LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 "^ Shelf....:.:. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 
 
COPYRIGHTED FEB. 15, 1890, BY W. 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS 
 
 TRAVEL AND EXPLORATION 
 
 j^l_a.sk:^ 
 
 VV. H. PIERCE, 
 
 KDITKD BY 
 
 PROF, and MRS. J. H. CARRUTH, 
 
 Lawrence, Kansas. 
 
 Lawrexce, Kansas 
 
 JOUKNAf. PrRLlSHINr, CoMPAW 
 
 iSoo. 
 
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 W' 
 
 orJ 
 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A Trip to the Cassiar Gold Mines— Half-breeds 
 and Indians— Their Way of Living— Good 
 Gold Diggings— Fort Wraugel. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 -A Trip to Shuck Inlet— Cake Indians— Treach- 
 ery — A Narrow Escape. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 On Prince of Wales Island— The Ilyder Indians- 
 Friendly— Three Months Alone With Them— 
 A Swim for Life. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 •Going up the Stickeen River in Winter -Falling 
 Through the Ice — A Harrow Escape from 
 Drowning or Freezing. 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 •On Sitka or Barnoff Island— The People— The 
 Schools— The Missionaries. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Employed by the Alaska Gold Mining Company 
 —Building a Mill— Very Cold Weather— A 
 New Discovery. 
 
IV. CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER yil. 
 
 Jimeau Gold Mines Discovered —The Auk 
 Indians. 
 
 CHAPTER yill. 
 
 The Famous Treadwell Gold Mine Discovered- 
 Difficulty with Indians— White Men Murd- 
 ered — Indian Murderers Tried and Hung by 
 Citizens. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Russian Fur Company— AVhiskey Among 
 the Indians — Indian Parties — Getting an 
 Honorary Title. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Admiralty Island— A Snow-slide— A Hun for 
 Life. 
 
 CHAPTER XI, 
 
 The Wealth of Alaska— Its (iold Mines— Fish- 
 eries and Timber. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Bernes' Bayon — New (Jold Discoveries — A 
 Novel Sight— A Fight Between Two Huge 
 Cinnamon Bears. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Japanese Ocean Current— The Muir Glacier- 
 Immense Bodies of Ice Falling into the Sea. 
 
CONTENTS. V. 
 
 CHAPTER Xiy. 
 
 Mines and Mining — Swindling Operations — 
 Cheap Living in Alaska. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A Journey into the Interior— Daj'a Inlet— Saucy 
 Indians— Climbing a Mountain — A Great 
 Field of Snow— Thieving Indians. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Pleasant Traveling — Gold Found — A Great 
 Canyon— Coal Found. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Bones of the Mammoth and Mastadon Found 
 —Drifting on the Yukon River- -('hristian 
 Indians— Falling Banks— Narrow Escapes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Days Twenty-four Hours Long— Making 
 Music for a Bear— Exploring a Mountain— A 
 Fight with Cinnamon Bears. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 <Jommencing the Journey Down the Yukon — 
 Provisions Destroyed by Fire— The Game 
 Scared Away —Slow Starvation— Lynx Killed 
 - Very Hard Work to Travel— A Desperate 
 Effort— A New Thought Our Salvation— A 
 Three Hundred Dollar Meal— Three Comrades 
 Leave the Company— Two Lynx Shot and we 
 Were Saved. 
 
VI. CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 No Tidings of Lost Comrades— Efforts to Assist 
 Them. 
 
 CHAI'TER XXI. 
 
 The Miners— Different Kinds of Them. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A Winter at Juneau City— AVork for the Alaska 
 Gold Mining Company— Preparations for a 
 Trip to the Interior of Alaska— A Long Jour- 
 ney and Slow Traveling— Some Gold Found. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Prospecting for (iold— View from the Mountain 
 —An Exciting Adventure with Hogs and 
 Indians— Saved by a Riissian Trader. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Ascent of Forty Mile River — Rapids Cause an 
 Accident and Loss of Goods— Mosquitoes very 
 Abundant and Friendly— Gold Along this 
 River— Mammoth Bones in Abundance — Gold 
 Quartz. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 A Tribe of Cannibals— Terrible Creatures— Two 
 Comrades Murdered and Eaten— A Battle and 
 a Great Victory. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Traveling Under Great Disadvantages— Food 
 Scarce— A Sad Accident— A Comrade Drowned. 
 
CONTENTS. VII. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIL 
 
 Building Houses— Other Preparations for Winter 
 in a very Cold Climate— Quicksilver Frozen- 
 Hunting by the Light of Aurora Borealis— 
 The Scurvy— Twelve Sick— Five Died— Wil- 
 low Bark Tea. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIIL 
 
 A Trip up Forty Mile River— Gold Bars on It- 
 Extra Good Diggings. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Another Trip on the Yukon— Some Gold Dis- 
 coveries—Some Indians Along this River— 
 Their Way of Living— Boat Building. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 An Ocean Journey in a Boat— A Storm at Sea— 
 The Boat Wrecked— Landed on a Strange 
 Island. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Description of the Island— No Fire— Great Suf- 
 fering—Indians Come— Trip to St. Michaels— 
 The Trading Post— The People There— Depart- 
 ure for Sitka— Li ving on the Coast— Reflections 
 on God's Care of Us— Miners Names— Quaker 
 Missionaries. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Some Clippings from Late Alaska Papers. 
 
INDIAN TOTEM POLES. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is the intention of the writer of this 
 book to put before the reader the knowl- 
 edge he has gained of the Territory of 
 Alaska, both of the coast and interior, its 
 gold and silver mines, its fisheries; in 
 fact, to give a truthful and reliable 
 account of all its valuable resources and 
 geological and botanical curiosities. A 
 true and reliable knowledge of these 
 things has been obtained in thirteen years 
 of travel and exploration in this little 
 known Territory. 
 
 This Territory is larger than that of the 
 thirteen original States of the Union, 
 while its ccast line, including bays and 
 islands, is more than 25,000 miles; but it 
 is less known in its interior than Australia 
 or Africa. 
 
 It is a country rich in the precious 
 metals, furs, fisheries, and other valuable 
 products. 
 
 Some accounts have been published 
 prior to this, generally describing the 
 
lO INTRODUCTION. 
 
 coast, and what could be seen of this 
 strange land from the deck of a steamship. 
 These accounts have been mingled 
 with fiction and conclusions drawn from 
 hasty observations. They have not been 
 of a character to truthfully enlighten the 
 reader, as they generally treat of the 
 coast and its scenery. Little or nothing 
 has been said by those writers regarding 
 the more interesting and great unknown 
 ^interior — its great rivers, forests, and 
 boundless uninhabited wastes and soli- 
 tudes. Much will be found in this book 
 that wnll benefit those who contemplate a 
 journey to that distant land, whether it be 
 for profit or pleasure. 
 
 My first journey was to northern 
 British Columbia; my second was along 
 the coast of Alaska; my third and fourth 
 were in the interior of Alaska. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 On the first day of May, 1877, a party 
 of five young men, myself included, left 
 the mining town of Nainimo, British 
 Columbia, our destination being the then 
 famous Cassiar gold fields in the northern 
 British possessions on the head waters of 
 the Mackenzie River, which flows north- 
 ward and empties into the Arctic Ocean. 
 Being young and hopeful, and in the best 
 of spirits, some of the more sanguine 
 almost considered their fortunes made 
 when the journey began. Little did they 
 know of the years of hardship which some 
 of the little band would endure, this being 
 the experience of all prospectors and 
 frontier adventurers. 
 
 The voyage by the steamship Grappler 
 from Nainimo, British Columbia, to Fort 
 Wrangel, Alaska, required six days. We 
 called at Fort Simpson, and old Hudson's 
 Bay trading post. 
 
 The passengers were a motley crowd 
 — miners, Indians and half-breeds, with 
 quite a number of squawks, the wives of 
 
12 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 the natives on board. Also some of them 
 were the wives of a class of white men 
 who, having almost lost their taste for 
 civilized life, had taken native women for 
 wives.^ They were trying a mode of life 
 that could hardly be called civilized, yet it 
 was not wholly uncivilized. 
 
 Every spring these men would go to 
 the Cassiar mines, taking their dusky 
 mates with them, and it was no uncom- 
 mon sight to see them assisting their lords 
 and masters in working their claims. But 
 the majority of them were not so inclined. 
 On the contrary, they appeared to be 
 rather expensive in their habits, and I 
 have seen them sitting by their smoky, 
 dusty camp-fires dressed in silk. This 
 was rather unbecoming for people who, 
 instead of being raised in luxury, had 
 been raised on dried fish, fresh fish, and all 
 kinds of hsh — and lived in bark houses 
 with an open, smok}' fire-place in the 
 center. 
 
 There was a good deal of talk on board 
 the steamer about a quantity of gold that 
 had been taken from a place on Queen 
 Charlotte's Island a great many years ago 
 by the Hudson's Bay Company. The 
 
THRITEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 3 
 
 sum, my informant stated, amounted to 
 near $100,000. 
 
 According to the story, the natives had 
 discovered the gold on the face of a per- 
 pendicular cliff which rose from the salt 
 water, and not know^ing what the metal 
 was had taken it to the Hudson's Bay 
 Company's employes. They understood 
 its value, and induced the natives to show 
 them the place where they got it. 
 
 As stated above, they succeeded in 
 getting about one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. When the vein dipped under the 
 sea water, they built a coffer dam, but 
 had to give it up, as they could not keep 
 the water out. I afterwards inquired of 
 an old Hudson's Bay superintendent 
 about this gold deposit. He told me it 
 was true, and that other parties had 
 afterwards tried to work the lode, but did 
 not succeed in finding gold enough to 
 pay expenses. 
 
 On the sixth day of our voyage we 
 reached Fort Wrangel, the winter quar- 
 ters of the miners, or the major portion 
 of those who work in the Cassiar, or 
 Stickeen River diggings. Here we dis- 
 embarked. We found it a dirty place. 
 
14 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 The streets, if they could be called streets, 
 were extremely muddy and crowded with 
 dirty natives and miners, waiting for the 
 ice in the Stickeen River to break up. 
 Then the stream would become navigable 
 for the little steamer that every spring 
 carried the miners and the freight to the 
 head of navigation about one hundred and 
 sixty miles up the river from its mouth. 
 
 The river having opened we procured 
 our supplies and got aboard. The boat 
 was crowded to such an extent that there 
 was little more than standing room. 
 When night came on, the boat was tied to 
 a large cotton wood tree, and all hands 
 went ashore to find a place on the damp 
 earth to stretch their w^eary limbs. 
 
 The evening of the second day we 
 reached Glenora Landing, the head of 
 navigation, and disembarked. From here 
 the balance of the journey was over a 
 trail built by the government to the head 
 of Dease Lake. 
 
 The morning after our arrival at 
 Glenora Landing was spent in making 
 our baggage into portable parcels and 
 dickering with the packers to get them 
 to a creek called Twenty-four Mile Creek, 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1$ 
 
 where we wished to spend at least a few 
 days in search of gold before going on to 
 the principal gold fields. 
 
 All things being arranged, the next 
 morning the overland journey com- 
 menced. The country traversed by the 
 trail is mountainous, and the trail itself hot 
 and dusty — in places passing through 
 swamps miles in extent, made passable 
 for pack animals by corduroy bridging. 
 
 Here the romance of our situation 
 began to wane. The mosquitoes were 
 extremely plentiful, and by no means 
 considerate of our welfare They buzzed 
 in our ears, got into our eyes, noses and 
 mouths; — in short, made it so uncom- 
 fortable for us that we were greatly 
 relieved by camping and making smoke 
 fires to drive them away. Those blood- 
 thirsty insect pests are very plentiful all 
 over the northern part of North America, 
 and especially so in the neigborhood of 
 swamps, making some places almost unin- 
 habitable. 
 
 The evening of the second day's jour- 
 ney we camped at Twenty-four Mile 
 Creek, where we wished to try our luck. 
 The next morning we shouldered our 
 
1 6 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 tools and started up stream, to use a 
 miner's expression, looking for a favorable 
 bar. Having ascended the creek several 
 m.iles and prospected several bars, we 
 found some gold, but not enough to pav 
 for working. 
 
 We then concluded to move on to 
 Dease Creek, but the pack train had left, 
 and there was only one wa}^ to do it. 
 That was to pack the goods ourselves — 
 the different articles of bedding and tools, 
 cooking utensib and provisions, amount- 
 ing to more than one hundred pounds to 
 the man. This was rather an uncomfort- 
 able situation. The sun was very hot, 
 and the mosquitoes so thick that they 
 would almost blind one. We had to 
 pack our goods sixty miles over this 
 rough mountain trail to the head of Dease 
 Lake, where we could tret convevance 
 by boats to Dease Creek. We shoul- 
 dered our loads and started, joking each 
 other considerably about our different 
 merits and abihties to perform mules' 
 work. But the incHnation to joke soon 
 left us as we jogged along under our 
 heavy loads, some swearing at the vicious 
 mosquitoes, others bearing their burdens 
 in silence. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 7 
 
 I observed then, as I have noticed on 
 numerous occasions since, that the silent 
 and patient ones far excelled in endurance 
 those who used profane language and 
 openh' complained. 
 
 After several days of sweatinpf and 
 toiling, we arrived at the head of naviga- 
 tion on the i\rctic Slope, where, procur- 
 ing boats, we loaded on our tools and 
 supplies and proceeded without further 
 trouble to the diggings. 
 
 Here our faith in the richness of the 
 diggings was considerably diminished by 
 our observations. The miners all appeared 
 to be poor, and a large majority of them 
 were subsisting on credit, as they remarked, 
 until their dead work was done and they 
 could get their claims properly opened 
 and on a paying basis. Many wanted to 
 sell out, and after a great deal of talk 
 regarding the richness of their claims 
 would offer to sell at a price so low that 
 one would naturally wonder why a man 
 should want to give away thousands for 
 hundreds. 
 
 Years afterwards I understood these 
 things better. Provisions in the diggings 
 were high — flour fifty cents per pound, 
 
l8 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA 
 
 and all other things in proportion. The 
 countr}' is extremely mountainous, and 
 the mountains are all capped with eternal 
 snow. Timber grows only on the low- 
 lands. All transportation of supplies is 
 done in river boats, and where there are 
 no rivers it is done by Indians who charge 
 very high for packing. In those rugged 
 mountains it would be almost impossible 
 to make trails fit for animals. 
 
 These mines were discovered in the 
 year 1873, by Henry Tibbetts and J. 
 McCulloch, two Canadians, who, having 
 the spirit of adventure, crossed the Rocky 
 Mountains from the east side with a view 
 to trapping and trading with Indians. 
 Not being successful in this enterprise, 
 they turned their attention to prospecting 
 for gold. 
 
 They discovered gold on Dease River, 
 a tributary of the Mackenzie, at a place 
 known as McCuUoch's bar. Those two 
 men had endured many hardships, such 
 as are only known to the frontier explorer. 
 They had spent three years' time wander- 
 ing through the mountains, living by 
 hunting and fishing; in all that time never 
 seeing the face of any other white man. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I9 
 
 When they discovered the gold they were 
 lost, not knowing where they were. For- 
 tunately they met some Cascar Indians. 
 
 Those Indians had visited Stickeen 
 River, where sfold had been found some 
 years before and a few white men were 
 working. The Indians piloted them to 
 the whitemen. The news of this discover}^ 
 was carried to Fort Wrangel, then a 
 tradincr DOSt, from thence to X'ictoria. In 
 those days news of gold discoveries meant 
 a rush, and in the following spring it 
 •came. Hundreds went to the new Eldo- 
 rado. Some were fortunate, but a large 
 majority were not, and returned poorer 
 than they went. The tirst year in the 
 camp provisions w^ere very high, every 
 ■eatable one dollar per pound, and very 
 scarce at that. 
 
 The summer passed away wdth us, 
 nothing occurring to disturb the monotony 
 of our lives. We kept on prospecting, 
 but were not fortunate enough to find any 
 paying mines. Our boyish dreams of 
 wealth and pleasure vanished, and we 
 -were learning the lessons of life's hard 
 reality." Winter w'as rapidly approaching. 
 Our purses were light and growing lighter 
 
20 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 eveiy day. 1 concluded 1 had had enough 
 of that country and told m}' companions- 
 so. We bid each other good-bye, and 
 with one companion I started for the 
 coast, which we reached in August. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 I had heard of a new gold discovery on 
 the coast, about one hundred miles north 
 of Fort Wrangel, and wished to try my 
 luck there. M}^ companion and I arrived 
 safely at Wrangel, and at once proceeded 
 to outfit for the new diggins. We bought 
 a canoe, and in company with two other 
 miners from Fort Wrangel, started for 
 the mines. The first day out the weather 
 was very pleasant, and we row^ed along, 
 joking and having a jolly time generally. 
 The canoe route was an inland passage. 
 The ocean swells are broken by numer- 
 ous islands, although in places the passage 
 is twelve or fifteen miles wide. 
 
 The second day, in the midst of one of 
 those wide places we were overtaken by 
 a storm. Being unaccustomed to the 
 coast, we were in great danger of being 
 swamped, and could not find a place suffi- 
 ciently sheltered from the wind and waves 
 to risk a landing. The storm drove us 
 miles off our course, and it began to rain 
 very hard. Darkness came on, and it 
 
22 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 required the labor of one man continu- 
 oush' at bailing to keep the canoe from 
 filling with water. The darkness was so 
 great, that to see ten feet in any direction 
 was barely possible. We were obliged 
 to judge by the sound of the breakers on 
 shore and keep off, in order to avoid the 
 rocks; for, had we struck a rock on that 
 dark and stormy night, my narrative would 
 end here. Thus we passed the night, 
 wet and cold, for in that latitude Septem- 
 ber nights are chilly. The grey dawn of 
 morning showed us land about three miles 
 distant, and also what appeared to be a 
 harbor, for which we at once started. 
 
 We found the place \o be inhabited by 
 Cake Indians, a tribe that, although not 
 openly hostile were very treacherous. 
 Several small parties who had been 
 prospecting in their neighborhood had 
 disappeared, and had never been heard 
 from afterwards, although some of their 
 goods such as watches and other articles, 
 had been found in the possession of these 
 Indians. 
 
 We had been driven by the wind far 
 out of our course, and to stop there and 
 wait until the storm abated was a necessity. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 23 
 
 Knowing that they were treacherous 
 murderers, we had before us a very 
 unpleasant prospect. However, we were 
 well armed and on our guard, and, although 
 only four in number, decided to take the 
 chances. They received us in a very 
 friendly manner, and insisted on helping 
 us to unload our goods and pitch our 
 tents. 
 
 Having secured our luggage and made 
 a roaring log fire, we cooked our break- 
 fast. Our next move was to get some 
 sleep after our night of exposure. This 
 we proceeded to do, keeping one man on 
 guard, giving as a reason ihat he was 
 keeping up the fire to dry our clothing. 
 The rain had now ceased My turn to 
 watch came in the evening, and being 
 very suspicious of them I watched them 
 narrowlv. Several, of them were loafing 
 around our fire and I observed them 
 eyeing our guns. They appeared to be 
 taking estimates as to the value of our 
 goods, and I was fully satisfied that they 
 intended to attack us in the night. How- 
 ever the storm was abating. 
 
 In order that they might not suspect us 
 1 quiedy consulted with the others, and, 
 
24 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 our camp being a short distance from 
 theirs, we decided that after they went, or 
 pretended to go to bed, we would slip off 
 under cover of the darkness. This we 
 thought was the most feasible plan to get 
 away, for we were in extreme danger. 
 They numbered at least one hundred, and, 
 although we were well armed, and they 
 were not, we could not expect to stand 
 unharmed against such ijreat odds. 
 
 Accordingly we made preparations as 
 if we intended to stay that night, but took 
 good care to let the fire go out so that its 
 light might not betray us, and also so that 
 those of them who were loafing in our 
 camp might go to their own. After 
 darkness had set in, and our unwelcome 
 visitors had all left, we quietly carried our 
 effects aboard our canoe, leaving the tents 
 until the last, knowing that they would 
 watch the white tents, if anvthing. 
 
 All things being on board except the 
 tents, we then prepared to remove them. 
 Some of the party were in favor of leaving 
 them; but to live in that wet, rainy climate 
 without tents was almost impossible, so 
 we concluded to take them vvith us if 
 possible. One man was left to guard the 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 25 
 
 canoe, two were to quickly take down 
 the tents, and I was to take my station 
 about midway between the Indian camp 
 and my party, and in case of an attack 
 cover the retreat with my Winchester 
 rifle. I crept silently toward the village? 
 until I could see in the darkness the out- 
 line of their bark houses. I looked toward 
 my party and the tents and saw their 
 ghostly forms disappear toward the canoe, 
 and had begun to think that we were 
 needlessly alarmed, when an unearthly 
 yell of rage and disappointment broke the 
 stillness of the night. I thought there 
 must be fifty of them at least, and unfor- 
 tunately for me they were lower down in 
 the brush and almost between me and the 
 canoe. 
 
 I felt sure that my companions had 
 reached the canoe with the tents. This 
 was very satisfactory, but my own situa- 
 tion was very unpleasant. However the 
 heathens did not know that I was there, 
 while I knew very well where they were. 
 This was a great advantage to me. But 
 how about my companions in the canoe? 
 They would be obliged to pull away from 
 the shore in order to avoid the villains; 
 
26 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 in fact I had heard them shove off. The 
 Indians fired several shots after them, 
 which the boys told me afterwards they 
 did not return, as they did not want to 
 expose their position and did not want to 
 go far from shore until they could get me 
 aboard. My mind was quickly made up 
 as to the best course to pursue. The 
 Indians did not attempt to follow them in 
 the dark, although they had plenty of 
 canoes. 
 
 As they did not know I was on shore, 
 I was comparitively safe. I was satisfied 
 that the boys would wait until all was 
 quiet, and then return for me. The 
 villains w^ent to where we had camped to 
 see if we had left anything, and then, 
 passing close to where I was hid, went to 
 their own village. Soon all was quiet. I 
 crept silently toward the beach, and it 
 was not long before the canoe came in 
 close to the shore. Some of the boys 
 gave a low whistle, which I answered 
 with due caution. I got aboard, and we 
 were all happy once more. The night 
 was dark, but the sea was calm as a mill- 
 pond. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 27 
 
 We headed for the Shuck inlet, 
 along which the new diggins were. In 
 the morning we made land side. We 
 landed, cooked our breakfast and felt like 
 new men. Here we remained during the 
 day, resting ourselves from the fatigue 
 and excitement of the previous twenty- 
 four hours. The following morning w'e 
 resumed our journey, w^hich we accom- 
 plished without further difficulty. 
 
 We found about eight miners only at 
 the diggins, and their reports were by no 
 means flattering, as they said they were 
 hardly getting gold enough to pay them 
 wages. We also found an abominable 
 climate. It was raining when we landed, 
 and the rain fell in that place during my 
 sojourn there, full three-fourths of the 
 time. The cause of this enormous 
 amount of rain in that place is found in 
 the glaciers and ice fields which are found 
 along the stream and inlet, the evapora- 
 tion from the warm ocean current, which 
 is driven by the wind to the cold icy sur- 
 face of the glaciers. This causes the 
 vapor to condense, and an almost contin- 
 ual rainfall is the consequence. The 
 warm current which I refer to is called 
 
28 thirtp:en years in Alaska. 
 
 the Japanese current. Drifting up from 
 the South Pacific ocean, along the coast 
 of Japan, it flows eastward along the 
 coast of Alaska, w^arming the coast and 
 making it habitable, although it makes 
 the rainfall very heavy. 
 
 Nothing daunted by the discouraging 
 reports, we commenced prospecting, and 
 found gold in several places in small quan- 
 tities. Finally we found a place which 
 we thought would pay. We worked at 
 it about ten days and found it would not 
 pay. The three who were with me then 
 became discouraged and returned to Fort 
 Wrangel, leaving me alone. I then pitched 
 my tent with the other miners who were 
 working on the creek, and continued to 
 prospect on the creek about one mile 
 above my camp. 
 
 There I found a narrow canyon about 
 one half mile in lencfth. Its walls were 
 perpendicular. The miners told me that 
 no one had ever prospected in it, and that 
 it was full of gravel and might contain 
 gold. It could be prospected only at low 
 water. W atching my opportunity I one 
 day found the water low enough to allow 
 me to do some prospecting. 
 
THRITEKN YEARS IN ALASKA, 
 
 29 
 
 The prospect was flittering. With 
 nothing but my prospecting pan I panned 
 out ten dollars and twenty-five cents worth 
 of gold in tuo hours. But it commenced 
 raining again, and rain meant high water, 
 so I had to get out of the canyon. Then 
 I turned my attention to some means of 
 turning off the water. I saw that it would 
 be necessary to build a flume to carry the 
 water over, as the rock w^as perpendicular 
 on both sides and there was no chance to 
 turn it by. 
 
 To build a flume I must have several 
 thousand feet of lumber. This would 
 have to be whipsawed, for there were no 
 saw mills in Alaska in those days. To 
 whipsaw required two men; and I must 
 have help. So I showed the gold I had 
 panned out to two of the old hands on the 
 creek, and gave them equal shares with 
 myself in the discovery. We went to 
 work whipsawing, making boxes and 
 getting ready generally to open the claim 
 in good shape. It took us three months 
 to make the necessary lumber sluices, and 
 another month to put in the flume. 
 
 Our provisions ran short, but game was 
 shorter. We killed a pair of black bears, 
 
30 THIRTHKN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 but they were scarcely tit to eat. They 
 tasted very strongly of fish, living, as they 
 did at that time of year, on salmon that 
 were ascending the river to spawn. How- 
 ever fish were plentiful, and I sent a white 
 man and two Indians to Fort Wrangel 
 for supplies. Our daily fare was fish and 
 bear for breakfast, bear and fish for dinner 
 and both together for supper. 
 
