Alaska Part 61

CHAPTER XLVII

In the autumn of 1902 Felix Pedro, an experienced miner and prospector, crossed the divide between Birch and McMa.n.u.s creeks and entered the Tanana Valley.

Previous to that year many people had travelled through the valley, on their way to the Klondike, by the Valdez route; and a few miners from the Birch Creek and Forty-Mile diggings had wandered into the Tanana country, without being able to do any important prospecting because of the distance from supplies; but Pedro was the first man to discover that gold existed in economic quant.i.ties in this region, and his coming was an event of historical importance.

One of the best tests of the importance and value of geological survey work lies in the significant report of Mr. Alfred H. Brooks for the year of 1898--four years before the discoveries of Mr. Pedro:--

"We have seen that the little prospecting which has been done up to the present time has been too hurried and too superficial to be regarded as a fair test of the region. Our best information leads us to believe that the same horizons which carry gold in the Forty-Mile and Birch Creek districts are represented in the Tanana and White River basins.... I should advise prospectors to carefully investigate the small tributary streams of the lower White and of the Tanana from Mirror Creek to the mouth."

Pedro's discovery was on the creek which bears his name, and before another year gold was discovered on several other creeks. In 1901 a trading post was established by Captain E. T. Barnette, on the present site of Fairbanks, and the development of the country progressed rapidly. The Fairbanks Mining District was organized and named for the present Vice-President of the United States. In the autumn of 1903 eight hundred people were in the district, and about thirty thousand dollars had been produced, the more important creeks at that time being Pedro, Goldstream, Twin Creek, Cleary, Wolf, Chatham, and Fairbanks. In the fall of 1904 nearly four thousand miners had come in, and the year's output was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fairbanks and Chena had grown to thriving camps, and a brilliant prosperity reigned in the entire district. Roads were built to the creeks, sloughs were bridged, and Fairbanks' "boom" was in full swing. It was the old story of a camp growing from tents to shacks in a night, from shacks to three-story buildings in a month. The glory of the Klondike trembled and paled in the brilliance of that of Fairbanks. Every steamer for Valdez was crowded with men and women bound for the new camp by way of the Valdez trail; while thousands went by steamer, either to St. Michael and up the Yukon, or to Skaguay and down the Yukon, to the mouth of the Tanana.

Fairbanks is now a camp only in name. It has all the comforts and luxuries of a city, and is more prosperous and progressive than any other town in Alaska or the Yukon. It started with such a rush that it does not seem to be able to stop. It is the headquarters of the Third Judicial District of Alaska, which was formerly at Rampart; it has electric light and water systems, a fire department, excellent and modern hotels, schools, churches, hospitals, daily newspapers, a telegraph line to the outside world which is operated by the government, and a telephone system which serves not only the city, but all the creeks as well.

The Tanana Mines Railway, or Tanana Valley Railway, as it is now called, was built in 1905 to connect Fairbanks with Chena and the richest mining claims of the district; and two great railroads are in course of construction from Prince William Sound.

In 1906 the output of gold was more than nine millions of dollars, and had it not been for the labor troubles in 1907, this output would have been doubled. In the earlier days of the camp the crudest methods of mining were employed; but with the improved transportation facilities, modern machinery was brought in and the difficulties of the development were greatly lessened.

Upon a first trip to Fairbanks, the visitor is amazed at the size and the metropolitan style and tone of this six-year-old camp in the wilderness.

It is situated on the banks of the Chena River, about nine miles from its confluence with the Tanana. It has a level town site, which looks as though it might extend to the Arctic Circle. The main portion of the town is on the right bank of the river, the railway terminal yards, saw-mills, manufacturing plants, and industries of a similar nature being located on the opposite sh.o.r.e, on what is known as Garden Island, the two being connected by substantial bridges. The city is incorporated and, like other incorporated towns of Alaska, is governed by a council of seven members, who elect a presiding officer who is, by courtesy, known as mayor. The executive officers of the munic.i.p.al government consist of a clerk, treasurer, police magistrate, chief of police, chief of the fire department, street commissioner, and physician.

The munic.i.p.al finances are derived from a share in federal licenses, from the income derived from the local court, from poll taxes, and from local taxation of real and personal property. From all these sources the munic.i.p.al treasury was enriched during the year of 1906 by about ninety-five thousand dollars.

