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 ^a I ri Jt, 
 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 A JOURNAL OF QUIET ADVENTURE 
 IN ALASKA 
 
 BY 
 
 ROCKWELL KENT 
 
 WITH DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR 
 AND AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 DOROTHY CANFIELD 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 tEbe ltnfci;erboclter ipres? 
 
 1920 
 
 /^v 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ROCKWELL KENT 
 
 PLATES ENGRAVED UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF WILLIAM G. WATT 
 
 APh 19 ibl^U" •, 
 
 THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS, NEW YORK 
 
 ^ 
 
 )CI,A5RGr)?7 
 
 
To 
 
 old L, M. Olson and 
 
 young Rockwell Kent 
 
 of Fox Island 
 
 this journal is 
 
 respectfully dedicated 
 
The author acknowledges the courtesy of the owners of his 
 drawings in permitting their reproduction in this book: 
 
 MRS. ERNEST I. WHITE 
 ROBERT NICHOLS 
 STEPHEN C. CLARK 
 MRS. PAYNE THOMPSON 
 MRS. JOSEPH FLANNERY 
 MRS. J. S. MORGAN, JR. 
 DR. ARNOLD KLEBS 
 HENRY S. CHURCHILL 
 MRS. PERCY W. DARBYSHIRE 
 MRS. MEREDITH HARE 
 PAUL MANSHIP 
 MRS. VALENTINE WINTERS 
 HENRY NEWMAN 
 HUNT DIEDERICH 
 PURCELL JONES 
 M.KNOEDLER AND COMPANY 
 ALBERT STERNER 
 MARIE STERNER 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ^ AD jesting Pilate asked "What is Art?" he would 
 
 ft,^^ have waited quite as many centuries for an answer as 
 ^m ^k he has for the answer to his question about Truth. 
 # I V For art to the artist, and art to the rest of us, are two 
 ^^W M. very different things. Art to the artist is quite simply 
 Life, his life, of which he has an amplitude and in- 
 tensity unknown to us. What he does for us is to thrill us awake 
 to the amplitude and intensity of all life, our own included. And 
 this is a miracle for which we can never be thankful enough. 
 
 This, at least, is what Rockwell Kent's Alaska drawings and 
 Alaska journal do for me; they take me away from that tired 
 absorption in things of little import which makes up most of our 
 human life and make me see, not an unreal world of romantic 
 illusion, that fool's pleasure given by the second-rate artist, but 
 the real wonder-world in which I live and have always lived. 
 They make me see suddenly that there is a vast deal more in the 
 
 vli 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 world than embittering and anxious preoccupations, that much of it 
 is fine, much is comforting, much awe-inspiring, much profoundly 
 tragic, and all of it makes up a whole so vast that no living organism 
 need feel cramped. 
 
 No other of the qualities of the journal and drawings goes home 
 to me more than the unforced authenticity of the impression set 
 down by this strong and ardent artist. Emerson's grandeur is in- 
 finitely more convincing to me because of his homeliness, and I feel 
 a perverse Yankee suspicion of those who deal in sublimities only. 
 The man who can extract the whole quaint savor out of that 
 magical, prosaic, humorous moment of human life, the first stretch- 
 ing yawn of the early morning, that man can make me believe that 
 I too see the north wind running mightily athwart the sky. And the 
 artist who can put into the simplest drawing of a man and a little 
 boy eating together at a rough table in a rough cabin, all the dear 
 soUdity of family and home life, with its quiet triumph against over- 
 powering Nature, that artist can make me bow my head before the 
 sincerity of his impressive " Night." 
 
 The homeliness of the diary, its courageously unaffected natural- 
 ness, how it carries one out of fussy complications to a long breath 
 of relief in the fewness and permanence of things that count ! And 
 the humor of it . . . sometimes deliciously unintentional like the 
 picture of the artist finishing a fine drawing, setting the beans to 
 soak, bathing in the bread pan, and going to bed to read a chapter of 
 Blake, sometimes intentional and shrewd like " a banana-peel on a 
 mountain-top tames that wilderness," or "colds, like bad temper 
 and loss of faith, are a malady of the city crowd " ; sometimes outright 
 and hearty like a child's joke, as in the amusingly faithful portrait of 
 the pot-bellied, self-important personality of the air-tight stove ! 
 
 There are only three human characters in this quiet, intense 
 record, all of them significant and vital. First of them is the artist 
 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 himself, who in these notes, written originally for the eyes of his in- 
 timates only, speaks out with a free unselfconsciousness as rare in 
 our modern world as the virgin solitude of the island where he lived. 
 Here is the artist at work, creating, as Henry James said he could 
 not be shown; the artist, that is, a man violently alive, full-blooded 
 and fine, fierce and pure, arrogant and tender, with an elate, boastful, 
 well-founded certainty of his strength, rejoicing m his work, in his 
 son, in his friend, in the whole visible world, and most of all in himself 
 and his own vigorous possibilities for good, evil, and creative work. 
 
 The other two human characters in this adventuring quest after 
 great and simple things are acquisitions to be thankful for, also ; the 
 touchingly tender-hearted, knight-like, beautiful, funny little boy; 
 and lovable, dignified old Olson ... a fiction writer wonders in 
 despair why old Olson so vividly, brilliantly lives in these unstudied 
 pages, solid, breathing, warm, as miraculously different from all other 
 human beings as any creature of flesh and blood who draws the 
 mysterious breath of life beside you in the same room. 
 
 Fox Island lives too; we walk about it, treading solidly, loving 
 ** every log and rotten stump, gnarled tree, every mound and path, 
 the rocks and brooks, each a being in itself, " just as little Rockwell 
 does; and we climb with the " two younger ones up the sheer, snow- 
 covered ridge till across the great jagged teeth of Fenris-the-Wolf, 
 we see the glory of the open sea." We " look up at Olson, swaying 
 gigantic on the deck above us, as we bump the side in our little boat " 
 and we go down into the warm cabin full of the fumes of cooking and 
 good-fellowship, and drink with the old skipper and the old Swede till 
 we too see deep "under the white hard surface of where life is 
 hidden." 
 
 All this firm earth gives authority and penetration to the shining 
 beauty which pervades the book and the drawings, carries us along 
 to share it, not merely to look at it; to feel it, not merely to admire it. 
 
 ix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The notes here published were written, I believe, day by day for 
 the author's wife and children, and are here published almost as 
 they were set down, as commentary to the drawings. Well, let us be 
 thankful that we were let into the family circle and along with them 
 can spend six months in the midst of strength and beauty and tender- 
 ness and fun and majesty, close to simple things, great because they 
 are real. The author may be sure that we leave them with the same 
 backward-looking wistfulness he feels, and with the same gratitude 
 for having known them. 
 
 Dorothy Canfield. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 •''^L^L^^OST of this book was written on Fox Island in Alaska, 
 y% ■ ■ a journal added to from day to day. It was not 
 m m m m meant for publication but merely that we who were 
 W^ W P living there that year might have always an unfailing 
 memory of a wonderfully happy time. There's a ring of truth to all 
 freshly written records of experience that, whatever their short- 
 comings, makes them at least inviolable. Besides the journal, a 
 few letters to friends have been drawn upon. All are given im- 
 changed but for the flux of a new paragraph or chapter here and 
 there to form a kind of narrative, the only possible literary ac- 
 companiment to the drawings of that period herein published. The 
 whole is a picture of quiet adventure in the wilderness, above all 
 an adventure of the spirit. 
 
 What one would look for in a story of the wild Northwest is 
 lacking in these pages. To have been further from a settled town 
 might have brought not more but less excitement. The wonder of 
 the wilderness was its tranquillity. It seemed that there both men 
 and the wild beasts pursued their own paths freely and, as if con- 
 scious of the wide freedom of their world, molested one another not 
 at all. It was the bitter philosophy of the old trapper who was our 
 companion that of all animals Man was the most terrible; for if 
 
 zi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 the beasts fought and killed for some good cause Man slew for 
 none. 
 
 Deliberately I have begun this happy story far out in Resurrection 
 Bay; — and again dropped its peaceful thread on the forlorn thresh- 
 old of the town. We found Fox Island on Sunday, August 
 twenty-fifth, 1918, and left there finally on the seventeenth of the 
 following March. 
 
 R. K. 
 
 Arlington, Vermont, 
 December, 1919. 
 
 xu 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 Preface 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. — Discovery 
 II. — Arrival . 
 III.— Chores . 
 IV.— Winter . 
 V. — ^Waiting 
 VI. — Exciu-sion 
 VII.— Home . 
 VIII.— Christmas 
 IX.— New Year 
 X.— Olson. 
 XI.— Twilight 
 
 Page 
 
 vii 
 xi 
 
 I 
 
 10 
 
 41 
 
 67 
 
 84 
 
 102 
 
 109 
 
 134 
 150 
 182 
 200 
 
 XIU 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 *' Zarathustra Himself Led the Ugliest Man by the Hand, in 
 Order to Show Him His Night- World and the Great Round 
 Moon and the Silvery Waterfalls Nigh Unto His Cave" 
 
 Unknown Waters 
 
 Home Building . 
 
 Fire Wood 
 
 The Sleeper 
 
 The Windlass 
 
 The Snow Queen 
 
 Fox Island, Resurrection Bay, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska 
 
 Rain Torrents 
 
 Day 
 
 Night .... 
 
 Wilderness 
 
 One of Rockwell's Drawings 
 
 Sunrise .... 
 
 Adventure 
 
 XV 
 
 2 / 
 
 6 *' 
 
 12 
 
 i6 
 
 20 " 
 24 ' 
 28 
 32 
 
 36 
 
 42 
 
 46 
 
 50 
 
 54 
 56 
 60 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 On the Height 68 
 
 The Day's Work 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . . 72 
 
 Meal Time 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 76 
 
 Day's End . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 80 
 
 The Cabin Window 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 90 
 
 "Go to Bed" . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 Driftwood . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 98 
 
 The Whittler 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 104 
 
 "GetUpl" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 no 
 
 Man 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • "4 
 
 Woman 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 118 
 
 Foreboding 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 124 
 
 Lone Man 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 128 
 
 Cain 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 136 
 
 Superman 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 140 
 
 The North Wind 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 146 
 
 Another of Rockwell's Drawings 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 152 
 
 Weltschmerz .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 154 
 
 Victory ..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 158 
 
 Zarathustra and His Playmates . 
 
 
 
 
 
 164 
 
 Frozen Fall .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 168 
 
 The Hermit 
 
 
 , , 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 172 
 
 XVI 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Ecstasy 
 
 Pelagic Reverie . 
 Prison Bars 
 Running Water 
 Immanence 
 The Vision 
 The Imperishable 
 The Star-Lighter 
 
 Facing Page 
 
 176 ' 
 
 184 ,- 
 
 188 ^ 
 
 192 . 
 
 196 / 
 
 202 
 
 206 
 
 210 
 
 XVll 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 DISCOVERY 
 
 ®E must have been rowing for an hour across that 
 seeming mile-wide stretch of water. 
 The air is so clear in the North that one new to 
 it is lost in the crowding of great heights and spaces. 
 Distant peaks had risen over the lower mountains of 
 the shore astern. Steep spruce-clad slopes confronted us. All around 
 was the wilderness, a no-man's-land of mountains or of cragged 
 islands, and southward the wide, the limitless, Pacific Ocean. 
 
 A calm, blue summer's day, — and on we rowed upon our search. 
 Somewhere there must stand awaiting us, as we had pictured it, a 
 little forgotten cabin, one that some prospector or fisherman had 
 built; the cabin, the grove, the sheltered beach, the spring or stream 
 of fresh, cold water, — we could have drawn it even to the view that it 
 must overlook, the sea, and mountains, and the glorious West. We 
 came to this new land, a boy and a man, entirely on a dreamer's 
 search ; having had vision of a Northern Paradise, we came to find it. 
 With less faith it might have seemed to us a hopeless thing 
 exploring the unknown for what you've only dreamed was there. 
 Doubt never crossed our minds. To sail uncharted waters and 
 
 I 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 follow virgin shores — what a life for men! As the new coast 
 unfolds itself the imagination leaps into full vision of the human 
 drama that there is immanent. The grandeur of the ocean cliff is 
 terrible with threat of shipwreck. To that high ledge the wave may 
 lift you ; there, where that storm-dwarfed spruce has found a hold for 
 half a century, you perhaps could cling. A hundred times a day you 
 think of death or of escaping it by might and courage. Then at the 
 first softening of the coast toward a cove or inlet you imagine all the 
 mild beauties of a safe harbor, the quiet water and the beach to land 
 upon, the house-site, a homestead of your own, cleared land, and 
 pastures that look seaward. 
 
 Now having crossed the bay thick wooded coast confronted us, 
 and we worked eastward toward a wide-mouthed inlet of that shore. 
 But all at once there appeared as if from nowhere a little, motor- 
 driven dory coming toward us. We hailed and drew together to 
 converse. It was an old man alone. We told him frankly what we 
 were and what we sought. 
 
 " Come with me, " he cried heartily, " come and I show you the 
 place to live. " And he pointed oceanward where, straight in the 
 path of the sun stood the huge, dark, mountain mass of an island. 
 Then, seizing upon our line, he towed us with him to the south. 
 
 The gentle breeze came up. With prow high in the air we spanked 
 the wavelets, and the glistening spray flew over us. On we went 
 straight at the dazzling sun and we laughed to think that we were 
 being carried we knew not where. And all the while the strange old 
 man spoke never a word nor turned his head, driving us on as if he 
 feared we might demand to be unloosed. At last his island towered 
 above us. It was truly sheer-sided and immense, and for all we could 
 discover harborless ; till in a moment rounding the great headland of 
 its northern end the crescent arms of the harbor were about us, — 
 and we were there 1 
 
 2 
 
"ZARATHUSTRA fflMSELF LED THE UGLIEST MAN BY THE HAND, 
 IN ORDER TO SHOW HIM HIS NIGHT-WORLD AND THE GREAT 
 ROUND MOON AND THE SILVERY WATERFALLS NIGH UNTO 
 HIS CAVE" 
 
DISCOVERY 
 
 What a scene ! Twin lofty mountain masses flanked the entrance 
 and from the back of these the land dipped downwards like a ham- 
 mock swung between them, its lowest point behind the center of the 
 crescent. A clean and smooth, dark-pebbled beach went all around 
 the bay, the tide line marked with driftwood, gleaming, bleached 
 bones of trees, fantastic roots and worn and shredded trunks. Above 
 the beach a band of brilliant green and then the deep, black spaces of 
 the forest. So huge was the scale of all of this that for some time we 
 looked in vain for any habitation, at last incredulously seeing what 
 we had taken to be bowlders assume the form of cabins. 
 
 The dories grounded and we leapt ashore, and followed up the 
 beach onto the level ground seeing and wondering, with beating 
 hearts, and crying all the time to ourselves: *' It isn't possible, it isn't 
 real!" 
 
