Historic Adventures Part 12

The news of John Brown's raid spread through the country, and the people North and South were amazed and bewildered. They had grown used to hearing of warfare in the distant borderland of Kansas, but this was a battle that had taken place in the very heart of the Union. Men did not know what to think of it. John Brown appeared to many of them as a monstrous figure, a firebrand who would touch his torch to the tinder of slavery, and set the whole nation in a blaze. Newspapers and public speakers denounced him. They said he was attacking the foundations of the country when he seized the a.r.s.enal and freed slaves from their lawful owners. Only a handful of men had any good to say for him, and that handful were looked upon as madmen by their neighbors. Only a few could read the handwriting on the wall, and realize that John Brown was merely a year or two in advance of the times.

We who know the story of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery think of John Brown as a hero. We forget the outlaw and remember the martyr. If he was setting the laws of men at defiance he was also following the law that he felt was given him by G.o.d. His faith and his simplicity have made him a great figure in history. A man who met him riding across the plains of Kansas in the days of the border warfare drew a vivid picture of him. He said that a tall man on horseback stopped and asked him a question. "It was on a late July day, and in its hottest hours. I had been idly watching a wagon and one horse toiling slowly northward across the prairie, along the emigrant trail that had been marked out by free-state men.... John Brown, whose name the young and ardent had begun to conjure with and swear by, had been described to me. So, as I heard the question, I looked up and met the full, strong gaze of a pair of luminous, questioning eyes. Somehow I instinctively knew this was John Brown, and with that name I replied.... It was a long, rugged-featured face I saw. A tall, sinewy figure, too (he had dismounted), five feet eleven, I estimated, with square shoulders, narrow flank, sinewy and deep-chested. A frame full of nervous power, but not impressing one especially with muscular vigor. The impression left by the pose and the figure was that of reserve, endurance, and quiet strength. The questioning voice-tones were mellow, magnetic, and grave. On the weatherworn face was a stubby, short, gray beard.... This figure,--unarmed, poorly clad, with coa.r.s.e linen trousers tucked into high, heavy cowhide boots, with heavy spurs on their heels, a cotton shirt opened at the throat, a long torn linen duster, and a bewrayed chip straw hat ... made up the outward garb and appearance of John Brown when I first met him. In ten minutes his mounted figure disappeared over the north horizon."

But John Brown had seized the government's a.r.s.enal, and put arms in the hands of negro slaves, and therefore the law must take its course with him. Its officers came to him where he lay on the floor of his fort, a badly-wounded man, who had fought for fifty-five long hours, who had seen two sons and eight of his comrades shot in the battle, and who felt that his cause was lost.

When men who owned slaves asked the reason for his raid, he answered, "You are guilty of a great wrong against G.o.d and humanity and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage.... I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them. That is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit."

A number of Virginians had been killed in the fight, and it was difficult to secure a fair trial for the raiders. The state did its best to hold the scales of justice even. The formal trial began on October 27, 1859. Friends from the North came to his aid, and a Ma.s.sachusetts lawyer acted as his counsel. John Brown heard the charges against him lying on a straw pallet, and four days later he heard the jury declare him guilty of treason. December 2, 1859, the sentence of the court was carried out, and John Brown was hanged as a traitor. His last written words were, "I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

Every great cause in history has its martyrs, and John Brown was one of those who were sacrificed in the battle for human freedom. Statesmen had tried for years to argue away the wrongs that began when the first African bondsmen were brought to the American colonies. Statesmen, however, cannot change the views of men and women as to what is right and wrong, and all the arguments in the world could not convince such men as John Brown and his friends that one man had a right to the possession of a fellow-creature. He struck his blow wildly, but its echo rang in the ears of the North, and never ceased until the Civil War was ended, and slavery wiped off the continent. The great negro orator, Frederick Dougla.s.s, said twenty-two years later at Harper's Ferry, "If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did, at least, begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harper's Ferry and the a.r.s.enal, not Major Anderson, but John Brown began the war that ended American slavery, and made this a free republic.... When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared,--the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union, and the clash of arms was at hand."

In the spring of 1861 the Boston Light Infantry went to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor to drill. They formed a quartette to sing patriotic songs, and some one wrote the verses that are known as "John Brown's Body,"

and set them to the music of an old camp-meeting tune. Regiment after regiment heard the song and carried it with them into camp and battle.