Each of the three banks operates an a.s.say office under the supervision of an expert. The population of the district is from fifteen to twenty thousand, of which five thousand belong permanently to the town. The climate is dry and sparkling; the summers are delightful, the winters still and not colder than those of Minnesota, Montana, and the Dakotas, but without the blizzards of those states. In 1906 the coldest month was January, the daily mean temperature being thirty-six degrees below zero, but dry and still. Travel over the trail by dog team is continued throughout the winter, skating and other outdoor sports being as common as in Canada.

Five saw-mills are in operation, with an aggregate daily capacity of a hundred and ten thousand feet, the entire product being used locally.

There is an abundance of poplar, spruce, hemlock, and birch; an unlimited water supply; a munic.i.p.al steam-heating plant; two good hospitals; two daily newspapers; graded schools,--the four-year course of the high school admitting the student to the Washington State University and to high educational inst.i.tutions of other states; a Chamber of Commerce and a Business Men's a.s.sociation; twelve hotels, five of which are first cla.s.s; while every industry is represented several times over.

This is Fairbanks, the six-year-old mining-camp of the Tanana Valley.

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

SUNRISE ON BEHRING SEA]

CHAPTER XLVIII

At Tanana our party was enlarged by a party of four gentlemen, headed by Governor Wilford B. Hoggatt, of Juneau, who was on a tour of inspection of the country he serves.

Our steamer, too, underwent a change while we were ash.o.r.e. We now learned why its bow was square and wide. It was that it might push barges up and down the Yukon; and it now proceeded, under our astonished eyes, to push four, each of which was nearly as large as itself. All the days of my life, as Mr. Pepys would say, I have never beheld such an object floating upon the water. The barges were fastened in front of us and on both sides of us; two were flat and uncovered, one was covered, but open on the sides, while the fourth was a kind of boat and was crowned with a real pilot-house, in which was a real wheel.

We viewed them in open and hostile dismay, not yet recognizing them as blessings in disguise; we then laughed till we wept, over our amazing appearance as we went sweeping, bebarged, down to the sea. Four barges to one steamboat! One barge would have seemed like an insult, but four were perfectly ridiculous. The governor was told that they const.i.tuted his escort of honor, but he would not smile. He was in haste to get to Nome; and barges meant delay.

We swept down the Yukon like a huge bird with wide wings outspread; and those of us who did not care whether we went upon a sand-bar or not soon became infatuated with barges. Straight in front of our steamer we had, on one barge, a low, clean promenade a hundred feet long by fifty wide; on the others were shady, secluded nooks, where one might lie on rugs and cushions, reading or dreaming, ever and anon catching glimpses of native settlements--tents and cabins; thousands of coral-red salmon drying on frames; groups of howling dogs; dozens of silent dark people sitting or standing motionless, staring at their whiter and more fortunate brothers sweeping past them on the rushing river.

Poor, lonely, dark people! As lonely and as mysterious, as little known and as little understood, as the mighty river on whose sh.o.r.es their few and hard days are spent. Little we know of them, and less we care for them. The hopeless tragedy of their race is in their long, yearning gaze; but we read it not. We look at them in idle curiosity as we flash past them; and each year, as we return, we find them fewer, lonelier,--more like dark sphinxes on the river's banks. As the years pa.s.s and their numbers diminish, the mournfulness deepens in their gaze; it becomes more questioning, more haunting. The day will come when they will all be gone, when no longer dark figures will people those lonely sh.o.r.es; and then we will look at one another in useless remorse and cry:--

"Why did they not complain? Why did they not ask us to help them? Why did they sit and starve for everything, staring at us and making no sign?"

Alas! when that day comes, we will learn--too late!--that there is no appeal so poignant and so haunting as that which lies in the silence and in the asking eyes of these dark and vanishing people.

Below Rampart the hills withdraw gradually until they become but blue blurs on the horizon line during the last miles of the river's course.

It is now the lower river and becomes beautifully channelled and islanded. Across these low, wooded, and watered plains the sunset burns like a maze of thistle-down touched with ruby fire--burns down, at last, into the rose of dawn; and the rose into emerald, beryl, and pearl.

Not far above Nulato the Koyukuk pours its tawny flood into the Yukon.

For many years the Koyukuk has given evidences of great richness in gold, but high prices of freight and labor have r.e.t.a.r.ded its progress.

During the past winter, however, discoveries have been made which promise one of the greatest stampedes ever known. Louis Olson, after several seasons in the district, experienced a gambler's "hunch" that there "was pay on Nolan Creek." He and his a.s.sociates started to sink, and the first bucket they got off bedrock netted seven dollars; the bedrock, a slate, pitched to one side of the hole, and when they had followed it down and struck a level bedrock, they got two hundred and sixty dollars.

