Adventures in Alaska

By

S. HALL YOUNG, D.D.

Alaska Days with John Muir. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth....

"Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John Muir's dog story? Here is a book by the man who owned Stickeen and was Muir's companion on the adventurous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Alaskan wilderness, it is also a living portrait of John Muir in the great moments of his career."—New York Times.

"I can see only one fault with the book, it is far too short. I should love to read such a book as big as the dictionary. Thank you very much!"—Gene Stratton-Porter.

"One need not be an admirer of John Muir to be thoroughly entertained by the lively pages. The Muir of this book is the familiar vibrant personality. This little book, the record of these trips, is written in a style animated and vivid without being journalistic—a style not unlike that of the lover of glaciers himself."—The Nation.

Adventures in Alaska

By

S. HALL YOUNG

Author of "Alaska Days with John Muir,"

"The Klondike Clan"

Illustrated

New York Chicago

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1919, by

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue

Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.

London: 21 Paternoster Square

Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

Stalking Walrus in an Oomiak

Dr. Young's figure is to the left. This is the time he got his ivory for the gavels

Foreword

The author puts forth this little book of actual adventures in the great new land of Alaska with the hope that it will afford healthy-minded young people a true idea of some phases of human and animal life there. These stories are picked out of an experience of forty years and selected with a view to both unity and variety.

The first three chapters are an attempt to draw in bold outline some dramatic episodes of the author's experience in the second of the three great gold stampedes of the Northwest. All these struggles for gold have in them richly dramatic elements. Life in such camps pulses strongly with all human ambitions, affections and passions. The missionary, if he is really to commend himself to the men who rush into the wilderness for gold, and do them good, must, first of all, prove himself a man, ready and able to do and suffer everything that falls to the lot of the gold seekers. He must live their life and play the game with them. He must cheerfully put up with the privations they endure, must take the lead in their healthy sports, must alleviate their sufferings, and, keeping himself free from the deadly gold-lust, must show that he has in himself and can give to his fellow pioneers something better than gold. His heart must be, for himself and those about him, a living fountain of joy and peace.

As in his earlier work, "The Klondike Clan," the author endeavored to draw a true picture not only of the life and conditions of the first Northwestern gold-rush, but also of the minister's aims and field of duty; so in this short sketch of the second Stampede his aim has been, above all things, truth. Every incident is actual history, and even the names are real. The dog story is also conscientiously true history, and belongs to one of the minor gold stampedes.

The second section of the book—the three bear stories and the walrus story—are also bits of history. Every pioneer missionary in Alaska should be an ardent hunter. The author's life has often depended upon his gun and fishing tackle. For ten years in Southeastern Alaska he and his family had no beef or pork or mutton, but the game—animals, birds and fish—more than made up for the lack of these.

In Interior Alaska the same conditions prevail. The wild animals furnish not only the food of the people, both natives and whites, but also their winter clothing. Life would be unbearable there in "sixty-below weather" were the inhabitants unable to procure the warm coats provided by kindly Mother Nature for the use both of her four-footed and her human children.

The Eskimo faces the hardest conditions of almost any native race in his battle for life; and yet he is, perhaps, the most comfortable of any. He gets his living from the Arctic seas, the seal and walrus being his main dependence. From the great walrus he gets meat, clam chowder, light and fuel; its skin makes his foot-wear, the walls and roof of his house, and his boats; its ivory furnishes his tools and implements of the chase. When the author and his friends brought the great supply of walrus meat to the Eskimo village of East Cape they insured the life and comfort of its inhabitants for the winter. All this is an essential part of a missionary's beneficent work. Good service for God and humanity is not inconsistent with the joy of the chase.

As the author confidently expects that many of his young readers will find their permanent homes in "The great big, broad land 'way up yonder," he hopes this book may prove, in some degree, an introduction to the enjoyments and achievements of the life there.

S. H. Y.
New York.

Contents

Illustrations

[CHAPTER I]

THE NOME STAMPEDE

It was with the excitement of a veteran soldier going into a fresh battle that I teetered over the springy plank from the Rampart shore to the deck of the Yukon River steamboat. My year's outfit of "grub and duds," as the miners would put it, was aboard. I grasped the hand of Dr. Koonce, with whom I had just floated in an open boat down the Yukon twelve hundred miles. A fine fellow—"Kooncie"! We had been camping, and fishing, and packing, and boating together since the first of May, 1899, and it was now the middle of August. He was to stay at the new mining town of Rampart, build a church there and learn the joyous life of a pioneer missionary.

What a queer mix-up of men on the crowded decks of the steamboat! Wild rumors of a ridiculous sort had reached the ears of gold hunters clear up the two thousand miles of the swift and crooked Yukon to Dawson. Gold! Not snugly reposing in the frozen gravel of deep gulches and canyons cut through the high hills—where respectable and orthodox gold ought to be; but gold on the wind-swept, stormy, treeless, exposed coast of Seward Peninsula—the tongue that impudent young Alaska sticks out at old Asia. Gold, like yellow corn-meal, in the beach-sands of Bering Sea, where nobody could lawfully stake a claim, but where anybody could go with shovel, pan and rocker and gather it up. Nuggets a-plenty and coarse gold—enticing shallow diggings—in the bed of Anvil Creek and other creeks and runlets in the hills, and the flat tundra about Nome.

The reports of the new "strike," often wild and exaggerated, came as a life-saver to weary and discouraged thousands of Klondikers, who had packed their outfits over the terrible thirty miles of the Chilcoot Pass in the fall of '97 or the spring of '98, sawed the lumber themselves in the "armstrong sawmill," sailed their clumsy boats through the lakes, shot the rapids of the Upper Yukon, spent the summer of '98 and the winter that followed surging here and there on "wildcat" stampedes or putting down "dry" holes on unprofitable lays, and were now eagerly snatching at this new straw, hoping to "strike it" on the Nome beach. From Dawson, Forty Mile, Eagle, Circle, Fort Yukon; from wood camps and prospectors' tents along the Yukon, and now from Rampart, these bearded, battered, sun-blistered men came rushing aboard the steamboat.

I had engaged a state-room before the steamboat arrived, but when it came a placard of the company owning the boat menaced us in the office: "All reservations cancelled. Boat overcrowded. No passengers to be taken at Rampart."

Of course there was a mighty howl from the Rampart men, nearly half of whom had packed up to go on the boat. I hurried to the purser, whom I knew, and showed my pass from the manager of the company.

"Can't help it, Doctor," he said in a loud tone, for the benefit of the bystanders. "The boat's past her limit now, and we're liable for big damages if anything happens. We can't take anybody."

Presently he slyly pulled my arm, and I followed him to an inner office of the store. "Get your goods aboard," he directed. "You can spread your blankets on the floor of my office."

While I was checking off my outfit and seeing it on board, I noticed a lot of the Rampart men, with hand-trucks gathered from the various stores, taking their own outfits aboard, ignoring the shipping clerk and dumping their goods wherever they found a place to put them. The officers and deck-hands were protesting and swearing, but the men went right along loading their outfits.

Presently the captain pulled the whistle rope and ordered the plank drawn in and the cable cast off from the "dead man." Instantly three men marched to the cable's end, seized the man who was to cast it off and held him. Then fully fifty men with their packs on their backs filed down the plank. The first mate tried to stop them. He even made a move to draw his pistol; but the foremost man—a big six-footer—threw his arms around him and carried him back against the stairway and held him until the men with their packs were all aboard. It was all done quietly, and with the utmost good humor. The men grinned up at the swearing, red-faced captain on the upper deck, and one shouted, "We'll give you a poke of dust, Cap., when we get to Nome."

When all were aboard, somebody on the bank cast off the cable, the swift current caught the boat, the wheel backed, and we swung around and headed down the Yukon, bound for the new strike.

Whiskers were very much in evidence in that closely packed mob of men that stood around on all the decks, stepping on each other's feet, perching on stairways, boxes, pole-bunks—anywhere for a resting place. To go from one part of the boat to another was a difficult proposition.

The most evident trait of the crowd was its good nature. The deck-hands, among whom I recognized a lawyer friend from Dawson and a former customs collector from Juneau, were gold-seekers like all the rest; and it was, "Hello, Shorty!" "Ah, there, Dutch!" "Where you goin', Jim?" between them and the newcomers. A rollicking, happy-go-lucky crowd, all joyful at being on the way to the new diggings. Even the officers of the boat began to smile, secretly pleased that they had a record-breaking and most profitable load aboard, and were free from blame for overloading, because they could not help it.

