much work to do to fool around answering the questions of a cheechaco? I'm not travelling down the Yukon for fun!"

This was distinctly discouraging; but I had set out to learn what had made those clothes so white. Besides, I was beginning to perceive dimly that she was not so hard as she spoke herself to be; so I advised her that I should not release her sleeve until she had answered my question.

She burst into a kind of lawless laughter and threw her hand out at me.

"Oh, you! Well, there, then! I never saw your beat! There ain't a thing in them there clothes but soap-suds, renched out, and sunshine. We don't even have to rub clothes up here the way you have to in other places; and we never put in a _pinch_ of blueing. Two-three hours of sunshine makes 'em like snow."

"But how is it in winter?"

She laughed again.

"Oh, that's another matter. We bleach 'em out enough in summer so's it'll do for all winter. Let go my sleeve or you won't get any blueberries for lunch."

This threat had the desired effect. Surely no woman ever worked harder than Miss Kinney worked. At four o'clock in the mornings we heard her ordering maids and malamute puppies about; and at midnight, or later, her springing step might be heard as she made the final rounds, to make sure that all was well with her family.

We were greatly amused and somewhat embarra.s.sed on the day of our arrival. We saw at a glance that the only vacant room was too small to receive our baggage.

"I'll fix that," said she, snapping her fingers. "I just gave a big room on the first floor to two young men. I'll make them exchange with you."

It was in vain that we protested.

"Now, you let me be!" she exclaimed; "I'll fix this. You're in the Klondike now, and you'll learn how white men can be. Young men don't take the best room and let women take the worst up here. If they come up here with that notion, they soon get it taken out of 'em--and I'm just the one to do it. Now, you let me be! They'll be tickled to death."

Whatever their state of mind may have been, the exchange was made; but when we endeavored to thank her, she snapped us up with:--

"Anybody'd know you never lived in a white country, or you wouldn't make such a fuss over such a little thing. We're used to doing things for other people _up here_," she added, scornfully.

Miss Kinney gave us many surprises during our stay, but at the last moment she gave us the greatest surprise of all. Just as our steamer was on the point of leaving, she came running down the gangway and straight to us. Her hands and arms were filled with large paper bags, which she began forcing upon us.

"There!" she said. "I've come to say good-by and bring you some fruit.

I'd given you one of those malamute puppies if I could have spared him.

Well, good-by and good luck!"

We were both so touched by this unexpected kindness in one who had taken so much pains to conceal every touch of tenderness in her nature, that we could not look at one another for some time; nor did it lessen our appreciation to remember how ceaselessly and how drudgingly Miss Kinney worked and the price she must have paid for those great bags of oranges, apples, and peaches--for freight rates are a hundred and forty dollars a ton on "perishables." It set a mist in our eyes every time we thought about it. It was our first taste of Arctic kindness; and, somehow, its flavor was different from that of other lat.i.tudes.

Dawson is gay socially, as it has always been. In summer the people are devoted to outdoor sports, which are enjoyed during the long evenings.

There is a good club-house for athletic sports in winter, and the theatres are well patronized, although, in summer, plays commence at ten or ten-thirty and are not concluded before one. As in all English and Canadian towns, business is resumed at a late hour in the morning, making the hours of rest correspond in length to ours.

Two young Yale men who were travelling in our party had been longing to see a dance-hall,--a "real Klondike dance-hall,"--but they came in one midnight, their faces eloquent with disgust.

"We found a dance-hall _at last_," said one. "They hide their light under such bushels now that it takes a week to find one; the mounted police don't stand any foolishness. Then--think of a dance-hall running in broad daylight! No mystery, no glitter, no soft, rosy glamour--say, it made me yearn for bread and b.u.t.ter. Do you know where Miss Kinney keeps her bread jar and blueberries? Honestly, I don't know anything or any place that could cultivate a taste in a young man for sane and decent things like one of these dance-halls here. I never was so disappointed in my life. I can go to church _at home_; I didn't come to the Klondike for _that_. Why, the very music itself sounded about as lively as 'Come, Ye Disconsolate!' Come on, Billy; let's go to bed."

No one should visit Dawson without climbing, on a clear day, to the summit of the hill behind the town, which is called "the Dome." The view of the surrounding country from this point is magnificent. The course of the winding, widening Yukon may be traced for countless miles; the little creeks pour their tawny floods down into the Klondike before the longing eyes of the beholder; and faraway on the horizon faintly shine the snow-peaks that beautify almost every portion of the northern land.

The wagon roads leading from Dawson to the mining districts up the various creeks are a distinct surprise. They were built by the Dominion government and are said to be the best roads to be found in any mining district in the world. A Dawson man will brag about the roads, while modestly silent about the gold to which the roads lead.

"You must go up into the creeks, if only to see the roads," every man to whom one talks will presently say. "You can't beat 'em anywheres."

Claim staking in the Klondike is a serious matter. The mining is practically all placer, as yet, and a creek claim comprises an area two hundred and fifty feet along the creek and two thousand feet wide. This information was a shock to me. I had always supposed, vaguely, that a mining claim was a kind of farm, of anywhere from twenty to sixty acres; and to find it but little larger than the half of a city block was a chill to my enthusiasm. They explained, however, that the gravel filling a pan was but small in quant.i.ty, that it could be washed out in ten minutes, and that if every pan turned out but ten dollars, the results of a long day's work would not be bad.