"Our biggest pan," said Mr. Olson, telling the story when he came out, one of the richest men in Alaska, "was eighteen hundred dollars. You can see the gold lying in sight."

Captain E. W. Johnson, of Nome, who had grub-staked two men in the Koyukuk, "fell into it," as miners say. They struck great richness on bedrock, and Captain Johnson promptly celebrated the strike by opening fifteen hundred dollars' worth of champagne to the camp.

Within ten days three pans of a thousand dollars each were washed out.

Coldfoot, Bettles, Bergman, and Koyukuk are the leading settlements of this region, the first two lying within the Arctic Circle. Interest has revived in the Chandelar country which adjoins on the east.

Really, Seward's "land of icebergs, polar bears, and walrus," his "worthless, G.o.d-forsaken region," is doing fairly well, as countries go.

Nulato, nearly three hundred miles below Tanana, is one of the most historic places on the Yukon, and has the most sanguinary history. It was founded in 1838 by a Russian half-breed named Malakoff, who built a trading post. During the following winter, owing to scarcity of provisions, he was compelled to return to St. Michael, and the buildings were burned by natives who were jealous of the advance of white people up the river. The following year the post was reestablished and was again destroyed. In 1841 Derabin erected a fort at this point, and for ten years the settlement flourished. In 1851, however, Lieutenant Bernard, of the British ship _Enterprise_, arrived in search of information as to the fate of Sir John Franklin. Unfortunately, he remarked that he intended to "send for" the princ.i.p.al chief of the Koyukuks. This was considered an insult by the haughty chief, and it led to an a.s.sault upon the fort, which was destroyed. Derabin, Bernard and his companions, and all other white people at the fort were brutally murdered, as well as many resident Indians. The atrocity was never avenged.

Nulato is now one of the largest and most prosperous Indian settlements on the river. A large herd of reindeer is quartered there. There was, as every one interested in Alaska knows, a grave scandal connected with the reindeer industry a few years ago. Many of the animals imported by the government from Siberia at great expense, for the benefit of needy natives and miners, were appropriated by missionaries without authority; but after an investigation by a special agent of the government there was an entire reorganization of the system. In all, Congress appropriated more than two hundred and twenty thousand dollars, with which twelve hundred reindeer have, at various times, been imported.

There are now about twelve thousand head in Alaska, of which the government owns not more than twenty-five hundred. There are also stations at Bethel, Beetles, Iliamna, Kotzebue, St. Lawrence Island, Golovnin, Teller, Cape Prince of Wales, Point Barrow, and at several other points. They are used for sledding purposes and for their meat and hides, really beautiful parkas and mukluks--the latter a kind of skin boot--being made of the hides.

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

SURF AT NOME

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle]

A native woman named Mary Andrewuk has a large herd, is quite wealthy, and is known as the "Reindeer Queen."

We reached Anvik at seven in the evening. Anvik is like Uyak on Kadiak Island, and I longed for the frank Swedish sailor who had so luminously described Uyak. If there be anything worth seeing at Anvik--and they say there is a graveyard!--they must first kill the mosquitoes; else, so far as I am concerned, it will forever remain unseen. Under a rocky bluff two dozen Eskimo, men and women, sat fighting mosquitoes and trying to sell wares so poorly made that no one desired them. Eskimo dolls and toy parkas were the only things that tempted us; and hastily paying for them, we fled on board to our big, comfortable stateroom, whose window was securely netted from the pests which made the very air black.

We left Anvik at midnight. We were to arrive at Holy Cross Mission at four o'clock the same morning. Expecting the _Campbell_ to arrive later in the day, the priest and sisters had arranged a reception for the governor, in which the children of the mission were to take part.

Thinking of the disappointment of the children, the governor decided to go ash.o.r.e, even at that unearthly hour, and we were invited to accompany him. We were awakened at three o'clock.

The dawn was bleak and cheerless; it was raining slightly, and the mosquitoes were as thick and as hungry as they had been at the Grand Canyon. Of all the pa.s.sengers that had planned to go ash.o.r.e, there appeared upon the sloppy deck only four--the governor, a gentleman who was travelling with him, my friend, and myself. We looked at one another silently through rain and mosquitoes, and before we could muster up smiles and exchange greetings, an officer of the boat called out:--

"Governor, if it wasn't for those d.a.m.n disappointed children, I'd advise you not to go ash.o.r.e."

We all smiled then, for the man had put the thought of each of us into most forcible English.