As for me, I was well content, even to be hustled and jostled and elbow-punched by this horde of scraggly-bearded men of the northwestern wilderness. This was my parish, my home; and these were my comrades, my chums, my brothers. I was just as sunburned and weather-beaten as they were, and felt the same tingling of nerves, the same leap of the blood at the call of fresh adventure.

I was dressed in the same sort of rough woolen mackinaw clothes and soft flannel underwear as the men around me. I had left my clerical suit and white shirts and collars behind, for three reasons: First, for the sake of economy. These strong, loose garments did not cost a third as much as broadcloth, and would wear twice as well. Besides, it would cost a dollar and a half to have a white shirt laundered in Interior Alaska (which, at that time, was twice the original cost of the shirt), and twenty-five cents to do up a collar, the cost price of which "outside" was three for a quarter. I could wash my flannel shirts myself. Second, for comfort's sake. The soft wool of these garments was so much warmer and more pliable than a "Prince Albert" suit; and a starched collar would sear one's neck like fire, when it was "sixty below." My chief reason, however, was that I wished to create no artificial barriers between my parishioners and myself. I wished to stand on the same social level. I desired these men to feel that I was one of them, and could camp and "rustle," carry a pack, live on rabbits and rough it generally as deftly and cheerfully as they—live the same outdoor life and endure the same so-called "hardships."

The view-point of these "sour-doughs" was shown in a funny way at our first landing place after leaving Rampart, which was the little town of Tanana. When the boat tied up, the whistle gave three sharp hoots, showing that the stay would be very short. As soon as the plank was ashore a man ran up it, and when he reached the deck he called loudly: "Is there a preacher aboard? Is there a preacher aboard?"

A grizzled old miner, who did not know me, pointed to the only man on the steamboat who wore a Prince Albert coat and white shirt and collar, and drawled: "Wa-al, that there feller, he's either a preacher or a gambler; I don't know which."

The "dressed-up" man proved to be a gambler. I made myself known to the anxious man from the village, followed him ashore and married him to a woman who was waiting in the company's office.

That was one voyage of mingled discomfort and pleasure. Discomforts and hardships are as you make them and take them. There were a few of that company who grumbled and swore at being crowded, at being obliged to stand up all day, to lie on the floor or on the piles of cord-wood at night, besides being compelled to fairly fight for their meals or to get their food from their own kits. But the majority of these men had been camping and roughing it for two years. Many of them had packed heavy loads over the Chilcoot Pass in the great Klondike Stampede, had made their own boats and navigated hundreds of miles of unknown and dangerous rivers, had encountered and overcome thousands of untried experiences. To all of them these little discomforts were trifles to be dismissed with a smile or joke, and they had contempt for any man who fussed or complained.

One of the cheeriest of the crowd aboard the steamboat was a newsboy twelve or thirteen years old. His name was Joe: I never knew his surname. He had had a very wonderful time. The year before—the summer of 1898—he was selling papers in Seattle. He heard of the high prices paid for newspapers and magazines at the camps of the Northwest. He bought three or four hundred copies of the Seattle P. I. (Post Intelligencer) and Times. He paid two and a half and three cents apiece for them, the selling price at Seattle being five cents. Then he got five or six hundred back numbers of these papers, from a day to a week old, for nothing. He also got, mostly by gift from those who had read them, three or four hundred of the cheaper magazines, some new, some a month or two old. For his whole stock he paid scarcely fifteen dollars.

Joe smuggled himself and his papers aboard a steamboat bound for Skagway, and worked his passage as cabin boy, waiter and general roustabout. At Juneau and Skagway he sold about one-fourth of his papers and magazines—the papers for twenty-five cents each and the ten-cent magazines for fifty cents. He could have sold out, but hearing that he could get double these prices at Dawson and down the Yukon, held on to his stock.

He formed a partnership with an old "sour-dough" miner, who helped him get his papers over the Chilcoot Pass and down the Yukon to Dawson. At the great Klondike camp he quickly sold out his papers at a dollar each, and the magazines at a dollar and a half to two and a half.

Joe spent the winter of 1898-9 at Dawson, selling the two papers published in that city and running a general news stand, in which he sold the reading matter he had sold before but gathered up again from the buyers. Sometimes he sold the same magazine four or five times.

When the Nome Stampede began, Joe got into the good graces of the manager of the steamboat company and got free passage down the Yukon. He shared my wolf-robe on the floor of the purser's room, and we became great chums. The boy was so bright and quick, and at the same time so polite and accommodating, that he made friends everywhere. He was a Sunday-school boy, and distributed my little red hymn-books when I held service in the social hall of the steamboat on Sunday, and his clear soprano sounded sweetly above the bass notes of the men.

"Joe," I asked him one day, "how much money have you made during the last year and a half?"

"Well," he replied, "I sent two thousand dollars out home from Dawson before I started down here, and with what I am making on this trip and what I hope to make at Nome, I think I'll have five thousand dollars clear when I land at Seattle the last of October."

"That's a dangerous amount of money for a small boy to have," I warned him. "Have you lost any of it?"

Joe grinned. "No, I dassen't. Some card sharps tried to get me to gamble at Dawson. They said I could double my money. But my partner [the old miner] said he'd lick me half to death if I ever went near the green tables. I didn't want to, anyhow. Everybody helps me take care of my money."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Why, give it all to mother, of course. She'll use it for me and my sister. I'm going to school as soon as I get home. Mother works in a store, but I guess this money'll give her a rest. She needs it."

A word more about little Joe before I leave him. He made good at Nome in September, and sailed for Seattle the last of October. The last I heard of him, four or five years later, he was making his way through the University of Washington, and still managing newspaper routes in Seattle. His is a case of exceptional good fortune; and yet I know of a number of boys who have made remarkable sums selling papers in Alaska. It is a boy's land of opportunity as well as a man's.

Our voyage to St. Michael was a tedious one—down the long stretches of the Lower Yukon, worming through the sand-bars and muddy shallows of the interminable delta, waiting through weary hours for tide and wind to be just right before venturing out on Bering Sea. Hurrying at last under full steam through the choppy sea, with the waves washing the lower deck and producing panic, uproar and swearing among the men packed upon it—we came to the harbor of St. Michael on the wind-swept, treeless, mossy shore of Norton Sound.

I was still to work my way through a tangle of delays and adventures before I could reach my goal—the great new camp at Nome, one hundred and thirty miles from St. Michael.

I had first to get my outfit together on the wharf, counting the boxes and war bags, pursuing the missing ones to other outfits and proving my claim to them. In the confusion this was a hard job, but I only lost two or three of my boxes. I piled my goods in a corner of the big warehouse of the North American Trading and Transportation Co., and set up my tent on the beach, for I was near the end of my money, and could not pay the high prices charged at the hotels. I got into my camp kit and did my own cooking, protecting my food as best I could against the thievish Eskimo dogs.

Then began a search, which lasted a week, for means of getting to Nome. The gold-hunters were putting off every day in whale boats, Eskimo oomiaks, and small sloops and schooners; but these craft were too small and uncertain for me to risk passage in them. My caution proved wise, for five or six of these small boats, after setting out, were never heard of again.

While I was waiting, the U. S. Revenue Cutter, Bear, came into the harbor, and aboard her was Sheldon Jackson, Superintendent of Education for Alaska, the noted pioneer missionary. He was just returning from a tour of the native schools and reindeer stations. (He was the man who had introduced the reindeer into Alaska from Siberia to supply the wants of the Eskimo.)

"Hurry on to Nome," he counseled me. "You were never needed more in all your life."

At length there limped into the harbor a little tub-like side-wheel steamboat, belonging to the Alaska Exploration Company, whose wharf was a mile and a half distant up the harbor. There was no way of getting my goods across the swampy tundra of St. Michael Island to the wharf. On the beach I found an abandoned old rowboat with open seams. I procured pieces of boards, some oakum and pitch, and set to work to repair the old boat. The steamboat was to sail for Nome the next forenoon. I worked all night. I made a pair of clumsy oars out of boards. Then I carried my goods to the leaky boat and rowed them to the dock. It took three trips to transfer my outfit, and while I was rowing back and forth somebody carried off my most valuable war-bag, containing most of my foot-wear and underclothes—one hundred dollars' worth.