 There was a green grass lawn beneath our feet extending on one 
 side under an orchard of neatly pruned alders to the mountain's base, 
 and on the other into the forest or along the shore. In the midst of the 
 clearing stood the old man's cabin. He led us into it. One little 
 room, neat and comfortable ; two windows south and west with the 
 warm sun streaming through them; a stove, a table by the window 
 with dishes piled neatly on it; some shelves of food and one of books 
 and papers; a bunk with gaily striped blankets; boots, guns, tools, 
 tobacco-boxes ; a ladder to the store-room in the loft. And the old 
 man himself: a Swede, short, round and sturdy, head bald as though 
 with a priestly tonsure, high cheek bones and broad face, full lips, a 
 sensitive small chin, — and his little eyes sparkled with good humor. 
 
 " Look, this is all mine, " he was saying; " you can live here with 
 me — with me and Nanny, " — for by this time not only had the milk 
 goat Nanny entered but a whole family of foolish-faced Angoras, 
 father, mother, and child, nosing among us or overturning what they 
 could in search of food. He took us to the fox corral a few yards from 
 
 5 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 the house. There were the blues in its far corner eying us askance. 
 We saw the old goat cabin built of logs and were told of a newer one, 
 an unused one down the shore and deeper in the woods. 
 
 " But come, " he said with pride, " I show you my location notice. 
 I have done it all in the proper way and I will get my title from Wash- 
 ington soon. I have staked fifty acres. It is all described in the 
 notice I have posted ; and I would like to see anybody get that away 
 from me. " 
 
 By now we had reached the great spruce tree to whose trunk he 
 had affixed a sort of roofed tablet or shrine to house the precious 
 document. But, ah look ! the tablet was bare I only that from a small 
 nail in it hung a torn shred of paper. 
 
 '* Billy, Nanny! " roared the old man in irritation and mock rage; 
 and he shook his fist at the foolish looking culprits who regarded us 
 this time, wisely, from a distance. " And now come to the lake ! " 
 
 We went down an avenue through the tall spruce trees. The sun 
 flecked our path and fired here and there a flame-colored mushroom 
 that blazed in the forest gloom. Right and left we saw deep vistas, 
 and straight ahead a broad and sunlit space, a valley between hills ; 
 there lay the lake. It was a real lake, broad and clean, of many acres 
 in extent, and the whole mountain side lay mirrored in it with the 
 purple zenith sky at our feet. Not a breath disturbed the surface, not 
 a ripple broke along the pebbly beach ; it was dead silent here but for 
 maybe the far off sound of surf, and without motion but that high 
 aloft two eagles soared with steady wing searching the mountain tops. 
 Ah, supreme moment! These are the times in life — when nothing 
 happens — but in quietness the soul expands. 
 
 Time pressed and we turned back. *' Show us that other cabin, 
 we must go. " 
 
 The old man took us by a short cut to the cabin he had spoken of. 
 It stood in a darkly shadowed clearing, a log cabin of ample size with 
 
 6 
 
UNKNOWN WATERS 
 
DISCOVERY 
 
 a small doorway that you stooped to enter. Inside was dark but for 
 a little opening to the west. There were the stalls for goats, coops for 
 some Belgian hares he had once kept, a tin whirligig for squirrels 
 hanging in the gable peak, and under foot a shaky floor covered with 
 filth. 
 
 But I knew what that cabin might become. I saw it once and said, 
 " This is the place we'll live. " And then returning to our boat we 
 shook hands on this great, quick finding of the thing we'd sought and, 
 since we could not stay then as he begged us to, promised a speedy 
 return with all our household goods. " Olson's my name, " he said, 
 " I need you here. We'll make a go of it. " 
 
 The south wind had risen and the white caps flew. We crossed the 
 bay pulling lustily for very joy. Reaching the other shore we saw, 
 too late, crossing the bay in search of us the small white sail of the 
 party that had brought us part way from the town. So we turned and 
 followed them until at last we met to their relief and the great satis- 
 faction of our tired arms. 
 
^}^^^^. °il^°^^^^^t^. .^^'^^°^; ^^surrect ion Bay. Alaska . Lat. 55)°.54' N. LonH^-j^W 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 ARRIVAL 
 
 OUR journal of Fox Island begins properly with the day of 
 our final coming there, Wednesday, September the 
 twenty-eighth, 1918. 
 At nine o'clock in the morning of that day we slid 
 our dory into the water from the beach at Seward, 
 clamped our little patched-up three and one half horse-power 
 Evenrude motor in the stem, and commenced our loading. 
 
 Since the main part of such a story, as in all these following pages 
 we shall have to tell, must consist in the detailing of the innumerable 
 little commonplaces of our daily lives, we shall begin at once with a 
 list, as far as we have record of it, of all we carried with us. It follows : 
 
 I Yukon stove 
 
 4 lengths stovepipe 
 
 I broom 
 
 I bread pan 
 
 I wash basin 
 
 I bean pot 
 I mixing bowl 
 Turpentine 
 Linseed oil 
 Nails, etc. 
 
 10 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 10 gals, gasoline 
 lo lbs. rice 
 
 5 lbs. barley 
 
 10 lbs. cornmeal 
 10 lbs. rolled oats 
 10 lbs. hominy 
 10 lbs. farina 
 10 lbs. sugar 
 50 lbs. flour 
 2 packages bran 
 
 6 cans cocoa 
 I lb. tea 
 
 I case milk 
 8 lbs. chocolate 
 I gal. sirup 
 I gal. cooking oil 
 
 1 piece bacon 
 
 2 cans dried eggs 
 
 2 cans baked beans 
 6 lemons 
 
 2 packages pancake flour 
 10 lbs. whole wheat flour 
 6 ivory soap 
 
 3 laundry soap 
 6 agate cups 
 
 4 agate plates 
 4 agate bowls 
 2 agate dishes 
 
 4 pots 
 
 2 pillows 
 
 2 comforters 
 
 I roll building paper 
 I frying pan 
 
 3 bread tins 
 
 10 lbs. lima beans 
 10 lbs. white beans 
 
 5 lbs. Mexican beans 
 10 lbs. spaghetti 
 
 12 cans tomatoes 
 100 lbs. potatoes 
 10 lbs. dried peas 
 5 lbs. salt 
 I gal. peanut butter 
 
 1 gal. marmalade 
 Pepper 
 
 Yeast 
 
 5 lbs. prunes 
 5 lbs. apricots 
 5 lbs. carrots 
 10 lbs. onions 
 
 4 cans soup 
 12 candles 
 
 2 Dutch Cleanser 
 Matches 
 
 I tea kettle 
 Pails, etc. 
 
 Also there were a heavy trunk containing books, paints, etc., one 
 duffel bag, one suit case, and a few other things. And when these 
 were stowed away in the dory there was little room for ourselves. 
 However, at ten o'clock we cast off and started for Fox Island with 
 the little motor rurming beautifully. 
 
 It lasted for three miles when at once, with a bang and a whir, the 
 motor raced, and the boat stood motionless on the calm gray water. 
 Through the fog we could just discern the cabin of a fisherman on the 
 nearest point of shore — perhaps a mile distant. We rowed there as 
 
 II 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 best we could, seated somehow atop our household goods; we un- 
 loaded our useless motor, our gasoline, and our batteries, cleared a 
 little space in the boat for ourselves to man the oars, and in a miser- 
 able drizzling rain, pushed off for a long, long pull to the island. By 
 too literal a following of directions I lengthened the remainder of the 
 course to twelve miles, and that we rowed, I don't know how, in four 
 hours and a half. Fortunately the water was as calm as could be. 
 Rockwell was a revelation to me. With scarcely a rest he pulled at 
 the heavy oars that at first he had hardly understood to manage ; and 
 when we reached the island he was hilarious with good spirits. 
 
 We unloaded with the help of Olson — whom by the way we must 
 introduce at some length — and stowed our goods in his house and 
 shed. We cooked our supper on his stove and slept that night and the 
 next on his floor ; and then, having our own quarters by that time in 
 passable shape, quit his friendly roof for the most hospitable, kindly, 
 and altogether comfortable roof in the world — our own. 
 
 Olson is about sixty-five years of age. He's a pioneer of Alaska 
 and knows the country from one end to the other. He has prospected 
 for gold on the Yukon, he was at Nome with the first rush there, he 
 has trapped along a thousand miles of coast; and now, ever unsuccess- 
 ful and still enterprising, he is the proprietor of two pairs of blue 
 foxes — in corrals — and four goats. He's a kind-hearted, genial old 
 man with a vast store of knowledge and true wisdom. 
 
 The map shows our Fox Island estate. Our cabin was built as a 
 shelter for Angora goats somewhat over a year ago. It is a roughly 
 built log structure of about fourteen by seventeen feet, inside dimen- 
 sions, and was quite dark but for the small door and a two by 
 two feet opening on the western side. We went to work upon it the 
 morning following our arrival and in two days, as has been told, made 
 it a fit place to live in but by no means the luxurious home that it was 
 in our mind to make. Our cabin to-day is the product of weeks' more 
 
 12 
 
HOME BUILDING 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 labor. To describe it is to account for our time almost to the begimiing 
 of the detailed days of this diary. 
 
 Tread first upon a broad, plank doorstep the hatch of some ill- 
 fated vessel — the sea's gift to us of a front veranda ; stoop your head 
 to four feet six inches and, drawing the latchstring, enter. Before 
 you at the south end of the sombre, log interior is a muUioned window 
 willing to admit more light than can penetrate the forest beyond. 
 Before it is a fixed work table littered with papers, pencils, paints, and 
 brushes. On each long side of the cabin is a shelf the eaves' height, 
 five feet from the floor. The right-hand one is packed with foods in 
 sacks and tins and boxes, the left-hand shelf holds clothes and toys, 
 paints and a flute, and at the far comer built to the floor in orthodox 
 bookcase fashion, a library. 
 
 We may glance at the books. There are : 
 
 " Indian Essays ." Coomaraswamy 
 
 " Griechische Vasen " 
 
 " The Water Babies " 
 
 " Robinson Crusoe " 
 
 " The Prose Edda " 
 
 " Anson's Voyages " 
 
 " A Literary History of Ireland. " Douglas Hyde 
 
 " The Iliad " 
 
 " The Crock of Gold " 
 
 " The Odyssey " 
 
 Andersen's " Fairy Tales " 
 
 " The Oxford Book of English Verse " 
 
 " The Home Medical Library " 
 
 Blake's " Poems " 
 
 GUchrist's " Life of Blake " 
 
 " The Tree Dwellers," " The Cave Dwellers," " The Sea People," etc. 
 
 " Pacific Coast Tide Table " 
 
 " Thus Spake Zarathustra " 
 
 " The Book of the Ocean " 
 
 " Albrecht Diirer " (A Short Biography) 
 
 "WilhelmMeister" 
 
 Nansen's " In Northern Mists " 
 
 15 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 In the center of the right-hand wall is a small low window and 
 beneath it the dining table. Right at the door where we stand, to 
 our left, is the sheet-iron Yukon stove and behind it another food- 
 laden shelf. A new floor of broad unplaned boards is under our feet, 
 a wooden platform — it is a bed — stands in the left-hand comer by 
 the stove. Clothes hang under the shelves; pots and pans upon the 
 wall, snowshoes and saws ; a rack for plates in one place, a cupboard 
 for potatoes and turnips behind the door — the cellar it may be called ; 
 the trunk for a seat, boxes for chairs, one stool for style ; axes here 
 and boots innumerable there, and we have, I think, all that the eye 
 can take in of this adventurers' home ! 
 
 Trees stood thick about our cabin when we first came there ; and 
 between it and the shore a dense and continuous thicket of large 
 alders and sapling spruces. Day by day we cleared the ground ; cutting 
 avenues and vistas; then, though contented at first with these, en- 
 larging them until they merged, and the sun began to shine about the 
 cabin. It grew brighter then and drier, — nonsense 1 am I mistaking 
 the daylight for the sun? I can remember but one or two fair days in 
 all the three weeks of our first stay on the island. 
 
 For a true record of this matter Olson's diary shall be copied 
 into these pages. It follows in full with his own phonetic spelling 
 as leaven. 
 
 Sunday, Aug. 25th. — Wary fin Day. over tu Hump Bay got 2 salmon an 
 artist cam ar to Day and going to seward efter his outfit and ar going to sta 
 Hear this Winter in the new Cabbin. 
 
 Wed. 28th. — Drisly rain and cold. Mr. Kint and is son arivd from seward 
 this afternoon, goats out all night. 
 
 Thurs. 29th. — goats cam ome — 12.30 p. m. Mr. Kint Working on the Cabbin 
 fixing at up. Drisly rain all night and all day. 
 
 Fri. 30th. — Wary fin day and the goats vant for the montane igan. Help 
 putting Windoes i to the Cabbin. 
 
 Sat. 31st. — Foggy day. Big steamer going to seward. 
 
 16 
 
FIRE WOOD 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 September 
 
 Sun. I St. — Mead a trip around the island. Cloudy Day. 
 
 M. 2. — Big rainstorm from the S. E. goats all in the stabel. 
 
 T. 3. — Drisly rain all Day. 
 
 W. 4. — going to seward. 
 
 T. 5. — Came Home 1 p.m. 
 
 F. 6. — Drisly rain and Calm Wather. 
 
 S. 7. — S. E. rainstorm. 
 
 Sun. 8. — Big S. E. rainstorm. 
 
 M.9.— 
 
 T. 10.— " " " 
 
 W. II.— first Colld night this fall. Clear Calm Day. 
 
 T. 12. — Clowdy and Calm. Tug and Barg going West. 
 
 F. 13. — Steamer from the Sought 5.30 p.m. Drisly rain and Calm. 
 
 S. 14. — raining Wary Hard, the litly angora queen ar in Hit this morning. 
 Fraet steamer from West going to Seward. 
 
 Sun. 15. — raining Wary Hard all Day. the goats ar in the cabbin all Day 
 sought Est storm. 
 
 M. 16. — S.E. rainstorm. 
 
 T. 17. — raining all Day. North Est storm With Caps and Wullys all over. 
 
 W. 18. — Wary fear day. Mr. Kint and the Boy vant to seward this morning. 
 
 T. 19. — raining heard all day steamer from West going to seward 4 p.m. 
 
 F. 20. — raining heard all Day. 
 
 S. 21. — Wary rof rainstorm from Soght Est. Wullys all over. 
 
 Sun. 22. — Steamer from West going to Seward 2 p.m. the tied vary Hie Comes 
 clear up in the gras and the surf ar Stiring up all the Driftwood along the shore, 
 raining lik Hell. 
 
 M. 23. — raining all Day. 
 
 T. 24. — Snow on top of the mountins on the maenland a tre mastid skuner 
 from West going to Seward, toed by som gassboth raining to Day egan. Mr. 
 Kint and son got ome to the island this Evening. 
 
 September fourteenth. 
 
 I Stopped writing, for the fire had almost gone out and the cold 
 wind blew in from two dozen great crevasses in the walls. The best 
 of log cabins need recalking, I am told, once a year, and mine, 
 roughly built as it is, needs it now in the worst way. Some openings 
 are four or five inches wide by two feet long. We've gathered a great 
 
 19 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 quantity of moss for calking, but it has rained so persistently that it 
 cannot dry out to be fit for use. 
 
