Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled Part 6

THE SEWARD PENINSULA--CANDLE CREEK, COUNCIL, AND NOME

ONE day's rest was not a great deal after the distance we had come--and that day fully occupied with business--but since Point Hope was abandoned some sort of schedule must be made for the Seward Peninsula, and where Sunday shall be spent is always an important factor in arranging these itineraries. There was just time to reach Candle for the next Sunday and it was decided to attempt it. Hans would accompany me as far as Candle, where he hoped to find work. It meant two days of forty-five miles each, for it is ninety miles from Kikitaruk to Candle, but they told us it could be done.

So the reluctant adieus made, letters despatched, some mailed here at Kikitaruk, some to be carried back to Bettles and mailed there--these latter getting outside long before the former--we started at seven in the morning instead of six, as we had planned, on the journey down the sh.o.r.e of Kotzebue Sound. That hour's delay turned out to be a calamity for us.

The trail was smooth along the beach until Cape Blossom was reached, and I had the first riding of the winter, Hans and I alternately running and jumping on the sled. There was a portage across the cape, and three or four miles below it was the wreck of the river steamer _Riley_, which used to make a voyage up the Kobuk with supplies for the miners at the Shungnak. The thermometer was at -38 when we started, and the same light but keen breeze was blowing that had annoyed us on the other side of the peninsula. What a barren, desolate region it is!--low rocks sinking away to the dead level of the snow-field on the one hand, nothing but the ice-field on the other.

[Sidenote: A BAD NIGHT]

[Sidenote: CAMPED IN THE OPEN]

We were bound for an igloo forty-five miles from the mission, the only shelter between Kikitaruk on the peninsula and Kewalik on the mainland, and we had been warned that the igloo would be easy to miss if it grew dark as it would be almost indistinguishable from the snow-drifts of the sh.o.r.e. Some directions from a mult.i.tude of counsellors remembered in one sense by Hans and in another by me, added to our uncertainty as to just where the igloo lay. The wind increased in force as the evening advanced and the last time I looked at the thermometer it still registered -38.

The sun set over the sound with another of those curious distortions which had before proved ominous to us. It was flattened and swollen out like a pot-bellied Chinese lantern, with a neck to it and an irregular veining over its surface that completed the resemblance. The wind increased until the air was full of flying snow and it grew dark, and still there was no sign of the igloo. Only slowly and with much difficulty could the trail be followed, and that meant we were soon not moving fast enough to keep warm in the fierce wind. At last we lost the trail altogether, and sometimes we found ourselves out on the rough ice of the sound and sometimes wallowing in a fresh snow-drift on the sh.o.r.e.

I became possessed with the fear that we had pa.s.sed the igloo. I was positive that we were told at the mission that we should reach it _before_ the high bluffs were pa.s.sed, and we had pa.s.sed them a long way and had now but a shallow shelf to mark the coast-line. It is strange how long that delusion about pa.s.sing his destination will pursue the Alaskan traveller. Presently the dogs dropped off a steep bank in the dark, and only by good fortune we were able to keep the heavy sled from falling upon them, for they were dead tired and lay where they dropped.

With freezing fingers I unhitched the dogs while Hans held the sled, and we lowered it safely down. But it was plain that it was dangerous to proceed. We could not find the trail again and were growing alarmingly cold. We were "up against it," as they say here, "up against it good and strong." We had a tent but no means of putting it up, a stove but nothing to burn in it, a grub box full of food but no way to cook it. So the first night of coast travel was to show us the full rigour and inhospitality of the coast and to make us long for the interior again.

Wood can almost always be found there within a few miles, if it be not immediately at hand, and no one properly appreciates the hospitality of a clump of spruce-trees until he has spent a night of storm lying out on this barren coast. We turned the dogs loose and threw them a fish apiece, unlashed the sled, and got out our bedding. I had been sleeping in robes, Hans in a shedding caribou-hide sleeping-bag that was my pet aversion. When he crawled out in the morning he was so covered with hair that he looked like a caribou, and the miserable hairs were always getting into the food. We fished them out of the coffee, pulled them out of the b.u.t.ter, and picked them out of the bread. But now in that sleeping-bag he had an enormous advantage. We lay side by side on the snow in the lee of the sled, and, tuck myself up with blanket and robe as I would, it was impossible to keep the swirling snow from coming in.