I was a tired man when I stumbled down the steep stairs into the dark and stuffy hold of the little steamboat; and much more tired when, after two and a half days of seasickness, bobbing up and down in the choppy seas like a man on a bucking broncho, I pulled up the stairs again and let myself down the rope-ladder into the dory which was to take the passengers ashore at Nome.

"You can only take what you can carry on your back," announced the captain. "There's a storm coming up and I've got to hurry to the lee of Sledge Island, twenty miles away. You'll get your outfits when I come back. Lucky we're not all down in Davy Jones's locker."

I strapped my pack-sack, containing my wolf-robe and a pair of blankets, on my back, glad to get ashore on any terms. The dory wallowed heavily in the waves, the strong wind driving it towards the sandy beach. Boats have to anchor from one to two miles offshore at Nome. When we reached the beach, a big wave lifted the dory and swung it sideways. The keel struck the sand, and she turned over, dumping us all out, the comber overwhelming us and rolling us over and over like barrels. Drenched and battered, we crawled to land.

A heavy rain was falling as I staggered up the beach with my water-soaked blankets on my back, looking for a lodging-house. The beach was lined with tents, placed without regard to order or the convenience of anybody except the owner of each tent. A few straggling board-shacks were stuck here and there on the swampy tundra. Two or three large, low store buildings represented the various pioneer trading companies. The one street, which ran parallel to the beach, was full of mud. The buildings most in evidence were saloons, generally with dance-hall attachments. The absence of trees, the leaden, weeping sky, the mud, the swampy tundra, the want of all light and beauty, made this reception the dreariest of all my experiences in the new mining camps.

Nome, Alaska, Summer of 1900

A city of tents, twenty miles long

But I long ago learned that nothing is so bad but that it might be worse. I had not at that time seen Edmund Vance Cook's sturdy lines, but the spirit of them was in my heart:

"Did you tackle the trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful,
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven heart and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it;
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only, how did you take it!"

I soon found a sign written in charcoal on the lid of a paper box—Lodging. I entered the rough building and found a cheery Irish woman named M'Grath. There was no furniture in the house except two or three cheap chairs and a home-made board table.

"Shure, ye can," she answered in reply to my question about spending the night there. "Ye'll spread yer robe an' blankets on the flure, an' it'll only cost ye a dollar an' four bits. Ye'll plaze pay in advance."

I took stock of the contents of my pocketbook. There was just five dollars and a quarter left of the thousand dollars with which I had started from home on the first of May. It was now the first of September, and no more money was due me until the next spring. My food and tent were on the steamboat and would not be likely to come ashore for many days. It was Sunday evening, and a whole week must elapse before I could take up a collection.

I paid my landlady and she put my blankets by her stove to dry. I paid another dollar and a half for a supper of beans and flap-jacks—the first food I had tasted for three days. I slept soundly that night on the floor, without a care or anxiety. The next morning I paid another dollar and a half for breakfast, and could not resist the temptation of purchasing a Seattle paper (only three weeks old—what a luxury!). I had just twenty-five cents left—and I was a stranger in this strange corner of the earth!

I could not help laughing at my predicament as I entered the Alaska Exploration Company's store. A bearded man standing by the stove bade me "good-morning."

"You seem to be pleased about something," he said. "Have you struck it rich?"

"Well, yes!" I replied; "a rich joke on me," and I told him of the fix I was in.

"What? You are Dr. Young?" he exclaimed, shaking me heartily by the hand. "Why, I'm a Presbyterian elder from San Francisco."

The man's name was Fickus, a carpenter, who had come to Nome to build the store and warehouses of one of the big companies. He had held the first religious meetings in the new camp and had found quite a circle of Christian people.

He offered to lend me money, but I refused to take it. "No," I said, "let us wait and see what happens."

Something happened very quickly. While we were talking a young man entered the store and came up to me.

"I understand that you are a minister," he said.

"Yes," I replied. "What can I do for you?"

"You can marry me to the best woman in Alaska."

"Is she here?" I asked, with a triumphant smile at Fickus.

"Oh, yes; she came on the last boat from Seattle."

"When do you wish the ceremony to take place?" I inquired.

"Right now," he replied. "You can't tie the knot too quickly to suit me."

I followed the eager young man, married him to a nice-looking girl who was waiting in a near-by cabin, received a wedding-fee of twenty dollars, and returned to my newly-found friend with the assurance that my wants were supplied until my outfit would come ashore.

This was my introduction to the second great gold camp of the Northwest—the raw, crazy, confused stampede of Nome.

[II]

THE ANVIL

The first two great gold camps of the Northwest were very different, although largely composed of the same material. In physical features they were most unlike. The Klondike was in the great, 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 the wonderful "Inside Passage," broke through the chain of snowy mountains by the Chilcoot Pass, and, in your rough rowboat, shot down the six hundred miles of the untamed and untameable Yukon. Or else you sailed twenty-three hundred miles over the heaving Pacific and the choppy Bering Sea to St. Michael, and then steamed laboriously against 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 of Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea; or, if you were up the Yukon, came down it to St. Michael and across Norton Sound a hundred and fifty miles to Nome.

Though on the same parallel of north latitude, the climates of the two camps are very unlike. In the Klondike you have the light, dry, hot air of summer; the light, dry, cold 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, no breath of air shaking the aspens; in the winter of almost unbroken but luminous night, the Spirit of the North broods like James Whitcomb Riley's Lugubrious Whing-whang,

"Crouching low by the winding creeks,
And holding his breath for weeks and weeks."

There are no wind-storms in the Klondike, and a blanket of fine, dry snow covers the land in unvarying depth of only a foot or two.

On Seward Peninsula, the Spirit of Winter breathes hard, and hurls his snow-laden blasts with fearful velocity over the icy wastes. The snow falls to great depth, and never lies still in one place. It drifts, and will cover your 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 have lost their way in the streets of Nome and wandered out on the tundra to their death. There is considerable sunshine in the summer, and some comparatively still days, but there is much rain, and mossy swamps are everywhere.

The men at Nome in the fall of '99 included many who had been at Dawson in '97, but conditions were very different. The Klondike Stampede was composed of tenderfeet, not one in twenty of whom had ever mined for anything before—men of the city and 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, possessing themselves of a multitude of worthless claims, eating up the outfits they had brought in with them, and then working for wages in mines of the lucky ones to buy a passage to the new diggings. Many had come down the Yukon in their own rowboats.

But the Klondike Stampede was the cause of other smaller but more fruitless stampedes. These were started by steamboat companies, or by trading companies, and often by "wildcat" mining companies, and were generally cruel hoaxes. Scores of small steamboats, hastily built for the purpose, went 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-seekers of '98 found only disappointment, endured the savage winter as best they could, and, out of money and food, were making their way back to the States, when news of the marvelous "beach diggings" at Nome met them and they flocked thither in hopes of at least making back their "grub-stake."

As these vessels approached the new camp, the most prominent landmark which met their eyes was a lone rock in the shape of an anvil, which crowned the summit 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 called Anvil City; but the Government postal authorities, looking at the map, found Cape Nome in the vicinity, and the post-office was named after the Cape.

Anvil Rock. Overlooking Nome

For the name "Nome" two explanations are given. It is said that the American and Canadian surveyors who were laying out the projected Western Union Telegraph Line across the American and 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 Eskimo the name of the cape. Now the Eskimo negative is "No-me," and the man not understanding, or not knowing its name said "No-me." This was written down and put on the map as the name.

But I like Anvil, and spoke and voted for that name at the first town meeting, held soon after I landed at the new camp. For the camp has been a place 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. Others have been shaped and moulded by fiery trial and "the bludgeonings of chance." When I see that stone anvil I think of Tennyson's inspired lines:

"For life is not an idle ore,
But iron, dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use."

I was battered as hard as any one on this anvil of the Northwest; but to-day I feel nothing but gratitude for the severe experience.

I had to wait until Saturday before the little steamer on which I came from St. Michael returned from the shelter of Sledge Island and put my goods ashore. In the meantime I had obtained permission to spread my blankets on the floor of the Alaska Exploration Company's store. During that first week we had constant storms. Five or six vessels were driven ashore and broken up by the violence of the waves.