 Well, it rains and rains and rains. Since beginning this journal 
 we've had not one fair day, and since we've been here on the island, 
 seventeen days, there has been only one rainless day. There has been 
 but one cloudless sunrise. I awoke that day just at dawn and looking 
 across out of the tiny square window that faces the water could see the 
 blue — the deep blue — mountains and the rosy western sky behind 
 them. At last the sun rose somewhere and tipped the peaks and the 
 hanging glaciers, growing and growing till the shadows of other peaks 
 were driven down into the sea and the many ranges stood full in the 
 morning light. The twilight hours are so wonderfully long here as the 
 sun creeps down the horizon. Just think! there'll be months this 
 winter when we'll not see the sun from our cove — only see it touching 
 the peaks above us or the distant mountains. It will be a strange 
 life without the dear, warm sun I 
 
 I wonder if you can imagine what fun pioneering is. To be in a 
 country where the fairest spot is yours for the wanting it, to cut and 
 build your own home out of the land you stand upon, to plan and cre- 
 ate clearings, parks, vistas, and make out of a wilderness an ordered 
 place I Of course so much was done — nearly all — when I came. But 
 in clearing up the woods and in improving my own stead I have had a 
 taste of the great experience. Ah, it's a fine and wholesome life ! . . . 
 
 Another day. The storm rages out of doors. To-day I stufifed the 
 largest of the cracks in our wall with woolen socks, sweaters, and all 
 manner of clothes. It's so warm and cozy here now I Olson has been 
 in to see me for a long chat. I believe he can give one the material 
 for a thrilling book of adventure. Take his story, or enough of the 
 thousand wild incidents of it, give it its true setting — publishing a 
 map of that part of the coast where his travels mostly lay — let it be 
 frankly his story retold, above all true and savoring of this land — 
 
 20 
 
THE SLEEPER 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 and I believe no record of pioneering or adventure could surpass it. 
 He's a keen philosopher and by his critical observations gives his 
 discourse a fine dignity. On Olson's return to Idaho in the '8o's after 
 his first trip to Alaska a friend of his, a saloon-keeper, came out into 
 the street, seized him, and drew him into his place. " Sit down, Ol- 
 son, " he said, ** and tell us about Alaska from beginning to end." 
 And the traveler told his long wonder-story to the crowd. 
 
 At last he finished. 
 
 " Olson, " said his friend, " that would make the greatest book 
 in the world — if it was only lies. " 
 
 Gee, how the storm rages ! 
 
 I'm relieved to-night; Rockwell, who seems to have a felon on 
 his finger, is improving under the heroic treatment he submits to. 
 I've had visions of operating on it myself — a deep incision to the bone 
 being the method. It is no fun having such ailments to handle — 
 unless you're of the type Olson seems to be who, if his eye troubled 
 him seriously, would stick in his finger and pull the eye out, — and 
 then doubtless fill the socket with tobacco juice. 
 
 We have reached Wednesday, September the eighteenth. 
 
 That day the sun did shine. We rowed to Seward, Rockwell and 
 I ; stopped for the motor that on our last trip we had left by the way, 
 but found the surf too high. At Seward the beach was strewn with 
 damaged and demolished boats from a recent storm. Moreover, in 
 the town the glacial stream was swollen to a torrent ; the barriers had, 
 some of them, been swept away ; a bridge was gone, the railroad tracks 
 were flooded, the hospital was surrounded and almost floated from 
 its foundations. And we saw the next day, when it again poured 
 rain, the black-robed sisters of charity, booted to the thighs, fleeing 
 through the water to a safer place. It stormed incessantly for four 
 days more. Although I had taken what seemed ample precaution 
 for the safety of my dory, she was caught at the height of the storm 
 
 23 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 by the exceptional tide of that season and carried against a stranded 
 boat high up on the shore, and pinioned there by a heavy pile torn 
 from the wharf. But our boat escaped undamaged. 
 
 Seward was dull for Rockwell and me. We've not come this long 
 way from our home for the life of a small town. America ofifers 
 nothing to the tourist but the wonders of its natural scenery. All 
 towns are of one mold or inspired, as it were, with one ideal. And 
 I cannot see in considering the buildings of a single period in the East 
 and in the West any indication of diversity of character, of ideals, of 
 special tradition; any susceptibility to the influence of local condi- 
 tions, nothing in any typical American house or town where I have 
 been that does not say *' made in one mill." There's a God forsaken 
 hideousness and commonplaceness about Alaskan architecture that 
 almost amounts to character — but it is not quite bad enough to re- 
 deem itself. Somewhere in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies 
 there's a little town of one street backed up against the towering 
 mountains. Dominating the town is the two- or three-story "Queen 
 Hotel," the last word in flamboyant, gimcrack hideousness. Hotel 
 and Moimtain ! it is sublime, that bald and crashing contrast. 
 
 On September third, I wrote to a friend: "They strike me as 
 needlessly timid about the sea here, continually talking of frightful 
 currents and winds in a way that seems incredible to me and would, 
 I think, to a New England fisherman. However, I must be cautious. 
 Olson says that in the winter for weeks at a time it has been im- 
 possible to make the trip to Seward. Well, I'll believe it when I try it 
 and get stuck." 
 
 Three weeks later, — Tuesday, September twenty-fourth, we were 
 in Seward. The morning was calm varying between sun and rain, 
 but it seemed a good day to return to Fox Island. Rockwell and I had 
 some difficulty launching our boat down the long beach at low water; 
 but at last we managed it, loaded our goods aboard, — viz., two large 
 
 24 
 
THE WINDLASS 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 boxes of groceries, fifty-nine pounds turnips, a stove, five lengths of 
 stovepipe, a box of wood panels, two hundred feet one inch by two 
 inch strips, suit case, snowshoes, and a few odd parcels. 
 
 At ten forty-five we pushed off. At just about that moment the 
 sun retired for the day and a fine and persistent rain began to fall. 
 After about three miles we were overtaken by a fisherman in a motor 
 sloop bound to his camp three miles further down the shore. He took 
 us in tow and, finally arriving at his camp, begged us to stay " for a 
 cup of tea " — he was an Englishman. I yielded to the delay there 
 against my own better judgment. After a hearty meal we left his 
 cove at two fifteen. 
 
 Still it drizzled rain and the breeze blew faintly from the northeast. 
 We had a seven-mile row before us. Near Caines Head we encoun- 
 tered squalls from the south and were for sometime in doubt as to 
 the wind's true direction. We headed straight for Fox Island only 
 to find the wind easterly, compelling us to head up into it. I for- 
 tunately anticipated a heavier blow and determined to get as far to 
 windward and as near the shelter of the lea shore as possible, and 
 without any loss of time. Our propulsion toward the island I left to 
 the tide which was about due to ebb. We made good headway for a 
 little time until the wind bore upon us in heavy squalls. 
 
 The aspect of the day had become ominous. Heavy clouds raced 
 through the sky precipitating rain. The mountainous land appeared 
 blue black, the sea a light but brilliant yellow green. Over the water 
 the wind blew in furious squalls raising a surge of white caps and a 
 dangerous chop. I was now rowing with all my strength, foreseeing 
 clearly the possibility of disaster for us, scanning with concern the 
 terrible leeward shore with its line of breakers and steep clififs. 
 Rockwell, rowing always manfully, had great difiiculty in the rising 
 sea and wind. Fortunately he realized only at rare moments the 
 dangers of our situation. 
 
 27 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 We were now rowing continually at right angles to our true course. 
 I had but one hope, to get to windward before the rising sea and gale 
 overpowered us and carried us onto the dreaded coast that offered 
 absolutely no hope. Once to windward I had the choice of making a 
 landing in some cove or continuing for Fox Island by running with the 
 wind astern. At last the surface of the water was fairly seething 
 under the advancing squalls; the spray was whipped into vapor and 
 the caldron boiled. I bent my back to the oars and put every ounce 
 of strength into holding my own with the gale. It was a terrible 
 moment for I saw clearly the alternative of continuing and winning 
 our fight. 
 
 " Father," pipes up Rockwell from behind me at this tragic instant 
 " when I wake up in the morning sometimes I pretend my toes are 
 asleep, and I make my big toe sit up first because he's the father toe." 
 At another time Rockwell, who had shown a little panic — a very little 
 — said : '* You know I want to be a sailor so I'll learn not to be afraid." 
 
 At last we turned and made for the island. We had reached the 
 point where with good chances of success we coa/</ turn, — and where 
 we had to. We reached the shelter of the island incredibly fast, it 
 seemed, with the sea boiling in our wake, racing furiously as if to 
 engulf us, — and then bearing us so smoothly and swiftly upon its 
 crest that if it had not been so terrible it would have been the most 
 soothing and delightful motion in the world. In rounding the head- 
 land of our cove a last furious effort of the eluded storm careened us 
 sailless as we were far on one side and carried us broadside toward 
 the rocks. It was a minute before we could straighten our boat into 
 the wind and pull away from the shore, then twenty feet away. Olson 
 awaited us on the beach with tackle in readiness to haul our boat out 
 of the surf. We landed in safety. Looking at my watch I found it to 
 be a quarter to six. (The last four miles had taken us three hours !) 
 
 Olson's dory had been hauled up onto the grass and tied down 
 
 28 
 
THE SNOW QUEEN 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 securely. Mine was soon beside it. The tides and heavy seas of this 
 time of year make every precaution necessary. 
 
 The wind that night continued rising 'til it blew a gale. And that 
 night in their bed Rockwell and his father put their arms tight about 
 each other without telling why they did it. 
 
 Wednesday, September twenty-fifth. 
 
 It stormed from the northeast throughout the day. After putting 
 the cabin in order and hanging out our bedding to dry by the stove^ 
 for we had found it very damp — I set about cutting a large spruce tree 
 whose high top shut out the light from our main windows. A few 
 more still stand in the way. The removal of all of them should give 
 us a fair amount of light even in the winter when the sun is hid. 
 It occurs to me that it may be rather fortunate that my studio window 
 looks to the south. I'll certainly not be troubled with sunlight while 
 I may yet borrow some of the near-sun brilliancy from above our 
 mountain's top. Rockwell and I worked some time with the cross- 
 cut saw. I'm constantly surprised by his strength and stamina. Rock- 
 well read nine pages in his book of the cave dwellers. So nine of 
 "Robinson Crusoe" were due him after supper. He undresses and 
 jumps into bed and cuddles close to me as I sit there beside him 
 reading. And " Robinson Crusoe " is a story to grip his young fancy 
 and make this very island a place for adventure. 
 
 Thursday, September twenty-sixth. 
 
 These are typical days, I begin to feel sure, of prevailing Alaska 
 weather. It rains, not hard but almost constantly. Nothing is dry 
 but the stove and the wall behind it ; the vegetation is saturated, the 
 deep moss floor of the woods is full as a sponge can be. We took the 
 moss that weeks ago we'd gathered and spread along the shore to 
 
 31 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 dry and commenced with this sopping stuff the calking of our cabin. 
 It went rapidly and the two gable ends are nearly done. What a 
 difference it makes; to-night when my fire roared for the biscuit 
 baking the heat was almost unbearable. The usual chores of wood 
 and water ; a little work at manufacturing stationery ; supper of farina, 
 com bread, peanut butter, and tea; six pages for Rockwell; and the 
 day, but for this diary, is done. 
 
 Friday, September twenty-seventh. 
 
 At last it's fair after a clear moonlit night. I worked all day 
 about the cabin calking it and almost finishing that job, splitting 
 wood, and working with the cross-cut saw. Added stops to the frame 
 of our door, made a miter box, and cut my long strips brought from 
 Seward last trip into pieces for my stretcher frames. And Rockwell 
 all this time helped cheerfully when he was called upon, played boat 
 on the beach, hunted imaginary wild animals with his bow and arrow 
 of stone-age design, and was as always so contented, so happy that 
 the day was not half long enough. 
 
 Ah, the evenings are beautiful here and the early mornings, 
 when the days are fair ! No sudden springing of the sun into the sky 
 and out again at night ; but so gradual, so circuitous a coming and a 
 going that nearly the whole day is twilight and the quiet rose color of 
 morning and evening seems almost to meet at noon. We glance 
 through our tiny western window at sunrise and see beyond the bay 
 the many ranges of mountains, from the somber ones at the water's 
 edge to the distant glacier and snow-capped peaks, lit by the far-off 
 sun with the loveliest light imaginable. 
 
 To-night for supper a dish of Olson's goat's milk " Klabber " 
 (phonetic spelling), simply sour milk with all its cream upon it, 
 thick to a jelly. It was, in the favorite expression of Rockwell, 
 " delicious." 
 
 32 
 
FOX ISLAND, RESURRECTION BAY, KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 Saturday, September twenty-eighth. 
 
 Beginning fresh but overcast the day soon brought us rain, — and 
 it is now raining gently as I write. And yet we accomplished a great 
 deal, clearing of undergrowth a part of the woods between us and the 
 shore, felling three more trees, and cutting up a monster tree with the 
 cross-cut saw. At dinner time Olson ran in with the greatest excite- 
 ment. On the path in the woods near the outlet of the lake he had 
 seen at one time five otters. They came from the water and advanced 
 to within twenty feet of where he and Nanny — the milk goat — stood. 
 And there they played long enough for him to have taken a dozen 
 pictures. In the afternoon we saw a nimiber of otters at another 
 place, on the rocks at one end of the beach. They were in and out of 
 the water, going at times for little excursion swims far out into the 
 harbor, then chasing each other back and playing hide-and-go-seek 
 among the rocks. This afternoon I prepared all my wood panels to 
 begin my work, painting them on both sides. 
 
 Sunday, September twenty-ninth. 
 
 The Lord must have been pleased with us to-day for the grand 
 clearing up we gave this place of His. Olson has begun to work to- 
 ward me in clearing the still wild part of the intervening space be- 
 tween our cabins. It begins to look parklike with trees stripped of 
 limbs ten or twelve feet from the ground and the mossy floor beneath 
 swept clean. With the cross-cut saw I finished up the giant tree we 
 felled a few days ago ; and then, the groimd being clear, I cut the large 
 tree that kept so much light from our windows. The difference it has 
 made is wonderful ; our room is flooded with light. 
 
 There is a fascination in cutting trees. Once I have gripped my 
 axe, or even the tedious saw, I find it hard to relinquish it, returning 
 to it again and again for one more cut. I believe that the clearing of 
 homesteads gave the pioneer a compelling interest in life that was in 
 
 35 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 wonderful contrast to the ordinary humdrum labor to which at first 
 he must have been bred. It is easy to understand the rapid conquest 
 of the wilderness ; begin it — and you cannot stop. 
 