I called the dogs to me and made them lie on my feet and up against my side, and so long as they lay still I could get a little warmth, but whenever they rose and left me I grew numb again. But Hans in his sleeping-bag was snoring. The bag is the only bedding on the coast.

Added to the physical discomfort of that sleepless, shivery night was some mental uneasiness. There was no telling to what height the storm might rise, nor how long it might continue. Sometimes travellers overtaken in this way on the coast have to lie in their sleeping-bags for three days and nights before they can resume their journey. The only interest the night held was the thought that came to me that as nearly as I could tell we camped exactly on the Arctic Circle. The long night dragged its slow length to the dawn at last and the wind moderated a little at the same time, so with the first streak in the east I awoke Hans, we gathered our poor dogs together, rolled up the snow-incrusted bedding, and resumed our journey. Two miles farther on was the igloo!

Our calls awoke some one and we were bidden to enter. Descending a ladder and crawling through a dark pa.s.sage we came in to the grateful warmth and shelter. The chamber was crowded with sleeping Esquimaux and reeked with seal oil and fish, but Hans said it "looked good and smelled good to him," and so it did to me also. One has to lie out on that coast in a storm to appreciate the value of mere shelter. We went at once to cooking, for we had eaten nothing but a doughnut or two in twenty-four hours, and surely never meal was more relished than the reindeer steaks and the coffee we took amongst those still sleeping Esquimaux. I should have liked to spend the day and the next night there, for they were friendly and kindly, but the wind had moderated somewhat and there was still a chance to reach Candle for Sunday. With the offer of a sack of flour at Kewalik we induced a couple of Esquimaux to accompany us, for I knew we had to cross the mouth of a bay over the ice to reach the mainland and I wanted to take no more chances.

Our company, again raised to four, started out about nine, and until the Choris Peninsula was reached the trail still skirted the sh.o.r.e. It is strange that Kotzebue, who named this peninsula of a peninsula for the artist who accompanied his expedition in 1816, should have left the main peninsula itself unnamed, and that the British expedition which named Cape Blossom ten years later should have failed to supply the omission.

It still bears no name on the map. We portaged across the Choris Peninsula and at the end of the portage took a straight course across the mouth of Escholtz Bay (Escholtz was Kotzebue's surgeon) for Kewalik on the mainland, pa.s.sing Chamisso Island, named for Kotzebue's poet friend. There is something very interesting to me in this voyage of Kotzebue's, and I have long wished to come across a full narrative of it. But the bitter wind that swept across that ice-sheet with the thermometer at -30 brought one's thoughts back to one's own condition.

My hands I could not keep warm with the gear that had sufficed for 50 and 60 below in the interior, and I was very glad to procure from one of our native companions a pair of caribou mitts with the hair inside, an almost invulnerable gauntlet against cold. If that wind had been in our faces instead of on our sides I am sure we could not have travelled at all. At last we won across the ice and brought up at a comfortable road-house at Kewalik, about ten miles from Candle. Here we lay overnight, taking the opportunity of thawing out and drying the frost-crusted bedding, leaving the short run into town for the morning.

[Sidenote: CANDLE CREEK]