But I was getting my congregation together, and so was happy. A goodly proportion of Christian men and women are always found in these gold camps, and they are very willing workers. Before Sunday came I had found an old acquaintance, 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 a former chapter, fixed up some seats. I got my organ carried up the ladder and found singers. "Judge" McNulty, a lawyer friend who was handy with crayons, made fancy posters out of some pasteboard boxes I had got from the store.

The floor of Bruce's store was cluttered with Eskimo mucklucks, bales of hair-seal skins, and other unsavory articles; and an old Eskimo woman, who had her lower lip and chin tattooed downwards in streaks after the fashion of these people, sat among the skins, chewing walrus hides and shaping them into soles for mucklucks, while the congregation 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 Dr. Humphrey, a dentist, who had been director of a large chorus and choir; Mr. Beebe, our chief baritone, had sung in the choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Oakland, Cal.; and there were other professionals. I give these details as a typical beginning in a frontier camp. There is always fine talent of all sorts in a new gold town.

Let me give right here two or three instances of the bread of kindness "cast upon the waters" and "found after many days." Nowhere is this Bible saying oftener realized than in the friendly wilderness.

One of the first men I met at Nome was an old Colorado miner, whom I had known at Dawson. I had done him some kindness at the Klondike camp during the illness and after the death of 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 to go 'outside' in a few days. You come out on the tundra with me to-morrow, and I'll stake some ground for you; then I'll take your papers out with me and try to sell the claims."

I went with him and he marked off three claims for me, which he had already selected. The next spring, when my long illness had plunged me deeply 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 my claims. I paid my doctor's bills and the other debts, and rejoiced. It was as money thrown down to me from heaven, in my time of dire need.

At Dawson, in the summer of '98, I helped an old G. A. R. man from Missouri. He had been sick with the scurvy and was drowned out by the spring freshets and driven to the roof of his cabin, where I found him helpless and half-devoured 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 went to stake my claims and bagged a lot of ptarmigan; and a number of times afterwards I shot others of these delicious wild chickens with it. And when I was taken ill and my money all spent, I was able to sell the gun for a goodly sum.

One more link in this chain of kindness: When my goods came ashore and I was able to set up my tent, I found two men, one a Norwegian, the other a Michigander, both of whom had just arrived, without a shelter. I took them into my tent. They helped me to move my goods, made me a cot and fixed up tables, box-chairs 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 came again and again to my cabin, bringing "shickens for Mr. Zhung," and roasted them for me, serving them with his famous nut-butter gravy. In the language of the Northwest, "I didn't do a thing to those chickens." Of all places in the world, I think Alaska is most fruitful in return for little acts of kindness.

Men such as I have just described were pure metal, and the heavy blows they received on the anvil only made their characters more beautiful and efficient.

It was in the metal of the men themselves—what this hard life would do for them. Some it made—some it ruined. Among the "Lucky Swedes," who leaped in a few months from poverty to wealth by the discovery of gold in Anvil Creek, three form a typical illustration.

One was a missionary to the Eskimos, on a small salary. At first his gold gave him much perplexity and trouble while he was being 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 missions and schools among the natives, and pursued his Christian way, honored and beloved, to broader paths of greater usefulness.

A second Swede was also a missionary, teaching the little Eskimos on a salary of six hundred dollars a year. His gold completely turned his head. He fell an easy prey to designing men and women. He became dissipated and broken in body and 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, his church getting only a small part of its dues. The last I heard of him he was a mere wreck of a man, disgraced, despised and shunned by his former friends. The anvil battering, the trial by fire, the hard blows, proved him base metal.

The third man was a Swedish sailor and longshoreman, ignorant and low, living a hand-to-mouth, sordid life, with no prospects of honor or wealth. His gold at first plunged him into a wild orgy of gambling and dissipation. He took the typhoid fever and was taken "outside." Everybody prophesied that he would simply "go the pace" to complete destruction.

But there was true steel in his composition. His moral fiber stiffened. He began to think and study. He broke away from his drunken associates. He sought the companionship of the cultured. A good woman married and educated him. He has become one of Alaska's wealthiest and most influential citizens, and his charities abound. The stern anvil shaped him to world-usefulness. It is all in the man!

Here at Nome I first made the acquaintance of that strange race in which I afterwards became so much interested—the Eskimo. At first they were a 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 depend upon driftwood for our fuel, they would come several times a day, bringing huge basketfuls of the soggy sticks for sale at fifty cents a basket.

They soon learned that I was a missionary, and then they would come rolling along, forty or fifty of them at a time, and "bunch up" in front of my tent. If I were cooking dinner they were sure to gather in full force, and would lift up the flap 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 half a mile away if the wind were blowing from him to you. The combined smells of a company of natives, not one of whom had ever taken a bath in his or her life, and who lived upon ancient fish and "ripe" seal blubber—well, I'll stop right here!

One evening at a social in our warehouse-church we played the "limerick" game, which was then a popular craze. We would take a word 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 Nugget. With a man's usual egotism I can only remember my own, which I saw at intervals for several years in Eastern periodicals:

"Oh, look at this queer Esquimaux!
His nose is too pudgy to blaux.
His odors are awful;
To tell them unlawful.
The thought of them fills me with waux."

One day I was getting dinner in my tent and the usual company of natives watching the performance, when there came along a couple of men who had just landed and who, evidently, had never seen an Eskimo before. I overheard their conversation.

"Say, Jim," said one, "just look there. Did you ever see the like?" (A pause.) "Say, do you think them things has souls?"

"We-e-ll," drawled Jim, "I reckon they must have. They're human bein's. But I'll tell you this: If they do, they've all got to go to heaven, sure; for the devil'd never have them around."

Now let me tell you a sequel: Two years afterwards I was a Commissioner from the newly organized Presbytery of Yukon to the General Assembly, which met at Philadelphia. My fellow Commissioner from the Presbytery—the elder who sat by my side—was Peter Koonooya, an Eskimo elder 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 extraordinary intelligence, a man of property, owning a fleet of whaling oomiaks. He could read, write and talk English, was a constant student of the Bible, and was considered by the Presbytery of sufficient intelligence and piety to represent us in the supreme Council of the Church.

I am quite certain that Peter always voted exactly right on all questions which were up before that Assembly; because he watched me very closely and voted as I did.

I was able, then, and in after years, to do these gentle, good-natured natives some good, and other Christian teachers have done much more for them. So it comes about that the condition of the 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, for whom nothing in a Christian way has been done, is as day to night. They are pliable metal, and the Anvil of the Northwest is shaping them into vessels and implements of usefulness and honor.

The Odoriferous but Interesting Eskimo

Two of Dr. Young's Parishioners

[III]

BUNCH-GRASS BILL

Although I had often met him on the streets of Dawson in '98, I had not come into hand-shaking contact with Bunch-grass Bill until my first week at Nome. Of all the social orders whose members gathered together in clubs for humane work during the epidemic of typhoid fever, the first to organize, besides being the strongest and most active, was the Odd Fellows' Club. It was already organized when I arrived and, as I belonged to the order, I was present at the second meeting. The young lawyer who was president of the Club, taking me around the little circle of earnest men, brought me to a black-haired, black-eyed, sturdily-built and singularly handsome young Irishman by the name of Billy Murtagh.

"Billy owns and runs the 'Beach Saloon,' and goes by the name of Bunch-grass Bill," introduced our president. "I don't know how he got into the Odd Fellows, under rules which bar saloon-keepers and bad men. But he's in, and we'll not turn him out of the Club, at least so long as this distress continues."

Bill made no reply to this rather uncomplimentary introduction, but shook hands with Irish heartiness and looked at me with level gaze. "I've seen you in my saloon at Dawson," he said.

The others laughed, and the president chided, "You oughtn't to give a preacher away like that, Bill."

Taking a closer look at the young man, a scene at Dawson a year earlier flashed upon me. I was collecting money to pay the passage on the steamboat bound down the Yukon of some poor fellows who were broken and sick, and who must go "outside" or die. I made the round of the saloons and gambling halls, and going into one of these places was curtly refused by one of the partners. The other, who was this young man, came up and quietly said to the cashier, "Weigh him out two ounces ($32.00)."