 Rockwell has set his heart upon trapping, in the kindest and most 
 considerate way known, some wild thing — and having it for a pet. I 
 rather discouraged his taming the sea urchin and persuaded him out 
 of consideration for the intelligent creature's feelings to restore him 
 to the salt water — and let me have back the bread pan. But now one 
 of Olson's box traps is set for a magpie. They're plentiful here. I 
 built myself a fine easel to-day, the best one I've ever had ; and put a 
 shelf under my drawing table. The room is clean and neat to-night; 
 it is in every way a congenial place. I don't see why people need 
 better homes than this. It was cloudy most of to-day and rained a 
 very little from time to time. Soon I can no longer keep from painting. 
 
 Monday, September thirtieth. 
 
 The morning brilliant, clear, and cold with the wind in the north. 
 I promised Rockwell an excursion when we had cut six sections from 
 a tree with the cross-cut saw. It went like the wind. Then with 
 cheese, chocolate, and Swedish hard bread in my pocket for a lunch 
 we started for the lowest ridge of the island that overlooks the east. 
 We had always believed this to be a short and easy ascent until one 
 day just before supper we tried it in a forced march and found, 
 after the greatest exertions in climbing, that the ridge lay still the 
 good part of an hour's climb above us. 
 
 So to-day, though we chose our path more wisely, it proved hard 
 climbing along rough stream beds, across innumerable fallen trees, 
 through alder, bramble, and blueberry thickets, and always with the 
 soft, oozy moss underfoot. But we reached the top — steep to the very 
 edge. Suddenly the trees ended, the land ended, — falling sheer 
 away four hundred feet below us; and we stood in wonder looking 
 
 36 
 
RAIN TORRENTS 
 
ARRIVAL 
 
 down and out over a smooth green floor of sea and a fairyland of 
 mountains, peaks and gorges, and headlands that cast long purple 
 shadows on the green water. Clouds wreathed the mountains, snow 
 was on their tops, and in the clear atmosphere both the land and the 
 sea were marvelous for the beauty of their infinite detail. Tiny white 
 crested wavelets patterned the water's surface with the utmost pre- 
 cision and regularity; and the land invited one to its smooth and 
 mossy slopes, its dark enchanted forests, its still coves and sheltered 
 valleys, its nobly proportioned peaks. It was a rare hour for us two. 
 
 We then followed the ridge toward the south walking in the 
 smoothly trodden paths of the porcupines. It led us up the lofty hill 
 on the east side of the island between its two coves. But the steep- 
 ness of the ascent and the matted thickets of storm-dwarfed alders 
 that were in our way were too much, I thought, for Rockwell, and 
 after going some distance farther alone I returned to him and we 
 started homewards. 
 
 Once on the moimtain side we sat down in the moss and mountain 
 cranberry to rest. And all at once we saw a great old porcupine come 
 clambering up the hill a short way from us. I spoke to him in his own 
 whiny-moany language and he was much pleased ; he sat up, listened, 
 and then came almost straight toward us. I continued talking to him 
 until after several corrections of his course — determined upon by 
 sitting up and listening — he arrived within four or five feet of Rock- 
 well, and sat up again. 
 
 We could hardly keep from laughing, he looked so foolish. But 
 he sensed things to be wrong, dropped down, elevated his quills, 
 then turned and started off. Somehow I couldn't let him go without 
 annoying him; so, grabbing a stick I pursued him poking at him to 
 collect a few quills. But at this Rockwell set up such a shrieking and 
 wailing that I had to stop, — and finally apologized profusely and ex- 
 plained that I meant no harm to the sweet creature. Rockwell madly 
 
 39 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 loves wild animals, has not the slightest fear of them, and would really, 
 I believe, try out his theory of calming the anger of a bear by kissing 
 him. 
 
 Then we came home and had a good dinner. I cut more wood and 
 at last, after one month here on the island, I PAINTED. It was a 
 stupid sketch, but no matter, I've begun! A weasel came out and 
 looked at me as I worked, then whisked off. The magpies look into 
 our trap, squint at the food, and then at once leave that neighborhood. 
 It is cloudy and rainlike to-night. Is it too much to hope for more 
 than one fair day? 
 
 40 
 
^^^«^( 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 CHORES 
 
 Tuesday, October first. 
 
 1 0-DAY it rained ! We attended first to our fascinating 
 
 _ chores, plying the cross-cut saw as the drizzle fell. 
 
 M Then we went to work as artists, Rockwell with his 
 
 ^^^^ water colors and I with my oils. Rockwell has a 
 
 number of good drawings of the country here and of 
 
 the things that have thrilled him. 
 
 Pop ! The cork of my jug of new made yeast has just struck the 
 ceiling. That brew has been a part of this day's work. Hops, pota- 
 toes, flour, sugar, raisins, and yeast; stewed and strained and bottled. 
 To-day also was completed and served the first 
 
 Fox Island Com Souffle 
 
 " Take two cups of samp (whole hominy) and stew for an indefinite time 
 in salted water (it should cook at least three or four hours). It should 
 
 41 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 boil almost dry. Make of the remainder of the water and some milk two 
 cups of cream sauce dissolving in it some cheese. Mix with the corn and 
 pour into a baking dish. Spread cheese over the top and put into oven to 
 brown. " 
 
 We offer this delicious discovery to the world on the condition 
 only that *' Fox Island Corn Souffle " shall be printed on the menu 
 wherever it is used. 
 
 I made to-day a grandfather's chair for myself. It is as comfort- 
 able as it is beautiful. 
 
 Every day I read in the '* History of Irish Literature. " The 
 Deirdre Saga I read to-day. It must be one of the most beautiful and 
 the most perfect stories in all the world. So little do we feel ourselves 
 related, here in this place, to any one time or to any civilization that 
 at a thought we and our world become whom and what we please. 
 Rockwell has been a cave dweller hunting the primeval forest with 
 a stone hatchet and a bow of alder strung with a root. To me it is the 
 heroic age in Ireland. 
 
 Wednesday, October second. 
 
 Incessant, hard rain. The two artists at their work a good part 
 of the day, Rockwell making several new drawings in his book of 
 wonderful animals. We bathed and I washed the accumulated 
 clothes of several weeks. And to-night Olson came for a long call. 
 He's a good story teller and his experiences are without end. And so 
 closes this day — with the rain still pouring monotonously on the roof. 
 
 Thursday, October third. 
 
 To-day was fair at sunrise, cloudy at nine o'clock, and showery 
 all the rest. We worked again with the beloved cross-cut saw, 
 setting ourselves an almost unattainable task — and then surpass- 
 
 42 
 
DAY 
 
CHORES 
 
 ing it. And I cleared the thicket for a better view of the mountain 
 to the south ; and in the afternoon felled another large tree. Stretched 
 canvass for a while; and painted and drew, and felt the goddess 
 Inspiration returning to me. 
 
 Olson, Rockwell, and I, with levers and blocks, turned aud 
 emptied the three boats that the recent rains had almost filled. 
 Already we fear the frost. The mountains have been capped with 
 snow, all green has gone from their sides; the dark season is near 
 at hand. 
 
 Rockwell is ever sweet, industrious, and happy. He is beautiful 
 after his bath. 
 
 Friday, October fourth. 
 
 A gloriously lovely day, a cloudless sky and the wind in the 
 north. That puts life into men! Up at sunrise, we two. Before 
 breakfast the axe was going, and afterwards we brought down two 
 mighty trees. (The trees of this part of Alaska are not to be com- 
 pared with the giants of the Western States. Two feet is a large 
 diameter.) Then I painted for a while futilely, the green and wind 
 blown sea, the pink mountains, snowy peaks, and golden morning 
 sky. 
 
 Rockwell and I couldn't restrain our spirits and had to clamber 
 up the steep mountain side ; up, up we went straight above our clear- 
 ings ; and soon, in looking back, the bay, the lake, and our neck of land 
 lay like a map below us. Clififs and the steep slopes baffled us at times 
 but we found a way at last to reach the peak of the spur above us. 
 There it was like a pavilion, a round knoll carpeted with moss, a ring 
 of slender, clean-trunked trees ; and beyond that nothing nearer than 
 the sea nine hundred feet below. Coming down we ran across a 
 porcupine toiling up the slope. We played with him a bit and finally 
 
 45 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 let him climb a tree. Olson would have had us bring him home for 
 dinner. They're said to taste good. 
 
 We cut with the saw a while in the afternoon. Rockwell drew and 
 I made two more sketches— one a good one. The evening at sim- 
 down was more briUiant even than the day. For such days as this 
 we have come to Alaska ! 
 
 Saturday, October fifth. 
 
 A hard day full of little bits of work. Sawed up a tree alone, — to 
 punish Rockwell ! for not studying. Calking the east side of the cabin 
 — the last side. Painted, baked, and built myself an arrangement 
 out-of-doors to sketch in comfort. I sit on the board with my palette 
 — a box end — secured before me and my picture above it. Rockwell 
 took his punishment so to heart that in the afternoon he read ten 
 pages in his book. All of to-day has been overcast, but with a clean, 
 refreshing atmosphere. In the account of Anson's voyage around the 
 Horn it is remarked that fair weather in those latitudes rarely lasts. 
 It may be true of the same latitudes north. 
 
 Monday, October seventh. 
 
 Yesterday I wrote nothing in the diary — there was nothing to 
 write, but that it rained. " Rain like Hell " Olson's journal doubtless 
 reads, — and ditto for to-day. 
 
 The storm is even harder now. The wind strikes our cabin first 
 from the west, then north, east, and south. The surface of the cove 
 is seething under the cross squalls; that is called the ** wullys. " A 
 boat not strongly managed would be whipped round and rotmd. 
 Olson has been much in to see us, lonely old man ! I drop my draw- 
 ing while he is here and take to stretching canvass, all the while 
 yarning with him. Rockwell likes the calls as a diversion. Rock- 
 
 46 
 
NIGHT 
 
CHORES 
 
 well's good humor and contentment is without limit. He draws with 
 the deepest interest hours a day, reads for a time, and plays — talking 
 to himself. 
 
 We have good hearty fights together in which Rockwell attacks 
 me with all his strength and I hit back with force in self-defense. 
 We have a good time washing dishes, racing, — the washer, myself, 
 to beat the dryer. Rockwell falls down onto the floor in the midst of 
 the race in a fit of laughter. Rockwell's happiness is not complete 
 imtil I spank him. I grab the struggling creature and throw hi m down, 
 trying to hold both his hands and feet to have free play in beating 
 him. This I do with some strength sometimes using a stick of kindling 
 wood. The more it hurts the better Rockwell likes it — up to a limit 
 that we never reach. 
 
 So much for the day's play. Of our work mine is mostly 
 over the drawing table. Both yesterday and to-day I made good 
 drawings; and my ideas come crowding along fast. Cooking, 
 somehow, is the least troublesome of all the daily chores. We 
 live, as may be imagined, with a simplicity that would send a 
 Hoover delegate flying from the door in dismay. This is our 
 daily fare: 
 
 BREAKFAST 
 
 (invariably the same) 
 Oatmeal 
 Cocoa 
 Bread and Peanut Butter 
 
 DINNER 
 
 Beans (one of several kinds and several ways) 
 
 or 
 Fox Island Corn Souffle 
 
 49 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 or 
 Spaghetti 
 
 or 
 Peas 
 
 or 
 Vegetable stew (barley, carrots, onions, potatoes) 
 
 and 
 Potatoes or rice 
 
 and foften 
 Prunes or apricots or apples i dried) 
 
 SUPPER 
 
 (invariably the same) 
 Farina 
 
 Corn bread with peanut butter or marmalade 
 Tea for father, milk for son 
 
 And sometimes dessert — stewed fruit, chocolate, or, when Olson 
 gives it, goat milk junket. 
 
 Let us here record that to this date we have had not the least little 
 sickness, — only glowing health and good spirits. 
 
 Tuesday, October eighth. 
 
 RAIN 1 But what difference does it make to us. Everyone is in a 
 good humor. The house is warm and dry; we've lots to eat and lots 
 to do. 
 
 Olson's dory was again half full of water so we turned her and the 
 skiff over. I stretched canvass and primed it and finished Anson's 
 '* Voyage Around the World "a thrilling book. Late this afternoon it 
 began to clear ; the sun shone and we were presently at work with the 
 saw — only to be driven in again by the shower. I expect fair weather 
 
 to-morrow. But 
 
 50 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
CHORES 
 
 Wednesday, October ninth. 
 
 Fair weather is still as far away as ever, unless a sharp but cloudy 
 afternoon and sundown with brilliant light in the western sky spell 
 change. Olson says the foxes will not eat to-night and that this is 
 invariably a sign of change to good days — that in bad weather they 
 eat and in fair they abstain. It poured in the morning and we worked 
 indoors. After dinner we all moved a lumber pile that stood on the 
 shore abreast of our cabin to a place nearer Olson's — this only to 
 better our view of the water. We sawed wood for a while and piled 
 all that we have so far cut ready for winter use. There are in all 
 fifty sections of short stove wood. That is a month and a half's supply. 
 I painted towards evening, and made two good sketches. 
 
 The nights have grown colder. For the past two days the moun- 
 tains across from us, the nearest ones, have been covered with snow 
 downwards to half their height. The farther ranges have for weeks 
 been white. They're beautiful and invite one to go climbing and 
 sliding over their smooth white snowfields. Close to, one would 
 find impassable crags and crevasses, a howling wind and bitter cold. 
 Rockwell to-day finished his second book, " The Cave Dwellers. " 
 
 Midnight Bulletin : the stars are out, brilliant in a cloudless sky ! 
 
 Thursday, October tenth. 
 
 It's raining ! All day has been overcast, but sharp and clear. It 
 was for us all a day of hard work. We cleared up the woods between 
 Olson's cabin and ours carrying one large pile of brush from our door 
 yard to the beach and burning another huge one. That was a wild 
 sight as night came. It had become a great fire of logs burning stead- 
 ily and lighting up all the woods around. It is still burning in the 
 pouring rain. We sawed a little — always more than keeping pace with 
 our consumption of wood. Rockwell worked almost the whole day and 
 went to bed tired. I read to him an hour. He loves to hear poetry. 
 
 S3 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 We set an elaborate contrivance to catch a magpie; and were 
 humiliated by the bird who walked round and round the snare eying 
 
 ONE OF ROCKWELL'S DRAWmGS 
 
 it wisely, then suddenly rushed in only far enough to secure a piece 
 of decoy bait — and fled. Painted to-day making a good little sketch, 
 but, on my first trial of the home-made canvas, finding it to need 
 more priming. Work ! work ! 
 
 Friday, October eleventh. 
 
 This day we should have been in Seward. It was calm although 
 it rained from time to time. Olson ofifered to tow us across to Caine's 
 Head ; but, the rain coming up as we were about to start in the morn- 
 ing, we waited till afternoon, started, proceeded half a mile, en- 
 countered engine trouble, and finally ignominiously rowed home, I 
 pulling Olson and his motor and Rockwell bringing in our own dory. 
 If it had not been so late we would have kept on. 
 
 54 
 
CHORES 
 
 We have a magpie. I saw one hop into Olson's shed, quickly ran 
 and closed the door, and there he was. Now he's in a box-trap cage 
 set on a specially constructed shelf on our front gable. He's a garru- 
 lous creature and bites angrily; but he's a youngster and we hope to 
 teach him to say all sorts of pretty things; Olson says they take 
 naturally to swearing. So Rockwell has at last a pet. 
 