 Having completed our liume and got 
 every thing in readiness, we commenced 
 washing only to meet with disappointment. 
 The claim did not prove to be near so rich 
 as the prospect promised, and would 
 barely pay for working, leaving no 
 surplus to pay for the months we spent in 
 preparation. However we worked away 
 all winter, being obliged to stop occasion- 
 ally on account of spells of cold weather. 
 
 The man I had sent for supplies arrived, 
 but had got caught in a storm and had to 
 throw half the cargo overboard in order 
 to keep from swamping, so we were 
 short of a great many things all winter. 
 We killed some mountain sheep which 
 helped us out materially. 
 
 The mines kept yielding less and less, 
 until they would no longer pay running 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 3I 
 
 expenses. Spring came, and with it high 
 water, which washed out our flume and 
 we abandoned the claim. We returned 
 to Fort Wrangel where each took his own 
 course. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 1 concluded to spend the summer of 
 1878 prospecting on Prince of Wales 
 Island. Copper had been discovered on 
 this island, and the formation was also 
 favorable for the more precious metils. 
 The island was inhabited by the Hyder 
 Indians, a tribe noted for their intelligence 
 and good-will toward the whites. Accord- 
 ingly, in company with one companion, 1 
 started for Carter Bay, distant from Fort 
 Wrangel about ninety miles. We arrived 
 safely, and were welcomed by the natives 
 in a very friendly and hospitable manner. 
 The chief had a house made of lumber, 
 which he had split out of cedar trees. It 
 was roofed with bark. He tendered us a 
 corner of his house to live in ; and as it 
 was clean and exceptionally well kept for 
 an Indian's house we accepted it, making 
 him presents in return, of tobacco, coffee, 
 and sugar. 
 
 These people are great canoe builders; 
 the timber, which is red cedar, growing 
 
34 THIRTKEN YEARS IX ALASKA. 
 
 quite large on this island. Some of their 
 canoes are models of beauty, and some of 
 them are very large. I have seen them 
 made from the trunk of a single tree so 
 large that the^• could easil}- carry eight 
 tons. 
 
 These natives, when not engaged in 
 liunting or fishing, spend their time in 
 making those canoes, both large and 
 small, which they trade or sell to neigh- 
 boring tribes, who have not the time or 
 the skill to make them. They told us 
 that they would be pleased to help us to 
 find gold or other precious metals on the 
 island, for they wanted a plenty of white 
 men to come and Hve with them so that 
 thev could trade wnth them for flour and 
 other articles. 
 
 They materially assisted us in prospect- 
 ing, carrving us from place to place in 
 their canoes, and guiding us inland to 
 places where thev thought we might be 
 successful. Also, they brought us fish 
 and game, for which their charges were 
 very moderate. But I could not find even 
 a trace of gold. In one place near a 
 good harbor I found several copper leads, 
 and the ore looked promising. As it 
 
TIIIKTFiKN YEARS IX ALASKA. 35 
 
 might carrv silver, my partner and 1 did 
 con'-.iderable work here. x\fter seeing 
 that the leads liad a permanent appear- 
 ance, the next thin^^ was to hnd the value 
 <)i the ore. 
 
 This could only be accomplished by 
 taking some of the ore and going to San 
 Francisco, and havmg it properly tested. 
 We decided that my partner should go. 
 •So packing up a quantity of the ore, I 
 took him and the ore to Pongas Narrows, 
 the nearest point where he could board 
 the mail steamer. Having seen him off 
 to San Francisco, I returned to Prince of 
 Wales Island, and continued to do what 
 J could to develop our property. My 
 partner- expected to return in two months. 
 
 In the meantime I was alone among 
 the Indians, there not being a white man 
 nearer than Fort Wrangel, ninety miles 
 distant. Two months elapsed and no 
 partner, and no letter, for I had no chance 
 to send to Wrangel the nearest post office. 
 Another month and no news. My pro- 
 visions were almost gone, so I hired a 
 small canoe and one Indian and started 
 for Fort Wrangel for supplies. 
 
 Here I met with a little adventure that 
 
36 THIRTEKN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 almost cost nic m}' life. One day while 
 pulling- along in our little canoe close to 
 the shore I saw some berries on the bank^ 
 a species of the whortleberry, which 
 grows in great quantities on the island. 
 I told the Indian, who was steering, that 
 we would go ashore and get some of 
 them. We landed and at once com- 
 menced eating berries. The tide was 
 rising and we had not properly secured 
 our canoe, which got afloat, and when we 
 went back to the place it was several 
 hundred feet from land. Here was a hx. 
 I could see only one way to get it — to 
 swim for it. Removing my clothing I 
 plunged in and struck out boldly for the 
 canoe. I had got within about hfty feet 
 of it wdien a wind sprung up from off the 
 shore and blew it away faster than I could 
 swim. In vain. I did my best, but I 
 could not gain one inch. I looked back 
 towards the shore. I knew I never could 
 swim back, as I was almost exhausted. 
 It was a bad position to be placed in. I 
 determined to make one more effort for 
 the canoe, and at least not to give up as 
 long as I could keep above the surface. 
 I kept heading for the canoe. I was so 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 37 
 
 tixhausted that I thought every stroke 
 would be the last I could make, when I 
 thought the wnnd slacked. Then I noticed 
 that I was gaining on the canoe. This 
 encouraged me and I kept on. The wind 
 slacked entirely and I gained the canoe, 
 crawled in and lay in the bottom quite 
 a while before I got strength enough to 
 pull ashore. 
 
 I have often thought to what apparently 
 trifling circumstances we owe our lives. 
 For had the wind continued to blow a few 
 short minutes longer, my doom would 
 have been sealed. I could not ha\'e orained 
 the canoe, and I should not have had the 
 strenoth to return to land. But mv time 
 had not come. The All Powerful had 
 interposed, and I Hved on and have passed 
 through many hardships and dangers 
 since. Although T am 3'et a young man, 
 and should only be in the prime of life, I 
 am physically a wreck through cold, 
 starvation and exposure, in the land of the 
 midnight sun. A few days afterward I 
 reached Fort Wrangel. 
 
 Here I received mail from my partner. 
 He had had the ore tested and it proved 
 to be worthless. It carried some copper, 
 
38 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 but not enough to make it valuable: na 
 gold or silver. He did not intend to 
 return until the coming 3pring. This 
 discouraged me from prospecting further 
 in that locality. I went to a bay on the 
 west side of the same island and spent twa 
 months, but found nothing. The balance 
 of the time, until February, 1879, I spent 
 hunting. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Returning to Fort Wrangel I prepared 
 to sled up the Stickeen River on the ice, 
 for late in the fall a new gold-bearing 
 creek had been discovered in the Cassiar 
 district, and I wanted to try my luck on 
 it. All things being ready I started with 
 one companion up the river. We were 
 taking considerable supplies with us. 
 which, in that country in winter or early 
 spring, are always conveyed on hand-sleds; 
 some times with dogs, but oftener the 
 miners not having dogs pull them them- 
 selves. My partner and I not having 
 dogs were doing our own pulling. We 
 had too much freight to take it all at one 
 load, and were obliged to make two trips. 
 Thus, suppose we had a thousand 
 pounds, we would take five hundred and 
 haul it one half day's journey, and go back 
 in the afternoon. The next day we would 
 haul up the rear load, and so on until the 
 journey was finished. A good many 
 parties were ahead of us. Thus the road 
 was broken and very good, though the 
 
40 THIRTKKN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 weather was cold. All went smoothly 
 enough, until one stormy morning we had 
 a longer journey than usual to make. 
 The snow was drifting some, which delayed 
 us, as it made the sleds harder to pull, 
 and it was almost dark before we got 
 started back to camp where our beds 
 were. 
 
 The storm increased, and to add to our 
 discomfort it was bitter cold and blowing 
 in our faces. It became very dark, and 
 in many places the trail was drifted full, 
 as the wind having blown the snow all 
 clean from the glare river ice left us no 
 guide to go by. 
 
 In all those northern rivers that are 
 frozen in winter, there are air holes or 
 places that do not freeze, caused by 
 currents of air. I had thought of those 
 places, but had not seen any as we came 
 up during da\light: but we had lost the 
 trail and in the darkness got off our course. 
 All of a sudden my footing gave way and 
 I, was floundering- in the cold river water. 
 My partner, who was behind, warned by 
 the splash I made managed to stop, but 
 not before he got partly in. I had fallen 
 headlong. Fortunately the water was 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 4 1 
 
 shallow, not over three feet deep. I 
 regained my feet before I got drifted 
 under the ice, and climbed out again on 
 the solid ice. In a moment my clothes 
 had frozen stiff; and to add to the horror 
 of the situation, we were lost in the dark- 
 ness and did not know where to go. 
 
 My partner had only got his feet and 
 legs wet, as he had not fallen down. To 
 attempt to find the camp in that bitter 
 cold wind, I knew was almost sure death. 
 So we headed for a bunch of timber on the 
 bank and penetrated it until we found a 
 sheltered place. We tramped a path in 
 the snow around a large cottonwood tree, 
 and kept up a kind of Indian war dance 
 around it. My frozen pants broke through 
 at the knees, and I saw at once that we 
 must do something else, for it was early 
 in the spring, and we could not stand it all 
 night, for the nights up north in February 
 are long. As I had got wet all over, I 
 had no matches that would burn. For- 
 tunately my partner had some that had 
 not got wet. We went in search of, and 
 at length found a dry stub of a tree, and 
 after a great deal of trouble and when 
 
42 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 our matches were almost gone, we finally 
 got it to burn. 
 
 It made a good tire and burned all night 
 and saved us from freezing: if not our 
 whole bodies, at least some of our limbs. 
 
 At daylight we found we were but a 
 short distance from camp. We went to 
 camp, made a roaring fire, got a good 
 breakfast and slept all day. 
 
 I have dreamed of that plunge in that 
 cold water on that cold night months 
 afterward, and woke up with a warning 
 cry to my partner, that seemed to me 
 almost as real as it did on that wretched 
 night. But such is the Hfe of the miners 
 and frontiersman of the far north. They 
 are exposed to cold, hunger, wild beasts, 
 savage tribes and all diseases induced by 
 their rough mode of living, many even 
 dying with scurvy. 
 
 All this is borne without complaint; 
 and a miner will divide his last morsel 
 with a comrade in distress. To abandon 
 a sick or wounded miner is looked upon 
 as the most unpardonable of crimes. You 
 must stay with and nurse him, or bring 
 him to a place w^here medical assistance 
 can be procured. I know men whom 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 43 
 
 have assisted in carrying or hauling 
 hundreds of miles. 
 
 Having recovered from our night of 
 misfortune, we proceeded on our journey. 
 We were more fortunate the balance of 
 the trip. Nothing occurred to delay or 
 annoy us. We arrived safely at the 
 diggings and found the weather cold and 
 ever3'thing frozen solid. We went to the 
 new creek, staked off claims, made our- 
 selves comfortable, and waited for the 
 weather to moderate so that we could 
 prospect.* 
 
 In a few days the weather moderated 
 and we went to work prospecting. We 
 sunk holes to the bed rock in various 
 places. This was quite a job, for the 
 ground was frozen solid all the way. 
 We found some gold but the mine was 
 not rich. We concluded to work it, and 
 prepared accordingly. We sawed lum- 
 ber, made sluice boxes, and built a wing 
 and head dam. Having got the water 
 turned off, we commenced washing. The 
 claim paid well, and we flattered our- 
 selves that we should do well that sum- 
 mer. It paid for about one month, and 
 then all at once it failed. Although we 
 
44 THIRTEEN YEARS IiN ALASKA. 
 
 spent time and money trying to find the 
 pay-streak again we did not succeed. 
 
 We sold out to some Chinamen, for the 
 claim would still pay enough to satisfy a 
 Chinaman. We packed our effects and 
 started for new fields. But I did not find 
 anything more that summer although I 
 was busy prospecting. One day I was 
 prospecting in a small gulch. I sunk a 
 little shallow hole to the bed rock, and 
 filledmy pan from the bottom of the hole. 
 I went to the water and washed it out in 
 that pan. I got a nugget that \ras wortli 
 twent3'-eight dollars, but strange to say, 
 I could not find another in the gulch. I. 
 often wondered how that nugget got there 
 all by it&elf. I continued to prospect 
 until the snow came, but met with no re- 
 ward. Then I returned to Fort Wr angel 
 in the Fall of 1879. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 When I arrived at Fort Wrangel, I 
 found that there were very favorable re- 
 ports from the Sitka quartz mines. Sev- 
 eral years before this, a practical quartz 
 miner had enlisted in the United States 
 army, and with his company had been 
 assigned to duty at Sitka, Barnoff Island, 
 Alaska. Now^ being something of an 
 expert in quartz, he soon discovered that 
 the country was gold-bearing. At the 
 expiration of his term of service he 
 remained in Alaska to prospect. He 
 succeeded in making several valuable 
 discoveries. He went to Portland, Oregon, 
 organized a company and commenced 
 work on the mines. This is what caused 
 the favorable reports I have mentioned. 
 
 I took the first mail steamer that came 
 along for Sitka. 
 
 The site of the present town of Sitka 
 IS not where the Russians first settled. 
 They first settled in a place called at 
 present Old Sitka, where they lived and 
 traded with the natives a number of years. 
 
46 TIIIRTKKN YEARS I\ ALASKA 
 
 But finally the natives became hostile, 
 and one dark and stormy night treacher- 
 ously gained entrance to the Russian fort 
 and murdered every man, woman, and 
 child, leaving no one to tell the tale. 
 
 When this became known to the Rus- 
 sian government they promptlv sent a 
 war ship, the natives were severely pun- 
 ished and a new town was started on the 
 present site of the town of Sitka. I am 
 not able to state how long since this 
 occurred, but it was a great many years 
 ago, for the new town of Sitka has a xavy 
 ancient appearance. Here the Russians 
 built very large and substantial buildings 
 of hewed logs, or square timber. At 
 present some of them are rotted to the 
 ground, and all are more or less rotten 
 and dilapidated. Here I found a couple 
 of hundred Russians, or people of Russian 
 descent; also many half-breeds. They 
 were of the lower class of Russians, and 
 did not appear in the least superior to the 
 native Indians. They w'ere drunken and 
 debauched in the extreme. It was a 
 common sight to see a Russian woman 
 going along the streets staggering under 
 the influence of whiskey or some other 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 47 
 
 vile compound, using the most profane 
 and indecent language and cursing some 
 one for some real or imaginary wrong. 
 
 Their living is principal}' lish, or 
 the same as that of the natives. They 
 seldom have flour or groceries, for all 
 their money goes for alcoholic stimulants, 
 and it is fortunate for them that they have 
 no opportunity to get much money. Here 
 both Russians and Indians manufacture 
 by distiUing a liquor called hoochenoo. 
 It is made from molasses, sugar, potatoes 
 and in fact from almost anything that will 
 ferment. They make their stills from old 
 tin coal' oil cans, also making the worm 
 out of scraps of tin soldered together. At 
 this business they display considerable 
 ingenuity, and it is a noticeable fact that 
 a native Alaskan, whether he be of 
 Russian or Indian parentage, will bring 
 forth all his mechanical skill if there is 
 any whiskey to be got by it. Such is the 
 life led by these poor, miserable people. 
 Yet nature has furnished them w^ith food 
 in abundance. The w^aters are teeming 
 with fish, which are easily taken at all 
 seasons. The land suppHes them with 
 deer, bear and other smaller game, so that 
 
48 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 with the necessaries of life thev are well 
 provided for: much better than thousands 
 of the poor of Europe and the larger 
 cities of America, where, in cold winter, 
 children roam the streets, selling papers, 
 matches and other light articles to get the 
 money to buy their daily bread. 
 
 No native child in Alaska is so poor. 
 Their houses are stocked with dried fish 
 and game. Fuel is abundant, and they 
 are happy. If they would continue to live 
 according to their ancient customs they 
 would remain happv, but they are trying 
 to imitate the whites. In this they are 
 encouraged by the missionaries and the 
 United States government. 
 
 It is a mistake, and this is the reason 
 why: The government has appropriated 
 certain sums yearly for the education of 
 the native Alaskans. The money is 
 handled by a mission, and a sectarian 
 mission at that. This mission also adds 
 to the amount by private subscriptions 
 through the States, and the two sources 
 of supply combined make a considerable 
 sum. With this money they have built a 
 large boarding school at Sitka, and also 
 other schools at less important places. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 49 
 
 At Sitka they gather in a large number 
 of Indian children. More girls than boys 
 enter the schools; but some of the boys 
 not liking the restraints run away. Thus 
 the schools are composed mainly of girls. 
 The boys and girls that remain are fed 
 and clothed on the civilized plan. They 
 acquire tastes for the white people's style 
 of living. They are taught to cook and 
 sew, and keep themselves clean. They 
 are also taught to speak English, to read 
 and write; in fact all the branches of a 
 common school education. They are also 
 taught the knowledge of the Scriptures. 
 Now this is all right; that is, the education 
 and the religious teaching. But not so 
 the boarding house arrangement. There 
 the females acquire the same tastes that 
 our own mothers and sisters have. They 
 Hve on the same food, cooked in the same 
 style that the whites use. When their 
 time expires at the school t^ev are sent 
 out to make their own living. They have 
 no knowledge of ihe ways and means 
 pursued by their fathers and mothers in 
 getting their support from the sea and 
 forest. The}- cannot get emplovment 
 from the whites, and they are truly in a 
 
50 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 helpless condition. You would naturally 
 -ask the question : Why do they not marry 
 the young men of their tribe? The reason 
 is this: The men are raised as Indians, 
 the females with the habits of the whites, 
 and they have no tastes in common. 
 Their boarding school education estranges 
 them from their natural protectors. This 
 ^tate of affairs is taken advantage of by 
 white men, men of bad principles. The 
 girls are ruined body and soul. A few 
 short years and intemperance and other 
 vices have done their deadly work, and 
 the chapter of their life is closed forever. 
 Such being the case, why would it not 
 be better to drop the boarding school 
 system. To educate them is all right. 
 To teach them the Jaws of God is also 
 -good. But it is self-evident that to teach 
 them a mode of living, which the natural 
 resources of the country will not support, 
 is a mistake. It is also a noticeable fact, 
 that the most criminal and vagabond class 
 among the natives are those who have 
 been educated by the whites. This is a 
 deplorable state of affairs, yet the officers 
 of the government do not appear to take 
 any notice of it. And it is not likely that 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN AEASKA. 5 I 
 
 they will so long as their own fat salaries 
 are promptly paid. 
 
 The natives are rapidly decreasing in 
 numbers. This decrease is caused by the 
 ravages of diseases that are always the 
 result of intemperance and other vices. 
 The death rate among them at present 
 far exceeds the birth rate. A few short 
 years more of the present style of manage- 
 ment and the native Alaskan Indian will 
 be numbered with the races that have 
 passed from earth never to return. 
 
 The Russian population of Sitka, with 
 a few exceptions, are not at all superior 
 to the Indians, except in their origin. 
 Their habits of life are the same. The 
 morals of the Russian Alaskan are no 
 better than those of his darker skinned 
 neighbor, and it was a common sight to 
 see them band together in drunken 
 debauches. They also are decreasing ^n 
 numbers. Some of them will work when 
 they can get employment. So also will 
 the Indian, w^ho do almost all the packing 
 and carrying of supplies for miners and 
 others through the territory. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 But now, dear reader, having given an 
 insight into the habits and morals of the 
 people of Sitka, I will proceed to speak 
 of its industries. The mines are situated 
 twelve miles from Sitka, near the head of 
 an arm of the sea, called Silver Bay. A 
 small steam launch was used by the com- 
 pany to transport the mining supplies to 
 the head of salt w^ater. From thence to 
 the mine, about two miles, Indian labor 
 was used. The quartz was gold-bearing, 
 carrying no other minerals of any value. 
 It was also of the kind that some call 
 ribbon rock. Portions of it were ver}- 
 rich in gold, while the greater part was 
 almost entirely worthless. 
 
 Our boarding house was at an elevation 
 of twelve hundred feet above sea level, 
 and in that high latitude twelve hundred 
 feet high means cold weather in winter. 
 Our quarters were made of lumber, with 
 the cracks battened up. It was really 
 very poor quarters for so cold a climate 
 in winter. Often the victuals would freeze 
 
54 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 on the table while we were having our 
 meals. The company were very anxious 
 to get their little five stamp mill built in 
 order to test the value of their mine, and 
 would not stop for cold weather. Event- 
 ually, by perseverance, we got the 
 machinery hauled over the snow on sleds,, 
 employing Indians to haul the sleds. We 
 built the mill and drove a tunnel, and by 
 the first of March the following spring,. 
 1880, were ready to run. The company 
 had expended eight thousand dollars. All 
 things being ready we started up, only ta 
 find that the ore was not rich enough to 
 pay. The work shut down. The money 
 expended was a dead loss, and the mine 
 is there for any one that wants it. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The summer of 1880 I spent in pros- 
 peciing in the vicinity of Sitka. I did not 
 find anything of any value. I was think- 
 ing I would leave Alaska, and was waiting 
 in Sitka for the ship. We then had only 
 one vessel a month. Just then two other 
 prospectors came in, who had been pros- 
 pecting in the neighborhood of Tarko 
 River. They had made good discoveries, 
 both in quartz and placer gold. I con- 
 cluded to remain, and joined a party with 
 four others. 
 
 We purchased a boat, and taking about 
 two weeks' provisions with us started for 
 the new discovery. It was our intention 
 to go there as soon as possible — -try to 
 get claims near the discovery and return 
 to Sitka to winter. It was then the lirst 
 of November, and we did not care to try 
 to do anything during the winter. 
 
 We were not acquainted with the coast 
 in that locality, and were obliged to travel 
 by an old Russian chart, which I had 
 managed to pick up at Sitka. The chart 
 
56 thirtp:en years in Alaska. 
 
 was not correct and caused us to lose our 
 way several times, for our route lay 
 among the numerous islands along the 
 coast. After a good deal of traveling 
 and hunting around we succeeded in find- 
 ing the Auk Indian village. The Auks 
 are a small tribe of Indians who live in the 
 vicinity of the place where the gold was 
 found. 
 
 I have neglected to mention that we could 
 not get any reliable information from the 
 two men who made the discover}^, as they 
 did not want parties to go there before 
 spring, fearing that they might interfere 
 with their claims. Had they been willing 
 to give us a map of the location it would 
 have saved us much time and annoyance. 
 However the Auk Indians knew the place, 
 but were smart enough to demand a large 
 fee for showing us where it was. It also 
 began to snow, which made it yet more 
 difficult, as it covered up the tracks made 
 b}' the tirst parties. 
 
 The Indians demanded one hundred 
 dollars for showing us the place. This 
 demand we did not feel inclined to comply 
 with. After a good deal of dickering and 
 losing several days more time, we finally 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 57 
 
 induced them, for a small sum, to show us 
 where the discoverers had camped on the 
 beach. Every thing was covered with 
 snow, but we kept up our search and 
 linallv found their location stakes in a 
 little valley about four miles from our 
 camp. 
 
 Owing to the depth of the snow, w^hich 
 was increasing every day, it was impossi- 
 ble to prospect to any advantage, and we 
 were forced to give up trying to get any 
 claims until spring. In the meantime our 
 provisions had completely given out. We 
 were one hundred and sixty miles from 
 Sitka, the nearest supply point. 
 
 We decided to return at once to Sitka. 
 First we w^ent to the Indian village where 
 we invested several dollars in dried salmon, 
 which, although not very palatable food, 
 is a great deal better than nothing. 
 
 We started for Sitka, but the winter 
 storms were fully upon us. The wind 
 blew continuously, and, day after day, we 
 were obliged to He in camp, the wind and 
 seas making it too dangerous to travel. 
 Our food was dry salmon and clams; and 
 to add to our discomfort the snow turned 
 to rain, and the heavy winds drove it 
 
58 THIRTEEN YEARS IX ALASKA. 
 
 through our tent like a sieve. All of our 
 clothing and blankets were very wet — so 
 wet that we could not sleep in them. W e 
 could not dry them for the rain was con- 
 tinuous and heavy, however, we managed 
 to make a large log-heap lire. Fortu- 
 nately we found some pitch pine which 
 made a lire possible. 
 
 This added much to our comfort. 
 Here we could cook three meals a day, 
 and have a change every meal. Thus, 
 salmon and clams for breakfast, clams and 
 salmon for dinner, and reverse it again for 
 supper. On several occasions I went 
 hunting, and once I was rewarded with a 
 porcupine. He was fat and made us a 
 tine stew. 
 
 Well it could not storm always, so one 
 day it quit and cleared off. We launched 
 our boat and returned to Sitka without 
 further trouble. 
 
 By this time a lot of miners, who had 
 come from the Cassiar mines to the coast 
 to winter, heard of the new strike and 
 had come to Sitka to outtit and go there. 
 This created a stampede. Every one 
 wanted to go. Although nothing could 
 be done durinir the winter, thev would be 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 59 
 
 there when spring opened. So every- 
 body, or all the miners, went there. 
 
 Again I outfitted. This time with two 
 partners, and taking winter supplies w^ent 
 back. The weather was good, and w^e 
 had no trouble on the trip. We all camped 
 on the beach, about forty miners all told, 
 and started a new town. That town is 
 now Juneau City, the metropolis of 
 Alaska. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 We spent the winter in building log 
 houses'and sawing lumber with whipsaws, 
 for we had a vague idea that we would 
 want the lumber in the spring. Miners 
 came from other places, and w^hen sprmg 
 opened there were nearty two hundi'ed 
 miners on hand. 
 
 As the snow melted aw^ay all were busy 
 prospecting, and almost every one secured 
 claims of some value, both of placier and 
 quartz. Some of the quartz was very 
 rich; not so wnth the placier, although it 
 paid to work it, that w^as about all. It 
 did not prove to be rich. 
 