"Oh, I remember you now, and your two ounces," I said to Bill; and to the others, "I can vouch for his knowing the Second Degree of the order, at least."

I was made chairman of the Relief Committee of the Club, and found work a-plenty cut out for me. Although the members of the Club did not look with indifference upon any case of distress, yet its prime object was to look up and help the sick Odd Fellows. I prepared a bulletin and tacked it up in the stores and saloons, directing that any cases of distress among the members of the order should be reported to the Committee. As the typhoid epidemic increased in virulence, the Club found its hands full.

A day or two after this first meeting, I was passing Bill's saloon when he called me in.

"I've just heard of a sick man," he reported, "and I think he's an Odd Fellow." Then, after a pause, he added, "But if he isn't that doesn't make a —— bit of difference."

He led the way along the beach for half a mile or more, to an isolated tent, where we found the typhoid case. Billy stayed until he made sure that the man was well cared for in the charge of friends and a good physician. Then he took me aside and slipped a twenty-dollar gold piece into my hand. "Use that for him," he directed.

The next day I had to raise a hundred and fifty dollars to send an old miner who was poor and crippled "outside." I marched at once to the "Beach Saloon." "Billy," I said, "this old-timer has blown in all his dust for booze; and it's up to you who have got it from him to take care of him now."

"That's right," he promptly answered. "There's ten saloons; what would be my share?"

"An ounce," I replied, passing him the paper.

He weighed out the gold dust. "Wait a while before going on. I'll pass the word down the line," he said.

Half an hour afterwards I stopped again at his door. "They're all ready," reported Bill. "If any of them guys don't come across, just tell me."

They all "came across," and thereafter, until I left Nome, all the saloon-keepers met every demand I made upon them without question. When a man had been impoverished or made sick through drink I went to the saloons, only, for his relief. In other cases I made a general canvass. When collecting money for church purposes I went to everybody, except the saloon-keepers and their following.

The day before my second meeting with the Odd Fellows' Club—a rainy, blustering day—I came to Bunch-grass Bill with a greater demand.

"It is you I want this time, Billy, not just your money," I said. "There is a sick Odd Fellow in a tent almost a mile from here. He is alone and lying in a puddle of water. Get your gum-boots and find three or four other stout men and come with me."

Bill agreed at once, found a man to tend his bar, secured a squad of strong and willing men, a stretcher from the army post and a good physician and went with me on the errand of mercy. He worked all day in the mud and rain. He carried the sick man to the warehouse which we had turned into a temporary hospital, visited all the stores in an attempt to find mattresses, and, failing in that, bought eight large reindeer skins and piled them on the floor for a bed, bought underwear, dry blankets and other comforts for the sick man, and laid in a supply of delicacies for the use of the hospital. In all, he spent over fifty dollars and a whole day of strenuous work upon the case.

When I asked him at dusk if he were not tired he laughed: "Never had a better time in all my life."

That night was the regular weekly meeting of the Club. I made my report, which was quite long, and mentioned many distressing cases, showing an alarming increase of the typhoid. Then I asked for a rotary relief committee of three to be chosen at every other meeting, and a permanent relief committee of two.

"I've found the biggest-hearted man in all Alaska," I said. "His business and mine are not quite the same. In fact I have been all my life fighting saloons and saloon-keepers, and I expect to keep on fighting them until I die. But this man's heart of love for his fellow-men fights his business harder than I can."

Then I related some of the things Billy had done during the past week, and ended my speech by asking that he be put on the permanent relief committee with me. "We two will find the sick and cut out the work for the rest of you," I promised.

The Club applauded, much to the confusion of Bill, who tried his best to shrink out of sight. One of the boys reported next morning.

"Say, Doctor," he began, "you sure scared Bunch-grass Bill near to death last night. Tickled, too. He asked us all to come in and have one on him. He doesn't know anything else to do when he feels good. 'That's a new one on me,' he said. 'I never had anything to do with a preacher in my life. Didn't like 'em. Kept shy of 'em. But if Father Young sees fit to come into my saloon—and he's in it every day—I'll go with him wherever he wants me to go—even if it's to his church.'"

That touched me, for I could sense something of the sacrifice it would involve. It would be far easier for Bill to start on a three-thousand-mile winter mush on snow-shoes, over unbroken trails, than to step inside of a Protestant meeting-house.

From that time on, Bill was my right hand. As the number of typhoid victims increased, he made his saloon an intelligence office, finding and reporting to me all new cases. The example of the Odd Fellows stimulated the various social orders represented in the camp—the Masons, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Eagles, and others—to a like humane work; and Bill looked up their sick members and reported to their committees. He saw that all the sick had medical attention, and guaranteed the payment of scores of doctor's bills. Each steamboat that left Nome for the "outside" carried a number of convalescents and broken-down and moneyless men, and funds had to be raised for their passage. Bill headed nearly all of these subscription lists, as well as those for fitting up the four temporary hospitals we opened and filled with sick men.

Being for over six weeks the only clergyman in that whole region, I conducted all the funerals. One week I had eleven—all typhoid cases. Bill attended them all, looking after the digging of the graves and making coffins, and often acting as undertaker.

Now, I am not setting up my saloon friend as a saint. Quite the contrary. I suppose he had been guilty of every crime mentioned in the Decalogue. He had never known any home life, but had knocked about from camp to camp of the western frontiers ever since boyhood. His ideas of morality, therefore, were very vague. He was said to have been "run out" of several towns in Montana and Idaho. He had a violent temper and, as the phrase went, was "quick on the trigger." Rumor said that he had the blood of more than one man on his hands; although it was claimed, in every case, that he had not sought the quarrel. He sold whiskey and drank it, gambled and swore habitually without a thought of any of these things being wrong. He was simply an uncultured, ignorant, rough-and-ready, Irish-American backwoodsman.

But to those of us in the raw camp of Nome who witnessed Bill's untiring kindness and self-sacrifice during those weeks of distress, his faults faded into the background behind the light of his many good deeds. St. Peter says, "Charity covers a multitude of sins," and surely Bill's charity "abounded" overwhelmingly, putting out of sight much of the evil in his life.

As for me, I shall always think of him as one of the most loyal, devoted friends I ever had, and the saver of my life. For after seven weeks of most strenuous and wearing work, I was suddenly stricken down with the typhoid myself. The blow came when I was fairly drowned in the multitude of my duties. I was raising the money to send out on the steamboat four or five men who must leave the country or die—poor fellows whose vitality was so low that they could not combat the cold and storms of a Nome winter. I was also preparing another warehouse-hospital. So great was the demand for space for the care of the sick that I had felt compelled to take into my own ten-by-twelve tent three men sick with the disease. So crowded was the tent that I had to sleep under the bed of one of them. Billy Murtagh and others of the Odd Fellows' Club warned me against thus exposing myself to the infection, but there seemed to be no other way. Billy brought me all his remaining Apollinaris water that I might not have to drink the impure seepage of the tundra. Some of the brothers carried me pails of water from the one well which had been recently put down.

While I was in the midst of the canvass for funds, and in the bustle of preparation for the departure of the last steamboats, I had a terrific headache for several days. I was besieged day and night by friends of sick men for places to put the stricken ones where they could be cared for. The life of a number of these men seemed to depend on my keeping on my feet. I had no time to be sick. I kept away from Billy and my other friends, for fear they might forcibly interfere.

But one of the Odd Fellows saw me as I was coming out of a store with a subscription paper in my hand. He looked at me for a moment and hurried to the "Beach Saloon."

"Bill," he shouted, "get a doctor, quick, and go to the parson. I saw him just now staggering along with his face as red as fire and his hand to his head. He's got the fever, sure."

Billy came running down the beach with Dr. Davy at his heels and caught me as I was entering my tent. Without ceremony they picked up the sick man who was in my cot and carried him to another tent near by. Then, in spite of my protests, they undressed me and laid me in my blankets. I was half delirious and stubborn. I fought them.

"This is all nonsense, Doctor," I protested. "I have only a headache. There is no time to fool away. These men must go out on this steamboat, and the money is not raised. Let me alone."

Dr. Davy finished his examination and turned to Bunch-grass Bill. "He has a bad case of typhoid," was his verdict, "and ought to have been in bed three or four days ago. Find a house to put him in and a woman to nurse him."