 If only it will hold calm! To-night it is fair and starlight — but 
 we can never be sure of the weather's constancy. We hold every- 
 thing in readiness to start in the morning. 
 
 Saturday, October twelfth. 
 
 A mild and lovely day on our island but in the bay a breeze from 
 the north that would have made our rowing to Seward difficult. 
 Still we wait with our things assembled for the trip. We shall go at 
 the very first good chance. This morning Olson cleared the limbs 
 from the trees about us to ten or twelve feet from the ground. Only 
 the tall, clean trunks are now between us and our mountains across 
 the bay. I painted most of the afternoon. My canvas is still quite 
 impossible — rough and absorbent. We built a large cage for the 
 magpie he was so restless in his small one. And now he's quite 
 contented. 
 
 Rockwell said to-day that he would like to live here always. 
 That when he was grown he'd come here with his many children and 
 me, if I was not dead, and stay. It is hard to write, it is hard to work, 
 with the trip to Seward at hand. Olson says it is Sunday. I think 
 he's right. Somehow I've missed a day. 
 
 Sunday, October thirteenth. 
 
 (I still keep to my chronology until we find out from Seward where 
 we stand.) A wonderfully beautiful day with a raging northwest 
 
 55 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 wind. I must sometime honor the northwest wind in a great picture 
 as the embodiment of clean, strong, exuberant life, the joy of every 
 young thing, bearing energy on its wings and the will to triumph. 
 How I remember at Monhegan on such a day, when it seemed that 
 every living thing must emerge from its house or its hole or its nest 
 to breathe the clean air and exult in it; when men could stand on the 
 hilltops and look far over the green sea and the distant land and 
 delight in the infinite detail of the view, discerning distant ships 
 at sea and remote blue islands, and, over the land, sparkling cities 
 and such enchanting forests and pastures that the spirit leaped the 
 intervening miles and with a new delight claimed the whole earth to 
 the farthest mountains — and beyond ; on such a day there crept from 
 his hole an artist, and, shading his squinting eyes with his hand, 
 saluted the day with a groan. " How can one paint? " he said, " such 
 sharpness ! Here is no mystery, no beauty. " And he crept back, this 
 fog lover, to wait for earth's sick spell to return. 
 
 This morning the magpie sang — or recited poetry ; he made strange 
 glad noises in his throat — and that in a cage ! We worked, the rest 
 of us, like mad. At five-thirty Olson, resting at last, said : " Well, 
 you've done a great day's work. " And after that I painted a sketch, 
 cut and trimmed three small spruce trees; and then, it being dark, 
 prepared supper. 
 
 But when do we go to Seward? My bag is packed. Olson begins 
 each day by testing his motor. The wind must moderate in time. 
 We see it pass our cove driving the water as in a mill-race. To-day 
 it swept the cove itself. 
 
 Rockwell went for a walk in the woods ; he has a delightful time 
 on his rambles, discovering goats' wool on the bushes, following the 
 paths of the porcupines to their holes, and to-day finding the porcu- 
 pine himself. He always returns with some marvelous discovery or 
 new enthusiasm over his explorations. He has been practicing writ- 
 
 56 
 
SUNRISE 
 
CHORES 
 
 ing to-day. He says that if he could only write he would put down 
 the wonderful stories of his dreams. These stories would run into 
 volumes. 
 
 Tuesday, October fifteenth. 
 
 Yesterday we left the island. The day was calm though cloudy, 
 and at times it rained. Olson towed us to Caine's Head. From there 
 we made good time Rockwell rowing like a seasoned oarsman, as 
 indeed he has now a right to be called. We stopped at the camp 
 where we had in August left our broken-down engine, and brought 
 that away with us, as well as some turnips and half a dozen heads of 
 beautiful lettuce grown on that spot. 
 
 By night it was raining hard and blowing from the southeast. 
 We spent the evening at the postmaster's house, playing, I, on the 
 flute to Miss Postmaster's accompaniment. It went splendidly and 
 imtil midnight we played Beethoven, Bach, Hayden, Gluck, Tchaikow- 
 sky, till it seemed like old times at home. Then Rockwell with his 
 eyes shut in sleep, consumed a piece of apricot pie and a glass of 
 milk, and we came home bringing along two glasses of wild currant 
 preserve. I read my letters over and then went to bed. But the 
 storm raged by that time and I couldn't sleep for worry about my 
 boat. At last I rose and dressed and went down to the shore. The 
 dory was safely stranded but too low down. So with great toil I 
 worked her higher up the beach beyond high water. 
 
 To-day it has rained incessantly. I have bought a few odd sup- 
 plies and registered for the draft. 
 
 Above all to-day the engine has resumed its running and we'll 
 return to Fox Island under power. I know nothing about an engine 
 but I have eight miles to learn in before the only hazardous part of 
 the voyage begins. To-night Rockwell and I spent the evening at the 
 house of a yoimg man whom we've found congenial and who above 
 
 59 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 all is a friend of a young German mechanic for whom I've a liking. 
 So the four of us sang the evening through, seated before a great 
 open fire. The house is of logs and stands out of the town on the 
 border of the wilderness. There are spots like this little house and 
 its hospitable hearth that show even the commercial desert of Seward 
 to have its oases. And now we're in our room. Rockwell is asleep in 
 bed. It is past midnight. I am thinking of dear friends at home, and 
 I bid them affectionately good-night. 
 
 Thursday, October seventeenth. 
 
 Yesterday in Seward was about as every other day. We spent it 
 between letter-writing in our hotel room and visiting from store to 
 store. It poured rain and blew from the southeast. We spent our 
 evening with the German. We have planned with him to signal back 
 and forth from Seward, particularly to send me the news of peace. 
 If I can distinguish, with glasses a high-powered electric light that he 
 will show from a house on the highest point in the town, then, by 
 means of the Morse code with which I am furnished and which he 
 knows, I'll receive messages on appointed days. 
 
 To-night Rockwell and I went a quarter of a mile down our beach 
 to a point that commands a view up the bay to Seward and lighted a 
 bonfire there. Boehm, the German, was regarding us, we presume, 
 through a telescope. On Sunday night, if it is clear, we are to look 
 for his light. The difficulty will be to distinguish it from others. 
 
 We left Seward this morning at 9.45, our dory laden with about 
 one thousand pounds of freight — including ourselves. The little 
 three and one half horse-power motor worked splendidly and carried 
 us to the island in a little over two and a quarter hours. The day was 
 calm, to begin with, with a rising north wind as we crossed from 
 Caine's Head. On the island we found a visitor. There had been two 
 other men but they were gone to Seward the night before. All had 
 
 60 
 
ADVENTURE 
 
CHORES 
 
 been on Monday forced by the rough sea to turn back from attempt- 
 ing to go around the westward cape. The old fellow who is still here 
 told me to-night that in the twenty years that he had been in Alaska 
 he had never seen such weather. That's good news. At Seward the 
 mountains are covered with snow to within a few hundred feet of the 
 town's level. I'm tired. This ends to-day. Incidentally my dates 
 proved to be correct when I reached Seward. 
 
 Oh, I've almost forgotten our loss. The poor magpie lay dead on 
 the floor of his cage. So we found him, killed, I beUeve, by the storm, 
 for Olson neglected to cover him. Rockwell, who straight on landing 
 had run there, wept bitterly but finally found much consolation in 
 giving him a very decent burial and marking the spot with a wooden 
 cross. 
 
 Friday, October eighteenth. 
 
 The night is beautiful beyond thought. All the bay is flooded with 
 moonlight and in that pale glow the snowy mountains appear whiter 
 than snow itself. The full moon is aknost straight above us, and 
 shining through the tree tops into our clearing makes the old stumps 
 quite lovely with its quiet light. And the forest around is as black as 
 the abyss. Although it is nearly ten o'clock Rockwell is still awake. 
 It is his birthday — by our choice. His one present, a cheap child's 
 edition of Wood's " Natural History," illustrated, has filled his head 
 with dreams of his beloved wild animals. I began to-night to teach 
 him to sing. We tried Brahms's "Wiegenlied," with little success, 
 and then "Schlaf, Kmdlein, Schlaf," which went better. These 
 songs and many other German songs, all with English words, are in 
 the song book I bought him. I hope I shall have the patience and 
 the time to succeed with Rockwell in this. 
 
 Three men are now with Olson in his cabin, for the two who were 
 gone to Seward returned to-day. They are younger men, one of them 
 
 63 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Emsweiler a well-known guide of this country. I spent an interesting 
 hour with them this evening. Olson told me to-day that his age is 
 seventy-one. The smell of fresh bread is in our cabin, for I baked 
 to-day. Baking, wood-cutting, darning of socks, putting the cabin 
 in order, and the building of a shelf, these, with the other usual chores, 
 were the whole day's work; a profitless day lies on my conscience. 
 I shall draw a little and then go to bed. 
 
 Saturday, October nineteenth. 
 
 To-day was raw and cloudy, mild and sunny ; in the morning windy, 
 in the afternoon dead calm so that the hills were reflected in the bay. 
 The men have left, I am glad to say, not that they were in themselves 
 at all objectionable, but it somehow did violence to the quiet of this 
 place to have others about. Emsweiler slaughtered one of the goats 
 for Olson, so there's now one less of us here. I felled a large tree 
 to-day and later sharpened the cross-cut saw preparatory to cutting it 
 up. To-night the sun set in the utmost splendor and left in its wake 
 blazing, fire-red clouds in a sky of luminous green. Not many more 
 days shall we see the sun ; it sets now close to the southern headland 
 of our cove. 
 
 Rockwell works every day on his wild animal book. To obtain 
 absolutely new and original names for his strange creatures he has 
 devised an interesting method. With eyes closed he prints a name or 
 rather a group of miscellaneous letters. Naturally the result he per- 
 ceives on opening his eyes is astonishing. 
 
 Sunday, October twentieth. 
 
 It has been a beautiful, clear, cold, violent northwest day. I've 
 painted on and ofif all day with wood cutting between. One can't 
 stop going in such weather, and out-of-doors you can't stand still for 
 it is too icy cold and windy. 
 
 64 
 
CHORES 
 
 Rockwell and I have just now, eight o'clock, returned from down 
 the beach where we went to look for lights from Seward. But we 
 could distinguish nothing meant for us. The moon has risen and 
 illuminates the mountain tops — but we and all our cove are still in 
 the deep shadow of the night. It is most dramatic ; the spruces about 
 us deepen the shadow to black while above them the stone faces of 
 the mountain glisten and the sky has the brightness of a kind of 
 
 day. Olson brought us goat chops for dinner. We could not have told 
 them from lamb. 
 
 This afternoon late a small power boat appeared in the bay at- 
 tempting to make its way toward Seward. After some progress the 
 wind forced her steadily and swiftly back. When we last saw her 
 she seemed to be trying to make the shelter of our island or one of the 
 outer islands, the while driving steadily seaward. It's a wild night 
 to be out in the bay though doubtless calm at sea. It is such an ad- 
 venture that we must be on our guard against. As we look across the 
 bay toward Bear Glacier, which is hidden by a point of land, we can 
 see the efifect of the north wind sweeping down the glacier, a mist 
 
 65 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 driving seaward. It is nothing less than the fine spray of that 
 wind-swept water. 
 
 Monday, October twenty-first. 
 
 It is so late that I shall write only a little. To-day was again won- 
 derful, a true golden and blue northwest day. I have painted and 
 sawed wood, and built myself a splendid six-legged saw horse. Olson 
 thinks I have already cut my winter's supply of wood — but it seems 
 to me far from it. Rockwell has been most of the day at his own 
 animal book, making some strange and beautiful birds. This morn- 
 ing the ground was frozen with a hard crust. It did not thaw through- 
 out the day, and again to-night it is very cold. Winter is at last upon 
 us, the long, long winter. And the sun retreats day by day farther 
 toward the mountain. I look to the sun's going with a kind of dread. 
 We have seen nothing of the boat that last night was driven to shelter. 
 We believe the men to be in the other cove of our island. 
 
 66 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WINTER 
 
 eNDLESSLY, day after day, the journal goes on record- 
 ing a dreary monotony of rain and cloud. Who has 
 ever dwelt so entirely alone that the most living things 
 in all the universe about are wind and rain and snow? 
 Where the elements dominate and control your life, 
 where at getting up and bedtime and many an hour of night and day 
 between you question helplessly, as a poor slave his master, the will 
 of the mighty forces of the sky? Dawn breaks, you jump from bed, 
 stand barefoot on the threshold of the door, look through the straight 
 trunked spruces at the brightening world, and read at sight God's 
 will for one more whole, long day of life. " Ah God ! it rains again." 
 And sitting on the bed you wearily draw on your heavy boots, and 
 rainy-spirited begin the special labors of a rainy day. Or maybe, at 
 the sight of clouds again, you laugh at the dull-minded weather man 
 or curse at him good naturedly. Still you must do those rainy- 
 
 67 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 weather chores and all the other daily chores in hot wet-weather 
 garments. That is destiny. 
 
 Most of the time, to do ourselves real justice, we met the worst of 
 weather with a battle cry, worked hard, — and then made up for out- 
 door dreariness and wet by heaping on the comforts of indoors, — dry, 
 cozy warmth, good things to eat, and lots to do. 
 
 We have reached late fall — for northern latitudes. The sky is 
 brooding ominously, heavy, dull, and raw. Winter seems to be closing 
 in upon us. We're driven to work as if in fear. Hurry, hurry! Saw 
 the great drums of spruce, roll them over the ground and stack them 
 high. Calk tight with hemp the cabin's windward eaves so that no 
 breath of wind can enter there and freeze the food inside upon the 
 shelf. Set up the far-famed air-tight stove where it will keep you 
 warm, — warm feet in bed and a warm back while painting. Patch 
 up the poor, storm-battered paper roof, — two or three holes we find 
 and we are sure it leaks from twenty. About the cabin pile the hem- 
 lock boughs, dense-leafed and warm, making a green slope almost 
 to the eaves. Now it looks cozy ! Outside and in the last is done to 
 make us ready for the winter's worst, and just in time! It is the 
 evening of October twenty-second and the feathery snow has just 
 begun to fall. Olson comes stamping in. " Well, well, " he cries, 
 ** how's this ! How does our winter suit you? " It suits us perfectly. 
 The house is warm, Rockwell's in bed, and I am reading *' Treasure 
 Island" to him. 
 
 '* What are you going to make of him? " asked Olson that night 
 speaking of Rockwell. I was at that moment pouring beans into the 
 pot for baking. I slowed the stream and dropped them one by one : 
 
 " ' Rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief, 
 Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief. ' 
 
 How in the world can anyone lay plans for a youngster's life ? " 
 
 68 
 
ON THE HEIGHT 
 
WINTER 
 
 Rockwell lay in his bed dreaming, maybe, of an existence love- 
 lier far than anything the poor, discouraged imagination of a 
 man could reach. A child could make a paradise of earth. 
 Life is so simple! Unerringly he follows his desires making the 
 greatest choices first, then onward into a narrowing pathway until 
 the true goal is reached. How can one preach of beauty or teach 
 another wisdom. These things are of an infinite nature, and in 
 every one of us in just proportion. There is no priesthood of the 
 truth. 
 