So the spirit of the simple crusader went marching on through the war, and his name was linked forever with the cause of freedom.

XII

AN ARCTIC EXPLORER

When Columbus sailed from Palos in 1492 he hoped to find a shorter route to Cathay or China than any that was then known, and the great explorers who followed after him had the same hope of such a discovery in their minds. When men learned that instead of finding a short route to China they had come upon two great continents that shared the Western Ocean, they turned their thoughts to discovering what was known as the Northwest Pa.s.sage. They hoped to find a way by which ships might sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean north of America. The great English explorers in particular were eager to find such an ocean route, and this search was the real beginning of the fur-trading around Hudson's Bay, the cod-fishing of Newfoundland, and the whale-fishing of Baffin Bay.

One sea-captain after another sailed across the Atlantic, and strove to find the pa.s.sage through the Arctic regions; but the world of snow and ice defeated each of them. Some went back to report that there was no Northwest Pa.s.sage, and others were lost among the ice-floes and never returned. Then in 1845 England decided to send a great expedition to make another attempt, and put at the head of it Sir John Franklin, a brave captain who had fought with Nelson and knew the sea in all its variety. He sailed from England May 26, 1845, taking one hundred and twenty-nine men in the two ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_. He carried enough provisions to last him for three years. On July 26, 1845, Franklin's two vessels were seen by the captain of a whaler, moored to an iceberg in Baffin Bay. They were waiting for an opening in the middle of an ice-pack, through which they might sail across the bay and enter Lancaster Sound. They were never seen again, and the question of what had happened to Sir John Franklin's party became one of the mysteries of the age.

More than twenty ships, with crews of nearly two thousand officers and men, at a cost of many millions of dollars, sought for Sir John Franklin in the years between 1847 and 1853. One heroic explorer after another sailed into the Arctic, crossed the ice-floes, and searched for some trace of the missing men. But none could be found, and one after another the explorers came back, their only report being that the ice had swallowed all traces of the English captain and his vessels. At length the last of the expeditions sent out by the English Government returned, and the world decided that the mystery would never be solved. But brave Lady Franklin, the wife of Sir John, urged still other men to seek for news, and at last explorers found that all of Franklin's expedition had perished in their search for the Northwest Pa.s.sage.

Arctic explorers usually leave records telling the story of their discoveries at different points along the road they follow. For a long time after the fate of Franklin's party was known, men tried to find records he might have left in cairns, or piles of stones through the Arctic regions. Whale vessels sometimes brought news of such records, but most of them proved to be idle yarns told by the whalers to surprise their friends at home. One of these stories was that all the missing records of Sir John Franklin were to be found in a cairn which was built near Repulse Bay. This story was told so often that people came to believe it was true, and some young Americans set out to make a search of King William Land and try to find the cairn. The party sailed on the whaler _Eothen_, and five men landed at Repulse Bay. The leader was Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, of the United States Army. He had three friends with him named Gilder, Klutschak, and Melms, and with them was an Eskimo, who was known as Joe.

The young Americans set up a winter camp on Chesterfield Inlet, and tried to live as much like the native Eskimos as possible. During the winter they met many natives on their hunting-trips, and the latter soon convinced them that they were on a wild-goose chase, and that the story of the cairn was probably only a sailor's yarn. Lieutenant Schwatka, however, was not the sort of man to return home without some results from his trip, and so he made up his mind to go into the country where Franklin's party had perished, hoping that he might find some record which would throw light on the earlier explorer's travels.

The Eskimos were a race largely unknown to civilized men. White men had seen much more of the native American Indians who lived in more temperate climates. These young Americans found a great deal to interest them during the winter among these strange people of the far North.

Hunting was their chief pursuit, and the Americans found that they spent much of their time indoors playing a game called _Nu-glew-tar_, which sharpened their quickness of eye and sureness of aim. It was a simple sport; a small piece of bone, pierced with a row of small holes, was hung from the roof of the hut by a rope of walrus hide, and a heavy weight was fastened to the end of the bone to keep it from swinging. The Eskimo players were each armed with a small sharp-pointed stick, and each in turn would thrust his stick at the bone, trying to pierce one of the holes. The prize was won by the player who pierced the bone and held it fast with his stick.