Bill had one of the softest and sweetest voices I ever heard. He came to me and laid his cool hand on my forehead. "Don't you worry about those men, Father," he said gently. "I'll attend to that. Now who do you want to nurse you?"

"Mrs. Perrigo," I replied. "She has just built a new cabin. I helped her with it. Her husband is recovering from the fever."

Soon the good woman was in my tent, eager to serve. I was carried through a driving snow-storm to her cabin. It was a rude affair built of rough boards set upright and battened with narrow, half-inch strips. A single thickness of building-paper poorly supplemented the inch boards. But cold and uncomfortable as it was, it was the only available shelter. I had them bring my tent and make a storm-shed of it in front of the door. There, for more than two months, I was to lie helpless.

My friends told me afterwards of the consternation that my illness caused. I was chairman of all the general relief committees—those of the town council, the citizens, the mission, the Odd Fellows. That the leader should thus be laid aside seemed a greater calamity than was actually the case. For Mr. Wirt of the Congregational Church arrived with lumber to erect a hospital, and Raymond Robins, a young man of great earnestness and talent, who has since arisen to national prominence, came with him to help in Christian work.

The night after I was taken to the Perrigo cabin, there was a meeting of the Odd Fellows' Club. Billy Murtagh was present and made his first public speech. As my illness and the general situation was discussed he rose to his feet, the tears streaming down his face. He seemed unconscious of them—or, at least, unashamed.

"Fellers," he faltered, "I'm hard hit. This gets me where I live. Now I'll tell you this: you fellers can look after the other sick folks, and call on me when you need any money. But I want you to leave Father Young to me. I've adopted him. He's my father. All I've got is his. If there's anything in this camp he needs, he's goin' to have it."

Ah, that long, desperate fight for life! The stunning pain in my head, the high fever, the delirium, the nervous terror, the deadly weakness, the emaciation, the chills and nausea! I was badly handicapped in my fight. The two months of wearing work and strain which preceded my illness had exhausted me, body and mind—there was no vital reserve to draw upon.

I was in a little, cold shanty, twelve feet square, crowded and unhealthy. Two people besides myself must live in that tiny room—sleep there, cook there. The savage arctic winter raged against us, howling his vengeance upon our impudence in thus braving him, unprepared. He made every nail-head inside the house a knob of frost. When my blankets, damp with the steam of cooking, touched the wall, he clamped them so tight one must tear the fabric in pulling it free. He made my clothing, stowed under the cot, a solid lump of ice. He asphyxiated us with foul gases when the door was closed, and filled the room instantly with fine snow from the condensation of the moisture when it was opened. He charged constantly upon the thin shell of the house with his high October and November winds, shaking it wildly and threatening to bowl it over. He drove, in horizontal sheets, the fine, flour-like snow, shooting it through batten-crevice, door-crack and keyhole; and, finding myriad small apertures in the shake roof, sifted it down upon my face. He piled it in fantastic whirls around the house, selecting the side on which our one small window was, to bank it highest, so that he might shut out our light. He sent the red spirit in the thermometer tube down, down, down—ten below zero, twenty, thirty when it stormed, and forty, fifty, sixty below when it was still, and the black death-mist brooded over the icy wastes and men breathed ice-splinters instead of air.

The fuel supply for the Nome camp was very poor and scanty. Men were digging old, sodden logs of driftwood out of the snow, and hauling this sorry fire-wood twenty miles by hand. Coal was scarce and sold by the ton for $150.00, or by the bucket for ten cents a pound.

Having had experience with typhoid epidemics and other sicknesses in the Klondike Stampede, I had laid in a good supply of nice foods for the sick, such as malted milk, the best brands of condensed milk, tapioca, farina, and other delicacies; but all of these had been given away before my own illness, and there was a scarcity of such articles in the stores.

But my friends, women and men,—indeed, everybody in the camp seemed interested in me and anxious to do something for me—arose to meet all these emergencies and "ministered to mine infirmities." The Odd Fellows supplemented the efforts of the convalescent, but still shaky Perrigo, and cut the wind-packed snow into bricks and built it around the house, until it looked like a veritable Eskimo igloo. It was much warmer after this was done.

The doctors at Nome all prescribed a diet of milk and whiskey for their fever patients. Upon the news of my illness circulating in the camp a dozen bottles of different brands were at once sent to me. Billy came, examined, smelled at, and tasted these liquors, with the air of an expert. Then he bundled all the bottles into a gunny sack and carried them away, saying, "He's not going to have any of this dope. I've got some of the pure stuff, made in Ireland." And he brought me an ample supply for all my needs, and a gallon of pure alcohol for sponge-baths.

The Odd Fellows organized wood-cutting "bees" for my benefit, and daily carried water from the well for Mrs. Perrigo's use. The women collected food and milk from their own stores and those of others, and brought them to me. The fellowship of the wilderness, the finest in the world, had its full exercise for my benefit there at Nome. I doubt if there was a person in all that great camp who would not have given me cheerfully his last can of milk.

As the fever progressed and my condition grew more serious, the daily visitors were restricted to two—Mrs. Strong and Bunch-grass Bill. The lady looked after matters of business, my letters, and information about other sick people. Billy, with his soft, low voice and gentle manner, hovered over me, sitting for hours at my bedside, lifting me in his two big hands with infinite care and deftness. Never did son care for father with more tender solicitude and fuller devotion than did this Irish Catholic saloon-keeper, this "bad man" of the western frontier, for me—a Protestant preacher.

There were many malamute dogs at Nome, great, beautiful, wolf-like beasts, and the "malamute chorus" was much in evidence in the late hours of the night. One, in particular, which was tied up not far from Perrigo's cabin, tuned up regularly every morning at three o'clock with his high-pitched tremolo, waking every dog within a mile, until all were howling, and keeping it up till daylight. There was no sleep possible for me while this concert was in progress, and I used to lie awake for hours, waiting fearfully for the leader to begin, and to cower in my robes with nervous chills coursing down my spine at every renewal of the long-drawn cadence, "Oo-o-o-o-o, oo-o-o-o-o, ow, ow, ow, ow."

My fever would always rise with the commencement of this discordant chorus and increase as long as it continued, and the doctor on his morning visit would find me exhausted and trembling. The words of Clarence would chase each other through my brain:

"With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise
I trembling wak'd, and, for a season after
Could not believe but what I was in hell."

Mrs. Perrigo told Billy of the nuisance. He stayed up that night until the leading canine musician shrieked his solo to the moon. He followed up the sound until he found the dog, roused the grumbling owner, paid the high price asked for the animal, led him down the beach half a mile, and shot him.

An errand of an opposite character also fell to Billy's lot. The barracks which housed a squadron of United States soldiers was less than a block from the cabin in which I lay. Every night at eleven o'clock a bugle of remarkable sweetness and expression would blow "[Taps.]" I would listen for the soothing melody, and when it would sound I would turn over in my robe and obey its command, "Go-o-o to sle-e-ep."

Lieutenant Craig, the commander of the post, ordered the discontinuance of "Taps," thinking it would disturb me and the other sick people. That night I waited, as usual, for the "good-night" bugle, and when it did not sound I grew anxious and distraught. I thought my watch was wrong or the bugler must be sick. I grew excited, restless and feverish, and passed a sleepless night, missing my accustomed lullaby. We told Billy; he went to see the Lieutenant, and the next night the lovely, soothing phrase sounded forth on the still night air, and I slept.

Taps.
[Listen]

Another cause of nervousness and anxiety arose, requiring the efforts of both Mrs. Strong and Billy Murtagh to solve the difficulty. I was paying my nurse, Mrs. Perrigo, five dollars a day, which was almost all she and her husband had to live on. They had been eating for a year and a half a food outfit designed for only a single season, and there was but little of it left. Mr. Perrigo, who was a Yankee tintype-picture peddler and knew no other trade, had tried his best to be a gold-miner; but, in common with the rest of the forlorn "Kobuckers," had made nothing at all. His wife, who had been a bookkeeper in Boston, valiantly took up the trades of waitress, washerwoman and cook in the Arctic wilderness, but there was but little money in that disappointed crowd. Almost immediately after landing on the "golden sands" of Nome in August Mr. Perrigo was stricken with the fever. With the fearful prices that prevailed, my five dollars a day was little enough to feed them and meet the monthly payments on their house.