 Early in the spring' the Douglas Island 
 mines were discovered, among which is 
 the famous Treadwell mine. This mine 
 was discovered by an Indian, who showed 
 it to a Frenchman. The Frenchman 
 located and sold the mine to John Tread- 
 well & Co., for four hundred dollars. 
 To-day it is the greatest mine in the 
 world. 
 
62 THIRTEEN YEARS IX ALASKA. 
 
 The company reside in San Francisco. 
 They haye a two hundred and forty stamp 
 mill, with a sulphuret concentrator to each 
 battery of liye stamps. They also haye 
 large works for extracting the gold from 
 the sulphuret. The mine is the largest 
 known body of quartz in the world, the 
 lodge being about tiye hundred feet wide, 
 cropping out this width for thousands of 
 feet in length. There are other large and 
 high grade ledges of high grade ore, 
 which will undoubtedly become paying 
 mines when properly opened and worked. 
 
 The Juneau City mines, and Douglas 
 Island mines are in the same district, 
 about tiye miles apart. The Douglas 
 Island mines are situated on Douglas 
 Island, directly opposite Juneau, across a 
 narrow channel of salt water and about 
 two miles distant from Juneau City, while 
 the mines on the Juneau City side are 
 located all the way from the town to a 
 distance of four miles back from salt 
 water. 
 
 Many of the quartz mines here haye 
 great natural adyantages for shipping 
 machinery. It could be put aboard the 
 ship in San Francisco and landed right on 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IX ALASKA. 63 
 
 the mill site in Alaska, where it would 
 be required for use. Such is the situa- 
 tion of the famous Treadwell mine. 
 
 Labor here is not high, considering the 
 cHmate and other disagreeable surround- 
 ings, which the laborer hao to contend 
 with. Wages range all tlie way from 
 two to six dollars a day. A common 
 white laborer will get three dollars per 
 day, a miner four, a blacksmith live, a 
 millwright six and an Indian two dollars 
 per day. 
 
 The Indians are largely employed in 
 packing. This they generally do by con- 
 tract, and are paid according to the dis- 
 tance and the weight of the article to be 
 packed. They are very treacherous and 
 untrustworthy. I have known them to 
 agree to pack a certain distance at a cer- 
 tain price; they w^ould start with the load 
 and after packing it a short distance, and 
 yet so far from town that you could not 
 get any one else to pack it, because there 
 was no one there to get, they would set 
 the load down and demand double the 
 price agreed upon. If you would not 
 pay it they would leave you and your 
 goods on the road, leaving you in an 
 
64 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 unpleasant situation. You could not carry 
 the load yourself, and if vou left it, it 
 would be stolen, and there was no one 
 near whom you could get to pack it for 
 you. This was very annoying. Yet to 
 all these inconyeniences we must submit. 
 All for the sake of the poor Indian. 
 
 I haye also seen the members of one 
 tribe preyent the members of another 
 from packing or working for white men, 
 because they did not think the pay suffi- 
 cient. There the Indians come in o-reat 
 numbers in search of employment. Being 
 of different tribes, they do a great deal of 
 quarreling among themselyes, and even 
 go so far sometimes as to kill each other. 
 
 However, when it got so far as that, it 
 became necessary for the whites to inter- 
 fere, for we wanted the Indians to labor, 
 and if they were fighting among them- 
 selves we could not get them to work. 
 
 Unfortunately among the white popu- 
 lation there were some unprincipled scoun- 
 drels, who made it a business to sell vile 
 whiskey to them, and as we had no law 
 it could only be precented by the miners 
 making a rule forbidding it, and as we 
 had made our own mining laws we also 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 65 
 
 added a clause to that effect. Yet there 
 were some who paid no attention to this, 
 and on several occasions it became neces- 
 sary for the miners to sieze and destroy 
 their poisonous mixtures. 
 
 One of this class of men located him- 
 self on a trail leading from Juneau back 
 to the portion of the district called the 
 basin. This trail was largely traveled by 
 Indians, and the reprobate had built a log 
 cabin, where he was doing a rushing 
 business. One evening three Indians 
 came along who were intoxicated before 
 they came to his place. They had no 
 money, but demanded liquor. He refused 
 them credit — a fight was the result, and 
 the white man was killed. One of the 
 natives struck him on the head with a 
 club and broke his skull. The Indian 
 who did the deed was one of the most 
 lawless of his tribe, and there were strong 
 suspicions that he had killed white men 
 before. The next day after committing 
 the murder, he asserted that he would 
 kill more white men yet. 
 
 Now the Indians had been very saucy 
 and impudent all summer. There being 
 a great many more Indians than white 
 
66 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 men in the camp, they had received the 
 impression that the whites were afraid of 
 them. So a citizens' meeting was called, 
 and it was decided that it would not do to 
 let the murder go unnoticed. It was 
 thought best to arrest him and turn him 
 over to the United States authorities at 
 Sitka. 
 
 As we knew that the gunboat would be 
 over from Sitka in a few days, the arrest 
 was made at once. He resisted and was 
 aided by the two who were with him 
 when the murder was committed. This 
 made it necessary to arrest the three. A 
 man was appointed to guard them and 
 they were locked up in a building that 
 had two rooms. The guard occupied the 
 front room and the prisoners were locked 
 up in the back room. They were con- 
 lined here about one week, when one of 
 the prisoners pretending that he wanted 
 to do some sewing, asked and received 
 permission from the guard to sit in the 
 front room, as the back room was too 
 dark, there being no window. The guard 
 was armed, but foolishly and carelessly 
 had allowed his pistol to lie on the table 
 in the room. This was what the murder- 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 67 
 
 ous, treacherous Indian wanted, and watch- 
 ing when the guard turned away for an 
 instant, he seized the pistol and shot him 
 in the back. Then unbarring the door 
 released the other two, and all three ran 
 off to the Indian town, taking the pistol 
 with them. 
 
 The Indian town is situated about one- 
 half mile from Juneau, and at the time 
 when this occurred there were at least 
 one thousand Indians in the village. The 
 murderous act was partly witnessed by a 
 miner who was near the buildino-. He 
 foolishly, alone and unarmed, followed 
 the three fugitives who ran into an Indian 
 house. He attempted to enter also, when 
 the Indian w^ho had the pistol shot him 
 dead at the door. 
 
 At once all was excitement, both in the 
 Indian and white settlements, and a con- 
 flict appeared to be inevitable. The 
 miners were notified in every direction 
 and all came to town. Fortunately we 
 had plenty of arms and ammunition. The 
 Indians far exceeded us in number, for 
 we could not raise more than two hundred 
 and fifty men, while the Indians could 
 raise a thousand. Yet we had the advant- 
 
68 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 age of being well armed, while they had 
 nothing but old style shot guns. Still it 
 was our desire to avoid a conflict, as w^e 
 could not profitably fight Indians and mine 
 at the same time. For in case of a con- 
 tinued war much property w^ould be 
 exposed to their depredations, and also 
 many isolated parties of miners w^ho were 
 out prospecting, might be killed. Yet it 
 was necessary to punish the murderers, as 
 it would not do to let them commit such 
 murders and go free. A small detachment 
 of armed men was sent to the Indians to 
 demand the prisoners. We found the 
 Indians all armed, but they did not appear 
 to wish to fight. We called for their 
 chiefs, who came forth, and we spoke to 
 them, telling them that we must have the 
 prisoners; that we did not wish to fight 
 with and kill others of them who were 
 innocent of crime; that we only wanted 
 those who had murdered our friends; that 
 we wished to remain on friendly terms 
 with them; that if they did not give them 
 up quietly we should be obliged to take 
 them by force, and that we would be 
 assisted by the government, who would 
 undoubtedly send gunboats to help us. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 69 
 
 This had the desired effect. If you want 
 to scare an Alaska Indian talk gunboat 
 and cannon to him. After considerable 
 talk amongst themselves they agreed to 
 give them up. The chief pointed out the 
 house they were in and told us to go and 
 get them, that the}^ would not interfere. 
 
 We found the door barred, and they 
 would not answer when we asked them 
 to open. Procuring a large stick we 
 quickly battered down the door and 
 entered. They had got a board loose on 
 the back side of the hut, and, jumping 
 through, attempted to escape. But escape 
 was impossible, as the house was sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 The Indian who committed the first 
 murder, still having the murdered guard's 
 pistol with one load in it, placed the 
 muzzle to his temple and blew out his 
 brains, thus cheating the gallows. We 
 secured the other two and took them back 
 to Juneau, passing through almost the 
 eniire length of the Indian village. On 
 our return we passed by groups of natives. 
 They had put away their arms, but looked 
 sulky and threatening. 
 
70 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 A meeting of all the citizens was at 
 once called, and consultations had as ta 
 what should be done with the prisoners. 
 It was decided to at once appoint a judges- 
 impanel a jury and give them as fair a 
 trial as possible in the absence of proper 
 authority and law. This was done. 
 Witnesses were examined, the evidence 
 was positive and very strong. The verdict 
 of the jury was: "Guilty of murder in the 
 first degree." The sentence was death. 
 
 A committee was at once appointed to 
 build a scaffold. It was built on the 
 beach, in plain view of the Indian village, 
 in order that it might be a lesson to them. 
 All things being completed, the prisoners 
 were brought forth under a strong guard. 
 It may be said to their credit that they 
 showed no signs of fear. They both 
 made short speeches in which they ex- 
 pressed themselves willing to die, and 
 they had confidence that they were going 
 to a happier land. They advised their 
 friends to live at peace with the white 
 man and conform to his laws; also to 
 avoid the use of whiskey and other intoxi- 
 cants. They said that they forgave their 
 enemies and wished all to forgive them.. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 7 1 
 
 Having spoken thus they pronounced 
 
 themselves ready. The black cap was 
 
 put on, the noose adjusted, the trap sprung, fj^ / 
 
 and there were two Bi©i5# good Indians on 
 
 earth and two more hunters in the happy 
 
 hunting ground. When they had hung 
 
 long enough, their bodies were cut down 
 
 and taken away by their relatives. 
 
 This ended the unfortunate affair, but 
 it had an excellent effect on the natives 
 afterwards. They were quite civil to the 
 whites, and although this occurred several 
 years ago, there has never been any 
 trouble with them since. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 In times before the advent of the whites 
 in Alaska, it was the Indian custom to 
 hunt and fish in summer, laying up great 
 stores of dried fish and game for winter 
 use. Their trapping for furs was done in 
 winter. The Russian Fur Company had 
 established trading posts all along the 
 coast, from the mouth of Stickeen River 
 in the south, to the mouth of the Yukon 
 River in Behrings Straits on the north. 
 There was no opposition, and the natives 
 were compelled to take just what the 
 company chose to give them for their furs. 
 
 It is needless to say that the prices 
 received by the natives were very low. 
 For example, they would trade an old 
 fashioned flint-lock shot gun for furs after 
 this manner. They would hold the gun 
 upright on the floor, and the Indian who 
 bought it had to pay for it a pile of 
 marten skins reaching up to the top of the 
 gun. Every skin would be worth five or 
 six dollars in the home market. Thus 
 they realized five or six hundred dollars 
 
74 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 for an article not worth ten. All their 
 other furs they were cheated out of in the 
 same way. 
 
 Yet they were really better off in those 
 days than they are now, for now they 
 have almost quit fishing and hunting. 
 They depend on getting their winter sup- 
 plies by working for wages for white men 
 in summer. Although they accumulate 
 considerable money in summer, they do 
 not take care of it, and the earlv winter 
 finds the majority of them destitute. 
 Many of them suffer with hunger, even 
 in this land of abundance, through their 
 own negligence. 
 
 Whiskey has much to do with this, for 
 there are still those here, who will furnish 
 them with it, and an Indian will brave 
 hunger and cold at any time if he can only 
 get whiskey. 
 
 There is also another custom which is 
 detrimental to their general welfare. If 
 an Indian accumulates more than he 
 requires for himself and family, which is 
 often the case, he gives what in our 
 language would be called a grand ball. 
 He spends all his surplus wealth for 
 groceries and dry goods, and speaking in 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 75 
 
 his language, gives a potlatch, that is, 
 divides the goods up in presents among 
 his guests, often tearing blankets in small 
 strips in order that the division may be 
 equal. 
 
 These potlatch parties always leave the 
 giver destitute, for he invariabW gives 
 away all he has. In return for this he 
 receives the title of chief, and the greater 
 the amount he has given away the greater 
 chief he is supposed to be. Yet it is only 
 a title, for I never could see that a chief 
 had any authority worth mentioning. All 
 these things keep the natives poor. In 
 times gone by he was happy. He hunted 
 and fished for his food, and trapped for 
 his clothing. He had never heard of an 
 intoxicant of any kind. His health was 
 good; and all things which his natural 
 taste craved, were easily procured. But 
 alas for poor Lo! Those happy days are 
 past and gone. He no longer fishes and 
 hunts. He weilds the axe, the hammer, 
 the pick and shovel, and packs huge 
 burdens on his back. He is a slave to 
 the white man and his own depraved 
 appetite for strong drink. 
 
76 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 The general health of this once happy- 
 people is destroyed; their morals have 
 not improved by contact with the whites; 
 the poison of unmentionable diseases has 
 impregnated the whole race. A few 
 short years more at the present death rate 
 among them, and the copper colored 
 native Alaskan will only exist in history. 
 
 The question naturally arises, w^hy is it 
 so? It always has been so where the two 
 races come in contact. One cause is the 
 bad class of white men who are always 
 flocking to the frontier. I do not mean 
 to assert that all are bad; that half, or 
 even one-fourth, are bad. But there are 
 always enough to do irreparable damage 
 by teaching them all the vices practiced 
 by the whites. The government is slow 
 to act; and when it does act, takes little 
 or no interest in the welfare of the natives. 
 Some will ask, what are our missions 
 doing? They are also slow to act, and 
 generally follow up the prospectors and 
 miners, and the seeds of vice are sown 
 before they get there. They should be 
 the first on the ground, because, according 
 to the proverb, an ounce of preventative 
 is worth a pound of cure. But they are 
 
 1 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 77 
 
 too late. The mischief is done, and the 
 confidence of the natives in the white 
 man's honesty and truth is destroyed- 
 before they arrive. 
 
 No doubt the intentions of the mission- 
 aries are good, but their efforts are 
 sometimes worse than useless. It is so in 
 the case of the young Indians' boarding 
 school, or so called home, at Sitka. The 
 intentions of the supporters of that institu- 
 tion are good, but they are eastern people 
 and do not understand the Indian character. 
 Schools are good, churches are good, but 
 the natives have homes better suited to 
 their character and tastes than can be 
 furnished by the whites. 
 
1 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Considerable prospecting is done every 
 summer along the coast, and some valu- 
 able discoveries have been made, both of 
 gold and silver bearing rock; gold quartz 
 also exists in large quantities on Admiralty 
 Island. 
 
 The prospector in the early spring finds 
 it necessary to exercise a good deal of 
 caution on account of snow slides. On 
 one occasion my companion and I were 
 traveling along the mountain side. We 
 both had packs on our backs, for it is 
 necessary there to carry both your bed 
 and provisions. When traveling in the 
 mountains, if you cannot get an Indian to 
 pack for you, you must do it yourself; 
 for pack animals are out of the question. 
 The hills are too rugged, and the timber 
 too thick. We were at an elevation 
 something like twelve or fifteen hundred 
 feet above the sea, and close to the beach. 
 We came to a field of snow which lay in 
 a declivity on the mountain side. It was 
 about one-fourth of a mile in width and 
 
8o THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 sloping down quite steep to a precipice, 
 or sheer descent of a thousand feet or 
 more. We were obb'ged to cross this 
 snow tield or climb much higher to get 
 around it. Being tired we did not wish 
 to climb, and decided to cross it where we 
 were. We did not like it, but overcoming 
 our fears we started. 
 
 In the middle of the snow was a large 
 rock, which w^as solid in place and bare of 
 snow. My companion was ahead. We 
 had not gone far when I thought I noticed 
 the snow moving. I called to my com- 
 panion to come back. He laughed at me 
 and kept on. I stopped, when all at 
 once, with a dull, grinding sound, the 
 whole field started over the cHff. To go 
 over that cliff on the snow would be to 
 fall more than one thousand feet into the 
 briny ocean. Drawing my sheath knife I 
 hastily cut the fastenings of the pack on 
 my back and ran for Hfe to the side I 
 started from, leavinor my pack to go over 
 the cliff. I then turned to look for my 
 companion. He had fallen down and was 
 struggHng to regain his feet. His pack 
 was still on his back. I called to him to 
 cut it loose, but the roaring of the rushing 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 8l 
 
 and grinding snow prevented his hearing 
 me; and although he regained his footing 
 he was being rapidly carried to the preci- 
 pice. Fortunately the sliding snow was 
 carrying him tow^ard the large rock in the 
 middle, which was solid and higher than 
 the surrounding snow. He saw the rock 
 and barely managed to gain it. He 
 remained there till the snow had all passed 
 by. Such is the life of the gold hunter 
 in this far northwest country. Had it 
 not been for the rock in the middle his 
 death would have been certain; for there 
 was no way that I could render him the 
 least assistance. Having lost my pack, 
 which contained some of the necessaries 
 of life, we were obliged to return to our 
 camp on the beach. 
 
.#*l*^^ 
 
 '"'^h^ 
 
 WHICH IS THE WORST SCARED? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Here we refitted and staried again; 
 this time for the interior of the island. 
 We found it very hard traveling, for it 
 was raining almost continuoush' and the 
 p-rowth of underbrush was so den^vi as to 
 be in places almost impenetrable. Here 
 grows a shrub called Devil's Club. It 
 grows very dense and is covered with 
 thorns. These thorns are strong and 
 sharp, and long enough to penetrate your 
 clothing. They are slightly poisonous 
 and cause inflammation. In some places 
 are great tracts of fallen timber, and the 
 streams w^ere high and difficult and dan- 
 gerous to ford. 
 
 It is only where the streams of water 
 cut through that the geological formation 
 can be seen. The growths of timber are 
 principally of the coniferous order, inter- 
 spersed in the low lands with alder, soft 
 maple, and a Httle cottonwood. Although 
 there is plenty of timber, the quality is 
 inferior. It is scrubby, knotty and wind 
 shaken. It can be used for the rougher 
 
84 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 building material, but finishing lumber 
 must be shipped from Puget Sound. 
 
 The wealth of Alaska consists of its 
 gold mines and fisheries; and the time is 
 not far distant when it will take the lead 
 in those two sources of profit. It will be 
 a profitable field for the prospector for a 
 hundred years to come, and equally so for 
 the fisherman. 
 
 The same description in regard to 
 climate and vegetation will apply to both 
 islands and main land in Alaska. 
 
 After making several trips like the one 
 described, and boating all around the 
 island, finding nothing of any value, we 
 left it in disgust and tried our fortunes in 
 Berner's Bayou on the main land, about 
 fifty miles north of Juneau. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 In that locality gold had been found, 
 :and indications were good for paying 
 strikes. There we made some discov- 
 eries, and also some very good prospects 
 were found by other parties; and now 
 there is a promising, but undeveloped 
 mining camp at that place. 
 
 Upon one occasion, while prospecting 
 in this district, I had the good fortune to 
 witness a battle between two monstrous 
 male cinnamon bears. Although the 
 fighting of animals has always been some- 
 thing that I did not like to witness, yet I 
 can say it was not the case that time. I 
 do not like bears, especially the large, 
 savage kind; and while they were fighting 
 I was hoping that they would succeed in 
 killing each other. My companion and I 
 were climbing up the mountain side in 
 search of quartz ledges, w^hen our atten- 
 tion was drawn to a very musical noise. 
 It consisted of a continuous growling, 
 grunting and half barking noise, very 
 loud and distinct. At first we did not 
 
86 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 know what to think of it, but finally con- 
 cluded it must be bears fighting. So we 
 changed our course in the direction of the 
 noise. We had not traveled far till we 
 came to an open glade, or space of land 
 comparatively level, on which no timber 
 grew — a space of three or four acres — 
 and here were the bears. We did not 
 enter the glade, as we did not want any 
 hand in the fight. 
 
 Our first move was to find and climb a 
 good tree and get a secure position thereon, 
 where we could have a good view of the 
 combatants. It was a terrible fight. 
 They bit each other and struck terrible 
 blows and at times appeared to almost 
 take the position of pugilists. While 
 looking on I thought that a human pugil- 
 ist would stand about as good a chance 
 with them as a mouse with a mastiff.. 
 Sometimes they would be striking and 
 warding off terrible blows making fur and 
 blood fly. Then they would close and 
 wrestle and bite and roll on the ground 
 roaring and growling continousty. They 
 were about equally matched, and for a 
 long time neither one appeared to gain 
 any advantage. 1 never saw anything^ 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 87 
 
 that looked near so savage as they did in 
 their anger. Finally one of them appeared 
 to be giving out, and having closed again 
 he was thrown and lay still. Taking 
 careful aim with my Winchester rifle at 
 the victor, I fired. Bruin fell beside his 
 vanquished companion, but quickly got 
 up again and started for the timber. As 
 he did not see us in the tree his head was 
 noW' turned from me; and although I gave 
 him two more shots, he ran away. His 
 opponent meantime lying still did not 
 appear to notice the shots, my companion 
 taking my rifle fired at him and hit him. 
 He jumped up and tried to run, but a 
 second shot struck a vital spot, and he 
 fell to rise no more. His skin was torn 
 and gashed in many places, his nose was 
 bleeding and he was a miserable looking 
 object. The sod where they had been 
 fighting w^as torn up in many places, and 
 covered with blood and hair. As I had 
 no s\'mpathy with bears, it w^as quite an 
 entertaining sight to witness such a fight. 
 Although I have heard of numerous 
 cases where men have fought with and 
 killed them with a sheath knife, when I 
 attack one, I want a good rifle and a tree 
 
88 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 close at hand. Bears are very numerous 
 all along the coast. They are not hunted 
 much, as their skins are of but little value, 
 and the hunting of them is attended with 
 some danger. Although their disposition 
 is to let you alone, if you let them alone, 
 yet they will attack you if wounded. 
 They will also fight bravely in defense of 
 their young. Their flesh is of little value 
 as food. They Hve on berries and roots 
 and the salmon that die while ascending 
 the creeks and rivers in the spawning 
 season. The bear hunter must be a sfood 
 shot, and possess a steady nerve. He 
 must use a proper amount of caution, for, 
 if careless, it is only a question of time, 
 when instead of getting the bear, the 
 bear will get him. 
 
CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 One would naturally suppose that in 
 this high latitude the winters would be 
 very cold, yet it is not the case. The so 
 called Japanese ocean current keeps the 
 climate warm here on the coast. I never 
 saw the mercury in the thermometer 
 lower than twenty degrees below zero, 
 and then only for a few days. It is not 
 so cold as in New York and Northern 
 Pennsylvania. But not so the interior. 
 The coast range of mountains is an 
 effectual barrier to the influence of the 
 ocean current, and on and east of the 
 mountains the cold is very intense. I 
 shall speak of this hereafter. 
 
 There are a great many glaciers here 
 on the coast range of mountains. One 
 of the most noted is the Muir glacier. It 
 is a tremendous body of ice. This glacier 
 empties its immense flow of ice into the 
 so called Glacier Bay. It has a frontage 
 on salt water of about three miles and a 
 depth where the ice breaks off of at least 
 three hundred feet. No one knows how 
 
90 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 far it extends back through the coast 
 range, although it has been explored a 
 distance of sixty miles or more. No end 
 has been discovered. This vast body of 
 ice is moving to the ocean at the rate of 
 forty feet in twenty-four hours. It extends 
 out over the sea until its unsupported mass 
 is heavy enough to break itself off. Then 
 it falls in large masses into the sea with a 
 tremendous splash making waves which 
 would swamp any ordinary small boat. 
 These masses of broken ice are sometimes 
 very large, and drifting to sea become 
 dangerous to navagation. 
 
 The sound caused by this falling ice is 
 nearly continuous, and at the distance of a 
 mile or so is not unlike artillery firing. 
 It is a grand sight and one never to be 
 forgotten. 
 
 No intelligent being can look upon this 
 scene, without feelings of reverence and 
 admiration for the creator of all this 
 wonderful grandeur. In it we recognize 
 the works of the Almighty, the handiwork 
 of Him who made and rules the planetary 
 system so vast and far beyond our ability 
 to comprehend, that we only see the begin- 
 ning. And yet the All Powerful does not 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 9I 
 
 forget us. All His mighty works con- 
 tribute to our welfare. Although our 
 poor, weak minds, may not always be 
 able to see how the benetit is to come from 
 some things; all have their use, and 
 nothing is made in vain. The glaciers 
 along the coast are numbt^red by the 
 hundreds. The large majority of them 
 belong to a class called dead glaciers. 
 They do not move nor flow^ They are 
 rapidly melting away. Every summer 
 reduces their size. This must be due to 
 a change in dimate, and indicates that the 
 climate is much warmer now^than when 
 those huge masses of ice were formed. 
 
 To travel on their surface is very 
 dangerous as they are broken up by deep 
 crevasses in which no bottom can be seen. 
 A great many years ago two Russian 
 officers in exploring the surface of one, 
 disappeared and were never heard of 
 afterwards. 
 
 Why should American tourists go to 
 Europe for scenery? The mountain 
 scenery of Alaska is unexcelled, and its 
 glaciers are the grandest in the world. 
 They are so pronounced by those who 
 have visited Alaska and also Europe. 
 
92 
 
 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 For convenience of access they are unex- 
 celled. One can take the steamer at Port 
 Townsend, Washington, and see all the 
 coast scenery without leaving its deck. 
 The route from Puget Sound to Alaska 
 is island bound almost its entire length. 
 There are hundreds of islands both large 
 and small, protecting the ship from the 
 ocean swells, and making the trip a smooth 
 and pleasant one. Every year the route 
 is becoming more popular for tourists, 
 and there is no doubt but that time will 
 eventually make it one of the most fash- 
 ionable resorts on earth. 
 