The diggings on Candle Creek yield to the Koyukuk diggings only as the most northerly gold mining in the world. Although the general methods are the same in all Alaskan camps, local circ.u.mstances introduce many differences. In all Alaskan camps the ground is frozen and must be thawed down. The timber of the interior renders wood the natural fuel for the production of the steam that thaws the ground, but the scarcity of wood on the Seward Peninsula subst.i.tutes coal. There is coal on the peninsula itself, but of very inferior quality, mixed with ice. One may see chunks of coal with veins of ice running through them thrown upon the fire. The wood of the interior is a great factor in its commercial and domestic economy, and its absence on the Seward Peninsula makes great change not only in the natural aspect of the country but in the whole aspect of its industrial and domestic life also. Wood-chopping for the stove and the mill, wood-sawing, wood-hauling employ no small percentage of all the white men in the interior--occupations which do not exist at all on the peninsula. But its encompa.s.sment by the sea, its peninsularity, is the dominating difference between the Seward Peninsula and the interior, and does indeed make a different country of it altogether. All prices are very much lower on the peninsula because ships can bring merchandise directly from the "outside." Thus amongst those who have money to spend there is a more lavish scale of living than in the interior towns, and luxuries may be enjoyed here that are out of the question there. Perhaps, conversely, it is true that life on the peninsula is somewhat harder for the poorer cla.s.s. Whether a railway from salt water to the mid-Yukon would redress this great difference in the cost of everything may be doubted. Railways do not usually operate at less than water-rates. There will probably always be an advantage in the cost of living and mining in favour of the Seward Peninsula camps.

There had been no public religious service of any sort in Candle, with its several hundreds of population, in three years, so there was special satisfaction in having reached the place for Sunday when many miners were in town from the creeks, and an overflowing congregation was readily a.s.sembled. And there was great pleasure in three days' rest at the hospitable home of a friend while the temperature remained below -40, exacerbated by a wind that rendered travelling dangerous.

Moreover, by waiting I had company on the way, and now that I was without native attendant or white companion, and disposed, if possible, to make the journey right across the peninsula to Council and then to Nome without engaging fresh a.s.sistance, I was doubly glad of the opportunity of travelling with two men bound for the same places and acquainted with the route.

[Sidenote: THE SEWARD PENINSULA]

Travelling, like so many other things, is very different on the Seward Peninsula. The constant winds beat down and harden the snow until it has a crust that will carry a man anywhere. There are only two means by which snow becomes crusted; one is this packing and solidifying by the wind, and the other is thawing and freezing again. There is much less wind in the interior than on the coast, and usually much less snowfall, and the greater part of the surface of the country is protected by trees; the climate, being continental instead of marine, is not subject to such great fluctuations of temperature. A thaw sufficiently p.r.o.nounced or sufficiently prolonged to put a stout crust on the snow when freezing is resumed, is a very rare thing in the interior and a common thing on the coast. So a striking difference in travel at once manifests itself; in the interior all the snow is soft except on a beaten trail itself, while in the Seward Peninsula all the snow is alike hard. The musher is not confined to trails--he can go where he pleases; and his vehicle is under no necessity of conforming in width to a general usage of the country--it may be as wide as he pleases. Hence the hitching of dogs two and three abreast; hence the sleds of twenty-two, twenty-four, or twenty-six inches in width. My tandem rig aroused the curiosity of those who saw it. Hence many other differences also.

Hitherto we had not dreamed of watering the dogs since snow fell; now I found their mouths b.l.o.o.d.y from their ineffectual attempts to dig up the hard snow with their teeth, and had to water them night and morning. It is not the custom on the Seward Peninsula to cook for the dogs, and dog mushers there argue the needlessness of that trouble. But the true reason is other and obvious. It is difficult for the traveller to get enough wood to cook for himself, let alone the dogs. On the Seward Peninsula skis are extensively used when there is soft snow; the prevalence of brush almost everywhere in the interior renders them of little use--and they are, therefore, little used, snow-shoes being universal.

So, as in nearly all such matters everywhere, local peculiarities, local differences, local customs, usually arise from local conditions, and the wise man will commonly conform so soon as he discovers them. There is almost always a sufficient reason for them.

[Sidenote: A "SIDLING" TRAIL]

The journey from Candle to Council was a surprisingly swift one. We covered the one hundred and thirty miles in three days, far and away the best travelling of the winter so far, but the usual time, I found. The hard snow gives smooth pa.s.sage though the interior of the peninsula is rugged and mountainous; two prominent elevations, the a.s.s's Ears, standing up as landmarks during the first day of the journey. The route crossed ridge after ridge with steep grades, and the handling of the heavy sled alone was too much for me. Again and again it was overturned, and it was all that I could do, and more than I ought to have done, to set it up again. The wind continued to blow with violence, and shelter from it there was none. One hillside struggle I shall always remember.