As soon as spring opened Lieutenant Schwatka started out, leaving his winter camp in April, 1879, and crossing in as straight a line as possible to Montreal Island, near the mouth of the Black River. He took with him twelve Eskimos, men, women, and children, and dogs to pull the sledges. They carried food for one month only, intending to hunt during the summer. Every night the Eskimos built snow huts, or igloos, in which the party camped. As they went on they met men of another Arctic tribe, the Ook-joo-liks, who wore shoes and gloves made of musk-ox skin, which was covered with hair several inches long, and made the wearers look more like bears than like men. One of these natives said that he had seen a ship that had sunk off Adelaide Peninsula, and that he and his friends had obtained such articles as spoons, knives, and plates from the ship. Lieutenant Schwatka thought the ship was probably either the _Erebus_ or the _Terror_. Later his party found an old woman who said that when she had been on the southeast coast of King William Land not many years before she had seen ten white men dragging a sledge with a boat on it. Five of the white men put up a tent on the sh.o.r.e and five stayed with the boat. Some men of the woman's tribe had killed seals and given them to the white men; then the white men had left, and neither she nor any of her tribe had seen them again. Asking questions of the Eskimos he met, Lieutenant Schwatka and his comrades gradually pieced together the story of what had happened to Franklin and his men. But the American was not content with what he had learned in this way, and he determined to cross Simpson Strait to King William Land, and search for records there during the summer. This meant that he would have to spend the summer on this bare and desolate island, as there would be no chance to cross the strait until the cold weather of autumn should form new ice for a bridge.

The Eskimos did everything they could to persuade him not to cross to the island. They told him that in 1848 more than one hundred men had perished of starvation there, and added that no one could find sufficient food to keep them through the summer. Yet the fearless soldier and his friends insisted on making the attempt, and some of the Eskimos were daring enough to go with them.

It seemed doubtful whether they could even get across the strait. Every few steps some man would sink into the ice-pack up to his waist and his legs would dangle in slush without finding bottom. The sledges would sink so that the dogs, floundering and scrambling, could not pull them.

The men had to push the dog-teams along, and after the first day's travel they were all so exhausted that they had to rest the whole of the next day before they could start on again. Finally they reached the opposite sh.o.r.e of the strait, and, while the natives built igloos and hunted, the Americans searched for records of Franklin's party. They found enough traces to prove that the men who had sought the Northwest Pa.s.sage had spent some time on this desolate strip of land.

More than once they were in danger of starvation. In the spring the Eskimos hunted wild ducks, which they found in remote stretches of water. Their way of hunting was to steal up on a flock of the birds, and, as soon as the ducks took alarm, to rush toward the largest bunch of them. The hunter then threw his spear, made with three barbs of different lengths, and caught the duck on the sharp central p.r.o.ng. The long wooden shaft of the spear would keep the duck floating on the water until the hunter could seize it. But as summer drew on, and the ducks migrated, food grew very scarce. Once or twice they discovered bears, which they shot, and when there was nothing else to eat they lived on a small black berry that the Eskimos called _parawong_, which proved very sustaining.

As the white men tramped day after day over the icy hillocks their footwear wore out, and often walking became a torment. In telling of their march Gilder said, "We were either wading through the hillside torrents or lakes, which, frozen on the bottom, made the footing exceedingly treacherous, or else with sealskin boots, soft by constant wetting, painfully plodding over sharp stones set firmly in the ground with the edges pointed up. Sometimes as a new method of injury, stepping and slipping on flat stones, the unwary foot slid into a crevice that seemingly wrenched it from the body."

When they had nothing else to eat the white men lived on the same food as the native hunters. This was generally a tallow made from the reindeer, and eaten with strips of reindeer meat. A dish of this, mixed with seal-oil, was said to look like ice-cream and took the place of that dessert with the Eskimos. Lieutenant Schwatka said, however, that instead of tasting like ice-cream it reminded him more of locust, sawdust and wild-honey.

As autumn drew on they made ready to cross back to the mainland; but it took some time for the ice to form on the strait. Gilder said of their camp life: "We eat quant.i.ties of reindeer tallow with our meat, probably about half of our daily food. Breakfast is eaten raw and frozen, but we generally have a warm meal in the evening. Fuel is hard to obtain and now consists of a vine-like moss called _ik-shoot-ik_. Reindeer tallow is used for a light. A small, flat stone serves for a candlestick, on which a lump of tallow is placed close to a piece of fibrous moss called _mun-ne_, which is used for a wick. The melting tallow runs down upon the stone and is immediately absorbed by the moss. This makes a cheerful and pleasant light, but is most exasperating to a hungry man as it smells exactly like frying meat. Eating such quant.i.ties of tallow is a great benefit in this climate, and we can easily see the effects of it in the comfort with which we meet the cold."