 Thus Alaska, although sparsely settled 
 and little known, is destined to become 
 eventually a great wealth producing coun- 
 try. It has mines of gold and also of 
 silver, for latel}' several good silver pros- 
 pects have been found near Juneau, and 
 more are being continually discovered. 
 Like all new mines, some of them will prove 
 to be passable, others will not produce 
 sutficient to meet expenses and cannot be 
 worked. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 In all new mining districts, by far the 
 greater number of locations made by the 
 mining prospectors, upon thorough investi- 
 gation prove to be worthless. Other 
 ledges or deposits produce barely enough 
 to pay running expenses, and a few prove 
 to be immensely rich. Besides paying all 
 expenses incurred for extracting the metals 
 from the ore, they pay the owners large 
 profits. 
 
 Then again there is a class of men in 
 all new districts, who buy or locate claims 
 in close proximity to the richer and more 
 famous mines in the districts where they 
 may chance to be. The real value of 
 their claims is a matter of Httle conse- 
 quence to them. The imaginary value of 
 the claims is then represented by issuing 
 stock. This is frequently sold on the 
 merits of the rich mines adjoining. The 
 wildcat schemers claiming that their ledges 
 are the continuations of those already 
 
94 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 proven to be rich, and that they only 
 require development to be equally pro- 
 ductive. 
 
 Having sold large amounts of stock, 
 they then proceed to assess the stock- 
 holders, on the plea of raising money for 
 development, work, mining machinery, 
 etc. Eventually the stockholders get tired 
 of this continuous drain and an investiga- 
 tion shows that they have been swindled. 
 There is no redress, and they are poorer, 
 but wiser men. These swindlers are very 
 injurious to legitimate mining. By float- 
 ing worthless stock they destroy the 
 confidence of the public, making it much 
 more diflicult for those, who have mines 
 of real value, to raise funds to develop 
 their mines and procure machinery to 
 successfully operate with. 
 
 Another disadvantage has been the 
 absence of civil law in the Territory. For 
 years it was impossible to procure a per- 
 fect title to property, and mining men did 
 not care to invest their money where there 
 was no law and no protection for life or 
 property. But fortunately now these 
 difficulties are removed, and the operator 
 can go ahead with a certainty of being 
 protected in his rights. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 95 
 
 One great advantage enjoyed by Alaska 
 people is an abundance of water power. 
 The heavy rainfall, glacier ice, and winter 
 snows, make many streams of pure, fresh 
 water, suitable for any purpose. The 
 great Treadwell mill is run by water, 
 although it is also furnished with steam 
 power. This is sometimes required in 
 winter, when the frost is severe enough 
 to cause a scarcity of water. The abund- 
 ance of water and cheapness of fuel enable 
 the miner to work ores much cheaper 
 than it can be done in any other part of 
 the United States. 
 
 Living in Alaska is not so expensive as 
 it is in Idaho or Colorado. This is due 
 to cheap transportation by steamers from 
 southern ports. Although they raise no 
 vegetables worth mentioning, fish is very 
 plentiful and costs but a trifle. The head- 
 quarters for miners' supphes — for almost 
 the whole Territory — at present, is 
 Juneau City. It is likely to continue so, 
 being centerall}^ situated and easy of 
 access. Here, also, is the supply point 
 for the Yukon miners; although, of late, 
 the Northwest Trading Company have 
 been shipping supplies direct from San 
 
96 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 Francisco to the mouth of the Yukon 
 River. Here they again ship them by a 
 smaller steamer up the river, meeting the 
 miners near the head waters. This makes 
 it much more convenient for miners to 
 procure supplies than in former years. 
 Then all supplies had to be packed from 
 the coast by Indians to the head of navi- 
 gation. For small boats on Lewis River 
 the expense was much greater. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Having prospected and mined on the 
 coast for several years with varied suc- 
 cess, I determined to try my luck in the 
 interior. One bright April morning found 
 me in readiness for the trip. I started 
 with only two companions. Several other 
 parties were going also, and we stayed 
 together as long as is was convenient. 
 We were obliged to take supplies enough 
 to last us six months, as we intended to 
 remain during the summer, and at that 
 date no supplies were coming up the 
 -Yukon River. We employed Indians tc^ 
 take us to the head of Day a Inlet, which 
 is the starting point to go overland. We 
 arrived safely with our stores at this 
 place.- There is a portage to be made. 
 It is • thirty-five miles from the head of 
 Daya Inlet to the fresh water lakes, that 
 (iinp(y themselves info the Lewis River. 
 Further down the L^wis River unites 
 with the Pelley River, forming the Yukbii^- 
 ' We employed Indians to pack our 
 supplies- to the lakeife, and were oHiged tc5 
 
98 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 pay them about twelv^e dollars and fifty 
 cents for one hundred pounds. The price 
 was too much, but they had an under- 
 standing with each other not to pack for 
 less, and we had to pay it or do our own 
 packing. This we could not do, as our 
 outfits, tools and all were near a thousand 
 pounds to the man. Those Indians are 
 known as the Chilkoot tribe. They are 
 very saucv, and although not actually 
 hostile they do not like white men, and 
 are extremely impudent. They will not 
 allow other tribes to come there to pack, 
 as they claim the trail, so they fix their 
 owm prices, which are outrageous. Also 
 their chiefs demand one dollar per head 
 from every white man passing through 
 their country. Very flattering to one's 
 feelings to be obliged to pay a dirty, 
 greasy, disgusting looking savage one 
 dollar, demanded in a half threatening 
 manner, for the privilege of passing 
 through Uncle Sam's domain. 
 
 Yet this tribe is very powerful, and to 
 quarrel with them would make the trip 
 impossible. We controlled our passion 
 for peace and profit's sake. The natives 
 were very lazy, and it was a hard job to 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 99 
 
 ^et them started. On some trifling pre- 
 text they would dehiy us from day to day, 
 and it was ten days from the time we 
 landed till we Anally got off. Then the 
 whole iranir turned out and carried all our 
 goods over on one trip, taking three days 
 to make the trip, traveling near twelve 
 miles per day. Some of the stronger 
 ones carried very heavy loads, as much 
 as two hundred pounds; others one hun- 
 dred, and boys and squaws carried light 
 loads. 
 
 Although there was a regular trail, the 
 «now w^as still on the ground. In some 
 places it was solid enough to bear us up, 
 in other places it would break through 
 -every few yards. Then it would have to 
 be beaten sohd in order that the heavy 
 packs might be carried over the trail. 
 We went along the Chilcoot River about 
 twenty-five miles to the summit of the 
 coast range of mountains, and at the 
 summit passed between two high peaks, 
 and it became very steep. As we ascended 
 the snow became deeper, but firm and 
 solid, so that the heaviest packers could 
 walk safely on its surface. Near the 
 summit it became so steep that it was 
 
lOO THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 necessary to cut a stair-case in the hard 
 ice-like snow, in order to make it safe for 
 those carrying burdens. After gaining 
 the summit there is a comparatively level 
 plateau, or vast snow plain, extending 
 many miles on the summit of the range. 
 Standing in the center of this great snow 
 field you can look in any direction, but 
 you will see nothing except snow and sky. 
 Not a bush nor shrub, not even a blade of 
 grass can you see to relieve the eye of 
 the glaring white and azure blue that 
 meets the view at every point. Here it is 
 necessary to wear goggles of colored 
 glass, or some colored crape-like material 
 over the face to prevent snow blindness. 
 When we reached this field of snow it 
 was midday, and the sun reflecting on the 
 snow was almost unbearable. Although 
 I had taken the precaution to partly cover 
 my face, I was so severely sunburnt that 
 a few days after the skin peeled off my 
 entire face and the back of my hands. 
 Travelino" a few miles further we came 
 to the edge of the plateau, and could see 
 the lakes and the timber on their borders... 
 Below we could see far down the valley 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. lOI 
 
 of the Lewis River, as it wended its way 
 northward, w^e knew not where. 
 
 From the edge of the plateau to the 
 lakes it is about eight miles. The descent 
 is quite steep in some places, but we 
 accomplished it without accident. We 
 paid off our Indians and camped on the 
 banks of lake Linderman. We afterwards 
 discovered, on opening our packs, that 
 many of them had been opened by the 
 natives, articles had been stolen and the 
 packs again done up as we had done them 
 at first. This was a source of much in- 
 convenience to us. The things stolen 
 were tools and articles that were almost 
 indispensable to us; and we were in a 
 land where they could not be replaced. 
 
 The lakes were still covered with ice, 
 although it was now the tenth of May. 
 The timber where w^e were was not very 
 good for boat building. So v;e concluded 
 to make sleds and haul our goods by hand 
 on the ice to some point further down, 
 where we could get good timber. It 
 required one day to build our sleds, and 
 early next morning we started with our 
 first loads. We found good timber on 
 lake Bennet, twenty miles below^ and by 
 
I02 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 making several trips, and taking advantage- 
 of the hardened ice in the early mornings, 
 moved every thing there. We at once 
 proceeded to saw lumber with whipsaws 
 and build boats. We built the boats 
 strong and large enough to carry all our 
 supplies, made oars and got everything 
 ready. Then we were obliged to wait 
 two weeks for the ice to break up in the 
 lakes before we could get through. At 
 length the ice broke up; we embarked 
 and worked our way northward through 
 the masses of broken ice. We passed 
 through lake Bennet to Mud lake, and 
 found the outlet that formed the head of 
 Lewis River. The country about those 
 lakes consists of hiorh mountains of bare 
 rock. Around their bases are some small 
 valleys and flats covered with scrub timber, 
 but at a slight elevation there is no vege- 
 tation of any kind. It is a gray, barren, 
 solid-looking rock. The rainfall here is 
 very light, as the coast range of mountains 
 appears to be the barrier to the rainfall 
 and prevents the heavy rain clouds from 
 the ocean from carrying their moisture 
 inland. This accounts for the dry barren- 
 ness of the lake district. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. IO3 
 
 The winters are very severe among 
 those bleak, rocky mountains, as they are 
 at a great elevation above sea level. 
 There is but little game here; but the 
 lakes are well supplied with fish. The 
 different kinds in the lakes are white fish, 
 pike and Arctic trout, and the rivers are 
 well supplied with salmon in summer. 
 The Arctic trout is a fish peculiar to the 
 Arctic slope. It is a fine flavored fish, 
 and bites greedily at a fly hook. The 
 white fish, pike and salmon are caught in 
 nets and traps or speared. 
 
 In this lake region there is a small tribe 
 of natives. They are very friendly to the 
 whites, but will steal at every opportunity, 
 and are very dirt}'. They are miserable 
 wretches and have miserable homes. Their 
 clothing consists principally of the skins of 
 rabbits; also of the poorer skins of the 
 more valuable animals. They sell their 
 furs to the coast Indians and get very 
 little for them. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 We entered the outlet of the lake and 
 drifted down with the current. This was 
 a very pleasant mode of traveling, riding 
 with the current in a good boat, onl)- 
 pulling oars when it became necessary to 
 get steerage way. The sun was shining 
 brightly, and just warm enough to make 
 one lazy. The trees on the banks were 
 leafing out and the birds gayly singing. 
 There were several of the migratory 
 species of birds that I recognized. The 
 lark and robin redbreast, the whippoorwill 
 and swallow. 
 
 The kinds of timber became more 
 plentiful and larger as w^e drifted down. 
 They consisted of spruce, hemlock, Nor- 
 way pine, Cottonwood, balm of Gilead, 
 alder, willow and some other varieties of 
 shrubbery, with which I was not ac- 
 quainted. 
 
 We were oblighed to keep a good 
 lookout for rapids or falls. This drifting 
 down was really quite pleasant; but I 
 could not avoid the thought that the 
 
I06 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 drifting up part of the business on the 
 return trip in the fall would not be so 
 pleasant. The river was low, and w^e 
 occasionally stopped at the mouths of 
 incoming streams, and taking out a pick, 
 shovel and gold pan would tr}^ the gravel 
 to see if we could raise a color of gold. 
 This w^e did in several places, and found 
 that there was gold in the country. This 
 was encouraging, and, as prospectors 
 always have a feeling that it is richer 
 ahead, w^e kept on. 
 
 We drifted along until the evening of 
 our first day after entering the river, 
 when we came to a canyon. Here the 
 river contracted to a narrow gorge. The 
 walls are perpendicular on both sides — 
 about one hundred feet above the surface 
 of the water. The canyon is about a mile 
 in length. We camped on the river bank 
 at the upper end of this canyon, and walk- 
 ing down its bank examined it carefully 
 to see if we could run through with our 
 boats. We saw that to run through 
 would be attended with some danger, and 
 that it would be impossible with our heavy 
 loaded boats. The water runs through 
 this canyon with tremendous velocity, and 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I07 
 
 in places forms breakers which surge up 
 and down so rough that a heavy laden 
 boat would be sure to be swamped. Also 
 it would be necessary to be very careful 
 not to strike the wrW rock; for the force 
 of the boat running at such a rate would 
 undoubtedly break the boat. We con- 
 cluded to carry our stores over the hill to 
 the lower end of the canyon, where we 
 could land and take them on below, and 
 then run through with the empty boat. 
 
 The next day, having carried our sup- 
 plies down, we got in and pushed off. I 
 must confess I felt a little shaky, and as 
 we got into those tremendous boiling 
 breakers I felt decidedly uneasy. At 
 every plunge of the boat the water came 
 rolHng in over the sides. We w^ere trav- 
 eling at railway speed; we were half 
 through and the boat was half full of 
 water. But fortunately we did not take 
 water so fast on the lower end of the run. 
 Just as we made the shore below our 
 boat filled to the top of the crunwale. We 
 quickly jumped out, which, of course, 
 lightened the boat and we were safe once 
 more. The other boats had about the 
 same experience, and one filled entirely. 
 
I08 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 The boat sank only to the top of the 
 gunwale, and the men clung to the top of 
 the boat. We pushed out with our boat 
 and pulled them in. 
 
 We reloaded our goods and started 
 again. We only traveled about three 
 miles until we came to a waterfall. There 
 we had to unload and portage the boat 
 and every thing about one hundred yards. 
 We handled the boats by laying down 
 skids and drawing the boats over them. 
 
 All aboard again; and it was all plain 
 sailing. There were some rapids, but no 
 more falls on the river, and no more 
 portages to make for a distance of more 
 than two thousand miles, or to the river's 
 mouth. 
 
 We floated lazily down the river, the 
 climate becoming warmer and vegetation 
 more rank and plentiful. We also began 
 to see game, and finally drifted out of the 
 river into a large lake of fresh water. 
 This lake was about sixty miles long by 
 twenty in width. Its banks, like those of 
 the lakes above, are mountains of rock; 
 bleak, gray and forbidding in appearance, 
 vegetation growing only near the water's 
 edge. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. IO9 
 
 In this lake are several small, rocky 
 islands. There geese, ducks and gulls 
 had made their nests, and we got quite a 
 lot of their eggs, The}^ are not so pala- 
 table as hens' eggs, but will do very well 
 in the absence of a better article. We 
 passed through the lake and again entered 
 the river. The weather remained pleas- 
 ant; the days were warm and fine, and 
 the nights cool, just right for sleeping. 
 
 We stopped occasionally to prospect 
 and hunt, as we were in a game country. 
 There were moose, caribou and mountain 
 sheep. There was gold on the river 
 bars, and some fair prospects; but the 
 river was rising rapidly every day, cover- 
 ing up the level of the gold deposits. 
 This was caused by the melting of snow 
 in the mountains, and we knew that the 
 water would not fall again for tw^o months. 
 We could not find any high bars, so we 
 kept on down. We passed through a 
 country that appeared to be rich in coal. 
 A number of veins of this fuel cropped 
 out from the river banks, which appeared 
 to be high mountains of clay of a blueish 
 color. Coal was plenty here, but no 
 gold. 
 
CHAPTER XVTI. 
 
 In this clay deposit were numerous 
 bones of animals that must have lived 
 there ages ago. Among these bones we 
 recognized what we supposed to be the 
 bones of the mammoth, old tusks of ivory, 
 cracked and black with age, also smaller, 
 short, thick-looking tusks, that might 
 have been the bones of a rhinoceros. 
 Some of these were very large. Un- 
 doubtedly the bones were the bones of 
 animals that were larger than any animals 
 on the earth to day. We passed on 
 through this coal formation until we came 
 to the mouth of the Pelley River. There 
 the junction of the Lewis and Pelley 
 Rivers forms the Yukon. We had passed 
 the Hoody Link River and the Big and 
 Little Salmon Rivers higher up. 
 
 Now we were drifting on the Yukon. 
 We came to a slate formation, indicative 
 of precious metals, and again commenced 
 prospecting for gold. We would land, 
 and while some would hunt others would 
 prospect. We found plenty of game, but 
 
112 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 little gold. We kept on drifting down, 
 passed the mouth of White River and 
 came to the Stuart River. We decided 
 
 to go no further but ascend the Stuart 
 River. 
 
 This we would be obliged to descend 
 agfain before cold weather, for at that date 
 there were no supplies in the country', 
 except what the miner carried and some 
 game, and the game could not be relied 
 on. A district will be abounding with 
 game one season, the next probably not a 
 single animal can be found. The country 
 is large, and the animals keep moving 
 and getting away from places where they 
 have been hunted. The Indians over- 
 come this difficulty by following up the 
 game, but a miner cannot do that and 
 mine too. 
 
 Here we saw quite a lot of natives. 
 They are a fine race, cleanly and honest, 
 and an exception to the general Indian 
 character. We were a curiosity to them, 
 many of them having never seen a white 
 man before. They were friendly and 
 brought us venison. They are tall and 
 Straight, and have regular features. They 
 are truthful and virtuous in every respect-. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. II 3 
 
 They wanted to trade with us. We traded 
 a little with them; but our stock of goods 
 for trading purposes was light, as we 
 came to mine not to trade. Their honesty 
 and good, behavior are attributed to the 
 teachings of a missionary, who went there 
 and taught them many years ago. This 
 missionary went among them alone, before 
 they had any opportunity to become 
 debauched. His teachings have been the 
 cause of their prosperity. I tried to find 
 out the name of this noble minded man, 
 that I might put it before the public, but 
 I did not succeed, as the natives only 
 called him father. We could make caches 
 of provisions at any place in the territorv 
 inhabited by this tribe — only securing 
 things against wild animals by making 
 scaffoldings high up from the ground. 
 On our return we would find all things 
 safe, although we could see where they 
 had camped at times right beside our 
 caches. 
 
 Among those Indians we found a half 
 breed Russian who could talk a Hitle 
 English. He acted as interpreter. He 
 told us he had come from a Russian set- 
 tlement down near the mouth of the 
 
114 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 Yukon River. He had married one of 
 their daughters and intended to remain 
 among them. But this tribe is an excep- 
 tion, there being no other Indians like 
 them in all Alaska. 
 
 There was only one thing in their mode 
 of Hfe that I did not like. They made 
 slaves of their females, making them do 
 all the heavy and menial labor. They are 
 a migratory tribe. They follow the game 
 in winter, but in summer they camp along 
 the rivers and hsh. 
 
 Their canoes are made of birch bark, 
 sewed together with a small, tough, string- 
 like root, which they get from the ground. 
 These canoes are very light, and are 
 made of different sizes. The larger ones 
 will carry about a ton, the small ones one 
 man. They are very neatly constructed 
 and quite handsome. 
 
 Their clothing in summer consists of 
 the tanned skins of the caribou and moose. 
 In winter they dress in the furs of the fox, 
 lynx, otter, marten, beaver and bear. 
 
 Having hghtened our boats by caching 
 some of our provisions, we commenced 
 ascending the Stuart River. The water 
 was high, and rising every day. It made 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. II5 
 
 the work much harder, as the current 
 was stronger and we were obliged to 
 keep close in shore, so that we could 
 reach bottom with our poles. Some times 
 we would take a line ashore and tow, one 
 man remaining in the boat to steer. It 
 was hard and slow work. 
 
 The Stuart River valley is, in places, 
 fifteen or more miles in width, and again 
 the mountains will close it in to two or 
 three miles. The valley is covered with 
 timber, the varieties being the same as I 
 have previously described. The moun- 
 tains bordering this valley are not high. 
 They are covered with moss and short 
 grass, and in places small groves of 
 shrubbery. In ascending the river we 
 killed several moose — a welcome addition 
 to our larder. The flesh of the moose is 
 almost, if not fully, equal to beef. A 
 full grown, fat moose will make eight or 
 nine hundred pounds of excellent meat. 
 
 In many places the high water was 
 cutting in under the river banks, which 
 were principally of sand. The sand was 
 frozen, for in this high latitude the ground 
 is frozen all the year — no one knows 
 how deep. The miners have sunk holes 
 
Il6 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 in search of gold thirty feet in depth and 
 it was still frozen. In the summer it 
 thaws out two or three feet at the top, 
 but freezes again in the winter. The 
 river water has a temperature much 
 warmer than the frozen river banks, and 
 the current rushing against the banks 
 thaws out and undermines great blocks 
 of it. It often washes away groves of 
 timber. In this manner those trees and 
 blocks of frozen surface fall into the river,, 
 giving but little warning. 
 
 And now the reader can plainly see 
 wherein Hes the danger in ascending the 
 stream. We had some narrow escapes, 
 and one party lost their entire outfit, boat 
 and all, by a fall of land and timber. 
 Fortunately no one were hurt. We were 
 then obliged to divide our stores with 
 them and assist them to build another 
 boat. In this manner we toiled and tugged, 
 pulled and poled, but had so many diffi- 
 culties to contend with that our progress 
 was slow. However we kept at it late 
 and early, and by the fourth of July we 
 had ascended about one hundred miles. 
 The river had commenced falling, and 
 from that time on lowered rapidly. As 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. II7 
 
 the river bars became dry we found some 
 gold. We built rockers and went to work 
 rocking. The result was twenty-five 
 dollars per day to the man. We kept on 
 rocking. We also prospected along the 
 side streams in the vicinity, but found 
 nothing of any value. The gold on the 
 river bars was very fine and limited in 
 extent. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Two-thirds of our party had weakened 
 and turned back, leaving but seven of us. 
 As the bar diggings were not satisfying 
 us we decided to give our attention 
 entirely to prospecting. We went some 
 further up the river, prospecting as we 
 went along, also prospecting side streams. 
 We found coarse gold in several places; 
 but it was slow work to sink holes, the 
 ground being frozen so hard. We also 
 took trips on foot through the surrounding 
 country. 
 
 The chmate here in summer is very 
 dry, and the days are even hot. From 
 the middle of June until the middle of 
 July there is no night. I plainly saw the 
 sun shining on the mountain at twelve 
 o'clock at night. It is very proper that 
 it should be so, for this is called the land 
 of the midnight sun. 
 
 This is a good fur country; reasonably 
 good for moose, and as usual, more bear 
 than we wanted. One morning a com- 
 panion and myself went to a small stream 
 
I20 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 that emptied into the river near our camp 
 to prospect. We had no arms with us — 
 nothing but a pick, shovel, and gold pan. 
 I was carrying the shovel and pan and 
 walking ahead. We came to an old game 
 trail that w^ould apparently lead us up the 
 creek, so we followed it. In places it 
 was covered with brush and partly hidden. 
 As we w^ere passing through one of those 
 places a monstrous brown bear rose up 
 suddenly in the trail. He was so close 
 that I could almost touch him, and I was 
 very much afraid that he would touch me. 
 He stood upright on his hind feet in a 
 kind of John L. Sullivan position, and 
 snorted at me. I was afraid to turn for 
 fear he would attack me behind; and I 
 think the bear had the same feeling 
 toward me. I had no arms; not even a 
 knife. Taking my gold pan in one hand 
 and my shovel in the other, I made music 
 for him. He snorted again and backed 
 off a few oteps slowly, and finally clearing 
 the trail with a bound he ran away at a 
 terrible pace. I hardly know who was 
 scared the most, the bear or myself. 
 
 Although we had done considerable 
 prospecting we found nothing to repay 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 121 
 
 our time and labor. Having a curiosity 
 to get a bird's eye view of the country, I 
 took a trip one day alone to the summit 
 of the highest peak that I could see in 
 that locality. Expecting to return the 
 same day I only carried a small piece of 
 bread with me for lunch. Before I arrived 
 at the base of the mountain I found that 
 it was fully twice the distance from camp 
 that I had calculated on. I commenced 
 the ascent, which was not steep at start- 
 ing, but gradually became so as I climbed. 
 The mountain was also higher than I had 
 anticipated. It was four o'clock when I 
 sat down to rest on its summit. 
 
