Alaska Part 63

Both the Eskimos and the Indians are lovers of music, and the former readily yield to emotion when they hear melodious strains. When a "Buluga," or white whale, is killed, a feast is held and the natives sing their songs and dance. The music of stringed instruments invariably moves them to tears. At a recent Thanksgiving service in Fairbanks, some visiting Indians were invited to sing "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful." With evident pleasure, they sang it as follows:--

"Oni, tsenuan whuduguduwhuta yilh; Oni, yuwhun dutlish, oni nokhlhan, Oni, dodutalokhlho, Oni, dodutalokhlho, Oni, dodutalokhlho, Lud."

At Point Barrow, three hundred miles northeast of Behring Strait, an old Eskimo who could not speak one word of English was heard to whistle "The Holy City," and it filled the hearer's heart with home-loneliness. A trader had sold the old native music-lover a phonograph, receiving in pay two white polar bear-skins, worth several hundred dollars.

Some one gave an ordinary French harp to a little Eskimo lad on our steamer; and from early morning until late at night he sat on a companionway, alone, indifferent to all pa.s.sers-by, blowing out softly and sweetly with dark lips the prisoned beauty of his soul.

All the islands of Behring Sea, as well as the coast of the Arctic Ocean, are inhabited by Eskimos. From the largest island, St. Lawrence, to the small Diomede on the American side, they have settlements and schools. St. Lawrence is eighty miles long by fifteen in width; while the Diomede is only two miles by one. The natives beg pitifully for education--"to be smart, like the white man." We shrink from their filth and their immorality, but we teach them nothing better; yet we might see through their asking eyes down into their starved souls if we would but look.

In many ways Nome is the most interesting place in Alaska. It is at once so pagan and so civilized; so crude and so refined. It is the golden gateway through which thousands of people pa.s.s each summer to and from the interior of Alaska. Treeless and harborless it began and has continued, surmounting all obstacles that lay in its way of becoming a city. It has a water system that supplies its household needs, with steam pipes laid parallel to the water pipes, to thaw them in winter--and then it has not a yard of sewerage. It has a wireless telegraph station, a telephone service, and electric-light plant; and it is seeking munic.i.p.al steam-heating. Electric lighting is excessively high, owing to the price of coal, and many use lamps and candles. There are three good newspapers, which play important parts in the politics of Alaska--the _Nugget_, the _Gold-Digger_, and the _News_; three banks, with capital stocks ranging from one to two hundred thousand dollars, each of which has an a.s.say-office; two good public schools; three churches; hospitals; and a telephone system connecting all the creeks and camps within a radius of fifty miles with Nome. The orders of Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Eagles, and Arctic Brotherhood have clubs at Nome. The Arctic Brotherhood is the most popular order of the North, and the more important entertainments are usually given under its auspices and are held in its club-rooms; the wives of its members form the most exclusive society of the North.

The spirit of Nome is restless; it is the spirit of the gold-seeker, the seafarer, the victim of wanderl.u.s.t; and it soon gets into even the visitor's blood. Millions of dollars have been taken out of the sands whereon Nome is now built, and millions more may be waiting beneath it.

It seemed as though every man in Nome should be digging--on the beach, in the streets, in cellars.

"Why are not all these men digging?" I asked, and they laughed at me.

"Because every inch of tundra for miles back is located."

"Then why do not the locators dig, dig, day and night?"

"Oh, for one reason or another."

If I owned a claim on the tundra back of Nome, nothing save sudden death could prevent my digging.

New strikes are constantly being made, to keep the people of Nome in a state of feverish excitement and dynamic energy. When we landed, we found the town wild over a thirty-thousand-dollar clean-up on a claim named "Number Eight, Cooper Gulch." Four days later an excursion was arranged to go out on the railroad--for they have a railroad--to see another clean-up at this mine.

We started at nine o'clock, and we did not return until five; and it rained steadily and with exceeding coldness all day. There was a comfortable pa.s.senger-car, but despite the wind and the rain we preferred the box-cars, roofed, but open at the sides. The country which we traversed for six miles possessed the indescribable fascination of desolation. Behind us rolled the sea; but on all other sides stretched wide gray tundra levels, varied by low hills. Hills they call them here, but they are only slopes, or mounds, with here and there a treeless creek winding through them. The mist of the rain drove across them like smoke.