I had accumulated $125.00—mostly wedding fees—when I was taken sick. It melted away like a spoonful of sugar in a cup of hot coffee. Every Monday I must have thirty-five dollars for my faithful nurse. I placed in Mrs. Strong's hands for sale my Parker shotgun, my typewriter, my gold-scales, my extra overcoat, all gifts from friends. She got good prices for them, and for the few articles I could spare from my food supply—but still the phantom weekly payment menaced me. When I closed my eyes the figures—$35.00—big and lurid—stared at me, and in my delirious dreams became red goblins, mocking me.

A splendid woman, member of the church which assumed my salary, had given me two beautiful wolf robes. I was lying in the heavier one. I delivered the other to Mrs. Strong. "Sell it for me," I requested. "You ought to get fifty or sixty dollars for it."

A week passed—then another. Mrs. Strong reported she "was holding the robe for a higher price." The crisis I had dreaded had arrived. My money was gone. I had none to meet next Monday's payment.

"Sell the robe for what it will bring," I directed Mrs. Strong. "I must have the money."

"I'll sell it on Saturday," she promised.

Monday morning Mrs. Strong marched in with a large canvas money-bag in her hand. With Mrs. Perrigo's assistance she counted out the money, which was mostly in silver coins. Then she wrote in large figures, "$158.50," and pinned the paper on the wall by my head.

"Where on earth did you get that money?" I cried.

"Why, for the robe, of course."

"You never got all that for it."

"Yes, I did," she affirmed.

Then the truth dawned upon me. "Mrs. Strong!" I exclaimed, "you raffled the robe!"

"Yes," she laughed. "What are you going to do about it?"

Then she explained. Finding it impossible to get a fair price for the fur blanket she and Bunch-grass Bill had laid their heads together. They knew that I would not consent to a raffle, so they kept the matter quiet. Bill displayed the robe in front of his saloon. Shares were offered at fifty cents each. My lady friends of the mission sold tickets. Bill bought fifty and others of my friends did almost as well. Their purpose if they won the robe was to give it back to me.

What could I do? To rebuke their kindly deception would be ungracious indeed. With brimming eyes I thanked my friends, and Mrs. Perrigo got her money.

But the greatest of Bunch-grass Bill's many acts of kindness towards me remains to be told. As Dr. Davy had said from the first, mine was "a bad case." I had seven and a half weeks of high fever before it broke, whereas the usual limit of fever was three weeks. I reached the extreme of emaciation and weakness. I could hardly lift my hand. When they bundled me in a blanket like a baby and hung me on the hook of a big steelyard I weighed sixty pounds! I was long in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and reached its utmost boundary, until the very waters of the dark river lapped my feet.

"Well, Bill," said Dr. Davy with a sigh, as he was returning one morning from his call upon me, and stopped, as was his custom, to report to the "Beach Saloon," "I'm afraid it's about over. I don't think Dr. Young can last much longer. He can retain nothing on his stomach. We've tried all the brands of condensed milk in the camp to no avail. Everything comes up the instant it is swallowed. There are many internal complications, and he may go off any hour in one of those deathly convulsive chills."

"Big Wilbur," who reported the scene to me afterwards, said that Bill's face "went white as chalk, and then flushed red as fire." He jumped at the doctor as though he were going to assault him.

"By God," he cried, "he's not goin' to die. We'll not let him, Doc. See here: When I had the fever at Dawson, what saved me was cow's milk. Now, there's a cow here. You come with me, and we'll go see her."

"That cow," explained Wilbur, "was a wonderful animal. Her owner sold twenty gallons of milk a day from her, and she didn't look as if she gave one. Bill knew the owner was doping the milk with condensed milk and corn-starch and water and other stuff. So he strapped on his two big guns. He's great for bluff, is Bill. Doc. and I went along to see the fun. We found the owner in the stable 'tending to his cow. Bill didn't beat around the bush any.

"'You look here' he said. 'Your cow's givin' too darned much milk. Now this man I want it for is my father, an' he's got enough microbes in him already. Doc. here, analyzed your milk; didn't you, Doc?' (Doc. Davy was game, and nodded.) 'He says you put tundra water and all kinds of dope in it. I'm goin' to keep tab on you, an' if you dope my milk—well, you know me! It don't make no difference what you charge—a dollar a bottle or five dollars a bottle—my father's got to have pure milk. Understand?'"

For three months Billy went to the stable every day and superintended the milking. At a cost to him, sometimes, of three dollars for a pint bottle, and never less than a dollar a bottle, the "bad man" brought me every day, with his own hands, a bottle of fresh milk. When Bill and the doctor came in with that first bottle Mrs. Perrigo carefully raised my head and gave me a brimming glass of the rich milk. I drank it all and dropped off to sleep. I needed no more whiskey. The turning point of my illness was that glass of cow's milk. Bill's big bluff saved my life!

To show the rough, yet fine sentiment of the man, let me tell one last word about the lone cow. She went dry before spring, and, as the camp was crazy for fresh meat, the owner butchered her. One of the Odd Fellows told me. Said he, "Bill just went wild when he heard of it, and we had all we could do to keep him from going gunning for the man who killed the cow that saved your life. Why, that man would lay down his life for you, and laugh while he was doin' it."

I would I could tell of Bunch-grass Bill's conversion and entire reformation, but this is a true story, and I never heard that he ever got so far as that. This much, however, I am proud to tell. One day in the spring of 1900, when the army of gold-seekers was beginning to land on the "Golden Beach," I was standing with Bill near his saloon. On a sudden impulse I spoke to him.

"Billy," I said, "I love you, but I don't like your business. It's a bad business. See what it has done to lots of good fellows around here. You are too big for that game. I wish you'd drop it and do something that's clean—that doesn't hurt anybody."

Bill made no reply, and I supposed my words had been fruitless. But in a few weeks one of my friends informed me that Bill had sold out and had gone to gold-mining.

"That's good!" I exclaimed. "Did he give any reason?"

"Yes," the man replied, "Bill said you told him to."

When I was returning to Alaska in 1901, I bought a nice buffalo smoking-set at the Pan-American Exposition and took it to Alaska for Bunch-grass Bill. I did not see him, as he was mining at a distance, but I heard of his pride and pleasure as he displayed the gift and talked affectionately of "Father Young." He left Alaska that summer, and I have heard vaguely of his presence in the Nevada gold-fields. But wherever he is, I pray that God may bless and save the Irish saloon-keeper, who loved me and saved my life.

[IV]

MY DOGS

Mushing with dogs in Alaska is the worst and the best mode of traveling in all the world—the most joyful and the most exasperating—according to the angle from which you look at it.

Once I was preaching a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments to the miners at Council, a town on Seward Peninsula eighty-five miles east of Nome. I had come to the Third Commandment; and I bore down pretty hard upon the useless and foolish habit of profane swearing.

When I was going home from the meeting, a group of young men stood on the corner waiting for me.

"Come over here, Doctor," called one of the men. "I have a bet with Jim, and I want you to decide it."

I crossed over to the jolly group. "What is your bet?" I asked.

"Why," he replied, "I've bet Jim five dollars that you have never mushed a dog-team."

"Well, you've lost," I answered. "I have driven dogs many times—and never found it necessary to swear at them, either."

Before I go on with my story, perhaps I would better explain that word "mush," as it is used in the Northwest. The word is never used in Alaska as you use it in the East, to denote porridge, or some sort of cereal. There we say "oatmeal" or "corn-meal," or simply "cereal."

In Alaska the word has but one use. It is a corruption of the French marchez, marche, which the Canadian coureurs du bois, or travelers of the woods, shout at their dogs when urging them along the trail. From marche to "mush" is easy. So now, throughout the great Northwest, Canadian or Alaskan, when a man is traveling he is "on a mush." When he is speaking to his dogs, either to drive them out of the house or to urge them along the trail, he shouts "mush!" If he be a good traveler, he is a "great musher." Of all the pet names they used to give me up there, the one of which I was proudest was "The Mushing Parson."

They tell a story, which has the ear-marks of truth, which illustrates this universal use of the word "mush" in the Northwest.

Two miners, who for years had been in the mining camps of Alaska, at last came "outside" to Seattle. In the morning they went to a restaurant for breakfast and took seats at a table. A rather cross-looking waitress came to take their order. "Mush?" she asked. The miners looked at one another in surprise and alarm. The woman waited a while, and when they did not answer she supposed they were deaf and had not heard her question. "Mush?" she screamed. The two men arose and fled. When they got safely to the sidewalk, one said to the other, "Now, what the Sam Hill did she fire us for?"