 A kind of short, hard grass grew on its 
 slopes, but in places the grass was replaced 
 with moss. I believe it was the kind that 
 the reindeer feeds on. .There were also 
 clumps of shrubbery and a great many 
 kinds of wild flowers; some of them very 
 beautiful. The view from the summit 
 was grand in its immense extent, but not 
 inspiring. It was lonesome in the extreme. 
 As far as the eye could see in every 
 direction, it was a vast solitude. Not a 
 sound could I hear on the summit of that 
 mountain; not even the twittering of a 
 
122 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 bird, nor the hum of a bee. The animal 
 life that exists in this country appears to 
 live only in the valleys, and the country 
 is so cold that nothing can Hve in winter. 
 But little food is produced in this far 
 northern region, so that no great amount 
 of birds and beasts can find support here. 
 Excepting the shrubs and grass that feeds 
 the moose and reindeer there is little feed 
 for anything, and the moose and caribou, 
 or reindeer, confine themselves to the 
 river bottoms. The rolling hill country 
 is a land of desolation. Nothing breaks 
 the stillness of this vast territory; no 
 animal nor bird in sight, and not a sound 
 to be heard. I cannot describe the feeling 
 it creates — one of extreme loneliness in 
 one who witnesses it. Although it was 
 getting late, about six o'clock — as the 
 days then were twenty-four hours long — 
 I was not afraid of being caught in the 
 dark. I had noticed from the summit a 
 gulch that lay to the eastward. I decided 
 to return that way. We were short of 
 fresh provisions, and as there was timber 
 in the gulch I thought I might get a 
 moose or caribou. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 23 
 
 To reach the gulch it was necessary to 
 descend farther eastward than where I 
 came up. It did not take long to get 
 down, and I was rewarded by seeing 
 game signs. Passing along quietly through 
 the timber, I found some fresh tracks and 
 followed them. I had not gone far when 
 I saw two caribou, a cow and her calf, 
 feeding in a clump of willow brush. 
 Aiming at the cow I fired and killed her 
 where she stood. The calf became 
 frightened and ran. I fired and brought 
 it down, but it jumped up and ran again. 
 I knew it would not go far, so drawing 
 my knife I bled the cow and then followed 
 the calf. It traveled faster and farther 
 than I thought it would. How^ever I 
 found, shot, and quartering it, hung it up 
 in a tree to keep it safe from bear or 
 lynx. This took some time. I had been 
 gone from the cow about three hours. I 
 felt quite hungry, so I made a fire and 
 roasted some ot the meat. Having satis- 
 fied my hunger I went back to the cow, 
 which was more than two miles distant. 
 When I got near I heard growling. I 
 knew that bears had smelt the blood and 
 were eating my caribou. Crawling quietly 
 
124 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 up I saw a large cinnamon bear and two 
 half grown cubs. They were having a 
 fine feast at my expense. I looked for. a. 
 tree to climb in case my shot was not 
 fatal. I did not fear the cubs, but I knew 
 the mother would fight to the last. 
 
 There was no suitable tree standing 
 near, but a tree had fallen, lodging on a 
 high rock. If close pressed, by running 
 up this tree I could gain the rock; and 
 the only way to gain it was by the tree 
 trunk. So getting as close as I could 
 safely I fired. She fell, rolled over, and 
 jumping up stood up and clawed the air. 
 Another shot and the beast went down 
 again. This time she saw me when I 
 fired, and although mortally wounded, 
 jumped up and came rushing furiously 
 at me. My rifle was a Winchester of the 
 most approved pattern. Pumping from 
 the magazine I fired rapidly, planting 
 every shot in the big brute's body, some 
 times knocking it down and at others only 
 checking her progress. It was quite a 
 noisy affair, the old bear roaring with pain 
 and the cubs growHng and snarling. The 
 bear kept coming and I kept firing. She 
 was getting too close for comfort. I had 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 25 
 
 pumped and fired my last shot from the 
 magazine. As I was wearing moccasins 
 I was sure footed. Running to the log, 
 which was near by, I leaped upon it and 
 gained the rock. The brute came to the 
 log. I was replenishing my magazine, 
 which I quickly did, and w^as just going 
 to fire again when she stopped. She was 
 bleeding from a number of w^ounds, and 
 quite a stream was running from her 
 mouth. Her fore feet were on the log 
 and she was swinging to and fro. She 
 had quit growling, when suddenly a great 
 crimson stream poured from her mouth 
 and she fell dead. I then turned my 
 attention to the cubs. They had run up 
 and were howling and smelling of the 
 body. A few shots quieted them. They 
 had spoiled quite a lot of the caribou. I 
 cut up what was good, hung it up and 
 went to camp to get help to pack in the 
 game. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 We were now beginning to think of 
 our return. They had all been gone for 
 a month, except my party of seven. As 
 we would be much lighter on the return, 
 not carrying tools, nor so much provision, 
 we decided to build two lighter boats, one 
 for three and one for four. The timber 
 was good where we w^ere camped, so we 
 commenced building at once, and in a few 
 days completed two strong, light and well 
 shaped crafts. 
 
 We embarked and went to the mouth 
 of the river, w^here we had cached the 
 supplies for our return, only to find the 
 most of the provisions destroyed by fire. 
 The fire had got out from the camp fires 
 of the men who had gone before, and 
 had destroyed fully two-thirds of the pro- 
 visions and badly damaged the remainder. 
 The situation was unpleasant. It was 
 eight hundred miles to the nearest sup- 
 plies, the travehng being mostly up the 
 river. We had a strong current to contend 
 with, but having a good supply of dried 
 
128 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 caribou we thought we could make the 
 trip. We w^orked hard ever^^ day, start- 
 ing early, pulling, poling and towing; only 
 stopping when tired and in need of rest 
 and refreshments. 
 
 We were now beginning to have nights, 
 as the nicrhts in winter in that land increase 
 in length, until like the day in summer, it 
 is all night. The river was almost as 
 high as when we w^ere drifting down, 
 which I afterwards found was caused by 
 heavy rains in the coast range. This 
 was unfortunate for us, as the current is 
 much stronger when the river is high. 
 The parties ahead of us had done us a 
 great deal of injury in being so careless 
 with their camp lires. They had not only 
 burnt our provisions, but had allowed 
 their fires to get out all the way up the 
 river. This had scared away the game; 
 and where there was game when we 
 came down, and we expected to get some 
 when going back, there was not a track 
 to be seen. We caught some fish, which 
 was a great help to us; but w^e could not 
 fish and travel at the same time. Only 
 •one variety w^ould bite a hook, the Arctic 
 trout, and they being small it required a 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 29 
 
 great deal of fishing to amount to any- 
 thing. 
 
 When we got to Pelley River we found 
 our provisions were going so fast that 
 unless we got some game we should die 
 of starvation before reaching the coast. 
 We decided to stop and hunt one da}'. 
 We scattered out in different directions, 
 but the big game had all left. We got 
 nothing but a few fool hens, a kind of 
 grouse, and two small rabbits. We then 
 decided to put ourselves on rations, which 
 we did, and also traveled from sunrise to 
 sunset. 
 
 The days were yet twenty hours long, 
 but were shortening very rapidly. We 
 found we could not stand this, so we 
 shortened our working hours. We also 
 worked the smaller boat with two men 
 and the larger with three, and kept a 
 hunter out on each side of the river to 
 pick up anything that could be used for 
 food. In this manner we accomplished 
 five Imndred miles. There were three 
 hundred more before we could expect 
 relief. Our provisions had entirely given 
 out, with the exception of a little tea and 
 a small sack of salt. The weather was 
 
130 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 also growing cold. It was now late in 
 September, and in this high latitude the 
 rivers freeze in October. A miserable 
 situation — no food, no tobacco, our cloth- 
 ing almost worn out. Every night ap- 
 peared to be colder than the preceding 
 one, yet we kept ahead, determined to do 
 our best. Sometimes we would get a 
 rabbit or a grouse, which we would care- 
 fully divide. We were getting weaker 
 every day, and yet all of us were kind 
 and pleasant to each other. Sometimes 
 we would hear a complaint against the 
 careless parties, who, having first destroyed 
 our provisions, through further careless 
 actions had driven the game from our 
 route. 
 
 We could still, at times, catch a few 
 fish, but the further up we got the harder 
 they were to catch. It made our hands 
 very cold to handle the wet oars and poles 
 in the boat. I cut a piece of blanket 
 and made a pair of mittens. All the rest 
 followed suit. They were a great benefit. 
 Although they would get wet they still 
 kept our hands warm. We accomplished 
 another hundred miles. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 13I 
 
 Here some of the men wanted to leave 
 the boats and travel afoot to the coast. 
 To this I strongly objected. I argued 
 with them a long time, pointing out the 
 ■danger attending the attempt. The 
 mountains were covered with snow; it 
 was getting deeper every day. The cold 
 was increasing, and the country they 
 would be obliged to travel through was 
 an unknown wilderness, of brush, swamps 
 and mountains. There would be swift 
 mountain streams to cross. In their weak- 
 ened condition they could not carry much 
 bedding, while, if they stayed with the 
 boat, they at least had a good bed. But 
 all to no purpose — I argued in vain. 
 Three was determined to go. The other 
 three believed as I did, and stayed with 
 the boat. They left us the following 
 morning, taking with them a shot gun, 
 one rifle, and a Httle salt. Each one 
 •carried a blanket. We parted with them 
 sorrowfully, for I felt almost certain that 
 they would never get through. The 
 poor fellows have never been heard of 
 since. There were but four of us now, 
 so we only took one boat. I can hardlv 
 tell how we got along. We traveled all 
 
132 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 our meager strength would allew, intend- 
 ing to stick to the boat, and if the river 
 froze up then we would travel afoot. 
 One day as we were boating along I saw 
 something swimming near the opposite 
 shore. It had started to cross, not having 
 seen us. We kept quiet, and it came 
 close to us. It proved to be a lynx, a 
 large, fat fellow. We killed him and had 
 a feast at once, w^ith meat enough left for 
 several days. At length we came to the 
 canyon. 
 
 As I spoke of passing it on our down- 
 ward trip, it is not necessary to describe 
 it now. Here we were obliged to portage 
 the boat a distance of near one mile. 
 Weak as we were from hunger, this was 
 a hard job. We traveled from the canyon 
 to the tirst lake in two days. Now there 
 would be at least no more current to 
 contend with. We were on the lakes, 
 but the W'ind was blowing, and continued 
 to blow so hard we could not travel. We 
 had not eaten any thing whatever for 
 three days, and but little before since we 
 got the lynx. I took my rifle and started 
 or the timber, though so weak I could 
 hardlv walk. One of the others also- 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 33 
 
 ^went hunting and the other two lay down. 
 I walked around slowly through the tim- 
 ber. At times I would get so faint that I 
 would have to sit down. What a terrible 
 craving and knawing at the pit of my 
 stomach. I could not see even a little 
 bird. I traveled slowly on through the 
 timber. Sometimes I imagined that I saw 
 game, and once I fired at a supposed 
 rabbit. The rabbit did not move. I fired 
 again. No move. I went up closer and 
 saw that I had been deceived. It was a 
 root; and as it was not an eatable root I 
 quit firing at it. I kept on hunting, all to 
 no purpose. There was no game to find. 
 I came to an old, dry, half rotten tree. I 
 started a fire, and laying down some 
 bark lay down to rest by the fire. I 
 dreamed that I was in a large city. I was 
 looking at the window of a restaurant or 
 bakery, and could see piles of bread, 
 pies and cakes. 1 went in and sat down 
 to a well furnished table and was eating. 
 How long I was eating I did not know, 
 but I could not satisfy myself. It did not 
 do me any good. The more I ate the 
 more I wanted to eat. When I awoke it 
 was dark. 
 
134 THIRTEEN YEARS IN AI.ASKA. 
 
 The fire in the old tree had burned low 
 and I was quite chilly. I did not think I 
 could find my way to camp in the dark^ 
 so I replenished the fire and sat there 
 studying on what it was best to do. I 
 knew that if we did not get something 
 soon to strengthen us, some, if not alU 
 would die. 
 
 All at once an idea came to me. I 
 could hardly wait till daylight. As soon 
 as gray dawn appeared I went back ta 
 camp. Bringing out three fox skins that 
 I had traded for with Indians, I picked 
 and singed the fur off. They were valu^ 
 able skins. One of them, that of a black 
 fox, was a rare specimen, and was valued 
 at one hundred and fifty dollars. The 
 other two were silver grey, also valuable 
 specimens worth seventy-five dollars 
 apiece. The total value of the three skins 
 was three hundred dollars. It was all the 
 same. Had they been worth three thous^ 
 and, instead of three hundred, they must 
 go into the pot after being picked, singed 
 and scraped until clean. 
 
 I scalded them in hot water and scraped 
 them. I then cut them fine and boiled 
 them quite a while, putting in some salt. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 35 
 
 After a good deal of cooking they became 
 quite tender, and tasted much better than 
 I thought they would. 
 
 While I was doing this the others were 
 yet in bed. I called them out and we 
 divided the stew amongst us. We were 
 strengthened at least for a few days more. 
 The boys often afterwards laughed about 
 the inglorious end of those high toned fox 
 skins. I sometimes answered with the 
 assertion, that had it not been for my fox 
 skin stew they would still be sleeping on 
 the shores of lake Bennett. 
 
 The wind calmed down, we launched 
 the boat and traveled two days. Our 
 stew had given out and we were hungry 
 again. I was requested by the others to 
 walk along the shore in quest of game, 
 as I was the most successful. We had 
 only one shot gun. The rifles were not 
 fit to use in killing small game; and the 
 game was small indeed. Sometimes a 
 rabbit or grouse would fortunately come 
 in m}^ path, but generally nothing but 
 little red squirrels and little birds. But 
 the little birds and squirrels were all very 
 scarce; and although I was the strongest 
 of the part}^ I was too weak from hunger 
 
136 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 to get over much ground. However I 
 did my best. 
 
 We were getting nearer the coast every 
 day, and I began to feel encouraged and 
 so did the others. I once brought in a 
 few mice, ahhough I could not eat them. 
 I thought some of the others might want 
 to try them. They did, and called .them 
 good. 
 
 The weather became several degrees 
 colder, the lakes froze over, and boat 
 traveling was at an end. However we 
 were close to the portage. The cold was 
 terrible on us. We had to be careful not 
 to freeze our hands and feet. The cold 
 wind blew fiercely through our worn and 
 ragged clothing. We staggered wearily 
 along the lake shore for three days and 
 reached the head of the lakes, and the end 
 of the portage trail. 
 
 Now if we could reach the summit of 
 the portage the balance of the trip to the 
 coast would be down grade; only thirty- 
 five miles further and we would be safe. 
 But the first ten or twelve miles were all 
 hard climbing. Again we were entirely 
 destitute. Not a morsel of food. We 
 were afraid to start in our starved condi- 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 37 
 
 tion. We decided to hunt one day and 
 try to get some kind of a meal before 
 starting. All four of us went out. We 
 shot some small squirrels which did not 
 do us much good. During the day myself 
 and one of the others had gone into the 
 timber up a small stream; he on one side 
 of the stream and I on the other. Sud- 
 denly I heard a cry like the voice of a 
 child crying. I listened and heard it 
 again. I called to my partner, who came 
 across to w^here I was. Again we heard 
 the cry, this time louder than before. It 
 was the cry of a lynx. We quickly went 
 in the direction of the sound. The sound 
 continued, and we traveled as fast as pos- 
 sible for fear that the animal might move 
 and we should lose him. We came upon 
 them (there were two of them, mates) in 
 traveling about a mile. On seeing us 
 they run up a tree. A shot apiece settled 
 them, and we went back to camp joyfully, 
 loaded with meat. But before we went 
 we made a fire and satisfied our hunger, 
 or partly satisfied it; for we had been 
 starved so long that we did not dare to 
 eat all we wanted to. 
 
138 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 Having returned to camp we rested and 
 fed up two days, and then felt strong 
 enough to climb the mountain. We filled 
 our pockets with cold roasted meat and 
 started. Although we suffered consider- 
 able from cold, we got through without 
 accident. We found a newly established 
 trading post on the coast and our troubles 
 were over. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 We then inquired for the men who had 
 left us far below on the river. There 
 were no tidings of them. If the}^ had got 
 through at all here would most likely be 
 the point at which they would arrive. 
 The snow was falling every day in the 
 mountains, yet I was determined to make 
 an effort to assist them. Only one of my 
 companions would go with me. We 
 replenished our clothing, dressing warmly 
 for the trip — partly in furs. 1 hired two 
 stout Indians and packed them with light 
 loads of provisions, a couple of bottles of 
 brandy, potted extract of beef, and such 
 other things as would be needed. We 
 started for the Chilcoot Pass, thinking 
 that probably we might find them in that 
 direction. This was the pass through 
 which they intended to come. We trav- 
 eled on an Indian trail, although it was 
 mostly covered wath snow. We traveled 
 several days and came to the pass, near- 
 one hundred miles from the coast. The 
 Indians stopped and would go no further. 
 
140 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 I wanted to go on through the pass. They 
 would not go. Their wages were to be 
 two dollars per day. I offered to give 
 them five dollars per day if they would 
 keep on. They would not go. I knew 
 we could not go without them, for we 
 could not carry enough to be of any 
 benefit to the men if we did find them. 
 I then told them if they would only go to 
 the north side of the pass, where I could 
 see down the north slope, I would then 
 return and give them five dollars per day. 
 Also if we found the men, and they helped 
 us all they could to get them out, I would 
 give them the same pay all the way back 
 and make them a present of ten good 
 blankets. The Indians like blankets. 
 They talked a while by themselves, but 
 finally said that the pass was dangerous; 
 that it was a glacier full of deep crevasses; 
 that the crevasses were now hid by the 
 falling snow, and we should lose our lives 
 if we attempted it. They would not go. 
 We had to give it up and leave the poor 
 fellows to their fate, whatever that may 
 have been. I got a long pole and finding 
 a high knoll of loose rocks in a conspicu- 
 ous place, fastened a red blanket firmly to 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I4I 
 
 the pole, and planted the pole firmly in 
 the rocks. We then took out supplies 
 just enough to carry us back and cached 
 the balance at the base of the pole, cover- 
 ing it with rocks to secure it against 
 animals. I then scraped the bark clean 
 from the pole and wrote directions on it. 
 This signal and cache were right in the 
 path and they could not get by without 
 seeing them. That was all we could do. 
 
 We returned to salt water, hired Indians 
 to take us to Juneau in a canoe, and 
 settled down for the winter. 
 
 No traces have ever been found of 
 those three men, although years have 
 come and gone since. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 Such is the life of the frontiersman. 
 He generally starts early in Hfe — a mere 
 boy — and often from an eastern home. 
 His first experience will be in some of 
 the near territories, where, if he engages 
 in mining and is successful, he may return 
 to his home with w^ealth, and, perhaps, 
 settle down as a farmer or business man. 
 He sees men making fortunes and pursu- 
 ing this course; he thinks he will acquire 
 one also. He is only waiting for a stroke 
 of fortune. Years pass by and he does 
 not succeed in getting it. He becomes a 
 prospector for precious metals. He is 
 unfortunate and does not strike any thing 
 of value. He goes farther west, thinking 
 that in a new country his luck may 
 change. More years pass by, and he is 
 still a poor prospector. His hopes are 
 aroused by every new excitement. All 
 in vain. Fortune will not smile upon him. 
 Perhaps he succeeds in accumulating a 
 small fortune. He returns home with 
 that, thinking he will settle down and be 
 
144 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 contented, but he is disappointed. The 
 friends of his youth have gone, or changed. 
 They are no longer boys and gils, but 
 men and women with families. Many of 
 his old associates are roaming the west, 
 as he did, in search of fortune, and the 
 old home is not what it used to be. His 
 old familiar land marks only bring up sad 
 memories of the past. He is lonesome 
 and unhappy, and he again returns to the 
 frontier; this time with no intention of 
 ever returning. He lives his life out on 
 the frontier, braving every danger for the 
 sake of excitement. And when his end 
 comes he is rudely buried by honest 
 hands; often in a grave that is never 
 again visited by a white man. No tomb- 
 stone marks his resting place; no flowers 
 grow upon his grave. But when the end 
 of time comes he will be counted as good, 
 or better, than those who have amassed 
 millions by schemes which rob the poor 
 and fill the world with miser3^ 
 
 On the coast I saw some of the parties 
 who had preceded us in coming from the 
 interior, and who, through their criminal 
 carelessness, had destroyed our provisions 
 and driven off the game by allowing their 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I45 
 
 camp fires to get out in all directions. I 
 could not refrain from telling them of the 
 consequences of their careless conduct. I 
 considered them to blame not only for our 
 sufferings and losses, but I also believed 
 them to be the cause of the loss of our 
 three unfortunate companions. Some of 
 them spoke of it with feelings of regret, 
 but others only laughed brutishly. But 
 those who laughed were not miners. 
 They were creatures from the slums of 
 cities whose modes of Hfe had hardened 
 their feelings. Such a man as this is not 
 the kind of a man who will stand up 
 bravely in the days of danger and hard- 
 ship. He is the first to give up; the first 
 to become a burden to his less preten- 
 tious companions. You can hear him 
 with his feet elevated near a bar-room 
 stove, bombastic and loud mouthed, re- 
 counting his deeds of bravery. But he 
 must stop sometimes to take another dose 
 of rot-gut whiskey to renew his courage; 
 for here is where his deeds of bravery 
 are done, at least all he ever does. 
 
 He sometimes mingles in a bar-room 
 fight. His courage there is great, and 
 especially so if he can find a small, weak 
 or helplessly intoxicated man, with whoni 
 
146 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 he can pick a quarrel. He will beat, kick 
 and abuse him beyond description. He 
 is so brave that, if others do not interfere, 
 he may beat the poor, helpless creature 
 to death. He has done a brave thing, 
 and why not? Has he not been drinking 
 Avhiskey all day? And if whiske}^ is not 
 good to raise the courage in a ruffian I 
 would like to know what it is good for. 
 There is only one improvement he could 
 make that would make him a still greater 
 hero. He might take another drink and 
 then go home and whip his wife or his 
 mother. Of this class of men are those 
 who laughed w^hen I informed them of 
 the consequences of their criminal neglect. 
 Now what is such a man in the presence 
 of hardship or real danger? If there is 
 hard labor to do he feigns sickness, and 
 remains sick until it is done. If danger 
 from crossing rivers he must have the 
 safest place. If danger from Indians he 
 brings up the rear, unless he fears an 
 attack from that direction. Then he gets 
 in the middle, and, if any real fighting 
 occurs, he is so cowardly that he cannot 
 fight. If food is scarce he must have his 
 full supply. No self-denial there; no 
 sympathy for an unfortunate comrade. 
 
THIRTEEN VEARS IN ALASKA. I47 
 
 If a fellow miner meets with an accident 
 •and is crippled, he will not assist. If a 
 comrade loses his provisions this creature 
 will spare him nothing, although others in 
 the party will divide. But enough of such 
 characters. 
 
 Now who is the man who does the 
 work? Who meets and overcomes the 
 ■dangers? He is the quiet, unassuming 
 man. He never talks of his great deeds. 
 In fact he hardly appears to know that he 
 has done any thing extraordinary. If you 
 want to find him do not look for him in 
 the bar room. If he is not busy mining 
 or prospecting then look in the workshop; 
 or, if it is Sunday, go to church. There 
 is where you will meet the right kind of 
 a man. He also attends the meetings of 
 temperance societies and literary societies. 
 These are the men to choose for compan- 
 ions on hard and dangerous trips. They 
 can be reHed on. If you are sick they 
 will do all they can to assist you. In the 
 face of danger they do not shirk, but 
 meet every thing bravely, quietly and 
 with determination. They do not exult 
 over a fallen foe. It is sad to think that 
 we are ever obliged to take the life of a 
 
148 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 human being, even if it is only a low^ 
 degraded savage; but we sometimes must 
 in defense of our own lives. 
 
 These men are not all members of the 
 church, although some are, but all are 
 men of good morals. If there is labor ta 
 be done all are willing and prompt. If 
 food is scarce all are self-denying. They 
 are on the best of terms with each other. 
 There is no profane language, nor coarse^ 
 brutal jokes. In the evenings the conver- 
 sation around the camp fire is pleasant 
 and interesting. And although gruff in 
 their manners, they are honest. Many of 
 them remember their Creator, and return 
 thanks to Him nightly on retiring, for His 
 never ceasing mercies. These are the 
 men who explore the frontiers and pave 
 the way for the future greatness of the 
 country. 
 
 Although the large majorit}- of front- 
 iersmen are such as I have just described,, 
 there are enough of the other class to do 
 much harm. They debauch and antaga- 
 nize the natives, thus causing an almost 
 continual warfare wherever the two races 
 meet. God have mercy on them, for 
 they have much to answer for. 
 
CHAPTER XXI] 
 
 I passed an uneventful winter at Juneau 
 and vicinity, part of the time in the employ 
 of the Alaska Mill & Mining Company. I 
 was not satisfied with my interior trip ; or, 
 in other words, I wanted to return and 
 try again. I believed and believe yet 
 that there is gold in plenty to be discovered 
 there, if one is only fortunate enough to 
 find it. The gold-bearing parts of that 
 country are very large. In fact there 
 is a little gold in almost any place you 
 may try. It was fine, or what miners 
 term river bar gold. Occasionally a little 
 of the coarse order is found in the small 
 streams. But the ground being eternally 
 frozen makes it hard to sink to bed-rock; 
 -and it is generally on bed-rock that coarse 
 gold is found in paying quantities. 
 
 The summers are so short, that to go 
 there from the coast and return the same 
 season, allows but little time to work. So 
 I concluded to go there again, and going 
 in the early spring take supplies suflficient 
 
150 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 to last eighteen months. This would give 
 me two summers to prospect, and I should 
 have to pass one winter there. So being 
 acquainted with some men who were 
 going to sta}' the same length of time, 
 and men who I thought w^ould suit me as 
 companions, I joined them. We procured 
 our outfit, taking plenty of warm cloth- 
 ing and blankets, for w^e knew the wanter 
 would be cold. 
 
 We started about the first of March.. 
 We took small, but strong, hand sleds- 
 with us, for we intended, if possible, to 
 haul our supplies on the snow and ice to 
 the lower end of the ice on the lakes. 
 We knew the ice in the river broke up- 
 much earlier than it did on the lakes, and 
 if we could get by the lakes to the river 
 before the ice became too weak it would 
 save us a good deal of time. 
 
 We employed Indians with canoes to 
 take us and our stores to the head of 
 Daya Inlet. We arrived in good condi- 
 tion, and were again ready for the trail. 
 The natives came and wanted to pack for 
 us, but we remembered how they stole 
 from us the year before, and would not 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I5I 
 
 give them any regular work. We some- 
 times hired them to haul sleds when we 
 could watch them. We hauled our goods 
 by making trips of one day's travel ahead 
 and making a camp. Then we would 
 leave some one to guard it, taking several 
 days to haul up the remainder. When 
 all was hauled up we would make another 
 camp ahead, and in this manner prevented 
 the natives from stealing. 
 