We were received at the mine by Captain and Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Corson, the owners. The ladies were entertained in the Johnsons' cabin home and the gentlemen at a near-by cabin, there being twelve ladies and twenty gentlemen in the party. An immense bowl of champagne punch--the word "punch" being used for courtesy--stood outside the ladies' cabin and was not allowed to grow empty. Late in the afternoon the heap of empty champagne bottles outside the gentlemen's cabin resembled in size one of the numerous gravel dumps scattered over the tundra; yet not a person showed signs of intoxication. They told us that one may drink champagne as though it were water in that lat.i.tude; and this is one northern "story" which I am quite willing to believe.

At noon a bountiful and delicious luncheon was served at the mess-house.

It was this same fortunate Captain Johnson, by the way, who opened fifteen hundred dollars' worth of champagne when bedrock was reached in his Koyukuk claim.

Sluicing is fascinating. A good supply of water with sufficient fall is necessary. Some of the claims are on creeks, but the owners of others are compelled to buy water from companies who supply it by pumping-plants and ditches. Boxes, or flat-bottomed troughs, are formed of planks with slats, or "riffles," fastened at intervals across the bottom. Several boxes are arranged on a gentle slope and fitted into one another. The boxes at "Number Eight" were twenty feet in length and slanted from the ground to a height of twelve feet on scaffolding. A narrow planking ran along each side of the telescoped boxes, and upon these frail foundations we stood to view the sluicing. The gravel is usually shovelled into the boxes, but "Number Eight" has an improved method. The gravel is elevated into an immense hopper-like receptacle, from which it sifts down into the sluice-boxes on each side, and a stream of water is kept running steadily upon it from a large hose at the upper end. Men with whisk brooms sweep up the gold into glistening heaps, working out the gravel and pa.s.sing it on, as a housewife works the whey out of the yellowing b.u.t.ter. The gold, being heavy, is caught and held by the riffles; if it is very fine, the bottoms of the boxes are covered with blankets, or mercury is placed at the slats to detain it.

The clean-up that day was twenty-nine thousand dollars, and each lady of the party was presented with a gold nugget by Mrs. Johnson. We were taken down into the mine, where we went about like a company of fireflies, each carrying his own candle. The ceiling was so low that we were compelled to walk in a stooping position. On the following morning we went to a bank and saw this clean-up melted and run into great bricks.

The lure and the fascination of virgin gold is undeniable. It catches one and all in its glistening, mysterious web. A man may sell his potato patch in town lots and become a millionnaire, without attracting attention; but let him "strike pay on bedrock"--and instantly he walks in a golden mist of glory and romance before his fellow-men. It may be because the farmer deposits his money in the bank, while the miner "sets up" the champagne to his less fortunate friends. Be that as it may, it is a sluggish pulse that does not quicken when one sees cones of beautiful coa.r.s.e gold and nuggets washed and swept out of the gravel in which it has been lying hundreds of years, waiting. If Behring had but landed upon this golden beach, Alaska--despite all the eloquence and the earnestness of Seward and Sumner-might not now be ours.

To the Nome district have been gradually added those of Topkuk, Solomon, and Golovin Bay, forty-five miles to eastward on the sh.o.r.es of Norton Sound, Cripple Creek, Bluff, Penny, and a chain of diggings extending up the coast and into the Kotzebue country, including the rich Kougarok and Blue Stone districts, Candle Creek, and Kowak River.

When gold was discovered at Nome, prospectors scattered over the Seward Peninsula in all directions. Some drifted west into the York district, near Cape Prince of Wales, the extreme western point of the North American continent. In this region they found gold in the streams, but sluicing was so difficult, owing to a heavy gravel which they encountered, that they abandoned their claims, not knowing that the impediment was stream-tin. Wiser prospectors later recognized the metal and located claims. The tin is irregularly distributed over an area of four hundred and fifty square miles, embracing the western end of the peninsula. The United States uses annually twenty million dollars' worth of tin, which is obtained largely from the Straits Settlement, although much comes from Ecuador, Bolivia, Australia, and Cornwall. Tin cannot at present be treated successfully in this country, owing to the lack of smelter facilities; but now that it has been discovered in so vast quant.i.ties and of so pure quality in the Seward Peninsula, smelters in this country will doubtless be equipped for reducing tin ores.

