The Boy With the U.S. Census

ne day early in June, as after the noon hour, he

or I understand they're looking for editors on the Alaskan schedules. A big batch of them has just arrived and I happ

also because this work has got a little monotonous. I hadn't thought of the Alaskan census," he continued, "and th

schedules; they'll be just like any other schedules, I should imagine, only that the occ

with Alaska they could not help but show to some extent the character of the conditions i

he Alaska schedules, Noble?" asked the chief of the divi

d, Mr. Cullern,"

was asked yesterday if I had any one to recommend I thought of you at once. Having had experience in the manufactures end, as w

think any of the places to which I went res

red in that light. But the underlying principles are the same, of course

answered promptly. "I sha

nothing more to be said, he walked back to

charge of the sub-section told him, "let me know, and then you

red the boy, "I'll be done in

ervous, quick-spoken man, who, as Hamilton afterwards found out, had the capacity of working at lightning speed, and then stopping an

ht he had better make as good a showing as he could, and so he, too, buckled to the job for all he was worth. When the boy had done two or three sched

er, but in the meantime you had better look over some of the reports the supervisors have sent in; they give you an insight into what those enumerators out there had to go through in order to

t much line on the conditions in the North. But I've always enjoye

Alaska by the oldest settlers there. There did not appear to be a man who did not have a pride in his work, an anxiety to create a record for traveling time, a d

erators just breaking their necks to beat out the other a

ood fortune, from the fact that there were in this part of Alaska more deaths from the weather this winter than all preceding years in tota

't it?" asked the boy. "But it always seems diffic

s it: 'All the men in the service,'" he continued, "'covered hundreds of miles over the ice and snow, in weather ranging from 30 to 70 degrees below zero, the average tem

ton w

sheering from its crest, are heaped high; where the snow underfoot is unbroken; where under snow-filled skies a wind studded with needle-sharp ice crystals blows a perfect gale; where the lonely and frozen desolation is peop

rked on in silence. Presently, as though there had been no pau

ms. When one considers their isolation,-often traveling for days without other shelter than a tent and fur robes-it can be understood what sacrifices some of these men made to visit far-away prospectors' cabins and claims. However,

er the repor

g stuff in that, and just the bald reports of the enumera

en, and read it with avidity. Presently,

at one you

om the district of Chan

es said, "I can go on with these s

s made it impossible for him to carry a sufficient supply of grub, and he was obliged to live off the country, killing moose, mountain sheep, and other f

he could pitch camp right there, put up a tent

turning he traveled above timber line eighteen hours in both directions, which, in a country where fire is a necessity, can be understood is a very considerable sacrifice. He traveled in many places w

ow-shoe?" asked

visit some cousins; they had a snow-shoe tramp and in

have to keep ahead of a dog-team coming along at a fair

a blizzard while accompanying the mail carrier, and if it hadn't been for the fact that the people of the nearest settlement knew that the mail carrier was

, wasn't it?" queried Barnes, but

er inhabitants of the country. No less than four times this man was found by other travelers in an exhausted condition, not far from complete collapse, and assisted to a stopping place. He lost three dogs, and suffered terribly himself from frost-bi

in the teeth of an Arctic wind, traveling over hundreds of miles of trackless wilderness

there in summer, I've heard, and driving in the warm w

, and you can't ride where there are no h

it so

ut, "there's usually a trip of several hundred miles before you get to th

milton said, "as so

ivers become raging torrents. You can't ride, and if you walk, how are you going to cross a swollen river, filled with pi

bout b

those ice-filled rivers

n as the ic

n river?-I thought not. Suppose, by very hard work, you could make two or three miles an hour up stream,-at that rate how long would it take you to go up to the highest settlement? And then you would have to go all the w

t," said Hamilton, "but still I

deer? I suppose you mean

s thinking of," H

would you feed him? Dried salmon? That's all there is, and while it makes good enough dog-feed, a horse isn't built that way. There's no hay-cutting section up there, and your horse would starve to death before yo

said Hamilton, "I hadn

her is not severe. But the north is another matter entirely. The pay that you would have to offer in order to lure the men away from the gold-diggings would be enormou

tarting on perilous journeys in the most severe winter ever know

n in surprise. "I hadn't heard of that.

is a most important part of the work. You remember that the enumeratio

now I had to hustle in order t

hat were on your schedule had lived in villages clo

n half the time. What delayed things was riding from farm

nd to be covered both had to be considered. Then allowance had to be made for the enumeration of those not readily accessible, and for such

hat made up all those districts. And, now you come to speak of it, I

ht weeks' work, nor to promise a month's work to a man and then give him a district that had only two or three weeks' employment. You couldn't alter th

ple on it, the kind of land it was, the roads and trails, the distance from the nearest town, the river

n the Eastern districts, for in the West large towns had grown up that were mere villages then. Whole sections of territory which were uninhabited te

have a friend, Roger Doughty, on the Geological Survey, an

he supervisors helped us greatly after the larger districts had been planned, but the Geography division had

do that for Al

d to be left to the supervisors, but they merely revised our original districting. It took a lot of figuring in Al

need of all that preparato

be, all the while. The Decennial Census, although it is the biggest part of the census work, is only one of its many branches, and then there are always other matters being

had regular work all the

en, as I think you know, we have for years made a special study of cotton crop conditions, and there is a bulletin published at stated intervals showing the state of the cotton industry in the United States. Then there is all the stat

amilton. "Wilbur Loyle, a forest ranger whom I knew very w

sation had run on long after office hours,-"owing to their co-operation the task is not cumbersome; questions of information or special sta