As soon as the ice on the strait was frozen hard enough the reindeer crossed it, and by the middle of October King William Land was practically deserted. Then the Americans and Eskimos started back to the mainland. Winter had now come, and the weather was intensely cold, often ninety degrees below freezing. In December the traveling grew worse, and food became so scarce that they had to stop day after day for hunting.

In January a blizzard struck their camp and lasted thirteen days; then wolves prowled about them at night, and once actually killed four of their dogs. "A sealskin full of blubber," said Gilder, "would have saved many of our dogs; but we had none to spare for them, as we were reduced to the point when we had to save it exclusively for lighting the igloos at night. We could not use it to warm our igloos or to cook with. Our meat had to be eaten cold--that is, frozen so solid that it had to be sawed and then broken into convenient-sized lumps, which when first put into the mouth were like stones. Sometimes, however, the snow was beaten off the moss on the hillsides and enough was gathered to cook a meal."

When they were almost on the point of starvation a walrus was killed, and supplied them with food to last until they got back to the nearest Eskimo village. From the coast they took ship to the United States. The records they brought with them practically completed the account of what had happened to Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition. And almost equally important were the new details they brought in regard to Eskimo life, and the proof they gave that men of the temperate zone could pa.s.s a year in the frozen land of the far north if they would live as the natives did, and adapt themselves to the rigors of that climate.

XIII

THE STORY OF ALASKA

In the far northwestern corner of North America is a land that has had few stirring scenes in its history. It is an enormous tract, close to the Arctic Sea, and far from the busy cities of the United States.

Not until long after the English, French, and Spanish discoverers had explored the country in the Temperate Zone did any European find Alaska.

Even when it was found it seemed to offer little but ice-fields and desolate prairies, leading to wild mountain ranges that did not tempt men to settle. Seal hunters came and went, but generally left the native Indians in peace. Most of these hunters came from Siberia, for the Russians were the first owners of this land.

An officer in the Russian Navy named Vitus Bering found the strait that is called by his name in 1728. Some years later he was sent into the Arctic Sea again by the Empress Anne of Russia to try to find the wonderful country that Vasco de Gama had sought. He sailed in summer, and after weathering heavy storms finally reached Kayak Island on St.

Elias Day, July 17, 1741, and named the great mountain peak in honor of that saint. More storms followed, and soon afterward the brave sailor was shipwrecked and drowned off the Comandorski Islands. His crew managed to get back to Siberia, having lived on the meat of the seals they were able to shoot. Russian traders saw the sealskins they brought home, and sent out expeditions to obtain more furs. Some returned richly laden, but others were lost in storms and never heard from. There was so much danger in the hunting that it was not until 1783 that Russian merchants actually established trading-posts in Alaska. Then a rich merchant of Siberia named Gregory Shelikoff built a post on Kadiak Island, and took into partnership with him a Russian named Alexander Baranof. Baranof built a fort on an island named for him, some three miles north of the present city of Sitka. The two men formed the Russian American Fur Company, and Baranof became its manager in America.

One day a seal hunter came to Baranof at his fortress, and took from his pocket a handful of nuggets and scales of gold. He held them out to the Russian, and said that he knew where many more like them were to be found. "Ivan," said Baranof, "I forbid you to seek for any more.

You must not say a word about this, or there will be trouble. If the Americans or the English know that there is gold in these mountains we will be ruined. They will rush in here by the thousands, and crowd us to the wall." Baranof was a fur merchant, and did not want to see miners flocking to his land, as his company was growing rich from the seals and fur-trading with the natives.

Little by little, however, the news leaked out that the northwestern country had rich minerals, and soon the King of Spain began to covet some of that wealth for himself. The Spaniards claimed that they owned all of the country that had not yet been mapped out, and they sent an exploring party, under Perez, to make charts of the northwest.

Perez sailed along the coast, and finding two capes, named them Santa Margarita and Santa Magdalena, but beyond that he did little to help the cause of Spain. Some years later exploring parties were sent out from Mexico, but they found that the wild ice-covered country was already claimed by the Russians, and that the Czar had no intention of giving it up. Other nations, therefore, soon ceased to claim it, and the Russian hunters and traders were allowed to enjoy the country in peace.