 We live in many worlds, Rockwell and I, — the world of the books 
 we read, — an always changing one, "Robinson Crusoe," "Treasure 
 Island," the visionary world of William Blake, the Saga Age, "Water 
 Babies, " and the glorious Celtic past, — Rockwell's own world of 
 fancy, kingdom of beasts, the world he dreams about and draws, — 
 and my created land of striding heroes and poor fate-bound 
 men — real as I have painted them or to me nothing is, — and then all 
 round about our common, daily, island-world, itself more wonderful 
 than we have half a notion of. Is it to be believed that we are here 
 alone, this boy and I, far north out on an island wilderness, seagirt 
 on a terrific coast ! It's as we pictured it and wanted it a year and 
 more ago, — yes, dreams come true. 
 
 And now the snow falls softly. Winter, to meet our challenge, has 
 begun. 
 
 Short notes in the journal mark "Treasure Island's" swift 
 passage. Then enter "Water Babies!" "Just after Rockwell's 
 heart and mine," I have recorded it. But Kingsley must lose his 
 friends, — a warning to the snob in literature. How it did weary 
 us and madden us, his English-gentry pride, — unless we outright 
 laughed. "At last it's finished. That's an event. When Kingsley 
 isn't showing off he's moralizing, and between his religious cant and 
 his English snobbery he is, in spite of his occasional sweet sentiment, 
 
 71 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 quite unendurable. So to-night we read from * Andersen's Fairy 
 Tales ' — forever lovely and true." 
 
 Children have their own fine literary taste that we know quite too 
 little about. They love all real, authentic happenings, and they love 
 pure fairy tale. But to them fiction in the guise of truth is wrong, and 
 fairy romance, unconvincing in its details, is ridiculous. Action they 
 like, the deed — not thoughts about it. Doubtless the simple saga 
 form is best of all, — life as it happens, neither right nor wrong, words 
 that they can understand, things they can comprehend, interesting 
 facts or thrilling fancy. Such simple things delight the child that 
 half of "Robinson Crusoe" and three quarters of the smug family 
 from Switzerland are forgiven for the sweet kernel of pure adventure 
 that is there. 
 
 As for adventure, — that is relative. Where little happens and the 
 gamut of expression is narrow life is still full of joy and sorrow. 
 You're stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world. 
 
 The killer-whales that early in September played in the shoal 
 water of our cove not thirty feet from land, rolled their huge, shining 
 bodies into view, plunged, raced where we still could follow their 
 gleaming, white patch under water, — there's a thrill ! 
 
 The battles that occurred that month between huge fish out in 
 the bay, their terrible, mysterious, black arms that beat the water 
 with a sound like cannon, the plunge into the depths of the poor, 
 frantic, wounded whale, and his return again for air; again the 
 thunder sound and flying foam and spray as the dread black arm is 
 beating on the sea; then calm. You shudder at that huge death. 
 That was a drama for Fox Islanders. 
 
 And later the poor magpie's death. Real tears were shed from a 
 poor boy's half-broken heart. 
 
 Two strangers come these days and stop with Olson. They're on 
 the search of that small craft that we saw driving seaward in a tempest. 
 
 72 
 
THE DAY'S WORK 
 
WINTER 
 
 There is mystery ! Was she adrift unmanned, broke from her moor- 
 ings, or was there life aboard as we had thought? In that case she'd 
 been stolen, and who were the men and where? Wrecked safely on 
 some island, drowned, or driven out to sea? No man shall ever know. 
 
 A porcupine is captured wandering near our house. We build 
 for him a cozy home — he doesn't like it much but still he should. 
 We care for him day after day, he twines himself, about our hearts. 
 Then at last one day when we'd pastured him in freedom out in the 
 new fallen snow, trusting his tracks to lead us to him, the goats cut 
 in and spoiled the trail and he was lost to us. 
 
 Olson has gone to Seward: days of waiting, days of waiting! 
 How many times do we travel down the cove to the point from whence 
 Caine's Head is seen, going in hope, returning gloomily. 
 
 The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that 
 maddening beast, eats up one comer of our broom. I throw a heavy 
 armful of kindling wood into his face — and he just sneezes. But 
 Rockwell plays with the goats as if they're human, or rather, as if 
 he were goat. They half believe it, he has told me, — and, Rockwell, 
 so do I. 
 
 Sunday, November third. 
 
 To-day was gloriously bright and clear with a strong northwest 
 wind. The mountains are covered with snow, beautiful beyond de- 
 scription. I painted in- and out-of-doors continuously all the day ex- 
 cept when Rockwell and I plied the saw. It is no little thing to have 
 one's work on a day like this out under such a blue sky, by the foaming 
 green sea and the fairy mountains. 
 
 Three days go by. It rains and hails and snows, and then is quiet. 
 Over the dead, still air comes the roar of pounding seas. Immense 
 and white they pile on the black cliffs of Caine's Head, the wash of a 
 storm at sea. Still over the heaving, glassy water we look in vain for 
 
 75 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Olson. Dark days, and the short hours are long with waiting. How 
 many times we traveled down the cove to look toward Seward, how 
 many score of times we peered through the httle panes of our west 
 window never to find the thing we sought for. 
 
 I've loaded my arms with firewood from the pile. I turn my head 
 and there in our cove before my very eyes at last is Olson ! This is 
 November sixth, — nine days away ! 
 
 " The war is over, " cried Olson as he landed. By all that's holy 
 in life may the world have found through its mad war at least some 
 fragrance of the peace and freedom that we discovered growing like a 
 flower, wild on the borders of the wilderness. . . . 
 
 Long into night I read the mail, count sweaters, caps, and woolen 
 stockings, all that the mail has brought. It is late, Rockwell is asleep, 
 the room is cold, it snows out-of-doors. . . . And now instead of 
 bed I'll stir the fire and begin my work. 
 
 Thursday, November seventh. 
 
 A true winter's day with the snow deep on the ground and the 
 profound and characteristic winter silence of the out-of-doors to be 
 sensed even in this ever silent place. At earliest dayUght began a 
 heavy thunderstorm with lightning all about and a downpour of hail. 
 It occurred intermittently throughout the morning. ... I did the 
 washing, using Olson's washboard and getting the clothes nearly 
 white. 
 
 Olson is full of amusing gossip. To the curious in Seward who 
 asked him why I chose to be in this God-forsaken spot he repHed : 
 " You damn fools, you don't understand an artist at all. Do you 
 suppose Shakespeare wrote his plays with a silly crowd of men and 
 women hanging around him? No, sir, an artist has to be left alone." 
 
 " Well, what does he paint? " 
 
 *' That's his business. Sometimes I see he has a mountain there 
 
 76 
 
MEAL TIME 
 
WINTER 
 
 on a picture, and next time I see it's been changed to a lake or some- 
 thing else." 
 
 One can imagine Olson with his questioners. The thing he most 
 wants, his ambition, one might say, is to make people sit up and take 
 notice of Fox Island, his homestead. It is in fact one reason why he 
 brought us here to live. Thanks to its amateur detective, Seward 
 had rejoiced for a short time in rumors of a German spy on Fox Island. 
 I told Olson that the authorities might still come and remove me. He 
 flared up, " I'd like to see them try it ! We could take to the moun- 
 tains with guns, and more than one of them would never try the thing 
 again. " And then he went on to tell me how in Idaho he had tracked 
 for days and weeks a notorious gang of outlaws and horse-thieves 
 and at last run them to earth, — one of his most thrilling and, I believe, 
 absolutely true stories of his adventures. 
 
 At this moment a steamer is blowing in the bay, navigating by the 
 echo from the mountain faces. She is near to us now but hidden 
 by the snowstorm. 
 
 Rockwell has begun to write the story of a long, waking dream of 
 his. It's a sweet idea and reads most amusingly in his own queer 
 spelling. Now, though it is already late, I must draw a while longer 
 and then, after bathing in the bread pan, sit up in bed and read a 
 chapter of the life of Blake. 
 
 Friday, November eighth. 
 
 It is so late that I half expect to see the dawn begin. I have been 
 working on a drawing of Rockwell and his father — and it looks ever 
 so fine. 
 
 Whew! just at this moment the wind has swept down upon our 
 cabin and blown the roof in as far as it would with great creaking 
 yield, — and then passed on sucking it out in its wake to such a spread 
 that a board that lay across overhead like a collar-beam has fallen 
 
 . 79 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 with a crash and clatter, — and Rockwell sleeps on ! The wind does 
 blow to-night, and it doesn't stop outside the walls of the cabin 
 either. My lamp flutters annoyingly. But ah ! the room is comfort- 
 able and warm. 
 
 This morning, it being at first wondrously fair, Rockwell and I set 
 out for a boat ride. But what with the fussing of installing our motor 
 and the launching of our cumbersome boat the wind was given time 
 to rise and spoil the day for us. But we went out into the bay and 
 played in the waves to see what the north wind could do. The chop 
 was devilish, short and deep; the boat bridged from one crest to 
 another with, it seemed, a clear tunnel underneath, — and then 
 running up onto a wave mountain she would jump off its dizzy peak 
 landing with a splash in the valley beyond and dousing us well with 
 water. In a calmer spot I stopped the engine and sketched our island ; 
 after which we rowed home. The rest of the day we worked on the 
 motor — first to find out why she wouldn't run, then, having found 
 and fixed that, to put other parts in still better order, and then, by far 
 the longest time and still to continue to-morrow, to mend what in the 
 course of our fixing we had broken. 
 
 Rockwell's in bed, asleep, dreaming of the little, wild night- 
 ingale that sang of freedom to that poor, unhappy Chinese Em- 
 peror ; while far from here in streets and towns the tin nightingale 
 of law-made liberty charms the world. And it's now my read- 
 ing time, my time for bread and jam and a soft-cushioned 
 back. 
 
 The days run by, true winter days, snow, cold, and wind, — what 
 wind ! It is terrifying when from our mountain tops those fierce blasts 
 sweep upon us roaring as they come ; flying twigs and ice beat on the 
 roof, the boards creak and groan under the wind's weight, the lamp 
 flutters, moss is driven in and falls upon my work-table, the canvas 
 over our bed flaps, — and then in a moment the wind is gone and the 
 
 80 
 
DAY'S END 
 
WINTER 
 
 world is still again save for the distant wash of the waves and the far 
 off forest roar. 
 
 Olson is full of treats. His latest was in pleasant violation of the 
 law. From a bottle of pale liquid half filled with raisins he poured 
 me a drink, mixing it with an equal amount of ginger ale and a dash 
 of sugar. It tasted pretty good, quite thrilling in fact. 
 
 " What is it? " I asked. 
 
 " Pure alcohol, " he said, smacking his lips. 
 
 Olson then launched forth on confidential advice, " from one 
 trapper to another, " on how to trap men,— in my case rich patrons. 
 He has my need of them quite upon his mind. 
 
 Olson's eggs, by the way, taste good enough. (They gave him 
 in Seward twenty-four dozen bad eggs to bring out for the foxes.) 
 We have eaten a dozen. To-day I cracked seventeen to find six for 
 dinner. Onion omelette is the fashion to cook them in. Rockwell 
 pronounces them delicious and — well — so do I. 
 
 Hard, hard at work, little play, not too much sleep. The wind 
 blows ceaselessly. Rockwell is forever good,— industrious, kind, and 
 happy. He reads now quite freely from any book. Drawing has be- 
 come a natural and regular occupation for him, almost a recreation — for 
 he can draw in both a serious and a humorous vein. At this moment 
 he's waiting in bed for some music and another Andersen fairy tale. 
 
 Another day has gone and a new morning is hours on its way. 
 Out in the moonlit night strained, tired eyes open wide and are made 
 clear again, cramped knees must dance in the crisp air, the curved 
 spine bends backward as the upstretched arms describe that superb 
 embracing gesture of the good-night yawn. November the thirteenth ! 
 how time sweeps by. And I look over the black water that we soon 
 must cross again to Seward. The wind bursts around the cabin 
 comer. I shiver and — go to bed. 
 
 83 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WAITING 
 
 Thursday, November fourteenth. 
 
 ©E'RE ready to go to Seward the moment the weather 
 moderates — which may be not for two weeks or 
 two months. I've packed blankets and several 
 days' food in a great knapsack so that if we're driven 
 to land somewhere we'll not perish of hunger, ^d 
 this trip while it may be carried out speedily may on the other hand 
 strand us days without number in Seward and cost three or four 
 times that many dollars. 
 
 The wind is still in the North, the days are wonderfully beautiful, 
 and the nights no less. This very night Rockwell and I skated for the 
 third time, Ah, but it was glorious on the lake, the moon high above 
 us in a cloudless sky, the snow and ice on the mountain sides glisten- 
 ing and the spruces black. We skated together hand in hand like 
 sweethearts ; going far to one end of the lake in the teeth of the wind 
 and returning before it like full-rigged ships. And Rockwell whose 
 second skate to-day this was improves every minute. 
 
 84 
 
WAITING 
 
 I've cut Rockwell's hair, four months' growth. He has had the 
 appearance of a boy of the Middle Ages with his hair cut to a line 
 above his eyes. Now he's truly a handsome fellow — and such a man 
 under the hardships of this cold place and rough life that I'm very 
 proud of him. 
 
 Saturday, November sixteenth. 
 
 Still it blows, yesterday and to-day, cold, clear, and blue, — and 
 the moon these nights stands straight above us and stays till 
 dawn, setting far in the north. It is really cold. Olson is quite 
 miserable and wonders how we can keep at our wood cutting and 
 skating. But I think I shall never live in such cold again as in 
 that first winter on Monhegan in my unfinished house when on 
 cold days the water pails four feet from the stove froze over be- 
 tween the times I used them, and my beans at soak froze one 
 night on the lighted stove. We love this weather here. While 
 the cabin is drafty I pile on fuel remorselessly, and that's a real 
 delight after having all my life had truly to count the pieces of 
 coal and wood. The ice on the pond is six inches thick, part of it 
 clear black that one can see the bottom through. This morning 
 Rockwell changed to heavy underwear. He complains always of 
 the heat, day and night. 
 
 The days go on about as usual varied only by an occasional 
 weekly or monthly chore and success or failure in my painting. 
 This morning with Olson's help I brought my boat up onto the land 
 above the beach. The boat is an extremely heavily built eighteen- 
 foot dory with a heavy keel; and yet the wind carried it four feet 
 last night and, if it had not been secured, might have blown it 
 down into the water where the waves would soon have wrecked 
 it. This night I shall not read in bed ; it's quite too far away from 
 the stove. 
 
 85 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Sunday, November seventeenth. 
 