 Our progress was slow, but we kept 
 steady at work, and had crossed the 
 mountains and slid half way down the 
 lakes when the ice became so weak that 
 we could not reach the river. We camped 
 and built boats and waited for the ice to 
 break up. The ice broke up, we embarked, 
 went to the canyon, packed our stores 
 across the portage and ran the boats 
 through without accident. We reloaded 
 the goods, ran to the falls below, portaged 
 them and then the river was clear of 
 obstacles as far down as we choose to go. 
 We drifted down with the current, as we 
 had done the year before, letting the oars 
 rest. The weather being warm and 
 pleasant we enjoyed the easy, gliding 
 
152 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 motion of the boat, and smoked and talked, 
 a very pleasant way of traveling. Down, 
 down we went, past the mouth of the 
 Hoodylink River. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Here we found a bar which we pros- 
 pected and found sufficient gold to pay. 
 Some of us stopped here and went to 
 work, others kept on down. The water 
 being very much lower than it was the 
 previous year, we found a good many 
 sfiots that would pay to work. When we 
 found a place that would pay we would 
 stop and work it out, or work until the 
 w^ater, w^hich was now rising, would drive 
 us out. Then we would go on to another. 
 We kept on in this manner until the 
 water had covered all the low bars. The 
 higher bars were not rich enough to pay. 
 We then gave our attention to the smaller 
 streams emptying into the river in hopes 
 of finding coarse gold. We would stop 
 at 'every favorable looking stream, some 
 times staying a week in one place. 
 
 I did not intend to go to the Stuart 
 River this year, but intended to go 
 further down the Yukon if the formation 
 was favorable for gold. We kept work- 
 
154 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 ing down gradually, and passed the 
 mouths of the Stuart and White Rivers. 
 
 Sometimes we would take a trip back 
 from the river fort}- or fifty miles, gener- 
 ally going in pairs. Our outfit on these 
 little trips would be a pick, pan and 
 shovel, a Winchester rifle, Colt's revolver, 
 one half a blanket and a httle flour, bacon, 
 sugar and coffee. We generally took 
 very little of these things, and depended 
 largely on game for food. In fact if game 
 signs were plenty, I have started, intend- 
 ing to be gone several days, taking noth- 
 ing to eat but a little salt. 
 
 Usually we would find a little gold at 
 every place and not much at any place. 
 A little adventure occurred to me on one 
 of these trips, which may be interesting 
 to the reader. This time I was alone. 
 We only w^ent hunting when we were 
 short of fresh meat. I did not intend to 
 go far, and took nothing but my rifie and 
 hunting knife. We were camped on a 
 fiat place on the river bank. The flat 
 extended about five miles back to the 
 mountains. Our camp was at the mouth 
 of a good sized creek, which was naviga- 
 ble for boats to the foot hills. The water 
 
THIRTPJEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 55 
 
 being sluggish and deep I knew that my 
 best chance for game at that season would 
 be along the base of the hills. I followed 
 up the stream, thinking that if I got any 
 large game we could take a boat up the 
 stream and thus save a good deal of 
 packing. 
 
 I followed alono- the stream and as I 
 neared the foot hills saw signs of moose. 
 I was then at the base of the hills. Skirt- 
 ing along the hills a mile or more I came 
 to an open prairie or glade, probably 
 containing four or five acres. I sat down 
 on a fallen tree to rest and look around. 
 I had not sat there long when a large 
 moose came out of the timber on the 
 opposite side, and was coming directly 
 towards me. I at once concealed myself 
 behind a tree and kept quiet. He came 
 on, and came so close to me that I could 
 have easily hit him with a stone. I shot 
 him behind the fore leg and he fell dead 
 in his tracks. He was a fine specimen of 
 his kind. I at once proceeded to cut him 
 up, hanging the meat up in a tree. I 
 then made a fire and cooked some of the 
 meat, roasting it on a stick. 
 
156 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 Having finished my dinner I thought 
 would climb up the mountain and get a 
 good view of the country. It was yet 
 early in the day, and I should still have 
 plenty of time to go to camp and come 
 back with help in the boat for the moose. 
 I commenced the ascent. I saw plenty of 
 fresh game tracks, but did not wish to kill 
 any more, because the moose would be all 
 we could use before it would spoil. I did 
 not follow them, but kept on up the 
 mountain. I reached the summit. It was 
 not very high, but afforded a good view 
 of the surrounding country. 
 
 Looking to the westward I saw a large 
 lake. I could not see the length of it, 
 but it appeared to be three or four miles 
 wnde. I could see that it was connected 
 with the river through a break in the 
 mountains below. But how much of it 
 was lake and how much river I could not 
 tell. It extended up to the bnse of the 
 mountain on which I was standing. I 
 was about to return to camp when I heard 
 a sound as if some one was chopping. I 
 listened. The sound continued. Look- 
 ing directly down at the part of the lake 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN AI.ASKA I 57 
 
 nearest to me, where the sound appeared 
 to come from, I distinctly saw smoke. 
 
 Who could it be in that land of sohtude 
 and desolation? At first I thought it was 
 natives. Then I thought of a boat that 
 had preceded us down the river a tew 
 days. It must be them. I thought they 
 had gone down; had come to the stream 
 that drained the lake, and ascending it 
 with their boat had got into the lake. It 
 was not mare than four miles to the 
 smoke. I decided to go down and see 
 them, and see if they had made any dis- 
 coveries. I started rapidly down the 
 slope, and soon came to the camp, when 
 I was quickly undeceived. It was a village 
 of natives. I should have liked to turn 
 back then for fear of treachery, for I 
 never could trust Indians. But it was too 
 late, I had been discovered. The dogs 
 came rushing and barking at me furiously. 
 There must have been at least forty of 
 them. They were very large and power- 
 ful brutes, and wanted to eat me without 
 stopping to argue the case at all. Some 
 children, who had been playing behmd 
 the village, ran screaming and crymg 
 back to their huts. Some women who 
 
158 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 saw me ran away howling. The dogs 
 got worse. I got ni}- back against a tree, 
 for they were very threatening, and were 
 really more like wolves than dojis. At 
 length one, who was bolder than the 
 others, sprang squarely at my throat. I 
 struck him with the barrel of my rifle, 
 but he came again. Leveling my rifle I 
 shot the brute dead. This scared the 
 others and they backed off. 
 
 Up to this time I had not seen an}- men. 
 Now I saw them coming; too many of 
 them. Most of them were armed. They 
 had spears, axes, clubs and old flint-lock 
 guns. I saw that I had got into a hornet's 
 nest. To run was worse than useless, for 
 the dogs would tear me to pieces. I 
 kept my back to the tree and determined 
 to make every shot in my Winchester do 
 its duty. Yet I would not fire the first 
 shot, but leveled my rifle — a hint to them 
 that if they fired the first they would get 
 the next. 
 
 What a din! Dogs barking, women 
 and children screammg, the men much 
 excited and talking very loud. Just then 
 I saw running up from behind our friend, 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 59 
 
 the half breed Russian interpreter, whose 
 acquaintance I had made the year before. 
 He quieted the men, and they called off 
 the dogs. The squaws and young ones 
 stopped their music. The half breed told 
 me that they were a band of Indians who 
 lived away back; that he met them there 
 every year to trade shot, powder, tobacco, 
 matches and such things for their furs, 
 and that but few of them had ever seen a 
 white man. I had no trouble in making 
 peace w'ith them. The Indian wanted 
 pay for his dog, which, of course, I 
 agreed to. 
 
 It was too late to go back to camp that 
 night, so I accepted the hospitality of the 
 half-breed trader. The Indian whose 
 dog I had shot w^ould not take money in 
 payment. He wanted a blanket. To 
 this I consented, and next morning went 
 back to camp, taking three of the Indians 
 with me. I gave the Indian his blanket, 
 and the other two some trifling present. 
 They went off well satisfied. 
 
 We took the boat and got the moose, 
 and embarked to go further down the 
 river, prospecting along every stream we 
 came to. We at length came to a river 
 
l6o THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 which is now called Forty Mile River. 
 It is a stream of considerable size. Here 
 we found coarse gold, and got encourag- 
 ing prospects. We made preparations to 
 ascend this river. We w^ere obliged to 
 build smaller and lighter boats. The 
 boats we used coming down being too 
 cumbersome. The current of this stream 
 was very swift, and the channel rocky 
 and dangerous. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Our boats were soon finished and the 
 trip commenced. As we ascended we 
 found spots that would pay, yet the}^ 
 were small, and a few days would work 
 any of them out. We had left much the 
 greater part of our supplies at the mouth 
 of the river. The work of ascending was 
 thus much lightened. In places there 
 were rocky rapids, some times even 
 making short portages necessary. 
 
 At one of these rapids w^e had an 
 accident, which w^as quite a loss to us, 
 both of time and provisions. We had a 
 tow line ashore with two men, myself and 
 one other, towing the boat, and one man 
 in the boat to steer. There was a large 
 rock that lay in a position w^hich made it 
 very inconvenient to pass. From the 
 position in which it lay it w^as necessary 
 to pass it on the outside. We had got 
 the boat by and were beginning to haul in 
 when suddenly the boat took a sheer and 
 strained so heavy on the rope as to break 
 
1 62 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 it. In an instant it swang broadside to the 
 currant, and drifted rapidly down stream. 
 The steersman did all he could, and suc- 
 ceeded in bringing the boat near the shore, 
 but it was in a bad place. There was the 
 trunk of a tree leaning very low^ over the 
 w^ater, which was very swift and deep. 
 The lower gunwale of the boat canght the 
 tree broadside, and in an instant it cap- 
 sized. The steersman got hold of a brush 
 and hauled himself out. 
 
 Another party a short distance below 
 picked up the boat and our bedding which 
 floated, but we lost all the provisions and 
 tools we had with us. Fortunately we did 
 not lose our arms, as we had them tied 
 under the forecastle in the bow of the 
 boat, (a precaution which we always 
 took) and they could not fall out. We 
 got our boat and at once returned to the 
 mouth of the river for supplies. Having 
 obtained them, we returned up the river, 
 and again started to go further up, work- 
 ing in places as we went. At length we 
 came to a place where the river forked. 
 One fork carried no gold. We kept 
 following up the other until the gold be- 
 came scarce, and we no longer found spots 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 163 
 
 sufficiently rich to work. At length we 
 emerged into a low flat country, and by 
 •climbing a neighboring hill we could see 
 many lakes and swamps. There was a 
 range of snow capped mountains to the 
 westward. 
 
 The country was covered with timber 
 and swarming with mosquitoes. Game 
 was scarce. This I attributed to these 
 pests. There were so many of them, and 
 they were so ravinous, that any other 
 animal life could hardly exist. The sun 
 now shdne almost day and night, it being 
 mid-summer. The gold on the river had 
 caused the miners to concentrate there, 
 and when we reached the flat lake 
 country we found the rest of our party. 
 Our party consisted of thirty-two men. 
 
 We decided to make our way through 
 the swamps and lakes and try to reach 
 the mountains to the west. We worked 
 hard from day to day pulling through the 
 lakes, and in places passing through nar- 
 row channels. Sometimes we were im- 
 peded by timber that had fallen across the 
 channel. We then had to cut the timber 
 out. In other places the lakes would be 
 more swamp than lake. It would be a 
 
164 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 black sticky mud, through which it was 
 hard to pull the boats. 
 
 We had a continual fight with the 
 mosquitoes. They would fill our eyes, 
 nose and mouth, and when we got through 
 our hands and faces were covered w^ith 
 sores, caused by those poisonous insects. 
 After ten days of hard labor we reached 
 the mountains. 
 
 At their base were banks of clay, miles 
 of it, on which grew no vegetation of any 
 kind. In walking over it I found a great 
 many bones, generally partly buried in 
 the clay, and having the appearance of 
 having been entirely buried at some time. 
 And oh! what bones! I had no means of 
 measuring them, but they certainly had 
 belonged to animals that were much 
 larger than any existing at the present 
 time. What great, powerful and clumsy 
 beasts they must have been. We also 
 found teeth. In looking at them one 
 could plainly see that they were teeth, 
 yet they were so large that one could 
 hardly realize the fact. The ivor}^ tusks 
 were very long and curved when not 
 broken; yet it was hard to find one that 
 had not been broken. They were so 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 65 
 
 cracked and black with age as to be 
 entirely useless for anything except relics 
 of past ages. 
 
 How or why did those animals become 
 extinct? Was it owing to a change of 
 climate? Indications point that way. If 
 those old bones could speak, they might 
 tell us great things of doings in ancient 
 times, that we do not now even suspect. 
 But bones do not talk, and we are left to 
 draw our own conclusions as to why those 
 great beasts no longer inhabit the earth. 
 
 In one place the alluvial soil was capped 
 with lava formation. A creek had cut 
 down throucrh the stratum of lava, and 
 al-o through the alluvial soil underneath, 
 to a solid stratum of bed-rock. The 
 alluvium was composed of clay and gravel, 
 and I saw some large bones in it. Alto- 
 gether I believe that country wo.uld be a 
 good field for geological and other scien- 
 tific researches. 
 
 We prospected throughout the moun- 
 tains, finding a little gold; also some gold 
 and silver bearing quartz. The silver ore 
 was of the base character, carrying lead 
 <ind copper with the silver. The gold 
 was of the free, milling kind, but we 
 
1 66 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 attached no value to quartz in that coun- 
 try. At present it is too far away. Yet 
 the time will come when it will be valu- 
 able. No doubt good quartz districts 
 will be discovered, for we have seen the 
 quartz, so there is no doubt of its exist- 
 ence. 
 
 On going to the summit of those moun- 
 tains there was another view, and another 
 chain of lakes to the southwest. The 
 country was full of rolling hills, and 
 looked favorable. There was no swamp 
 land, the water from those lakes empty- 
 ing into a stream to the southwest. We 
 all decided to go to the lakes and make 
 rafts, as we could go around on them on 
 the lakes. Having left our whip-saws 
 hundreds of miles back at our caches, we 
 had no way to make lumber for boats;. 
 and the portage being ten miles across, 
 we could not take our boats over. So 
 we packed over our provisions, mining 
 tools, arms and ammunition. We built 
 light rafts and started around the lakes, 
 keeping close in shore, and using poles to 
 shove the rafts along. We prospected 
 the streams as usual, finding a little gold. 
 We had gone dow^n this chain of lakes 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 67 
 
 about one hundred and fifty miles, when 
 we came to the outlet. We could not go 
 far down stream with our rafts; for we 
 would be obliged to walk back again to 
 the lakes. We concluded to leave our 
 light rafts in the lakes, and make two 
 large rafts, — large enough to hold sixteen 
 men each. This would include the whole 
 party. The river being deep and slug- 
 gish, we concluded to run down about 
 twenty miles, taking only small supplies 
 with us, as we would be obliged to pack 
 them back. Then to land a party on 
 each side of the river and prospect the 
 small streams coming back, to meet 
 where we left cur rafts and surplus 
 supplies. Then to commence the return 
 journey to the mouth of Forty Mile 
 river, where we had cached our winter 
 supplies. Then to build houses for the 
 winter. 
 
 Accordingly we built our rafts and ran 
 down about fifteen miles, when the water 
 began to be more rapid and we thought 
 it advisable to stop. Here we saw some 
 signs of Indians, but thought little of it, 
 because the Indians had always been 
 friendly, with the exception of the little 
 
l68 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 misunderstanding I had had with them up 
 the river. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Years before I had been told by a Rus- 
 sian trader, who had been trading on the 
 Yukon, about a tribe of cannibals that 
 lived on the head waters of the Tananah, 
 a river tributary to the Yukon. I knew 
 that the Tananah river was still several 
 hundred miles further westward. Little 
 did we think that w^e were camped within 
 five miles of those horrible man eaters. 
 Being at the lowest point we intended to 
 go to, we wanted to stop here several 
 days before starting back. All unsuspic- 
 ious of danger, we were out prospecting 
 every day. Sometimes we went up small 
 streams, and having mining tools to carr}^ 
 we did not take an}^ arms with us. Fool- 
 ish, careless men. It cost us the lives of 
 two of our best men, who were murdered 
 and eaten by those horrible inhuman 
 wretches. 
 
 These two men had started in the 
 morning to go to a place w^here the}^ had 
 been sinking a hole, and having found a 
 small prospect they wanted to try to sink 
 
170 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 to bed rock. They took nothing with 
 them but their tools and a lunch for their 
 dinner. All came to camp in the evening 
 except those two men. The place where 
 the}' were prospecting was down the river 
 and a little way back from it, making it 
 about three miles from our camp and 
 directly back about three miles from the 
 camp of the man eaters. 
 
 The next day we commenced searching 
 for them, but without success. We found 
 Indian tracks, and also discovered the 
 Indian camp. No Indians had visited our 
 camp, which satisfied me that they meant 
 mischief. They surely knew that we 
 were there, as we had fired guns at geese 
 and ducks the first day we landed, and 
 had fired more or less every day after- 
 wards. 
 
 We were now on our guard. Those 
 who had camped across the river moved 
 over to us. All our arms were put in 
 good order and ammunition got ready. 
 Fortunately all were well armed. All 
 had repeating rifles — principally Win- 
 chesters — with two exceptions, and they 
 had breech loadino- sliotcruns, which were 
 good with buck-shot at short range. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I7I 
 
 There were also the arms belonging to 
 the two missing men. 
 
 No one had been to where the men 
 were prospecting, but we knew the direc- 
 tion they had taken. So in the next 
 day's hunt we found the place. There 
 was no evidence of a struggle there. 
 We hunted all day and found nothing 
 more. Their tools w^ere there and the 
 case was a puzzle. We w^ere now thirty 
 strong. That evening we discussed the 
 matter. We could not think of moving 
 away and leaving the men. It was de- 
 cided that the following day ten men 
 should, if possible, try to follow the men's 
 trail; that ten should go to the Indian 
 camp on pretence of wanting to trade; 
 that five should stay in camp; that five 
 should go in a direction immediately be- 
 tween the Indian camp and the place 
 where the men had been prospecting; 
 that in case there was any firing, the mid- 
 dle five should at once reinforce the party 
 where the firing was, and that all sliould 
 then get back to the camp, where we 
 would be governed by circumstances. 
 
 We thought it might be that they had 
 made prisoners of our two comrades. I 
 
172 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 became one of the party who went to 
 their village. We were well armed 
 and determined in our purpose. We* 
 walked boldly down the river and with- 
 out warning walked suddenly into the 
 village. At hrst it created a great excite- 
 ment among them. Some disappeared, 
 others, more bold, stood their ground. 
 Having been requested by the other 
 members of my party to act as spokes- 
 man, I at once laid down a cloth or piece 
 of calico that we had broui^ht alonij for 
 the purpose. I placed thereon numerous 
 small articles, such as Indians trade for. 
 This they understood, and at once gath- 
 ered around in o;reat numbers. I had 
 instructed my men to watch their every 
 movement, and also not to allow them to 
 crowd too closely. I made a line on the 
 sand which indicated to them I did not 
 want them to cross. 
 
 Thev brought forth furs and skins of 
 all kinds, and began to trade. I was not 
 deceived in their appearance. They were 
 an extremely large and powerful race, 
 but few of them being less than six feet 
 in height, and the women were almost as 
 tall as the men. The weather was warm 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 73 
 
 and they wore but little clothing. Some 
 of them did not wear any, being 
 entirely naked. Others wore a skin 
 covering or breech cloth, fastened at the 
 waist, and hanging down almost to the 
 knees. Their hair, which is very black 
 and straight, hung loose down to their 
 shoulders. It was matted and full of 
 vermin. They w^ere extremely dirty. I 
 do not think they had ever washed them- 
 selves. Their features were more like 
 those of wild beasts than those of human 
 beings. Their eyes were of the Mongo- 
 lian t3'pe. Their foreheads were low and 
 receding. In some cases the chin would 
 be receding, in others the reverse.- Some 
 of them had heads of unusual length 
 behind, almost amounting to a deformity. 
 All had the wild beast expression of 
 countenance, and showed a lack of intelli- 
 gence. I have seen a good many wild 
 tribes but have never seen before, and 
 never expect to again, a race of human 
 beings which could give one such feelings 
 of loathing and disgust as these Alaska 
 man-eaters. 
 
 Their language consisted of a succes- 
 sion of harsh and unpleasant sounds 
 
2 74 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 connected with signs, and I had concluded 
 that they had httle or no dealing with 
 traders; as I could not see any articles in 
 the camp which they could have traded 
 for, excepting some old knives and a 
 couple of very old axes. Their arms w^ere 
 bows, arrow^s and spears. From some 
 source they had got iron that formed 
 their spear heads, although some of them 
 were made of copper. Their arrows 
 were pointed with bone, and some carried 
 clubs with rocks fastened to the end. 
 
 I finished trading as quickly as possible, 
 as I wanted to go through the village, 
 to see if I could see any thing pointing 
 to the fate of our missing companions. 
 Their houses w^ere made of sticks, brush, 
 grass and the skins of moose and cariboo. 
 We walked boldly through the village, 
 and inspected every thing that came in 
 our way, but found nothing. We then 
 went back of the village into the timber. 
 We saw numerous trails which appeared 
 to lead farther into the timber. I also 
 noticed that there was a great deal of 
 fallen timber close behind the village. I 
 afterwards found I had done a good thing 
 in posting myself so well. We then 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 75 
 
 returned to camp, and had not been 
 there long before the other two parties 
 came in. They had found some evidences 
 of a struggle not far from and farther 
 down the little stream where the boys 
 had been prospecting, but had found no 
 trail leading from the spot. Some of the 
 party wanted to leave, claiming that we 
 could do nothing more. To this I would 
 not consent, and the majority sided with 
 me. 
 
 There was much difference of opinion 
 as to what was the best course to pursue. 
 We decided that the next day a party 
 should go again to the place where the 
 struggle had been and search farther. 
 That night tw^o of our men had gone a 
 short distance from camp in the evening, 
 and were returning late, saw^ some of the 
 natives sneaking around our camp, but 
 had not been seen themselves. This sat- 
 isfied me that they were guilty of mur- 
 dering our companions. I also believed 
 that if we attempted to leave without 
 punishing them they would attack u?. 
 The country being rough and full of 
 underbrush, they could kill a great many 
 if not all of us. However, I did not say 
 
176 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 any thing then, but next morning joined 
 the searching party. We left about one- 
 half the men in camp, the remainder 
 making the searching part}-. We went 
 to where the struggle had been. The 
 evidence of a struggle was quite plain, 
 and in the creek, close by, we found a 
 button. Evidently it had been torn off 
 there. This satisfied us that they had 
 walked in the water to avoid making any 
 trail. We followed down, and about one 
 mile below found the place where they 
 had climbed out on the bank. There 
 was a great number of tracks, most of 
 them coming from the direction of the 
 cannibals' village. From this on the trail 
 was easily followed. It led us about five 
 miles to a small stream, that ran through 
 a small open glade. Here the horrible 
 tale was told. Several fires had been 
 built, and in the bushes at the edge of the 
 glade, we found the bones of our unfor- 
 tunate companions. We could see that 
 they had been roasted, and some of them 
 plainly showed the marks of teeth. 
 
 At once it flashed across my mind that 
 we should keep the man-eaters ignorant 
 of our discovery. I spoke to the others 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 1 77" 
 
 about it. They at once coincided with 
 me. So we did not disturbe any thing,. 
 but turning toward camp, went back as- 
 soon as possible. 
 
 Then the question arose, what should 
 be done? A few wanted to leave at 
 once, and I am glad to say only a few. 
 They were the bar-room fighters of whom 
 I have previously spoken. I let them, 
 talk and said nothing, although most of 
 the men had been looking to me for an 
 opinion. At length several asked me to 
 express my opinion, which I then did. 
 
 I told them it was self-evident that the 
 man-eaters were not afraid of us. Had 
 they been afraid, they would have left at 
 once after committing the horrible act.. 
 That I believed they were only waiting 
 until we should begin to travel, when they 
 could destroy us with their arrow^s from? 
 ambush without exposing themselves.- 
 That I believed they were watching us 
 continually, and since I had carefully re- 
 flected on the matter, I believed our pre- 
 caution about the discovery w^as useless.. 
 
 They then asked me what I thought 
 we should do. My proposition was tO: 
 attack them in their village, kill as many 
 
178 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 as possible and teach them to respect the 
 whites. We could then return in safety. 
 As we were armed with repeating rifles, 
 and they had no idea of our power, 
 they would be so much surprised that 
 the victory would be easy. Whereas, if 
 we started back without punishing them, 
 we would have the same number to fight 
 and also would do it at a great disadvant- 
 age. Having talked the matter over, 
 they adopted my plan and war was de- 
 cided on. The following morning was 
 appointed for the attack. We decided to 
 start at daybreak, go down through the 
 timber, and attack them from the rear. 
 