Alexander Baranof made a great success of the trade in skins, but the men who took his place were not equal to him. The company began to lose money, and the Czar of Russia decided that the country was too far away from his capital to be properly looked after. The United States finally made an offer to buy the great territory from the Czar, although the government at Washington was not very anxious to make the purchase.

The tract, large as it was, did not seem to promise much, and it was almost as far from Washington as it was from St. Petersburg. The Czar was quite willing to sell, however, and so the United States bought the country from him in 1867, paying him $7,200,000 for it.

On a fine October afternoon in 1867 Sitka Bay saw the Stars and Stripes flying from three United States war-ships, while the Russian Eagle waved from the flagstaffs and houses in the small town. On the sh.o.r.e soldiers of the two nations were drawn up in front of the old castle, and officers stood waiting at the foot of the flagpole on the parade ground.

Then a gun was fired from one of the United States war-ships, and instantly the Russian batteries returned the salute. A Russian officer lowered his country's flag from the parade ground pole, and an American pulled the Stars and Stripes to the peak. Guns boomed and regimental bands played, and then the Russian troops saluted and left the fortress, and the territory became part of the United States.

Up to that time the country had been known as Russian America, but now a new name had to be found. Some suggested American Siberia, and others the Zero Islands; but an American statesman, Charles Sumner, urged the name of Alaska, a native word meaning "the Great Land," and this was the name that was finally adopted.

It took many years to explore the western part of the United States, and men who were in search of wealth in mines and forests did not have to go as far as Alaska to find it. That bleak country was separated from the United States by a long, stormy sea voyage on the Pacific, or a tedious and difficult overland journey through Canada. Alaska might have remained for years as little known as while Russia owned it had it not been for a small party of men who set out to explore the Yukon and the Klondike Rivers.

On June 16, 1897, a small ship called the _Excelsior_ sailed into San Francisco Harbor, and half an hour after she had landed at her wharf the news was spreading far and wide that gold had been discovered in large quant.i.ties on the Klondike. Some of the men had gone out years before; some only a few months earlier, but they all brought back fortunes.

Not one had left with less than $5,000 in gold, gathered in nuggets or flakes, in tin cans, canvas bags, wooden boxes, or wrapped up in paper.

The cry of such sudden wealth was heard by many adventurers, and the old days of 'Forty-Nine in California began over again when the wild rush started north to the Klondike.

On June 17th another ship, the _Portland_, arrived at Seattle, with sixty more miners and $800,000 in gold. This was the largest find of the precious mineral that had been made anywhere in the world, and Seattle followed the example of San Francisco in going gold-crazy. Immediately hundreds of people took pa.s.sage on the outward bound steamers, and hundreds more were turned away because of lack of room. Ships set out from all the seaports along the Pacific coast of the United States, and from the Canadian ports of Victoria and Vancouver. As in the old days of 1849 men gave up their business to seek the gold fields, but now they had to travel to a wilder and more desolate country than California had been.

There were many ways of getting to the Klondike country. Those who went by ocean steamer had to transfer to flat-bottomed boats to go up the Yukon River. This was the easiest route, but the boats could only be used on the Yukon from June until September, and the great rush of gold-seekers came later that autumn. A second route was by the Chilkoot trail, which had been used for many years by miners going into the country of the Yukon. Over this trail horses could be used as far as the foot of the great Chilkoot Pa.s.s, but from there luggage had to be carried by hand. Another trail, much like this one, was the White Pa.s.s trail, but it led through a less-known country than the Chilkoot, and was not so popular. The Canadian government laid out a trail of its own, which was called "the Stikeen route," and which ran altogether through Canadian territory. Besides these there were innumerable other roads through the mountains, and along the rivers; but the farther men got from the better known trails the more danger they were in of losing their way, or suffering from hunger and hardships.

Towns blossomed along the coast of Alaska almost over night, but they were strange looking villages. The ships that landed at Skagway in the summer of 1897 found a number of rough frame houses, with three or four larger than the rest which hung out hotel signs. The only government officer lived in a tent over which flew the flag of the United States.

The pa.s.sengers landed their outfits themselves, for labor was scarce, and found shelter wherever they could until they might start on the trail.