The trail sloped with the hill and the wind was blowing directly down it. I could keep no footing on the marble snow and had fallen heavily again and again, in my frantic efforts to hold sled and dogs and all from sweeping down into a dark ravine that loomed below, when I bethought me of the "creepers" in the hind-sack, used on the rivers in pa.s.sing over glare ice. With these irons strapped to my feet I was able to stand upright, but it was only by a hair's breadth once and again that I got my load safely across. When I was wallowing in a hot bath at Council two days later I found that my hip and thigh were black and blue where I had fallen, though at the time, in my anxiety to save the dogs and the sled, I had not noticed that I had bruised myself. So, judging great things by little, one understands how a soldier may be sorely wounded without knowing it in the heat and exaltation of battle.

Then for a while there would be such travel as one sees in the children's picture-books, where the man sits in the sled and cracks his whip and is whisked along as gaily as you please--such travel as I had never had before; but there was no pleasure in it--the wind saw to that.

On the second day we crossed "Death Valley," so called because two men were once found frozen in it; a bleak, barren expanse, five or six miles across, with a great gale blowing right down it, charged not only with particles of hard snow but with spicules of ice and grains of sand. Our course was south and the gale blew from the northwest, and the right side of one's body and the right arm were continually numb from the incessant beating of the wind. The parkee hood had to be drawn closely all the time, and the eyes were sore from trying to peer ahead through the fur edging of the hood. One grows to hate that wind with something like a personal animosity, so brutal, so malicious does it seem. An incautious turn of the head and the scarf that protected mouth and nose was s.n.a.t.c.hed from me and borne far away in an instant, beyond thought of recovery. It seems to lie in wait, and one fancies a fresh shrill of glee in its note at every new discomfiture it can inflict. There is nothing far-fetched in the native superst.i.tion that puts a malignant spirit in the wind; it is the most natural feeling in the world. I said so that night in camp, and one of my companions mentioned something about "rude Boreas," and I laughed. The gentle myths of Greece do not fit this country. The Indian name means "the wind beast," and is appropriate.

A savage, forbidding country, this whole interior of the Seward Peninsula, uninhabited and unfit for habitation; a country of naked rock and bare hillside and desolate, barren valley, without amenities of any kind and cursed with a perpetual icy blast.

[Sidenote: DEATH VALLEY]

The valley crossed and its ridge surmounted, a still more heart-breaking experience was in store. We descended the frozen bed of a creek from which the wind had swept every trace of snow so that the ice was polished as smooth as gla.s.s. The dogs could get no footing and were continually down on their bellies, moving their legs instinctively but helplessly, like the flippers of a turtle, while the wind carried dogs and sled where it pleased. The grade was considerable and in bends the creek spread out wide. Nothing but the creepers enabled a man to stand at all, and creepers and brake together could not hold the sled from careering sideways across the ice, dragging the dogs with it, until the runners struck some pebble or twig frozen in the ice and the sled would be violently overturned. Twice with freezing fingers I unlashed that sled lying on its side, and took out nearly all the load before I could succeed in getting it upright again, losing some of the lighter articles each time. The third time was the worst of all. The brake had been little more than a pivot on which sled and dogs were swung to leeward, but now the teeth had become so blunt that, though I stood upon it with all my weight, it would not hold at all nor check the sideways motion under the impulse of the wind. Right across the creek we went, dragging the dogs behind, jerking them hither and thither over the gla.s.sy surface. I saw the rocks towards which we were driving, but was powerless to avert the disaster, and hung on in some hope, I suppose, of being able to minimise it, till, with a crash that broke two of the uprights and threw me so hard that I skinned my elbow and hurt my head, we were once more overturned. Never since I reached manhood, I think, did I feel so much like sitting down and crying. It seemed hopeless to think about getting down that creek until the wind stopped, and one doubts if the wind ever does stop in that country. But there was no good sitting there like a shipwrecked mariner, nursing sores and misfortunes; presently one would begin to feel sorry for oneself--that last resort of incompetence. And the bitter wind is a great stimulus. It will not permit inaction. So I was up again, fumbling at the sled lashings as best I could with torpid fingers, when one of my companions, uneasy at my delay, very kindly made his way back, and with his a.s.sistance I was able to get the sled upright again without unloading and hold it somewhat better on its course until another bend or two brought us to the partial shelter of bluffs and, a little farther, to the cabin where we were to spend the night. I understood now why my companions had a sort of hinged knife-edge fastened to one runner of their sled. By the pressure of a foot the knife-edge engaged the ice and held the sled on its course. This is another Seward Peninsula device.