 The men insisted on my acting as cap- 
 tain of the band, which I consented to do 
 provided all were satisfied, which they 
 were. I then told them that I should 
 expect them to obey promptly any order 
 given by me. To this they consented, 
 and we lay down to rest. I scarcely 
 slept that night, but lay thinking of the 
 possibilities of the coming day. Would 
 we all be ahve by the next sunset.'* I 
 knew that they outnumbered us almost 
 twelve to one, but I had great faith in 
 our Winchesters; besides, fully one-half 
 of the men had Colts revolvers. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I 79 
 
 The nights then were very short, there 
 Tiot being over two hours darkness. As 
 soon as dawn appeared I got up, stirred 
 up the fire and got the men up. We made 
 a large kettle of coffee, of which all par- 
 took, some also eating a light breakfast. 
 I told the men I wanted them to be very 
 •careful and not expose themselves. I 
 pointed out to them how inconvenient it 
 would be if there were many wounded. 
 Although I was positive that we should 
 •carry the day, yet we could do it without 
 ■exposing ourselves. I said that we should 
 keep behind trees; that if they pressed 
 us too hard we should avoid a hand to 
 hand fight by slowly retreating from tree 
 to tree. That when we had them checked 
 we should regain the ground by again 
 advancing from tree to tree. I advised 
 them to make no move which would ef- 
 fect our position, unless I gave the order. 
 I then appointed a man to act as my as- 
 sistant, my main object being to prevent 
 the men from needlessly exposing them- 
 selves. I left five men in the camp, and 
 with twenty-four went through the tim- 
 ber and came out behind the man-eaters* 
 village. 
 
l8o THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 It was as I had expected. They had 
 been watching us and there was a great 
 clamor and noise. I could see that they 
 were armed and ready. I formed the 
 men in a line with instructions to keep as 
 near in that position as possible, and keep 
 under cover of the trees. Placing my 
 lieutenant at one end of the line, I myself 
 went to the other. This would enable us 
 to watch and if any were wounded we 
 should see it at once ; whereas, if the men 
 were scattered too much, w^e should not 
 know where to look for them, and in case 
 of retreat we might accidentally leave 
 wounded men in their merciless hands. 
 
 I then ordered the men to advance, 
 keeping themselves covered as they had 
 done. Closer and closer we got, and the 
 noise increased in the village. I then 
 gave the order to fire whenever they had 
 an opportunity to kill anyone, but to fire 
 no useless shots. 
 
 We did not wait long. I saw they 
 were getting ready for a rush toward us.. 
 I got upon a fallen tree trunk, but yet 
 managed to keep behind another tree. I 
 saw the natives start, and sung out to 
 the men that they were coming and told 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. l8l 
 
 them to make every shot count. On they 
 came. The whole horrible, brutish-look- 
 ing lot came fairly under fire at less than 
 one hundred yards distant. I opened the 
 ball by firing the first shot, and then the 
 rifles rang out on the still morning air, 
 steady and regular. Then I saw what a 
 terrible weapon the Winchester was in 
 the hands of good marksmen. 
 
 Down they went by scores, almost 
 every shot appearing to count one, and 
 yet they kept coming. Now they were 
 within one hundred feet of us. They had 
 come to the fallen timber that I have be- 
 fore spoken of. They were obliged to 
 climb up on it to get to us,w^hich exposed 
 their whole bodies at a very short range. 
 In vain. Not one could gain an upright 
 footing upon the timber. When the front 
 one fell the next one tried it, only to fall 
 dead in the arms of his brother cannibals 
 behind. They were checked; they wav- 
 ered, then broke and ran. They had lost 
 terribly for so short a time. I then or- 
 dered the men to advance as far as there 
 were trees to cover their movements. We 
 got so close to their village that we could 
 fire through their frail houses. They 
 
1 82 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 fired some arrows at us, but we were not 
 exposed and they did us no harm. 
 
 A few of them sneaked up behind 
 some fallen timber and used their bows, 
 but it was all guess work. They alsa- 
 threw some spears over a pile of fallen 
 trees, behind which some of our men were^ 
 A spear struck one of our men in the 
 knee, making a severe but not dangerous 
 wound. This was the only man of ours 
 who was hurt during the fight. They 
 had had enough of charging us. Taking 
 seven men, I passed down to the lower 
 end of the village where I could keep in 
 the timber and still get closer. There we 
 got a splendid chance, firing on them in 
 front as well as in the rear. They were 
 now getting it too warm to stand it any 
 longer. They became panic stricken. 
 
 Some jumped into the river and swam 
 across; others were shot in the water, 
 and some got away through, the un- 
 guarded space at the upper end of the 
 vill ige. At last there was nothing more 
 to fire at. Some women and children 
 were hid in the huts, but the most of 
 them had got away. When we discov- 
 ered their hiding places they screamed 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 183 
 
 and ran. We let them run, paying no 
 further attention to them. 
 
 We had killed one hundred and four, 
 and about thirty were so badly wounded 
 that they could not get away. Some of 
 our men wanted to kill them, but I ob- 
 jected. I thought we had punished them 
 enough, and I think their appetite for the 
 white man's flesh is spoiled for many years 
 to come. We burned their village and 
 destroyed everything of any value that we 
 could see. We went and got the bones 
 of our murdered companions and buried 
 them, and started on the return trip. We 
 did but little prospecting on the return. 
 All were dejected in spirits. Our pro- 
 visions were getting short. 
 
 We came to our rafts on the lakes and 
 found everything all right. We traveled 
 to the head of the lakes. We crossed 
 the portage to our boats and found the 
 shallow lake on which we had left them 
 dried up. -Here was another fix. Our 
 boats were not less than ten miles from 
 water. We had no tools to make other 
 boats, and boats we must have. We de- 
 cided to carry them. Our provisions 
 were almost exhausted. We had carried 
 
384 THIRTEP:N YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 •our wounded man all the way from the 
 battlefield — if so it could be called when 
 it was so one-sided. Bad as those wretches 
 •were, I can never think of them without 
 feelings of compassion. Their punishment 
 was almost too severe. I did not mind 
 the killing of the men. They had made 
 war on us in the most treacherous man- 
 ner. But if I had it to do again I would 
 not burn their village and their fur clothes 
 and bedding, for that must have caused 
 tnuch suffering among the children in the 
 long, cold winter that followed. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 We carried the boats. It was a hard 
 job. The mosquitoes tormented us con- 
 tinually. There was no game, and our 
 provisions got so low that we put our- 
 selves on rations. Once more we em- 
 barked in our boats. There was much 
 shallow water and sand to get through, 
 which delayed us a great deal. We 
 pulled, hauled, tugged and lifted, which 
 increased our appetites, but did not in- 
 crease our supply of food. Nor did it 
 starve the mosquetoes. Such a life! It 
 was wretched — such hard work with not 
 enough food to sustain us, and the insects 
 blinding us. For several days it remained 
 about the same. We had cooked the 
 last thing we had. It was no use to look 
 for game there. Another day's travel 
 would carry us through swamp lake, as 
 we called it, to open water. No more 
 boating in mud then; but it had to be 
 done without a particle of food. Yet we 
 did it. Now it was open water to the 
 river. Then there was a current to carry 
 
1 86 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 US down to our winter supplies. We 
 gained the river and drifted down, only 
 pulling enough for steerage way. 
 
 And here is another incident to be 
 recorded; another comrade called to his 
 last account. A small boat that had 
 started first had got fast on a rock in 
 such a manner thai they could not get it 
 off. There were only two men in the 
 boat. The rock was near the middle of 
 the stream, in a rapid, dangerous place. 
 While w^orking to get it off, one of the 
 men taking an oar got a position w'here 
 he thought he could lift it off. He lifted 
 too hard, the ore broke suddenly, and he 
 was precipitated into the whirlpool. The 
 other man on the rock says he never 
 came up, or if he did, he did not see him. 
 The other man stayed on till we came 
 along. We ran so close to him that he 
 could jump into our boat. As we ran 
 down we came to men working on the 
 bars. They gave us food, and we were 
 happy once more. We found our caches 
 all right at the mouth of the river. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 After resting a few days, we com- 
 menced looking around for a suitable 
 place to build our winter quarters. Hav- 
 ing satisfied ourselves as to the location, 
 we at once commenced building, using 
 logs. We built double walls, making 
 them more than four feet in thickness, and 
 making a roof of logs, bark and gravel, 
 also four feet thick. We tilled in the hol- 
 low between the walls with clay and 
 gravel. Our fireplace was large and 
 built of rocks. The doors were double, 
 made in such a manner that before open- 
 ing the inner door we could shut the 
 outer one, thus preventing the cold from 
 getting into the house. There were no 
 windows, for there was no glass to make 
 any. In fact, as there is little daylight in 
 winter in that region, there would be but 
 little use for windows. We built our 
 cabins to accommodate from two to four 
 men each. 
 
 The weather was now getting cold, it 
 being the latter part of September. We 
 
1 88 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 then went hunting. Knowing where 
 there were some natives of the better 
 class, we went to see them, as we wanted 
 to trade for fur clothing or fresh moose or 
 caribou meat. We got the clothing, but 
 they had no meat to spare. We then 
 went hunting in earnest. Finding a good 
 place, we soon killed game enough to last 
 us through the winter. 
 
 As fast as we killed the game we al- 
 lowed it to freeze, and by keeping it in 
 the shade we kept it frozen. We got 
 our beef to camp and built a small house 
 for it. We then got a supply of wood, 
 and when winter came we were ready 
 for it. 
 
 Shorter and shorter grew the days, 
 and colder became the weather. Snow 
 fell to the depth of about one foot, and did 
 not get over two feet deep during the 
 winter. The sun disappeared entirely, 
 but the Aurora Borealis, or Northern 
 Light, came in its stead, making a strong 
 light, not unlike the electric light. The 
 weather became extremely cold, freezing 
 quicksilver, and getting much colder after- 
 ward. Not having any way of knowing 
 precisely how cold it was, we could only 
 guess. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 189 
 
 When we went out to fetch wood or 
 water we had to dress very warm, even 
 covering our faces and only leaving a hole 
 to breath and see through. Where the 
 frosty air could come in contact with the 
 bare skin it felt hke fire. The Httle moist- 
 ure that was in the wood, and what went 
 up the chimney from pots when cooking, 
 would freeze at the top and choke the 
 vent with ice. 
 
 When the weather was not too cold we 
 would hunt and trap for rabbits by the 
 light of the Aurora Borealis. The ex- 
 treme cold was not constant, but the 
 weather moderated at times, so that by 
 bundling up very warm we could stay out 
 several hours. Our cabin w^as carpeted 
 and lined with the skins of animals. Our 
 bedsteads were made of polls, our table of 
 rough boards and our chairs were blocks 
 of wood sawed the right length. For 
 light we used tallow-dip candles, which 
 we made ourselves from the tallow of the 
 moose and carriboo. We also used some 
 bear's oil in a lamp made from a yeast 
 powder can. 
 
 I used to go out as much as I could for 
 exercise and fresh air. In the cabin where 
 
190 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 I lived were two others, there being three 
 of us in the cabin. I induced my com- 
 rades to exercise as much as they could 
 in the open air, for I dreaded scurvy, and 
 sure enough it came. The men were not 
 all so well fixed for supplies as I and my 
 messmates were. Some of them were 
 short of provisions, and what they had 
 were not of the best quality. In all there 
 were about forty of us wintering at that 
 place. The scurvy made its appearance 
 about the middle of February. The one 
 attacked would first complain of soreness 
 of the gums, then the teeth would become 
 loose, the legs became swolen and dis- 
 colored, and if one would squeeze the 
 flesh of the affected part the print would 
 remain where one pressed. We were 
 short of medicine, as many had brought 
 none with them. Humanity demanded 
 that we should divide. 
 
 I had taken in among my other supplies 
 some delicacies in the shape of canned 
 goods, milk, jellies, jams, and Liebig's 
 extract of beef. I did not hesitate to 
 produce at once my little stock of delica- 
 cies and use them for the benefit of the 
 sick. With medicine I was poorly pro- 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I9I 
 
 vided, having only a few boxes of Bran- 
 dreth's piils, a few bottles of Pain-killer, 
 and a small bottle of gum camphor soaked 
 in alcohol. That was all I had in the 
 medicine Hne, 
 
 We did all in our power for the poor 
 sick men. They gradually grew worse. 
 We got barks and roots, and made teas, 
 but they did no good. Twelve of our 
 men were now sick and growing worse 
 every day. Two had died. We tried 
 willow bark and that did some good. All 
 used it and it prevented the disease from 
 spreading. 
 
 The parts of the body most affected 
 with the disease would turn black, and 
 the teeth would come out. The lower 
 extremeties became affected first, the dis- 
 ease gradually working up until the vital 
 parts were reached, when the patient 
 died. The affected parts turned as black 
 as charcoal, and, strange to say, the pa- 
 tient suffered but little pain. Two had 
 already died, and before we discovered 
 the virtues of the willow three others 
 were too far advanced to recover. The 
 other seven recovered. 
 
192 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 I was one day sitting talking to one who 
 was near his end. 1 was trying to cheer 
 him, although I knew he could not live 
 long, yet he did not think he should die. 
 His mind was clear and he was talking of 
 his intentions and plans for the coming 
 summer. He asked me to get him a 
 drink of water. The kettle was empty. 
 I took the kettle and went out to the hole 
 in the ice where we got water from the 
 river. I got the water, and coming in 
 filled a cup and went to his bedside. He 
 did not move. I spoke to him. No an- 
 sw^er — he was dead. I had not been gone 
 more than five minutes. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Spring was now at hand, although the 
 ice on the river would not break up 
 for some time. We made sleds, and 
 loading them with our supplies, started 
 up Forty Mile River to where we knew 
 of bars with gold enough to pay for 
 working them. We could not work 
 them in the fall on account of high water. 
 The water was now very low. As we 
 found the sledding on the ice very good, 
 we arrived at the bars in due time. We 
 cut and broke away the ice, but found 
 the gravel frozen. We made fires on it 
 and in that manner thawed it out. We 
 worked very hard, as we wanted to take 
 advantage of the low water, for we did not 
 expect it to remain so long. We scarcely 
 stopped long enough for rest and refresh- 
 ments. We were also finding some very 
 coarse gold, some pieces weighing as 
 much as two ounces. For awhile w^e did 
 well, getting as much as fifty dollars a 
 day to the man. But the geld began to 
 give out and the water began to rise. The 
 
194 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 ice broke up and went out. We had 
 nothing more to do there. We made 
 rafts and floated down on them to our 
 winter quarters. Here we stayed a few 
 days, resting and planning for the sum- 
 mer. With the gold we found on Forty 
 Mile River we found another metal. It 
 was quite malleable, was in the form of 
 grains similar to gold, and was of a steel- 
 gray color. It proved to be platinum, 
 which is worth about eight dollars per 
 ounce. It was not plentiful. 
 
 We had a great many different plans 
 for the summer. Some wanted to ascend 
 the Yukon to prospect; some wanted to 
 remain in the vicinity of where we were, 
 and I wanted to prospect down the Yukon 
 as far as I could find any mountains to 
 prospect, and in the fall go out at the 
 mouth of the river and go to St. Michaels, 
 a trading post on Bherings Strait about 
 ninety miles north from the mouth of 
 the Yukon, belonging to the Northwest 
 Alaska Commercial Company. There we 
 should surely be able to meet with a 
 whaling or trading vessel and get trans- 
 portation to San Francisco or some other 
 southern port. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Six men agreed to go with me and we 
 ^t once made preparations, bid good-bye 
 to our friends, and started on our long 
 journey. We drifted leisurely down with 
 the current, stopping and prospecting at 
 -every favorable looking tributary stream 
 as usual, and finding a little gold. I also 
 noticed considerable quartz, and I have no 
 hesitation in saying that the time will 
 come when the interior of Alaska will be 
 a great producer of the precious metals. 
 At times, if we found gold at the mouth 
 of a stream, we would ascend it, some- 
 times a considerable distance, with always 
 the same result — nothing to pay. And 
 so the days, weeks and months came and 
 went and Autumn had come. The valley 
 had increased in width until we could no 
 longer see the mountains on either side 
 except at times, and then only in the hazy 
 dim distance. 
 
 So we decided to give up prospecting 
 and go to St. Michaels. The river was 
 now very sluggish and filled with count- 
 
196 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 less islands. It was also very wide, in 
 some places fifteen or twenty miles. We 
 had passed the mouth of the Porcupine 
 River, which comes in from the north, 
 and the mouth of the Tanannah, a large 
 tributary coming in from the south, near 
 which a great many Indians were camped. 
 We stopped at their village, and here was 
 a slight to look at. The filth and dirt was 
 indescribable. Their poverty w^as almost 
 beyond belief. Their food consisted 
 principally of salmon, with some geese 
 and ducks. The fish, geese and ducks 
 were dried for winter use. There ap- 
 peared to be no other kind of game. As 
 they had no skins nor furs, their clothing 
 was made from the skins of the salmon 
 sewed toc^ether. 
 
 Their houses were dug out of the high 
 sandy river banks and covered with poles,. 
 with a smoke hole in the top. The front 
 of the house was built up with poles. They 
 were quite friendly. I went inside of one 
 of those houses, or dens, to satisfy my 
 curiosit}', and oh, the smell! I cannot see 
 how a human being could live in such an 
 atmosphere. My curiosity was fully sat- 
 isfied. I never wanted to examine an- 
 other. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. I97 
 
 We passed on down to the mouth of 
 the river, in many places passing small 
 camps of those wretched people. They 
 appeared to be more like esquimaux than 
 the up-river natives, and this feature in 
 their appearance became more and more 
 marked as we went down the river. 
 
 Now the country became entirely desti- 
 tute of timber. The banks were low and 
 the river was divided up into many chan- 
 nels. The surrounding country was very 
 low and flat and covered with a brownish 
 Htchen and moss. We were now down 
 to where the tide from the sea backed the 
 water up. Not a tree nor bush to be 
 seen in any direction. But we could get 
 plenty of driftwood that had come down 
 the river, a fortunate thing for us, for the 
 nights were quite chilly. Ducks and 
 geese were here by millions, and we were 
 well supplied with food as we still had 
 plenty of other suppHes. But what a land 
 of desolation! And yet we would occa- 
 sionally pass a few rude huts made of 
 driftwood. 
 
 Well, as all things have an end, so did 
 this long river, and we found ourselves 
 once more on the shores of the briny 
 
ipS THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 ocean. Our boats were not fit for ocean 
 traveling, so we got some logs of drift- 
 wood large enough to make lumber. We 
 broke up our two river boats, and sawing 
 some lumber from the logs, we got enough 
 to make one sea boat large enough to 
 carry the whole party to St. Michaels^ 
 which was about ninety miles distant. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 So one bright morning we started, but 
 the weather did not remain good. The 
 sky became overcast and the wind com- 
 menced blowing; however, the wind was- 
 not strong, so we kept on. Our boat 
 proved to be a good sea boat, riding the 
 seas as bouyantly as a duck. The days 
 were now about twelve hours long. The 
 nights were very dark, there being no- 
 moon. We decided to camp for the night 
 at the first favorable place, but we could 
 not find the favorable place. We wanted 
 a place where our boats would be shel- 
 tered from the wind and waves, as the 
 coast was rocky, but we could not see 
 any place we could haul the boat clear of 
 the surf. Daylight disappeared and we 
 had found no landing place. 
 
 The wind increased and blew a perfect 
 gale from the southeast. We were 
 obliged to keep away from the shore, for 
 there was danger of striking rocks. Then- 
 along with the wmd came a cold, blind- 
 ing sleet. Our condition was one of 
 
200 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 great discomfort. It was so dark that 
 we could not see each other in the boat. 
 We had had no supper; were cold, hun- 
 gry-, and wet to the skin, with a prospect 
 of passing the whole night at sea. The 
 wind was driving us rapidly to the north- 
 west. I knew that the Straits here were 
 not very wide, for during the day we had 
 got a sight of what I took to be the Sibe- 
 rian coast. The wind increased. It was 
 now almost a hurricane, but the rain and 
 sleet ceased. All we could do was to 
 pull with the wind for steerage way. The 
 boat could not be- handled properly, for 
 the seas were heavy and breaking and 
 we shipped a good deal of water. 
 
 Two of the men were experienced sea- 
 men, which I believe saved our lives on 
 this occasion. They handled the boat 
 well, and yet we shipped so much water 
 we had to Hghten the load. First we 
 threw overboard our mining tools; next 
 we threw over several sacks of flour, and 
 yet we had to bail continual!}-. Our rolls 
 of bedding came in the way of bailing, so 
 over they went. Nothing was left now 
 but a couple of sacks of flour and a few 
 other kinds of provisions, and they being 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 20I 
 
 saturated with salt water, would be but 
 little better than nothing. 
 
 However, it was not destined that we 
 should keep even these. The wind con- 
 tinued on in its fury, and we took turns 
 baiHng. Now we thought we could hear 
 the roaring of the surf on the beach ahead. 
 It was the shore of an island near the 
 main land and the hurricane was driving 
 us directly onto it. To hold the boat off 
 by pulling at the oars would be impossible 
 against such a hurricane. As we came 
 hearer we could see the breakers. I knew 
 the stru<rorle was near. If the undertow 
 was not to strong it was quite likely we 
 could make the shore. On the contrary, 
 if the undertow was strong, to gain the 
 shore was almost impossible. Day w^as 
 now breaking, which w^as a good thing 
 for us. We tied our rifles securely inside 
 the boat, also our revolvers and cartridge 
 belts. We lightened ourselves as much 
 as possible. It wms now lighter and we 
 could plainly see timber on the beach. 
 
 The experienced men proposed to send 
 the boat ashore under all the headway we 
 could possibly give her. Then, if the 
 beach proved to be soft, the headway 
 
202 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 would carry us so much further up. So 
 we headed directly for the shore and 
 pulled with all our strength. When the 
 shock came it was a heavy one. I heard 
 the timbers breaking. We had struck 
 rock bottom. Another wave struck and 
 swung the boat around, and then it was 
 lifted and came down and struck on the 
 side. We were all thrown into the water. 
 All hands made for the shore. Another 
 wave came and carried me off my feet 
 and then receded. I managed to ^et a 
 footing and did not go back with it. I 
 again struggled for the beach with all my 
 might, and before another swell came I 
 was out of danger. The others were as 
 fortunate as I, and we w^ere all safe so far 
 as drowning was concerned. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 We stood on the shore and watched the 
 boat, for it was now hght enough to see 
 a little. I was very anxious to get my 
 rifle. It was tied in the boat, and the 
 boat was already a wreck. To get our 
 arms was impossible. The boat went 
 entirely to pieces. We had lost every 
 thing — our boat, our tools, our beds, 
 provisions, and even our arms. We were 
 in a w^retched plight. Not a match, nor 
 anything to make a fire with; we had 
 only the clothes we wore. We were 
 landed, we knew not how far from St. 
 Michaels — the nearest place that we had 
 any knowledge of where we could get 
 assistance. The worst loss was the boat. 
 
 As soon as it was light enough we 
 commenced to explore the island, for an 
 island it proved to be. There were no 
 signs of natives, although I saw plenty of 
 deer tracks along the beach. However 
 we had no way to kill them and no fire 
 to cook them. We went aroudn the 
 upper part of the island. It was not 
 
204 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 more than three miles to the main land, 
 the coast of Alaska further northwest. 
 
 I could not see any smoke or sign of 
 inhabitants as I viewed the coast of the 
 main land. We gathered clams and mus- 
 cles and ate them raw, for we could not 
 cook without a fire; but they kept us 
 from starving to death at least. We 
 thought it best to stay at the upper end of 
 the island so we could watch both sides 
 for natives who might be passing in canoes. 
 It would be our only chance to get away. 
 It rained almost the whole day. We 
 were very wet, cold, hungry and miser- 
 able. Now night came on. I can hardly 
 tell how we lived. We tried to get a hre 
 by rubbing two sticks together, also with 
 rocks striking them together, but we did 
 not succeed. 
 
 The next day the sun came out and we 
 dried our clothing. Fortunately for us 
 the sun shone several da3's in succession. 
 We gathered fallen timber and made a 
 kind of a house. We roofed it with 
 brush and such barks as we could find 
 loose. Then we gathered leaves and 
 moss and made a nest, and found it much 
 better than no place. The clams and 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 205 
 
 muscles were hard living, and especially 
 so as the}' were raw^ 
 
 We tried ver}^ hard to get a fire. We 
 rubbed sticks together until they would 
 smoke, but we could not make them burn. 
 We had heard of savages making fire in 
 that way, but it would not work for us. 
 We then got rocks and by striking them 
 with our pocket knives we could get 
 sparks, but could not get anything dry 
 enough to catch from them. Still we 
 kept on trying, and no doubt would have 
 eventually succeeded. But one day two 
 canoes of natives, apparently a hunting 
 party, came close to the island. We 
 managed to attract their attention. They 
 landed and were very much surprised to 
 see us. They had fish arid venison and 
 also matches. They were friendly and 
 kind to us. They camped on the island 
 two days and hunted deer. They gave 
 us fish and venison. We made large fires 
 and had large roasts. We had lived on 
 raw shell-fish and been without fire ten 
 days. I thought the venison and fish 
 were the finest I had ever eaten. I even 
 felt as if the fire was of an extra qualit3\ 
 In this manner will one appreciate the 
 
2o6 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 necessaries of life if for a lime they are 
 deprived of them. 
 
 I then tried to hire them to take us to 
 St. Michaels. They agreed to go, but 
 wanted to know in what way and how 
 much we would pay them. I showed 
 them money — silver coin. They took it 
 into their hands and fitted it to their cloth- 
 ing, which intimated that they only con- 
 sidered it good for buttons. They farther 
 intimated that they did not want silver. I 
 showed them gold coin and gold dust with 
 the same result. They would not take 
 money, but indicated that they wanted our 
 clothing. 
 
 After a good deal of dickering I made 
 them understand that we could not spare 
 our clothing, but if they would take us to 
 St. Michaels I would get anything for 
 them that they wanted that was there for 
 sale. To this they agreed, and the next 
 day we started. Those natives were 
 clothed in furs and buckskin. They 
 lived at some place on the Siberian coast. 
 
 From the island on which we w^ere 
 wrecked I could see far to the northwest 
 into Alaska. The landscape sloped grad- 
 ually back as far as the eye could reach. 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 207 
 
 There were no signs of inhabitants on 
 the land, that I could see. Near the coast 
 it was covered with scrubby timber. Fur- 
 ther back it had the appearance of a prai- 
 rie. When the weather was good, the air 
 was free from smoke, the sign that always 
 indicates the presence of cities or a settled 
 country. From the summit of a large 
 hill I could see in the north and west the 
 dim outline of a range of mountains. 
 There was also a vast, level plain visible 
 to the view. 
 
