Adventures in Alaska

beautiful, mountainous, forested Interior; Nome was on the bleak, treeless, low, exposed coast of Bering Sea. To reach the Klondike you steamed from Seattle through twelve hundred miles of t

st the stiff current of the same Father Yukon eighteen hundred miles up to Dawson. To reach Nome you simply steamed the twenty-three hundred miles

old air of winter. There are long periods when the sky is cloudless. In the summer of unbroken day the land drowses, bathed in warm sunshine and humming with insect life,

ow by the wi

s breath for w

nd a blanket of fine, dry snow covers the l

house completely under in one night, and pack so hard that the Eskimo can drive his reindeer team over your roof in the morning. The air becomes so full of the flying particles that you cannot see the lead-dog of your team. Men

village and workshop and farm, new to wilderness life, unused to roughing it. Those who reached Nome in '99 were mostly victims of hard luck. Many were Klondikers who had spent two winters rushing wildly from creek to creek on fake reports, posses

nt up the Yukon to the Koyakuk and other tributaries in the summer of '98. Other scores of power-schooners and small sailing vessels sailed through Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and through Kotzebue Sound to the Kobuk and Sewalik Rivers. Almost without exception these eager gold-seek

mmit of the highest of the hills near the coast. At the base of this hill rich gold diggings were found in a creek. The town which sprung up was first ca

k. Overlo

Asiatic Continents, failed to find a name for this cape and wrote it down "No name," which was afterwards shortened to Nome. The more probable explanation is that the surveyors asked an

ce of hard knocks from the first. Rugged men have come there to meet severe conditions and have been hammered and broken by the blows of adversity.

is not a

ug from cen

hot with bu

baths of h

with the sh

pe and

vil of the Northwest; but to-day I feel noth

put my goods ashore. In the meantime I had obtained permission to spread my blankets on the floor of the Alaska Exploration Company's s

ance, Minor Bruce, whom I had known fifteen years before when he was a trader in Southeastern Alaska. He offered me the use of the loft over his fur store. Mr. Fickus, the man from San Francisco, to whom I have made reference in

regation was gathering. One usher received the people at the store door, steered them carefully between the bales and skins, and headed them to another who helped them up the steep stairway, while a third seated them. We had a good congregation and a rousing meeting. Our choir was one of the best I ever heard. Our organist and leader was

ess "cast upon the waters" and "found after many days." Nowhere is

f his nephew. When he found me at Nome he greeted me warmly. "You're just the man I've been looking for. I know you don't do any mining, but I'm going to do some for you. I expect

eeply into debt and I was wondering how I could pay my obligations, my old friend returned with a thousand dollars, from the sale of one of

d by mosquitoes. I raised money for his need and sent him out home by one of the first steamboats down the Yukon. Before he left he pressed upon me the only gift he could offer-a fine Parker shotgun. I took this gun with me when I we

rs and shelves for me. The Norwegian was a very fine cook and baked my "shickens" for me most deliciously. I kept the men in my tent until they could build a cabin. When I became ill they would come to see me, bringing ptarmigan broth and other delicacies; and when I was convalescing and ravenous the Norwegian

and the heavy blows they received on the anvil only

t made-some it ruined. Among the "Lucky Swedes," who leaped in a few months from povert

shaped to fit new conditions; but he rose finely to the occasion, gave a large part of his wealth to his church board for building

d character. He tried to keep for his own use the gold taken from the claim he had staked in the name of his Mission. His Board sued him for their rights. Long litigation, in which he figured as dishonest, selfish and grasping, followed,

rospects of honor or wealth. His gold at first plunged him into a wild orgy of gambling and dissipation. He took the

associates. He sought the companionship of the cultured. A good woman married and educated him. He has become one of Alaska's weal

source of considerable annoyance. I always felt like laughing aloud when the queer, fat, dish-faced, pudgy folk came in sight. As we had to depen

of my tent, grinning at me and eyeing every mouthful I ate. I did not know enough of their language even to tell them to go away. Their rank native odors were overpowering in the hot tent. You could detect the presence of one of those fellows

rd and each one would write a verse on it. One of the words was Esquimaux. A number of the "limericks" were published in the Nome

t this quee

s too pudg

ors ar

them u

f them fills

g the performance, when there came along a couple of men who had just landed and

Did you ever see the like?" (A pause.) "

n bein's. But I'll tell you this: If they do, they've all got

from Ukeavik Church, Point Barrow. Ten years earlier, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, then Superintendent of Education for Alaska, had visited that northernmost point of the Continent and had started a school and mission. Peter Koonooya was one of the fruits. He was a native of extraor

ht on all questions which were up before that Assembly

Alaska Eskimo, under the influence of the various Christian missions and schools among them, as compared with that of their brothers and sisters of the same race across Bering Strait in Asia, f

ous but Inte

Young's P