Claims lying behind and above the ones that front on the creeks are called "hill" claims. They have the same length of frontage, but are only a thousand feet in width. In staking a claim, a post must be placed at each corner on the creek, with the names of the claim and owner and a general description of any features by which it may be identified; the locator must take out a free miner's license, costing seven dollars and a half, and file his claim at the mining recorder's office within ten days after staking. No one can stake more than one claim on a single creek, but he may hold all that he cares to acquire by purchase, and he may locate on other creeks. Development work to the amount of two hundred dollars must be done yearly for three years, or that amount paid to the mining recorder; this amount is increased to four hundred dollars with the fourth year. The locator must secure a certificate to the effect that the necessary amount of yearly work has been done, else the claim will be cancelled.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

WRECK OF "JESSIE," NOME BEACH

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle]

CHAPTER XLV

When the _D. R. Campbell_ drew away from the Dawson wharf at nine o'clock of an August morning, another of my dreams was "come true." I was on my way down the weird and mysterious river that calls as powerfully in its way as the North Pacific Ocean. For years the mere sound of the word "Yukon" had affected me like the clash of a wild and musical bell. The sweep of great waters was in it--the ring of breaking ice and its thunderous fall; the roar of forest fires, of undermined plunging cliffs, of falling trees, of pitiless winds; the sobs of dark women, deserted upon its sh.o.r.es, with white children on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the mournful howls of dogs and of their wild brothers, wolves; the slide of avalanches and the long rattle of thunder--for years the word "Yukon"

had set these sounds ringing in my ears, and had swung before my eyes the shifting pictures of canyon, rampart, and plain; of waters rushing through rock walls and again loitering over vast lowlands to the sea; of forestated mountains, rose thickets, bare hills, pale cliffs of clay, and ranges of sublime snow-mountains. Yet, with all that I had read, and all that I had heard, and all that I had imagined, I was unprepared for the spell of the Yukon; for the s.p.a.ces, the solitude, the silence. At last I was to learn how well the name fits the river and the country, and how feeble and how ineffectual are both description and imagination to picture this country so that it may be understood.

Six miles below Dawson the site of old Fort Reliance is pa.s.sed, and forty-six miles farther Forty-Mile River pours its broad flood into the Yukon. About eight miles up this river, at the lower end of a canyon, a strong current has swept many small boats upon dangerous rocks and the occupants have been drowned. The head of the Forty-Mile is but a short distance from the great Tanana.

The settlement of Forty-Mile is the pioneer mining-camp of the Yukon.

The Alaska Commercial Company established a station here soon after the gold excitement of 1887; and, as the international boundary line crosses Forty-Mile River twenty-three miles from its mouth and many of the most important mining interests depending upon the town for supplies are on the American side, a bonded warehouse is maintained, from which American goods can be drawn without the payment of duties. As late as 1895 quite a lively town was at the mouth of the river, boasting even an opera house; but the town was depopulated upon the discovery of gold on the Klondike. Six years ago the settlement was flooded by water banked up in Forty-Mile River by ice, and the residents were taken from upstairs windows in boats. The former name of this river was Che-ton-deg, or "Green Leaf," River.

Now there are a couple of dozen log cabins, a dozen or more red-roofed houses, and store buildings. The steamer pushed up sidewise to the rocky beach, a gang-plank was floated ash.o.r.e, and a customs inspector came aboard. On the beach were a couple of ladies, some members of the mounted police in scarlet coats, and fifty malamute dogs, snapping, snarling, and fighting like wolves over the food flung from the steamer.

The dog is to Alaska what the horse is to more civilized countries--the intelligent, patient, faithful beast of burden. He is of the Eskimo or "malamute" breed, having been bred with the wolf for endurance; or he is a "husky" from the Mackenzie River.

Eskimo dogs are driven with harness, hitched to sleds, and teams of five or seven with a good leader can haul several hundred pounds, if blessed with a kind driver. In summer they have nothing to do but sleep, and find their food as best they may. Along the Yukon they haunt steamer-landings and are always fed by the stewards--who can thus muster a dog fight for the pleasure of heartless pa.s.sengers at a moment's notice.

With the coming of winter a kind of electric strength seems to enter into these dogs. They long for the harness and the journeys over snow and ice; and for a time they leap and frisk like puppies and will not be restrained. They are about the size of a St. Bernard dog, but of very different shape; the leader is always an intelligent and superior animal and his eyes frequently hold an almost human appeal. He is fairly dynamic in force, and when not in harness will fling himself upon food with a swiftness and a strength that suggest a missile hurled from a catapult. Nothing can check his course; and he has been known to strike his master to the earth in his headlong rush of greeting--although it has been cruelly said of him that he has no affection for any save the one that feeds him, and not for him after his hunger is satisfied.

The Eskimo dog seldom barks, but he has a mournful, wolflike howl. His coat is thick and somewhat like wool, and his feet are hard; he travels for great distances without becoming footsore, and at night he digs a deep hole in the snow, crawls into it, curls up in his own wool, and sleeps as sweetly as a pet Spitz on a cushion of down. His chief food is fish. If the Alaska dog is not affectionate, it is because for generations he has had no cause for affection. No dog with such eyes--so asking and so human-like in their expression--could fail to be affectionate and devoted to a master possessing the qualities which inspire affection and devotion.