 We jumped from bed in a hurry this morning believing that the 
 apparent stillness boded a calm day and a fit one for the Seward trip. 
 But the sea beyond our cove was running swiftly and within two 
 hours there was a gale of wind and some snow. Cold it was and 
 dark. We'd hardly put the lamp out after breakfast, before we 
 lighted it again for late dinner. Still in that short daylight I painted 
 and Rockwell skated and painted, and we both cut a lot of wood. 
 I've spent the evening writing, trying an article for " The Modem 
 School." We turned my boat over and secured it to the ground 
 with ropes just in time to escape the fall of snow to-night that 
 lies deep on the ground. The moon is up and through the clouds there 
 comes a general illumination like daylight. 
 
 Monday, November eighteenth. 
 
 To-day a storm from the southeast. It blows like fury. Break- 
 fast by lamplight, work until dark, then dinner — in the neighborhood 
 of three o'clock or maybe four — more work, and a nap, for I felt ex- 
 hausted. Rockwell goes to bed and is read to, I work a while longer, 
 then a light supper for which Rockwell gets up again, then — the 
 dishes washed and R. again in bed — a call on Olson for three quarters 
 of an hour, leaving there at ten, to work again till some wild hour. 
 What a strangely arranged day! I'm determined to have a clock. 
 But now it will be seen that no more time must be spent this night 
 upon this diary. Amen. 
 
 Tuesday, November nineteenth. 
 
 A dreary, dreary, a weary day. But I've worked or somehow been 
 ceaselessly busy and now I'm about ready for my nightcap of reading 
 and bed. Four canvases stretched and primed stand to my credit 
 and that alone is one day's work in effort and conquered repugnance. 
 
 86 
 
I WAVr TO pE*/) O^E M'lCflT, Ati^ 
 
 FATHER SAT UP /IM) '■«'^ *^ ^^ 
 
 MCAH. 1 ANJMX f/\Tm ^^^"^ W^NT- 
 
 1M&- W r}it WOODS. HWE/?F THfR A 
 RE WILDCATS'. ^iL DPI ill J/"Vc ^^ 
 
 fi>X5mT((W6WE wE«,P WAND Hi NC ^^^ 
 3fff WOODS Aivp llt^ VVo^Am A VEav i^**^KL 
 
 ofL A 609H K^AKtw? ^/^K (?LlOs/>t)N TI^/?tF 
 IT W4^ / KKU 0? THB 7A&E WHILE 
 
 tftU /y/M Nor To SftoOT Ht& 6-51^ ^- 
 ^ft^ I WON/T TO KA(H H\M. wmtE 
 
 tAfAT /HOWr^J-^FMCf Toff/M. f '^^. 
 >L^v5 cFp OF r/i/$^ iRae, ANt> 
 
 I MA P£ ^ ^^^<^ 5^^^ ^^ ^^'^^^' ' 
 
 ROCKWELL'S DREAM 
 
WAITING 
 
 What a tedious work. My Christmas letters are written, nearly all 
 of them. And as Christmas draws near it seems more and more 
 impossible without home and the children. It will be a huge make- 
 believe for one of our family here ! 
 
 There's a big storm at sea from the look of the water and the sound 
 of the wind. And the rain falls drearily and on the roof it rattles. 
 From the tall trees the great drops fall like stones ; they beat to pieces, 
 little by little, the paper roof, and now when the rain is hardest we 
 hear the drip, drip of the water on the floor. But we are comfortable — 
 so what of it all. 
 
 I read *' Big Claus and Little Claus " to Rockwell to-night. That's 
 a great story and we roared over it. Rockwell doesn't like the stories 
 about kings and queens, he says, " They're always marrying and that 
 kind of stuff." Just the same Rockwell himself has his life and 
 marriage pretty closely planned, — the journey from the East alone, 
 the wife to be found at Seattle to save her carfare — and yet not put 
 off as far as Alaska, for there they don't look nice enough, — and then 
 life in Alaska to the end of his days. And I'm to be along if I'm not 
 dead, — as I probably shall be, he says. 
 
 I have just finished the life of Blake and am now reading Blake's 
 prose catalogue, etc., and a book of Indian essays of Coomeraswamy. 
 The intense and illuminating fervor of Blake ! I have just read this : 
 " The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. 
 To suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that 
 are now in the world is not knowing what Art is ; it is being blind to 
 the gifts of the Spirit." Here in the supreme simpUcity of life amid 
 these mountains the spirit laughs at man's concern with the form of 
 Art, with new expression because the old is outworn! It is man's 
 own poverty of vision yielding him nothing, so that to save himself 
 he must trick out in new garb the old, old commonplaces, or exalt to 
 be material for art the hitherto discarded trivialities of the mind. 
 
 89 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Wednesday, November twentieth. 
 
 To-morrow we hope to get oflF — although it still storms. There's a 
 terrific sea rumiing but even such a sea would trouble us less than the 
 chop of the north wind. The wind above all else is to be feared here. 
 
 I painted little — it was so dark. Somehow on these short days it 
 is diflBcult to accomplish much. Certain things have to be done by 
 daylight: the chopping of wood, carrying of water from a hundred 
 yards away, lamp filling, and some cooking. I made myself a lot of 
 envelopes to-day and second-coated the canvases of yesterday's 
 stretching. And now it is bedtime for to-morrow we rise early. 
 Oh! the porcupine returned to-day and was discovered feeding 
 calmly near the cabin. He showed no alarm at Rockwell's approach, 
 and, when finally after some hours of undisturbed nibbling and 
 napping Rockwell carried him home by his tail and set him down a 
 little distance from his old cage, he ran straight there and interned 
 himself. 
 
 Friday, November twenty-second. 
 
 Both yesterday and to-day are to be recorded. The porcupine 
 is dead ! And yesterday he endeared himself so to us, playing about 
 in the house with the utmost content. The cause of his death we 
 cannot know — unless it was our kindness. Rockwell with Olson's 
 leather mittens on did carry him about a good deal. Of course they 
 are creatures nocturnal and we had planned to let him have his regu- 
 lar hours for exercise and feeding, Rockwell delighting in the plan 
 that he should stay with him in the woods at night, which I was cer- 
 tainly going to let him try. But it's over, — and Pet No. 2 has gone to 
 his happy hunting grounds. 
 
 It storms, yesterday violently with such wind and rain as seemed 
 incredible. The thin paper roof made the noise deafening so that I 
 could not sleep ; and the surf beat and the forest roared ; it was a wild 
 
 90 
 
THE CABIN WINDOW 
 
WAITING 
 
 night. To-day is better though it pours every half hour. When, 
 when shall we get to Seward ! And here before me are displayed all 
 the pretty Christmas presents I have made and that Rockwell has 
 made. Here we sit, these dark short days, working together at the 
 same table just like two professional craftsmen. On these days I 
 cannot paint, — and Olson calls upon us more than he should. Still, 
 we let him sit here in silence and he is wise enough to be quite con- 
 tent. Now it is late. The stove is out and I must go to bed. Two 
 meals only to-day, — another is due me. Oh 1 1 made myself a beauti- 
 ful die for note paper yesterday and printed it on my envelopes 
 to-day. 
 
 Saturday, November twenty-third. 
 
 It dawned calm with rain hanging in the air. We hurried with our 
 breakfast in the hope that we should get off; but within an hour 
 at the turn of the tide the northwest wind whipped down from the 
 moimtains and the rain fell in torrents. And now at a late hour of the 
 night it still rains although the wind has fallen. We felled a tree to- 
 day and partly cut it up. Although it was dismally dark all the time 
 I managed to paint a little. And I wrote much and drew in black and 
 white. Rockwell has been industrious as usual, drawing at my side. 
 He told me an amusing anecdote of little Kathleen that is worthy to 
 go down here. When in play she wants to change her doll's name 
 she sends for the pretend doctor, again herself, and he operates on 
 the doll. Cutting a hole in her stomach he stuffs into it a little piece 
 of paper on which he has written the new name. And so the name is 
 changed. 
 
 Tried some cottonseed oil of Olson's to-day that was too bad. 
 A year or two ago he was given a case of spoiled mayonnaise dressing 
 for fox food. Olson saved the oil which had separated from the rest 
 of it. I made dough for doughnuts while I heated the oil to fry our- 
 
 93 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 selves that great treat. Then arose a pinching, rancid odor that 
 ahnost made me ill but which Rockwell called delicious. However I 
 baked the doughnuts. Still, the oil unheated seemed not bad. 
 
 Sunday, November twenty-fourth. 
 
 Olson declares this day to be Simday and in honor of the day he 
 gave me a cup of milk for junket. And in honor of the day, whatever 
 it is, I worked so hard that now I'm tired out. The day began with 
 snow and continued with it. It blustered and blew much as a day in 
 March and the bay looked wild. And now to-night it is clear and 
 starlight. Will the north wind begin to blow again to-morrow? The 
 chances are that it will and Seward and the sending of my mail will 
 be as far away as ever. I painted with some success for the snow 
 makes the cabin lighter. Really my picture looks well. Eight 
 canvases are far along so that I'm proud of them. We cut wood to- 
 day of course; it would be great fun if only we'd more minutes of 
 daylight to spare. Steamer must be due in Seward now. We've seen 
 none for two weeks or longer. 
 
 Monday, November twenty-fifth. 
 
 It rages from the northeast ! The bay is a wild expanse of breakers. 
 They bear into our cove and thunder on the beach. A mad day and a 
 wild night. And Seward is as far off as ever ! It is now my hope that 
 a steamer will go to Seward before me. Olson finds by his diary that 
 none has been seen to go there for two weeks. I began two new 
 pictures to-day trying for the first time to paint after dark. My lamp 
 is so inadequate in this dark interior — it bums only a three-quarter 
 inch wick — that I can work only in black and white. But I've 
 laid in the whole picture in that way. Rockwell spends several hours 
 a day out-of-doors exploring the woods, searching out porcupine trails 
 and caves. It is weeks since I have stopped my work even for a walk. 
 
 94 
 
GO TO BED 
 
WAITING 
 
 In this " out-of-doors life " I see little of out-of-doors. It's a blessing 
 to me to have to saw wood every day. 
 
 I finished Coomeraswamy's "Indian Essays" to-day, an illuminat- 
 ing and inspiring book. Coomeraswamy defines mysticism as a belief 
 in the unity of life. The creed of an artist concerns us only when we 
 mean by it the tendency of his spirit. (How hard it is to speak of these 
 intangible things and not use words loosely and without exact mean- 
 ing.) I think that whatever of the mystic is in a man is essentially 
 inseparable from him ; it is his by the grace of God. After all, the quali- 
 ties by which all of us become known are those of which we are our- 
 selves least conscious. The best of me is what is quite impulsive ; and, 
 looking at myself for a moment with a critic's eye, the forms that occur 
 in my art, the gestures, the spirit of the whole of it is in fact nothing 
 but an exact pictorial record of my unconscious living idealism. 
 
 Tuesday, November twenty-sixth. 
 After a terribly stormy and cold night the day was fair with the wind 
 comfortably settled in the north as if he meant to stay there. Only 
 at night has it been cahn. To-night again is so and if I had not Rock- 
 well on my hands to make me timid I'd go at night to Seward. Olson 
 was a real Santa Claus to-day. First he gave us Schmier Kase, then a 
 good salt salmon — two years old which he said we'd " better try " — 
 and to-night a lot of butter churned by him from goat's milk. It looks 
 like good butter and, with the added coloring matter, more palatable 
 than the natural white butter of the goat. We felled two trees to-day 
 — fairly small ones. We consume a vast amoimt of wood with our all- 
 night fire. Well — to-morrow, let us say again, we'll be off to Seward. 
 
 Wednesday, November twenty-seventh. 
 To-day, if we had known how the weather would turn, we should 
 have started. It was lovely, cold but fair with the wind in the south- 
 
 97 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 west. It had in the morning all appearances of a heavy blow and we 
 failed to get in shape to take advantage of its calming as the afternoon 
 advanced. At any rate I have a little picture of it with the soft haze of 
 the day and the loose clouds. I painted besides on the large canvas of 
 Superman begxm a few days ago. Olson lent me his *' grub-box " to 
 use, a wooden box of small grocery size with a cover fastened with a 
 strap and buckle. Such a box is part of the outfit of every man on the 
 Yukon. My emergency grub is now in it, my letters, Christmas 
 presents, and all that's bound for Seward. Rockwell took Squirlie out 
 for an airing to-day, wrapping him with tender care in a sweater. 
 They went for a long way into the woods like good companions. Then 
 Rockwell drew a portrait of his muflBed pet which is destined for 
 Clara's Christmas. 
 
 Thursday, November twenty-eighth. 
 
 This continual waiting is getting upon my nerves. Most of to-day 
 I spent tinkering with the engine. It goes now — in a water barrel. 
 The trouble with the best of these little motors is that the moment 
 they get wet they stop, and they are attached at such an exposed place, 
 on the stern, that they will get wet if there's much of a sea. Then 
 you're in a bad fix for it's impossible to make any headway rowing 
 with the engine — or rather the propeller — dragging. Most of the 
 engines are hung right on the stem and can be readily detached and 
 drawn into the boat. But mine fits into a sort of pocket built in the 
 stem and is diflicult even on land to Hft out. It weighs decidedly over 
 a hundred pounds. So I don't reUsh getting caught with such an 
 equipment. I must have mentioned, by the way, that the engine was 
 '* thrown in " with the boat as of no value. 
 
 So there's the day gone. To-night we go to bed early and 
 if it is calm just before daylight in the morning we shall start 
 at once. 
 
 98 
 
DRIFTWOOD 
 
WAITING 
 
 Friday, November twenty-ninth. 
 
 Last night a terrific storm from the east. A few blasts struck the 
 house with such force that it seemed our thin roof could not stand it. 
 Of course it is really quite strong enough but the noise of those sudden 
 squalls bearing along snow and ice from the tree tops is simply ap- 
 palling. In the morning it became milder but continued to rain and 
 snow and for most of the day to blow heavily from the eastward. In 
 the afternoon to my despair a steamer entered for Seward; she'll 
 doubtless leave at daylight. There goes one of my chances to get my 
 Christmas mail off. 
 
 I painted splendidly to-day and am in the seventh heaven over it, 
 — which takes away some of my gloom at never reaching Seward. 
 A long call from Olson to-night. He sits here patiently and silently 
 while I draw. It snows steadily. What will to-morrow bring? 
 
 Francis Galton, the inquirer into human faculty, would have been 
 charmed at Rockwell's casual mention of the colors of proper names. 
 They do apparently assume definite colors that seem to him appro- 
 priate and characteristic beyond question. Clara, too, sees names as 
 colors. Father is blue, Mother is a darker blue. The breadth of 
 vowel soimd apparently, judging from this and other examples he 
 gave me, lowers the tone of color. Kathleen is a light yellow, very 
 light. Now for a bite to eat, for I've had but two meals— and then to 
 bed. 
 
 lOI 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 EXCURSION 
 
 Thursday, December fifth. 
 
 y^k^ OVEMBER thirtieth we arose before daylight. It was 
 
 yK^^ a mild, still morning and the melting snow dripped 
 
 £ M m from the trees. Without breakfast we set about at 
 
 ^^^ M' once to carry our things over to the boat. Olson was 
 
 aroused and turned out to help. There's always much 
 
 to be carried on a trip to Seward ; gasoline, oil, tools, my pack bag — 
 
 containing clothes, heavy blankets, and spare boots, — and the grub 
 
 box Olson had given me packed with mail, books, grub, and the flute. 
 