[Sidenote: THE KINDLY SWEDE]

I have it in my diary that "a Swede named Petersen was very kind to us at the cabin, cooking for us and giving us cooked dog feed." Blessed Swede named Petersen!--there are hundreds of them in Alaska--and I shall never forget that particular one's kindness--the only man I met in the Seward Peninsula who still persisted in cooking dog feed whenever he could. He had cooked up a mess of rice and fish enough to last his three or four dogs several days while he sojourned at this cabin, and he gave it all to us and would take nothing for it. His language was what Truthful James calls "frequent and painful and free." I ignored it for a while, loath to take exception to anything a man said who had been so kind. But at last I could stand it no longer--it took all the savour out of his hospitality--and I said: "I hope you won't mind my saying it, for I'd hate to give offence to a man who has been so good to strangers as you have, but I wish you'd cut out that cursing; it hurts my ears." He sat silent a moment looking straight at me, and I was not sure how he had taken it. Then he said: "Maybe you been kinder to me saying that, than I been to you. That's the first time I ever been call down for cursin'. I don't mean nothin' by it; it's just foolishness and I goin'

try to cut it out."

The dogs had done but ill on the dry fish, accustomed as they were to cooked food, and they ate ravenously of their supper. Only the previous night Lingo had betrayed his trust for the first and last time. Coming out of the cabin just before turning in, to take a last look round, I saw Lingo on top of the sled eating something, and I found that he had dug a slab of bacon out of the unlashed load and had eaten most of it. I knew he was hungry, missing the filling, satisfying mess he was used to, and I did not thrash him, I simply said, "Oh, Lingo!" and the dog got off the sled and slunk away, the very picture of conscious, shamefaced guilt. That was the only time he did such a thing in all the six years I drove him.

Council was past its prime at the time of this visit, but just as we entered the town, at the end of the third day's run, it seemed in danger of going through all the stages of decadence with a rush to total destruction out of hand, for a fire had broken out in a laundry, and with the high wind still blowing it looked as though every building was doomed. Of two chemical engines possessed by the town one refused to work, but the vigour and promptness of the people in forming two lines down to the river, and pa.s.sing buckets with the utmost rapidity, coped with the outbreak just in time to prevent its spreading beyond all control. Tired as we were, we all pitched in and pa.s.sed buckets until parkees and mitts and mukluks were incrusted with ice from water that was spilled. Efficient protection is a matter of great difficulty and expense in Alaskan towns, and there is not one of them that has escaped being swept by fire. The buildings are almost necessarily all of wood, the cost of brick and stone construction being prohibitive. No one can guarantee ten years of life to a placer-mining town, and there would be no warrant for the expenditure of the sums required for fireproof building even were the capital available. But the rapidity with which they are rebuilt, where rebuilding is justified, is even more remarkable than the rapidity with which they are destroyed.

A Sat.u.r.day and Sunday were very welcome at Council, and the courtesy of the Presbyterian minister, who gave up his church and his congregations to me, Esquimaux in the morning and white at night, was much appreciated.