There are three principal breeds of native dogs found in Alaska—the Husky, the Malamute and the Siberian Dog—all descendants of wolves, with wolfish traits and the wolf's warm coat and powers of endurance. Of these the Malamute is the largest, descended, as he is, from the great gray wolves of the Arctic regions. The Husky seems to be derived from the red wolf of the McKenzie River Valley; while the Siberian Dog has for ancestor the smaller, shorter-legged, heavier-furred Arctic wolf of the Siberian coast. The smaller and more worthless dogs of the southern Alaska Coast, if descended from wolves, must have the coyote as their progenitor—having his lighter and slimmer body and his sneaking, thievish, cowardly disposition.

Everywhere, however, the dog is largely what his master makes him, and these northern wolf-dogs have greatly improved since they have fallen into the hands of white masters. More intelligent breeding, greater care in feeding and more careful training, have made them what they are—the finest, most enduring and most dependable sleigh-dogs in the world.

The dog is by all odds the most valuable animal of the Northwest to the white miner and settler. He is the miner's horse, bicycle, automobile, locomotive, all in one. Life in those wilds would be almost unendurable without him. The miners appreciate this, and cases of cruelty and mistreatment are very rare. In the days of the early gold stampedes the cheechackos or tenderfeet, who knew but little about life in the wilderness, and still less about the dogs of the wilderness, sometimes were guilty of abusing their dogs; but this very seldom occurred, and the old-timers always frowned upon, and sometimes punished, cases of cruelty. I remember once holding, with joy, the coat of one of these old-timers at Dawson in the strenuous winter of 1897-8, while he administered a very beautiful and artistic thrashing to a newcomer who was guilty of beating his dogs with a heavy chain and knocking out the eye of one of them.

But I cannot better give you an idea of what dog-mushing in the Northwest is than by sketching a trip I took to a meeting of the Presbytery of Yukon in March, 1912. I was at Iditarod, a new gold-mining town in the western interior of Alaska. The meeting was to be held at Cordova on the southern coast, seven hundred and twenty miles distant. To reach Cordova I must cross four mountain ranges—the Western, the Alaska, the Chugach and the Kenai Ranges; and traverse four great river valleys—the Yukon, the Kuskoquim, the Susitna and the Matanuska. There was first a very rough stretch of rudely marked trail five hundred and twenty miles to Seward. There I would take a steamboat two hundred miles to Cordova. Let us betake ourselves together to this big miner's camp, and talk the matter over in the free, familiar way of the Northwest:

A young fellow of Scotch descent hailing from the north of Ireland, William Breeze, known far and wide as an experienced "dog musher," is to be my companion on this trip. He is bound for Susitna, three hundred miles from Iditarod, on a prospecting trip, and will take care of my dogs, boil their feed at night and do the heaviest part of the work.

Dr. Young and his Dog Team

Iditarod, February, 1912

And now let me introduce you to my team. It is one of the finest teams in all the North. There are five pups of the same litter, now six or seven years old. They are a cross between the McKenzie River husky and the shepherd dog, and have the long hair and hardy endurance of the former and the sagacity, intelligence and affection of the latter. Being brothers, they know each other and are taught to work together, although this fact does not hinder them from engaging in a general free-for-all fight now and again. However, if attacked by strange dogs the whole five work together beautifully, centering their forces with Napoleonic strategy and beating the enemy in detail.

The leader is black, white and tan, marked like a shepherd dog. He has been named "Nigger," but I have changed his name simply to "Leader." It sounds enough like the original to please him and keep him going. He is a splendid leader. He has a swift, swinging pace, and can keep the trail when it is covered a foot deep by fresh snow and there is no external sign of it. He has that intelligence which leads him to avoid dangers, and he will stop and look back at you if there is a hole in the ice or a dangerous slide, awaiting your orders and co-operation before he essays the difficult problem. His knowledge of "Gee" and "Haw" is perfect, the tone in which you pronounce these words and the force with which you utter them telling him just how far to the right, or to the left, he is to swing. "Gee!" spoken in a short, explosive, loud tone will turn him square to the right, while "Ge-e-e, ge-e-e-e," in soft lengthened syllables, will make him veer slowly and gradually. His sense of responsibility is very great, and his censorship of the conduct of his fellow teamsters very severe. He will not tolerate any shirking on their part and takes keen delight in their correction when they deserve it. But he will fly at your throat if you touch him with the whip.

The "swing dogs" just behind him are "Moose" and "Ring," colored like Irish setters. They have exactly the same gait, are the same size, and almost the same coloring, "Ring" a little lighter than "Moose" and with a white collar around his neck which suggested his name. "Moose" is a little gentleman, the loveliest dog I have ever known. His traces are always taut, and when you utter his name he will jump right up into the air, straining on his collar. He knows the words of command as well as the leader, and has never, perhaps, been touched with the whip. I think chastisement would break his heart, for he would know it was unmerited. He is my pet, the one dog of the team that I allow in my cabin, and my companion in my short journeys through the camp. He is remarkably clean and dainty in his habits, his coat shining like polished bronze. He would guard my person or my coat with his life, the most faithful, intelligent and affectionate dog I have ever had. I love that dog.

"Ring" is also willing, but has not the intelligence or the good nature of "Moose." He is a scrapper and apt to embroil the rest of the team in a general fight. But he will work all day at his highest tension.

"Teddy" and "Sheep," the "wheel dogs," are not so valuable as the other three. "Teddy" has the longest hair and the lightest weight of any, and the least strength; but he is a willing little fellow and a very keen hunter. Make a noise like a squirrel or a bird, and he will prick up his ears and dash down the path after the game, and when a real rabbit or ptarmigan crosses his path he will tear madly along until the game is passed. You can fool him every minute of the day, and Breeze has a way of imitating the little birds that keeps "Teddy" working his hardest.

"Sheep" is a malingerer. He is a clown, and so comical that you cannot help laughing at him, even when you know he deserves a good thrashing. He is fat, heavy and awkward. In color he is a light, tawny yellow, with long hair like "Teddy," but labors under the serious disability of having a different gait from the others. They are pacers; he is a trotter. When they are swinging rhythmically along at a five-mile gait, "Sheep" has to lope, his trot not being equal to the occasion. He has a way of playing off sick or fagged; but if game appears, he forgets all about his pretenses, his lameness is all gone in a second and he is the keenest of the team. Also, when nearing the camp he forgets his weariness and pulls harder than any of the team. It is necessary to let him see the whip constantly, and occasionally to feel it, and he is the only one of the team that necessitates its use at all.

About once a day, on the trail, a funny scene has to be enacted. We may be laboring up a long hill, or wallowing through deep snow, the difficult ascent requiring every man and dog to do his best. "Sheep" will get tired, and, with a backward look at me to see if I am noticing, will let his traces slacken. I give him a touch of the whip, and, although he can hardly feel the lash through his thick coat, he yelps and pulls manfully for a short distance; but presently his trace chain sags again. Soon "Leader" notices the heavier pulling and, knowing where the blame lies, turns his head, shows his teeth and growls at "Sheep," who jumps into his collar and pulls like a good fellow. Soon he forgets and lets up again, getting a fiercer growl from "Leader." A third time he is a slacker. Then "Leader" stops and begins to swing around carefully so as not to tangle the harness. "Moose" and "Ring" and "Teddy" all stand still and look at "Sheep." That unfortunate trotter lies down on his back with his feet in the air and begins to howl in anguish. I sit down on the sled and wait—I know what is coming. "Leader" reaches "Sheep" and for about a minute there is a bedlam of savage growls from "Leader" and piercing shrieks from "Sheep." I notice that "Leader" does not take the culprit by the throat, but only pinches the loose hide on his breast and side. That cannot injure him, so I am not uneasy. The punishment over, "Leader" resumes his place. "Sheep" gets up and shakes himself with an air of relief. I take the handle-bars and call "Mush." For the rest of the day "Sheep" pulls for all he is worth; but the next day he forgets and has to be trounced again.

I am conscious that this story may have a "fishy" flavor for some of my readers, but I can assure them it is true.