The centre of the tin-mining industry is at Tin City, a small settlement three miles west of Teller, Cape Prince of Wales, and is reached by small steamers which ply from Nome. Several corporations are developing promising properties with large stamp-mills. Both stream-tin and tin ore in ledges are found throughout the district.

The Council district is the oldest of Seward Peninsula, the first discovery of gold having been made there in 1898, by a party headed by Daniel P. Libby, who had been through the country with the Western Union's Expedition in 1866. Hearing of the Klondike's richness, he returned to Seward Peninsula and soon found gold on Fish River. He and his party established the town of Council and built the first residence; it now has a population of eight hundred. This district is forestated with spruce of fair size and quality.

The Ophir Creek Mines are of great value, having produced more than five millions of dollars by the crudest of mining methods. The Kougarok is the famous district of the interior of the peninsula. Mary's Igloo--deriving its name from an Eskimo woman of some importance in early days--is the seat of the recorder's office for this district. It has a post-office and is an important station. May it never change its striking and picturesque name!

The entire peninsula, having an area of nearly twenty-three thousand miles, is liable to prove to be one vast gold-mine, the extreme richness of strikes in various localities indicating that time and money to install modern machinery and develop the country are all that are required to make this one of the richest producing districts of the world.

The leading towns of the peninsula are Council, Solomon, Teller, Candle, Mary's Igloo, and Deering, on Kotzebue Sound. Solomon is on Norton Sound, at the mouth of Solomon River; a railroad runs from this point to Council.

The early name of Seward Peninsula was Kaviak--the name of the Innuit people inhabiting it.

Gold was discovered on Anvil Creek in the hills behind Nome in September, 1898, by Jafet Lindeberg, Erik Lindblom, and John Brynteson, the "three lucky Swedes." In the following summer gold was discovered on the beach, and in 1900 occurred the memorable stampede to Nome, when fifteen thousand people struggled through the surf during one fortnight.

Then began the amazing building of the mining-camp on the northwesternmost point of the continent. Anvil Creek, Dexter, Dry and Glacier creeks, Snow and Cooper gulches, have yielded millions of dollars. The tundra reaching back to the hills five or six miles from the sea is made up of a series of beach lines, all containing deposits of gold. Five millions of dollars in dust were taken from the famous "third" beach line in one season; and its length is estimated at thirty or forty miles. The hills are low and round-topped, and beyond them--thirty miles distant--are the Kigluaik Mountains, known to prospectors by the name of Sawtooth. Among their sharp and austere peaks is the highest of the peninsula, rising to an alt.i.tude of four thousand seven hundred feet by geological survey.

There are several railroads on the peninsula. Some are but a few miles in length, the rails are narrow and "wavy," the trains run by starts and plunges and stop fearsomely; but they are railroads. One can climb into the box-cars or the one warm pa.s.senger-coach and go from Nome out among the creeks,--to Nome River, to Anvil Creek, to Kougarok and Hot Springs, from Solomon to the Council Country,--and Nome is only ten years old.

Nome has a woman's club. It is federated and it owns its club-house, a small but pretty building. Its name is Kegoayah Kosga, or Northern Lights. It held an open meeting while we were in Nome. Bishop Rowe described a journey by dog sled and canoe, Congressman Sulzer gave an informal talk, and the ladies of the club presented an interesting programme. The afternoon was the most profitable I have spent at a woman's club.

For two or three months in summer it is all work at Nome; but when the snow begins to drive in across the town; when the last steamer drifts down the roadstead and disappears before the longing eyes that follow it; when the ice piles up, mile on mile, where the surf dashed in summer, and the wind in the chimneys plays a weird and lonely tune; then the people turn to cards and dance and song to while away the long and dreary months of darkness. The social life is gay; and poker parties, whereat gambling runs high, are frequent.