[Sidenote: NORTON SOUND]

In warmer weather, the thermometer no lower than -5 at the start, but with the same gale blowing that had blown ever since we left Candle, though it had shifted towards the northeast, we got away on Monday morning, bound for Nome, ninety miles away, hoping to reach the half-way house that night. Five or six hours' run over good trails, with no greater inconvenience than the acceleration of our pace by the wind on down grades, until the sled frequently overran the dogs with entanglements and spillings, brought us to the seacoast at Topkok, and a n.o.ble view opened up as we climbed the great bluff. There Norton Sound spread out before us, its ice largely cleared away and blown into Bering Sea by the strong wind that had prevailed for nearly a week, its waves sparkling and dashing into foam in the March sunshine; the distant cliffs and mountains of its other sh.o.r.e just visible in the clear air.

It was an exhilarating sight--the first free water that I had seen since the summer, and it seemed rejoicing in its freedom, leaping up with glee to greet the mighty ally that had struck off its fetters.

But from this point troubles began to grow. We dropped down presently to the sh.o.r.e and pa.s.sed along the glare surface of lagoon after lagoon, the wind doing what it liked with the sled, for it was impossible to handle it at all. Sometimes we went along broadside on, sometimes the sled first and the dogs trailing behind, moving their silly, helpless paws from side to side as they were dragged over the ice on their bellies.

When we had pa.s.sed these lagoons the trail took the beach, running alongside and just to windward of a telephone-line, with rough sh.o.r.e ice to the left and bare rocks to the right. Again and again the already injured sled was smashed heavily against a telephone pole. I would see the impact coming and strive my utmost to avert it, but without a gee pole, and swinging the sled only by the handle-bars, it was more than I could do to hold the sled on its course against the beam wind that was forcing it towards the ice and the telephone poles; and a gee pole could not be used at the rate we had travelled ever since we left Candle. Mile after mile we went along in this way. I do not know how many poles I hit and how many I missed, but every pole on that stretch of coast was a fresh and separate anxiety and menace to me. I think I would have been perfectly willing to have abolished and wiped out the whole invention of the telephone so I could be rid of those hateful poles. What were telephone poles doing in the arctic regions anyway? Telephone poles belonged with electric cars and interurban trolley-lines, not with dog teams and sleds.

Then it grew dark and the wind increased. I did not know it, but I was approaching that stretch of coast which is notorious as the windiest place in all Alaska, a place the topography of which makes it a natural funnel for the outlet of wind should any be blowing anywhere in the interior of the peninsula. My companions were far ahead, long since out of sight. I struggled along a little farther, and, just after a particularly bad collision and an overturning, I saw a light glimmering in the snow to my right. It was a little road-house, buried to the eaves and over the roof in snow-drift, with window tunnels and a door tunnel excavated in the snow. I was yet, I learned, five miles from Solomon's, my destination, but I hailed this haven as my refuge for the night and went no farther, more exhausted by the struggle of the last two or three hours than by many an all-day tramp on snow-shoes. It was a miserable, dirty little shack, but it was tight; it meant shelter from that pitiless wind. That night the thermometer stood at 7, the first plus temperature in twenty-two days.

By morning the gale had greatly diminished, and by the time I reached Solomon's and rejoined my companions it was calm, the first calm since we left the middle Kobuk. We had some rough ice to cross to avoid a long detour of the coast, and then we were back on the sh.o.r.e again and it began to snow. The snow was soon done and the sun shone, but the new coating of dazzling white gave such a glare that it was necessary to put on the snow gla.s.ses for the first time of the winter--and that is always a sign winter draws to a close.

[Sidenote: DOGS AND REINDEER]

On the approach to Nome we had our first encounter with reindeer, and at once my dog team became unmanageable. I had had some trouble that morning with a horse. A new dog I procured at Kikitaruk had never seen a horse before, and made frantic efforts to get at him, leaping at his haunches as we pa.s.sed by. But when they saw the reindeer the whole team set off at a run, dragging the heavy sled as if it were nothing. The Esquimau driving the deer saw the approaching dogs and hastily drew his equipage off the trail farther insh.o.r.e, standing between the deer and the dogs with a heavy whip. What the result would have been had the dogs reached the deer it is hard to say. I had kept my stand on the step behind the sled and managed to check its wild career with the brake and to throw it over and stop the approach before the carnivora reached their immemorial prey. Herein lies one of the difficulties of the domestication of reindeer in Alaska, a country where so far dogs have been the only domestic animals. Again, as we entered the outskirts of Nome the incident was repeated, and only the hasty driving of the reindeer into a barn prevented the dogs from seizing the deer that time.