, the wildness of the frontier life would creep in. An example of this was the listing of an Eskimo girl on the schedule as having "Sun" and "Sea" for her parents with an explanatory note to the effect that she had been found as a tiny gi

cture of the semi-savagery of the fur-cla

an Indian was described as "200 snows." To try to get this worked out to the probab

5 snows, then she eat cold (frozen to death). Got no woman 20 snows, she good woman.' He could not give any clue about his children only that 'his chickens 30 to 45 snows!' They reckon here only from what they can remember, so this buck is probably counting from about ten ye

oner skirting the icy shores of the glacier-fed waters o

tted travel, dropped into the Census Bureau. He made himself known to the Director, and the latter, always ready to show attention and being really proud of the Census Bureau staff, arranged to have him shown around the building. The Alaskan was a small

ing him around, "these men are just going over the Alaskan schedule

f apology, picked up the schedule on which Hamilton was working at t

said Hamilton "I was just wond

surprising reply, "that you'd have been wonderin' a

how's

n you come to try an' write one o' these schedules on scraps o' dried skin

d knowing him very well, he said to the visitor, "Spin us the yarn; I've been up

hat audience, too," said

p the job!" the visitor

d. "Here we are all waiting, and

Noatak Pass-" he was beginni

right at the start," he sa

to do but go, even though I knew there was no one on the other side but a bunch of Eskimos. Well, we were halfway up the pass when the Indian guide stopped the dogs an' listened. It was just about noon an' the travelin' was good, so that, wantin' to make time, I got good an' mad at the stop. Knowin' my Indian, I kep' quiet just the same, always bein' willin' to bet on a

thunder?" qu

ood to hear. The dogs knew it, too, for though we had been st

ht every tim

do much but snap an' snarl, but that they're always doin'. This time,

I asked t

' he answere

back, trouble with a big 'T' is right handy. I reckon that was the first tim

, 'old trail easy.' He po

if you doubled on your tracks the trail would hav

storm did come up we'd have a t

ou go

an where we had come from, an' that perhaps the storm would hold off long enough for us to make it. Those storms last for days, sometimes, an' w

course he never showed a sign. He started up the dogs without a word. I knew he thought it reckless and dan

ike as soon as tha

stant storm sounded no louder, the sky was no heavier, the air no colder, the wind no higher,-an' I built my hopes upon a delay in its comin', an' plunged on. We were makin' good time; the dogs were keepin' up a fast lick, an' the Indian ahead, workin' to break the trail, was movin' like a streak. I sure never did see an Indian travel the speed he

asked Hamilto

l a breath of wind. But the snow seemed to writhe an' stir as though some monster from the Arctic night was wakin' from his winter sleep, an' a wisp of snow

nd a faint crackin' as the hard snow crust shivered into atoms where it struck. Aimlessly, yet seemin' to have a hidden purpose as though wreathin' the figures of some

silence, one

, and behind us an' around, other of these columns rose an' moved like spectral dancers under the slate-gre

aid Barnes, in an awed

road ahead looked like the ice-forest of a disordered dream. Presently, without a moment's warnin' one of the huge snow pillars came rushin' straight at us, an' I braced myself by the sledge to hold to it if I could, but it sw

rt?" cried

e that they had not been damaged, an' resumed his place at the head of the dogs. What would have become of him if he

r really got

e how to get across. The column, goin' like a railroad train, had cut a gully in the hard snow full ten feet deep,-the sides

you get

own a steep path on both sides of the gully an' made the dogs take it.

id the bliz

n the wh

," the bo

olumns, bendin' their heads like grass before the wind, swept to the right of us, an' were out of sigh

it?" cried

hurt, of course, but it took me so long to get my breath that I thought it was never goin' to come, an' that I should suffocate. But after that first burst, the blizz

you do?

as far as we could, but soon realized that there was nothin' to do but camp right where we were an' wait for the blizzard to blow over. Usually two days is enough for the average storm

o always wanted to know t

d in some places and soft in others; the travelin' was almost impossible, an' you couldn't see twenty yards ahead. Then while the blizzard had filled the gullies made by the whirlwinds, the snow in them was n

e, the hard crust of the snow gave way beneath us, an' the sled, the dogs, and myself fell

he Indian?"

Indian just where we were. There was only one stream of that size in that neighborhood, an' until we found it, we were hopelessly lost. But from that time we knew that the settlement we were head

Hamilton. "I should think it wou

an shook

worst of it was, that when we come to unpack the sled-we did it with an ax because everythin' was frozen solid-the census pouch was missin'. Luckily there was no past work in it,-only blank schedules, information papers, an' thing

for shelter as the blizzard st

t the paper with r

use trying to get the

drove me back. On the third day I got a chance to go with some Eskimos with reindeer to a little settlement about twenty miles off, an' so I w

sing half-wild animals when dog-team was too exhausted

at his spare fig

part. How did you like the reindeer, though? I've always wondered that the

o quit, it doesn't matter where it is or what you do to him, he won't go another step. A balky mule is an angel of meekness beside a reindeer. You can always make a mul

them a good deal in Lapland

e way, and when you consider how short a time the government has had to do what is already accomplished, it seems to me the re

ettlement which you had got to wi

hough I was not the sufferer. We had been havin' a hard spell of weather, but there come a week when conditions on the trail were much better an' we were reelin' off the miles in great shape. I hadn

o the Indian, 'ever

' found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead. He was one of the survivors of the wrecked steamer Filarleon, and had frozen all the fingers of both hands. Two or three were turnin' gangrenous; a

do for him?"

wards heard that a doctor happened in to camp soon after I left, an' got at his hurts right away, an' th

n. "But then," he added a moment later, "

I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a thing as I ever read. I h

least idea," an

r read jus

enced in the treeless coast. Go to it

d, his eyes shining