"I'd like to give a poker party for you," said a handsome young woman, laughing, "but I suppose it would shock you to death."

We confessed that we would not be shocked, but that, not knowing how to play the game, we declined to be "bluffed" out of all our money.

"Oh, we are easy on cheechacos," said she, lightly. "Do come. We'll play till two o'clock, and then have a little supper; curlew, plovers, and champagne--the 'big cold bottle and the small hot bird.'"

When we still declined, she looked bored as she said politely:--

"Oh, very well; let us call it a five-hundred party. Surely, that is childlike enough for you. But the men!"

I laughed at the thought of the men I had met in Nome playing the insipid game of five-hundred.

"Then," said she, dolefully, "there's nothing left but bridge--and we just gamble our pockets inside out on bridge; it's worse than poker, and we play like fiends."

We suggested that, as General Greeley had come down the river with us and would be over from St. Michael the next day, they should wait for him; when the first player has led the first card, General Greeley knows in whose hand every deuce lies, and I wickedly longed to see the inside of Nome's composite pocket by the time General Greeley had sailed away.

There was no party for us that night; but there is a wide, public porch behind a big store by the life-saving station. It projects over the sea and about ten feet above it, and upon this porch are benches whereon one may sit alone and undisturbed until midnight, or until dawn, for that matter, but alone--with the glitter of Nome and the golden tundra behind one, and in front, the far, faint lights of the ships anch.o.r.ed in the roadstead and the tumultuous pa.s.sion of waves that have lapped the sh.o.r.es of other lands.

Sitting here, what thoughts come, unbidden, of the brave and shadowy navigators of the past who have sailed these waters through hardships and sufferings that would cause the stoutest hearts of to-day to hesitate. Read the descriptions of the ships upon which Arctic explorers embark at the present time--of their stores and comforts; and then turn back and imagine how Simeon Deshneff, a Cossack chief, set sail in June, two hundred and sixty years ago, from the mouth of the Kolyma River in Siberia in search of fabled ivory. In company with two other "kotches,"

which were lost, he sailed dauntlessly along the Arctic sea-coast and through Behring Strait from the Frozen Ocean. His "kotch" was a small-decked craft, rudely and frailly fashioned of wood; in September of that year, 1648, he landed upon the sh.o.r.es of the Chukchi Peninsula and saw the two Diomede Islands, between which the boundary line now runs. He must have seen the low hills of Cape Prince of Wales, for it plunges boldly out into the sea, within twenty miles of the Diomedes, but probably mistook them for islands. Half a century later Popoff, another Cossack, was sent to East Cape to persuade the rebellious Chukchis--as the Siberian natives of that region are called--to pay tribute; he was not successful, but he brought back a description of the Diomede Islands and rumors of a continent said to lie to the east. The next pa.s.sage of importance through the strait was that of Behring, who, in 1728, sailed along the Siberian coast from Okhotsk, rounded East Cape, pa.s.sed through the strait, and, after sailing to the northeast for a day, returned to Okhotsk, marvellously missing the American continent.

Geographers refused to accept Behring's statement that Asia and North America were not connected until it was verified in 1778 by Cook, who generously named the strait for the ill.u.s.trious Dane.

Less than a day's voyage from Nome is the westernmost point of our country--Cape Prince of Wales, the "Kingegan" of the natives. It is fifty-four miles from this cape to the East Cape of Siberia, and like stepping-stones between lie Fairway Rock and the Diomedes. Beyond is the Frozen Ocean. These islands are of almost solid stone. They are snow-swept, ice-bound, and ice-bounded for eight months of every year.

But ah, the auroral magnificence that at times must stream through the gates of frozen pearl which swing open and shut to the Arctic Sea! What moonlights must glitter there like millions of diamonds; what sunrises and sunsets must burn like opaline mist! How large the stars must be--and how bright and low! And in the spring--how this whole northern world must tremble and thrill at the mighty march of icebergs sweeping splendidly down through the gates of pearl into Behring Sea!

APPENDIX