[Sidenote: NOME]

Jimmy was long deposed from his ineffectual leadership and a little dog named Kewalik--the one I obtained at Kikitaruk--was at the head of the team. Kewalik had never seen so many houses before; hitherto almost every cabin he had reached on his journeys had been a resting-place, and he wanted to dive into every house we pa.s.sed. At Candle and Council both, our stopping-place had been near the entrance to the little town.

But now we had to pa.s.s up one long street after another and I had continually to drag him and the team he led first from a yard on this side of the road and then from one on the other. The dog was perfectly bewildered and out of his head by the number of people and the number of houses he saw. We were indeed a sorry, travel-worn, unkempt, uncivilised band, man and dogs, with an old, battered vehicle, and we felt our incongruity with the new environment as we entered the metropolis of the luxury and wealth of the North. Here we pa.s.sed a jeweller's shop, the whole window aglow with the dull gleam of gold and ivory--the terrible nugget jewellery so much affected in these parts and the walrus ivory which is Alaska's other contribution of material for the ornamental arts. Here we pa.s.sed a veritable department store, its ground-floor plate-gla.s.s window set as a drawing-room, with gilded, brocaded chairs, marquetry table, and ormolu clock, and I know not what costliness of rug and curtain. It was all so strange that it seemed unreal after that long pa.s.sage of the savage wilds, that long habitation of huts and igloos and tents. Hitherto we had often been fortunate could we buy a little flour and bacon; here the choice comestibles of the earth were for sale. I looked askance at my greasy parkee as I pa.s.sed shops where English broadcloth and Scotch tweeds were displayed; at my worn, clumsy mukluks when I saw patent-leather pumps. But Nome knows how to welcome the wanderer from the wilderness and to make him altogether at home. There could be no warmer hospitality than that with which I was received by the Reverend John White and his wife, than that which I had at many a home during my week's stay.

Nothing in the world could have caused the building of a city where Nome is built except the thing that caused it: the finding of gold on the beach itself and in the creeks immediately behind it. It has no harbour or roadstead, no shelter or protection of any kind; it is in as bleak and exposed a position as a man would find if he should set out to hunt the earth over for ineligible sites.

But Nome is also a fine instance of the way men in the North conquer local conditions and wring comfort out of bleakness and desolation by the clever adaptation of means to ends.

The art of living comfortably in the North had to be learned, and it has been learned pretty thoroughly. People live at Nome as well as they do "outside." One may sit down to dinners as well cooked, as well furnished, as well served as any dinners anywhere. The good folk of Nome delight in spreading their dainty store before the unjaded appet.i.te of the winter traveller, and it would be affectation to deny that there is keen relish of enjoyment in the long-unwonted gleam of wax candle or electrolier upon perfect appointment of gla.s.s, silver, and napery, in the un.o.btrusive but vigilant service of white-jacketed Chinaman or j.a.p.

Nome has a great advantage over its only rival in the interior, Fairbanks, in the matter of freight rates. The same merchandise that is landed at the one place for ten or twelve dollars a ton within ten or twelve days of its leaving Seattle, costs fifty or sixty at the other, and takes a month or more to arrive. But this accessibility in the summer is exactly reversed in the winter. No practicable route has been discovered along the uninhabited sh.o.r.es of Bering Sea, and all the mail for Nome comes from Valdez to Fairbanks and then down the Yukon and round Norton Sound by dog team. In winter Fairbanks is within seven or eight days of open salt water; Nome a full month. After navigation closes in October, the first mail does not commonly reach the Seward Peninsula until January. So that, with all its comforts and luxuries, Nome is a very isolated place for eight months in the year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOLD-MINING AT NOME.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PULLING THE "PELICAN" OUT WITH A "SPANISH WINDLa.s.s."]

[Sidenote: MINING AT NOME]