 We now embarked for St. Michaels 
 and on the evening of the second day we 
 reached it. It is a trading post. The 
 people were kind and hospitable and furn- 
 ished us with a house to live in. The 
 post is on a small island, quite near the 
 main land. The water is bad, and not a 
 stick of timber grows within many miles. 
 There is plenty of driftwood, however, 
 to be picked up on the beach. The trad- 
 ing company make thi-^ their supply sta- 
 tion for all their most northern trade. 
 
 Here we found an interpreter and made 
 satisfactory arrangements w^ith our In- 
 dians. We allowed them to name the 
 amount that they thought we should 
 
208 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 pay them. Their demand was very 
 light, not amounting to more than one 
 dollar to each man of the company. They 
 expressed themselves well pleased with 
 the payment. We then told them through 
 the interpreter that they had treated us 
 well and now we would make them a 
 present. We gave each one a good, 
 heavy pair of blankets. At this they 
 were very much surprised, as well as 
 highlv pleased. They promised us in re- 
 turn that thev would always be kind to 
 and friendly with the whites. 
 
 We remained at St. Michaels nearly 
 three weeks when a government revenue 
 cutter stopped. The captain gave us a 
 passage to Sitka, and mj- travels in inte- 
 rior of Alaska had ended. 
 
 I staved at the coast several years, 
 sometimes prospecting, at others in the 
 the employ of the different mining com- 
 panies. I do not think that I shall ever 
 again return to Alaska, although I con- 
 sider it a good field for the prospector. 
 My constitution is broken and I can no 
 longer endure the hardships attending 
 such a life. Through all those long years 
 there was an overruling Providence; an 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 209 
 
 ever helping hand, whose presence was 
 never wanting; who, through the medium 
 of our conscience, pointed out to us the 
 path of duty. Its power is felt by all 
 right minded men and women, and if we 
 obey that voice it will not only bring us 
 happiness in this world, but also in the 
 time to come. Who is it that having 
 done a good act, an act of kindness or 
 charity, that does not feel happier when 
 he reflects on it? And are there any, who 
 having done a mean action, do not feel 
 degraded in their own estimation? Such 
 is the gift of conscience that the All-Ruling 
 Power has given to us, that we may be 
 able to know the right from the wrong. 
 
 I deem it proper here in conclusion to 
 add a statement that of the men w^ho 
 were killed or died on those trips I only 
 know the names of two. They are 
 Thomas Jones, drowned; and Jack- 
 son, murdered and eaten by cannibals. 
 Usually among miners only nicknames 
 are used. Thus it is seldom you know 
 the name of any, except a very intimate 
 friend. 
 
 In speaking of matters pertaining to the 
 education of the native Alaskan, it is only 
 
2IO THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 fair to mention that the Society of Friends 
 is represented there. Their headquarters 
 are at Douglas City, on Douglas Island, 
 where the}*- have built a school house and 
 made other improvements under the able 
 management of Mr. E. W. Weesner. Like 
 the Pennsylvania Quakers in William 
 Penn's time, they are rapidly gaining the 
 good will and confidence of the natives. 
 
 These missionaries are exceedingly well 
 liked, not only by the natives, but by all 
 who have dealings with them. I believe 
 that much good will result from their ex- 
 ertions, and this may be said of all our 
 missionaries who are laboring in Alaska. 
 They are zealous and untiring in their ef- 
 forts, though they have had many difficul- 
 ties to contend with. A close, observer 
 can plainly see that thier good works are 
 commencing to tell for good, and I believe 
 it to be the duty of all who can to con- 
 tribute to their support, no matter what 
 denomination they may belong to; for a 
 number of them have spent many years of 
 the best part of their lives in this good 
 work. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 ■Some Clippings from Late Alaska Papers. 
 
 From the Juneau City Mining- Record. September 12, 1SS9. 
 
 A new trading post will be established by Mr. 
 Harper at the mouth of the Telley Eiver, which 
 will be a great convenience to miners going 
 •either way, as they will now be able to secure an 
 abundance of supplies. Mr. Harper some time 
 ago was on his way to this new post, and prob- 
 ably by this time is ready for business. 
 
 A NEAV STEAMER FOR THE YUKON. 
 
 The Alaska Commercial Company has placed 
 a new steamer on the river, to be better able to 
 handle the increasing traftic on the river. The 
 new boat is 135 feet in length and has a carrying 
 •capacity of about 140 tons. The boat was brought 
 from San Francisco in sections and put together 
 at the mouth of the river. 
 
 ■From the Juneau City Mining Record, October lo, 1SS9. 
 
 The Northern Pacific Railroad Company is 
 •evidently anticipating greatly increased busi- 
 ness for the coming year, as it has just placed 
 orders for rolling stock thus far in excess of any 
 other railroad. There are to be over 2,500 new 
 cars — of four classes. Then $1,000,000 will be 
 invested at once in establishing an Alaskan line 
 of elegant passenger and freight steamships to 
 •connect the company's railroads on Puget Sound. 
 
212 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 From the Juneau City Mininuf Record, October 24, iS'^^i 
 ALASKA COAL FIELDS. 
 
 (yoal has been found in vast quantities in 
 Alaska, so extensive in fact as to postpone the 
 day indefinitely when a substitute for that great 
 fuel must be sought. On the east shore of Cook's 
 Inlet, for a distance of two hundred miles, these 
 great coal measures have been traced, and their 
 extent is unknown. Three veins have been ex- 
 amined which vary in tliickness from four to 
 eight feet. The top one lies thirty feet from the 
 surface beneath a covering of blue clay, and be- 
 tween the veins are strata of fire clay four or 
 five feet thick, w'hich has been used in the can- 
 neries in the place of fire brick and found to be 
 most excellent From the water the coal veins 
 are easily accessible, the highest elevation for 
 from thirty to ninety miles from the inlet on 
 the east being but two hundred feet. At Coal 
 Harbor the Russians have taken out coal in 
 small quantities for years past, and government 
 vessels have used it to some extent. John Tread- 
 well organized a company last year to work these 
 mines, and several cargoes have been sent to 
 market. Coal Harbor is a large and secure haven, 
 completely land-locked and sheltered from storms 
 from any direction. Vessels may lie at the 
 wharves or at anchor in perfect security. A 
 railroad three miles in length will coimect the 
 mines with the wharves, which must run out a 
 long distance to reach deep water. If these coal 
 veins prove to be what is claimed for them 
 Alaska will have a source of wealtth greater 
 than any known.— Portland West Shore. 
 
 N. A. Fuller, formerly superintendent of the 
 A. M. & M. Co., on Douglas Island, is interested 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 213 
 
 with Mr. Tread well in the above mentioned coal 
 fields, and will probably have charge of the en- 
 terprise. 
 
 THE WEALTH OF ALASKA. 
 
 Senator Stockbridge recently made a trip into 
 this territory and was interviewed by the De- 
 troit (Mich.) Free Press. He said: "The coun- 
 try is rich in minerals of various kinds, and a 
 great deal of money will be taken out of it dur- 
 ing the next decade by capitalists who are 
 plucky enough to invest while the tide is run- 
 ning. The timber possibilities are also very 
 promising. There is an abundance of spruce 
 and cpdar, both varieties attaining enormous 
 size and important lumber value. In the mat- 
 ter of timber, Alaska does not differ m;iterially 
 from Washington. The salmon fisheries are 
 very noticeable commercial factors, and oper- 
 ated, as they usually are, in conjunction with 
 canning factories, they must naturally yield 
 large profits to investors. American capital 
 can, I think, be safely invested in Alaska with 
 reasonable certainty of profitable returns." 
 
 Selections from the Alaska Free Press of November 9, 1SS9, 
 
 We acknowledge a pleasant call from Gov- 
 ernor Knapp this week. The governor is now on 
 a cruise through southeastern Alaska, and is 
 taking unwonted zeal and is putting forth every 
 effort for the future advancement of this coun- 
 try. 
 
 Development work on the Silver Queen still 
 continues. The upper tunnel is being pushed 
 ahead, and the lower cross-cut tunnel is being 
 <lriven to tap the veins. The latter workings 
 will be used for winter work. 
 
214 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 0. E. Coon, immediately upon receivings his 
 appointment as postmaster, went to work to- 
 secure a money order office for Juneau, and 
 now, or in five weeks from this time, he informs 
 us he lias succeeded, as the notification and nec- 
 essary books and blanks arrived on this boat. 
 Mr. Coon certainly deserves great credit in secur- 
 ing for the people of Juneau this great conven- 
 ience. 
 
 Measured distances from Haines' Mission via 
 Chilkoot Pass to forks of Lewis and Pelley Eiv- 
 ers. — Survey of W. Ogilvie, D. L. S. 
 
 Miles. 
 
 From Juneau City to Haines' Mission ^o% 
 
 Haines' Mis. to head of salt water (Healey's) 20.4<) 
 *' " to head of canoe navigation. . 26.46 
 
 " to forks of Dainy River 28.76 
 
 " " to Sum of Daiay or Chilkoot P 35.47 
 
 " " to Lake Lyndemann landing. 44 21 
 
 " " to foot of Lake Lyndemann. . 48.41 
 
 " to head of Lake i^ennett 4U0L 
 
 " " to boundary between B. C. & 
 
 N. W. Territory ( Lat. 60°) 59.00 
 
 Haines' Mis. to foot of Lake Bennett 75.21 
 
 " " to foot of Caribou Crossing. . . 77.86. 
 
 " tofootofTakou(Tagish) Lake 94.91 
 
 " to Tagish houses 99.25 
 
 " to head of marsh (Mud Lake) 99.93 
 
 " to foot of Lake Marsh Il9 93, 
 
 *• " to head of Canon 145.48 
 
 " to foot of Canon 146.10 
 
 '* to headof White Horse Rapid. 147.85 
 " to foot of White Horse Rapid. 148.25 
 
 " ** to Takheena River 162.75 
 
 " to head of Lake Lebarge 176. 12 
 
 " to foot of Lake Lebarge 207.80- 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 21 5 
 
 Haines' Mis to Hootolinqua (Newberry of 
 •Sch watka) 240 00 
 
 Haines' Mis. to Cassiar Bar 267.44 
 
 " to Little Salmon River 310.84 
 
 " to Kinii liapicl (Five Fingers)37l.l3 
 " to Pelley River 430.50 
 
 Pelley River to Stewart River 120 00 
 
 Stewart River to Forty Mile Creek 120.00 
 
 From the Juneau Mining- Record, December 5, 1SS9. 
 HKLPING METLAKAIITLA. 
 
 The Boston Post is assisting the Rev. Drs. 
 Phillips Brooks and Reuen Thomas and Senator 
 Hoar in their endeavors to raise $25,000 by pub- 
 lic subscription, to aid Mr. William Duncan in 
 his work among the Metlakahtla Indians in 
 Alaska, and to rebuild their sawmill and other 
 buildings that were destroyed by fire last spring. 
 The sum already received amounts to several 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 We find the following in the Post: "Some of 
 our readers may not have seen the recently pub- 
 lished letters of the Rev. Drs. Phillips Brooks 
 and Reuen Thomas and Senator Hoar heartily 
 commending the great work of Mr. William 
 Duncan, begun by him among the Indians of 
 the Northwest Coast thirty-two years ago. Sav- 
 ages of the fiercest type, revolting in their relig- 
 ious ceremonies, cruel to their captives and very 
 superstitious, were gradually won over to ways of 
 peace, industry and perfect sobriety. The result 
 was a community of families, self-supporting 
 and self ffoverning. But persecution and rob- 
 bery made war or emigration their only choice. 
 Delegations, petitions, weary traveling, long 
 journeys and great expense on the part of Mr. 
 
2l6 THIRTE^iN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 Duncan and liis people ended always in disap- 
 pointment. Finally, in 1887, they turned their 
 backs upon their old homes, leaving behind 
 nearly all their work of twenty-five years — 
 houses, school, church, shops, mills and much 
 personal property — and established themselves 
 in Alaska. Here in the midst of a forest they 
 are slowly building- new homes, schools and a 
 church. The sawmill and other machinery 
 must do the first work. The people are cheerful 
 toilers and of good courage, but they are in 
 need of many handy appliances and work at 
 great disadvantage. Friends of our own Indi- 
 ans welcome these new comers. For more than 
 twenty years their influence over the Indians of 
 Alaska has made travel safer in that territory; 
 and when their town is built the people of ^let- 
 lakahtla, in their modest homes, with schools, 
 church, guest-house, mill and shops, will fur- 
 nish the best object lesson there can be placed 
 before the uncivilized native Indians. The sum 
 of §25,000 could be most wisely used in helping 
 them to do a far better work for themselves 
 and for the thousands they must lead out of 
 barbarism into civilization than they can do un- 
 aided, Winter is near at hand and a great deal 
 of money is needed for all kinds of supplies and 
 materials." 
 
 George Chopat, of the Alaska News Company 
 respectfully notifies the Juneau and Douglas 
 <;ity public that he is, by every steamer, receiv- 
 ing new lots of books and all the latest news- 
 papers, pictorials and magazines; all for sale at 
 eastern prices. The catalogue of his Circulating 
 Library is now ready for free distribution, con- 
 taining over five hundred books, to which 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 21 7 
 
 thousands are being rapidly added bj^ the ar-- 
 rival of each steamer. The low price of one dol- 
 lar a month he hopes will induce all to take 
 advantage of this beneficial and instructive en- 
 terprise. This one dollar per month entitles each 
 subscriber to take home as many books as he or 
 she can read during the month, always returning 
 the one had. Open until 10 o'clock p. m. 
 
 SALMON PACK OF THE WESTAVARD. 
 
 In the early part of the season the run was 
 
 very light, but as the season advanced the run 
 
 improved and the result has been that more fish 
 
 have been packed than ever before. Xotwilh- 
 
 standing this the year has been a profitless one 
 
 to many. A number of new canneries were 
 
 started this year and considerable money has 
 
 been lost Some of the old companies are among 
 
 the sufferers, while some new companies have 
 
 thriven — notably the Arctic Packing Company, 
 
 and the Alaska Improvement Company. The 
 
 Hume Company is in the lead, although it has 
 
 fallen somewhat short in comparison with other 
 
 years. The entire p;ick of the westward for the 
 
 season is as follows: 
 
 Cases. 
 
 Kodiak Company 42,509 
 
 Karluk Company 02,914 
 
 Pacific Steam Whaling Company 14,830 
 
 Western Alaska Company 4.685 
 
 Alaska Improvement Company 18,970 
 
 Alutian Island Fishing & Mining Co 10,400 
 
 I>. L. Beck & Sons, representing the Alaska 
 
 Company, Chiguak Bay Company, and 
 
 Pyramid Company 52,018 
 
 Arctic Company 76,401 
 
 Thin Point Company 2,501 
 
2l8 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 Scotchler & Gibbs, representing the Cen- 
 tral Alaska Company and the Peninsu- 
 lar Trading and Fur Company 33,305 
 
 Bradley & Company 5,035 
 
 Hume Company 34,000 
 
 Nushayak Company 27,764 
 
 Northern Company 18,711 
 
 Pacific Company 5,013 
 
 Arctic Fishing Company 31,000 
 
 Shumagin Company 6,158 
 
 Russian- American Company 22,561 
 
 Royal Company 14,412 
 
 Bristol Bay Canning Company 11,100 
 
 Golden Gate Salmon Company 3,300 
 
 N. P. Trading Company *. 11,370 
 
 Bo wen, Col well & Company (barrels) 375 
 
 Alaska Commercial Company 108 
 
 From the Alaska Free Press, December 2S, 18S9, 
 
 Ka-ah-chin, a noted Indian living at the lower 
 Auk village, gave a graad potlatch and dance at 
 hisresldenceduring Christmas. This little amuse- 
 ment cost him S 1,000, which amount he distrib- 
 uted in the way of Christmas presents among 
 his people. Ka-ah-chin, through his great liber- 
 ality, has now become a great chief. 
 
 Through special invitation, Messrs. John Bern- 
 hardt, AdoJph Mezgar, William Yenabor, of the 
 renowned firm of Luhrig, Dresden. Saxony, and 
 Oscar Billharz, all of the Bear's Nest Mine on 
 Douglas Island, attended the Christmas tree and 
 entertainment given by the ladies of Juneau at 
 the opera house on Christmas Eve. These gen- 
 tlemen expressed much surprise at finding so 
 many cultured people and so much of civiliza- 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 219 
 
 tion in this remote corner of the globe, where 
 they had thought to find only a mining camp on 
 the frontier. 
 
 In the United States District Court in and for 
 the District of Alaska: Be it remembered that 
 by the authority in me vested by Section 3 of 
 the Organic Act of May 17, 1884. an act provid- 
 ing a civil government for Alaska, 1, John S. 
 Bugbee, United States District Judge in and for 
 the district of Alaska, deem it expedient and 
 necessary, and do authorize and direct that a 
 special session of the United States District 
 Court for the District of Alaska be convened for 
 the dispatch of the business of the said court at 
 10 a. m., the eighth day of Januaiy, 1890, at the 
 court room in the town of Juneau in said dis- 
 trict. JOHN S. BUGBEE. 
 
 Sitka, Alaska, December 7, 1889. 
 
 Our enterprising proprietor of the Juneau City 
 hotel, J. J. McGrath, is going below on the El- 
 der for the purpose of making arrangements to 
 build a large hotel in Juneau. He expects to 
 build on the corner of Seward and Front streets 
 or Seward and Second street. Mac is a rustler, 
 and when he starts an enterprise he makes it 
 win. 
 
 From the Alaska Free Press, November 14, iS.'p. 
 ALASKA. 
 
 Concerning which it may be mentioned that 
 commencing in 1880, when it first found a place 
 on the catalogue of our annual bullion returns, 
 having been credited that year with a jield of 
 $6,CC0, it has since steadily increased its bullion 
 output, which amounted last year to something 
 
220 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 over $1,CCO,000, a large gain on the product of 
 the year before. The entire yield of Alaska 
 amounts to about 83,000,000, all gold. That the 
 bullion product will go on increasing at an even 
 more rapid rate than it has heretofore done, ad- 
 mits of no doubt; though it should not be for- 
 gotten that the exploration and opening up of 
 the mineral districts in the interior of Alaska 
 must ever Ije attended with great difficulties and 
 heavy expense. Along and near the coast, and 
 on the islands, mining operations can be prose- 
 cuted at smaller cost and with infinitely less 
 trouble. 
 
 [ The amount estimated above is correct ac- 
 cording to official reports, but the production of 
 Alaska is far greater. A large portion of our 
 gold finds a market in British Columbia and 
 elsewhere, and no record can possibly be ob- 
 tained, and it is safe to estimate the amount 
 about doubles that indicated. — Ed. Mining 
 
 llECOllD. 1 
 
 STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS COUNTKY. 
 
 W. M. Olin, who was with the senatorial 
 party here in August, says: 'The Alasi<a In- 
 dians have substantial log houses where they 
 live in winter. As soon as the salmon begin to 
 run in the spring, they leave for the fishing 
 grounds, the inlets and rivers, and lish for sal- 
 mon for themselves and the canneries. There 
 we found them. They are a hard-working peo- 
 ple, the men fishing and hunting and the women 
 making baskets. The older men cannot speak 
 English but the younger generation is beginning 
 to do so. One of the committee asked one of the 
 spokesmen at Port Chester what the village 
 would do if the government would give them 
 S20.()0(). ' We don't want the government to 
 
THIRTKEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 2 21 
 
 give us one cent,' was the reply. *If it would 
 lend us enough to build a sawmill and a can- 
 nery we would pay a good interest on it, but we 
 don't ask for anything.' The Indians down at 
 this end of the possessions are called Thlinkets, 
 and we spent nearly all of our time with them. 
 Further north are the Aleuts, who are said to 
 be warlike, and beyond them are the Esquimaux. 
 AVe went up as far as Chilcat and the Chilcat In- 
 let, where there are bands of Indians of the 
 same name. The Chilcat is furthest north, and 
 up the inlet and the stream flowing into it is a 
 pass over into the Yukon country. The Chilcat 
 Indians have village right on the pass, and they 
 impose a tax on white men going across, in the 
 shape of packing fees. They refuse to allow 
 the whites to pack their own baggage, nor will 
 they allow them to hire other Indians to do it 
 for them. They insist upon their monopoly. 
 The Indians we saw were mostly dirty and filthy 
 in their habits. For instance, their favorite food 
 is obtained by burying the head and entrals of a 
 salmon in the earth until it is actually decom- 
 posed, and then digging it up and eating it with 
 seal oil." 
 
 Andy Anderson, superintendent and part 
 owner of the Silver Queen on She^^p Creek, 
 spent Christmas in Juneau. He informs us 
 that work in driving the lower cross-cut is still 
 progressing. They have excavated into the 
 side of the mountain and erected warm and 
 comfortable quarters therein, out of danger 
 from snowslides, and are now living there 
 nearer the mine. 
 
 Mr. S. B. Eobbins informs us that as soon as 
 ispring opens himself and partners will commence 
 
222 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 development work on their bonanza nt Sum Dum 
 Bay. This is a claim discovered by them last 
 summer, which upon first discovery was thought 
 to be very valuable, but upon coming to town 
 and getting the ore tested, proved to be very 
 rich, the ore assaying several hundred dollars 
 per ton. Immediately upon receiving the re- 
 '\uYns they returned to the place, secured their 
 ground, and aho located an extension each way. 
 together with millsights and water rights. They 
 now have the best of the ground covered with 
 valid locations, and intend next summer to de- 
 velop the same as far as their means will allow. 
 
 Al Noyes is still pushing work on the Gla3ier 
 mine on Sheep Creek. The vein continues t) 
 hold out good and strong and is yielding some 
 very rich silver ore. 
 
 Messrs. Willoughby & Ware, with several In- 
 dian laborers, are still hard at work getting 
 things in shape on their Admiralty Island prop- 
 erty for the erection of a quartz mill next spring 
 
 Juneau's enterprising postmaster is adding 
 sixteen new lock boxes to the postofiice, making 
 sixty-nine in all, and he says they will all be 
 taken by January 1. Our city can boast of hav- 
 ing the best regulated postoflice in Alaska and 
 the most accommodating postmaster. 
 
 From the Mining Record, September 12, 1SS9. 
 
 WINTER WOKK ON THE YUKON. 
 
 There arrived in Juneau on the Elder Mr. 
 Frank Carter, a miner and prospector who has 
 been in the Yukon country two years, having 
 gone in during the spring of J 887, and started 
 
THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 223 
 
 out by the way of St. Michaels last May and 
 went to San Francisco, thence to Juneau. He 
 reports that one hundred and twenty men win- 
 tered at the mouth of Forty Mile and thirty- 
 one on Stewart River. During the winter a 
 large number of miners put in the time by tak- 
 ing the frozen gravel out and putting it on the 
 banks of the stream and washing it in the spring 
 when it thawed. All who put in their time in 
 this way made more or less, while some made as 
 high as S:^.00O. A company of Frenchmen who 
 thawed gravel cleaned up in the spring 100 
 ounces to the man. 
 
 Selections from Alaska Free Press of Nov. 9, 1S89. 
 
 Governor Knapp has issued his proclamation 
 setting aeide Thursday, the 28th day of Novem- 
 ber, as a day of Thanksgiving. 
 
 THE CITY OF TOPEKA. 
 
 The new boat, the City of Topeka, which the 
 Pacific Coast Stean ship Company has secured 
 to take the place of the Corona on the Alaska 
 route, will sail for Alaska on the Corona's 
 scheduled sailing day. She will net carry any 
 passengers north this trip. 
 
 The City of Topeka was built at Chester, Pa., 
 in 1884, and is consequently still a new boat. 
 She is of iron, and is 198 feet long, has a width 
 of beam of 35.2 feet and a depth of hold of 12 
 feet. Her gross tonnage is 1,057.29, and her net 
 tonnage 746.63. From this it will be seen that 
 the City of Topeka is much smaller than the 
 Corona. 
 
 She has sleeping accommodations for seventy- 
 five persons; but for her size, her freight carrying 
 capacity is good. She has good power, and is 
 
1224 THIRTEEN YEARS IN ALASKA. 
 
 the fastest boat of her size on the coast. She 
 was built originally for Boston parties, but 
 three years ago was purchased by the Atchison, 
 Topeka & Santa Fe Ilailroad Company and 
 brought to the coast. Since then she has done 
 but little. The company intend fitting her up 
 before she is brought here. 
 
 Dick Willoughby came in from Admiralty Is- 
 land on Thursday last. He informs us that 
 himself and Ware will immediately make ar- 
 rangements for the erection of a sawmill on 
 their property next spring. So far, development 
 work shows enough ore in sight to more than 
 pay all expense of constructing such plant, to- 
 gether with ditches, etc., and they are fully war- 
 ranted in going ahead in this enterprise. Dick 
 Johnson, an experienced mill man, will have 
 charge of the construction of this mill. 
 
 In a few days active development work will 
 be commenced on the Sheridan lode, situated at 
 the head of Sheep Creek basin, which property 
 is now under bond to A. P. Swineford. This 
 vein sliows strong for nearly 2,000 feet, and car- 
 ries gray copper and brittle silver ore from the 
 grass root^. 
 
 FRANKLIN HOTEL, 
 
 Established in 1881, 
 
 OLDS & ORTON, Proprietors, 
 
 Successors to AVheelock & Flannery. 
 
 First class accoinmodations, charges moderate. The 
 tables always svipplied with the best the market affords. 
 Fresh Bread, Cakes and Pies for sale. 
 Parties furnishing their own blankets will receive 
 board and lodging lor $7 per week. 
 
 WATEll FRONT, JUNEAU, ALASKA.