 The engine was in good order and started promptly. So away we 
 
 went out over the bay just as the day brightened. 
 
 It was calm and beautiful. The sun from below the horizon shot 
 shafts of light up into the clouds, gray became pink, and pink grew 
 into gold until at last after an hour or more the sun's rays lighted up 
 the mountain peaks, and we knew that he had risen. It continued 
 cahn and mild all the way, but nevertheless I caught myself singing 
 
 102 
 
EXCURSION 
 
 "Erlkonig," such is my anxiety at carrying Rockwell with me. 
 Rockwell enjoyed the trip wrapped up in a sheepskin coat of Olson's. 
 We stopped at a fishing camp for a moment's chat from the water. The 
 man living there had just caught a good sized-wolverine. We declined 
 breakfast and hurried on. 
 
 In Seward we stored our things in Olson's cabin, a little place 
 about eight feet square, and started for the hotel. One of our friends 
 met us with a shout, ** Well, you've had good sense to stay away so 
 long. " 
 
 Influenza, I then learned, had raged in Seward, there having been 
 over 350 cases ; and smallpox had made a start. But the deaths had 
 been few and it was now well in hand. However, I shunned the hotel. 
 A little cottage was generously put at our disposal and we were soon 
 comfortably settled there with our mail from home spread before us. 
 I left everything of mine at the hotel untouched and we continued to 
 wear our old clothes throughout the stay. At midnight I went with 
 Otto Boehm to pull the dory up above the tide and overturn her, and 
 then continued letter writing until three-thirty A.M. 
 
 December first and every day of our stay at Seward was calm and 
 fair. We kept house in our cottage, I continually busy writing and 
 doing up Christmas presents, for a steamer had entered on the thir- 
 tieth and was due to leave Sunday night, the first. The people of 
 Seward are friendly without being the slightest bit inquisitive, 
 and they are extremely broad-minded for all that their coimtry 
 is remote from the greater world. I don't believe that provincial- 
 ism is an inevitable evil of far-off communities. The Alaskan 
 is alert, enterprising, adventurous. Men stand on their own feet 
 — and why not? The confusing intricacy of modem society is 
 here lacking. The men's own hands take the pure gold from the 
 rocks; no one is another's master. It's a great land — the best 
 by far I have ever known. 
 
 103 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 What a telltale of reaction from our lonely island life is this 
 roseate vision of the little city of the far northwest! We came in 
 time to see Seward quite differently and, with confidence in Alaska, 
 to believe it to be in no way a typical and true Alaskan town. The 
 " New York of the Pacific," as it is gloriously acclaimed in the litera- 
 ture of its Chamber of Commerce, numbers its citizens perhaps at 
 half a thousand — the tenacious remnant of the many more who 
 years ago trusted our government to fulfill its promises to really build 
 and operate a railroad into the interior. One's indignation fires at 
 the recital of the men of Seward's wrongs, — until you recollect that 
 Seward was built for speculation, not for industry, and that by the 
 chance turn of the wheel many have merely reaped loss instead of 
 profit. There are no resources at that spot to be developed and there 
 is consequently no industry. 
 
 Seward is planned for growth and equipped for commerce. Wide 
 avenues and numbered blocks adorn the town-site maps where to the 
 naked eye the land's a wilderness of stumps and briars. The center 
 of the built-up portion of the town, one street of two blocks' length, is 
 modern with electric lights and concrete pavements. The stores are 
 wonderfully good; there are two banks and several small hotels, a 
 baker from Ward's bakery in New York and a French barber from 
 the Hotel Buckingham. There's a good grammar school, a hospital, 
 and churches of all sorts. There is no public library; apparently one 
 isn't badly missed. Seward's a tradesmen's town and tradesmen's 
 views prevail, — narrow reactionary thought on modem issues and a 
 trembling concern at the menace of organized labor. A strike of the 
 three newsboys of the Seward paper plunged the poor fool its printer 
 into frantic fear of an I. W. W. plot. But even Seward smiled at the 
 little man's terror. The worst of Seward is itself; the best is the 
 strong men that by chance are there or that pass through from 
 the great Alaska. 
 
 104 
 
THE WHITTLER 
 
EXCURSION 
 
 December second was a day for shopping. I bought all manner of 
 Christmas things, things for the tree, things to eat, little presents for 
 Olson — but nothing for Rockwell. He and I must do without presents 
 this Christmas. Then more letters were written. A wood block that 
 I had cut proved, on my seeing a proof of it, to be absolutely worthless. 
 
 December third I had still so much mail and business to attend to 
 that I stayed over another day. Set a door frame for Brownell and 
 spent that evening at his house. The postmaster came too, fine 
 fellow, and we'd a great evening taking turns singing songs — and the 
 P. M. did mighty well with " School-master Mishter O'Toole. " The 
 day I'd spent writing and gossiping about town. 
 
 I heard then a story about Olson that's worth while. He was once 
 telling a crowd of men about the reindeer to the northward. Among 
 his listeners was a Jew who was annoyed with his ** hectoring. " 
 At last this joker asked: " Olson, if you bred a reindeer to a Swede 
 what would you get? " " You'd get a Jew, " replied Olson. The Jew, 
 who still lives in Seward, has not bothered Olson since. The old man 
 has a rare reputation for his honesty and truth and all roimd sterling 
 qualities. 
 
 It's truly a satisfaction to be in a country where men are alert 
 enough to take no offense at alertness, where enterprise is so common 
 a virtue that it arouses no suspicion, and where it is the rule to mind 
 your own business. 
 
 December fourth we set about to leave for Fox Island. It took 
 two hours to wind up our final business in town and embark. Brown- 
 ell helped with the boat. Of cotirse the engine balked for fifteen 
 minutes and then (not " of course ") went beautifully. After travel- 
 ing a quarter of a mile I learned that Rockwell had left our clock 
 standing in the snow by Olson's cabin. So for that we went back. 
 Brownell saw us and brought it. 
 
 The trip was swift and smooth. At Caine's Head it began to snow, 
 
 107 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 obscuring Fox Island, but I knew the course. In mid-channel the 
 engine stopped. After ten minutes' tinkering it resumed going and 
 went beautifully till we rotmded the head of our cove. Then it sput- 
 tered and I had continually to crank it. However, it carried us to 
 thirty or forty feet of the shore when it breathed its last, thanks to 
 the snow that had by now thoroughly wet the engine and ourselves. 
 We unloaded and with great labor hauled up the dory and turned her 
 over. That night I was exhausted and went straight to bed, leaving 
 Rockwell at his drawing. So now we're on Fox Island again. 
 
 1 08 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 HOME 
 
 Thursday, December fifth (Continued). 
 
 ^ ILD. rainy, snowy, sleepy — this first day back at home. 
 
 J^T^B ^ I've done little work and dared look at but one 
 ^V ■ I picture — that of Superman — and it appears truly mag- 
 WW m m nificent. The sky of it is luminous as with north- 
 ^^ em lights, and the figure lives. After all it is Life 
 
 which man sees and which he tries to hold and in his Art to recreate. 
 To that end he bends every resource straining at what limits him. 
 If he could only be free, free to rise beyond the limits of expression 
 into belag! at his prophetic vision of man's destiny assuming himself 
 the lineaments of it, in stature grown gigantic, rearing upwards be- 
 yond the narrow clouds of earth into the unmeasured space of night, 
 his cotmtenance glowing, his arms outstretched in an embrace of 
 wider worlds! This is the spirit and the gesture of Superman. 
 — So I'm not unhappy. Now work begins again. For weeks there'll 
 be no mail in Seward and for more weeks none here. 
 
 109 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Friday, December sixth. 
 
 I'm reading a little book on Diirer. What a splendid civilization 
 that was in the Middle Ages, with all its faults. To men with my 
 interests can anything be more conclusive proof of the superiority of 
 that age to this than the position of the artist and the scholar in the 
 community? Let me quote from Diirer's diary. (Antwerp, a banquet 
 at the burgomaster's hall.) 
 
 " All their service was of silver, and they had other splendid ornaments and 
 very costly meats. All their wives were there also. And as I was being led to 
 the table the company stood on both sides as if they were leading some great 
 lord. And there were among them men of very high position, who all treated 
 me with respectful bows, and promised to do everything in their power agreea- 
 ble to me that they knew of. And as I was sitting there in such grandeur, 
 Adrian Horebouts, the syndic of Antwerp, came with two servants and presented 
 me with four cans of wine in the name of the Town Councillors of Antwerp, and 
 they had bid him say that they wish thereby to show their respect for me and 
 assure me of their good will. Wherefore I returned my humble thanks — etc. 
 After that came Master Peeter, the town carpenter, and presented me with two 
 cans of wine, with the offer of his willing services. So when we had spent a 
 long and merry time together till late at night, they accompanied us home with 
 lanterns in great honor." 
 
 Oh land of porcelain bath-tubs! A man has only to leave all 
 that by which we to-day estimate culture to realize that all of his 
 own civilization goes with him right to the back woods, and lives 
 there with him refined and undiminished by the hardships there. 
 
 Civihzation is not measured by the poverty or the wealth of the 
 few or of the milUons, nor by monarchy, republicanism, or even Free- 
 dom, nor by whether we work with hands or levers, — but by the final 
 fruit of all of these, that imperishable record of the human spirit, Art. 
 The obituary of to-day in America has surely now been written in the 
 poor workshop of some struggling, unknown man. That is all that 
 the future will know of us. 
 
 All records for winds are broken by what rages to-night. From 
 
 no 
 
GET UP!' 
 
HOME 
 
 the northwest it piles into our cove. The windows are coated with 
 salt, and tons of flying water sail in clouds out of the bay hiding the 
 mountains from the base to half their height. Our rafters bend be- 
 neath the blast ; ice— from we know not where — falls upon us with a 
 thundering noise. The canvases suspended aloft sway and flap, and 
 from end to end of the cabin the breeze roves at will. It's so ridicu- 
 lously bad and noisy and cold that Rockwell and I just laugh. But 
 the wood is plentiful for we cut some more to-day. 
 
 Last night at bedtime the wind had risen. At some midnight hour 
 the stove went out for I awoke at two and found the cold all about us 
 and the wind hard at it. So with a generous use of kerosene the fire 
 was made to bvuTi again and I returned to a good night's rest. Some- 
 how one doesn't mind short exposures to the cold. Many a day I 
 have stood naked out in the wind and then become at once glow- 
 ing warm again in the hot cabin. Baked bread to-day and it turned 
 out very well. Painted, shivered, wrote, and to-night shall try to 
 design a picture of the " Weird of the Gods. " But at this moment 
 our supper is ready and two hungry, cold mortals cannot be kept from 
 their com mush. 
 
 Saturday, December seventh. 
 
 Late ! Now that we have a clock — I stole one in Seward — we live 
 by system, our hours are regular. The clock I set by the tide, marking 
 the rise of the water in the new-fallen snow. We rise at 7.30. It is 
 then not yet sunrise but fairly light. Breakfast is soon cooked and 
 eaten. To start the blood going hard for a good day's work we spring 
 out-of-doors and chop and split and saw in the glorious, icy north- 
 wind. Then painting begins. I have scared Olson away — poor soul — 
 but I make it up by calling on him just at dark when my painting hours 
 are over. 
 
 Now it's eleven at night and I've still my bit to read. Whew, but 
 
 113 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 it's cold to-night and the wind is rising to a gale. And last night! — 
 what a bitter one. I got up four times to feed the ravenous fire. And 
 even so the water pails froze. We cannot afiford to let it freeze much 
 in the cabin for our stores are all exposed. What if the Christmas 
 cider should freeze and burst! I painted out of doors to-day — in 
 sneakers ! and stood it just about as long as one would imagine. To 
 love the cold is a sign of youth — and we do love it, the Awakener. 
 
 Sunday, December eighth. 
 
 Log cabins stuffed with moss should be wonderful in the tropics. 
 I'm about frozen. On this work table I must weight my papers down 
 to keep them from flying about the room. And the wind is icy ; it is 
 bitterly, bitterly cold. Olson says we need expect no colder weather 
 than this all winter. Of course we don't really mind it. The stove is 
 red hot and we may go as close to it as we please, and the bed is warm 
 — except towards morning. At night I move my jugs of yeast and 
 cider toward the stove, fill the " air-tight " to the top, pile blankets 
 and wrappers upon the bed, and sleep happily. 
 
 The gale still rages, fortunately not with its utmost fury. This 
 morning Rockwell and I hurried through our chores and then climbed 
 to the low ridge of the island. The snow in the woods is crusted and 
 bore us up well so that we traveled with ease and soon reached the 
 crest. Ah, there it was glorious ; such blue and gold and rose ! We 
 looked down upon the spit and saw the sea piling upon it; we looked 
 seaward and saw the snow blown from the land, the spray and the 
 mist rising in clouds toward the sun, — and the sun, the beautiful sun 
 shone on us. We took a number of pictures and then with numbed 
 fingers and toes raced down the slope playing man-pursued-by-a-bear. 
 Rockwell was wonderful to look at with his cheeks so red and clear. 
 He loved our little excursion. 
 
 And for the rest of the day we've worked. I stretched and coated 
 
 114 
 
MAN 
 
HOME 
 
 three large canvases, hateful job ! painted, sawed wood, felled a tree — 
 which the wind carried over onto another so that there it hangs neither 
 up nor down, — and that's about all. It's again eleven and time for 
 bed. The night is beautiful even if it is terrible; and the young 
 moon is near setting. 
 
 Monday, December ninth. 
 
 It blows worse than ever, and it is colder. All day the blue sky 
 has been hidden in clouds of vapor and flying spray. The bay seethes 
 and smokes and huge breakers race across it. It is truly bitter weather. 
 Olson to-night ventured the prophecy that this was about the cul- 
 mination of winter — but I know Olson by now. I cut another tree this 
 morning to release the one of yesterday and both fell with a magni- 
 ficent crash. Then we went to work with the cross-cut saw and 
 stocked our day's wood. 
 
 Olson called this afternoon and related his recollection of the 
 early days of Nome. 
 
 '* A certain man, " he began, " deserted from a whaler that 
 stopped for water on the north coast of Alaska. He'd been shang- 
 haied in San Francisco and was a tailor by trade. He made his way 
 down the coast with the occasional help of the esquimaux. At last 
 he came to Nome. The men were gone from the native village but 
 a woman took him in. She was named English Mary. Now she had 
 heard of the gold finds on the Yukon and she asked the man if he was 
 a miner. He answered, * Yes. ' * You come with me, * she said, and 
 led him to a certain creek and showed him the shining nuggets lying 
 thick upon the bottom. But the tailor really knew nothing about 
 gold and let it lie. He continued down the coast and was at last 
 carried to St. Michael. There he met a missionary and a young 
 fellow who had come to Alaska with a party of prospectors. With 
 those two he returned in a boat to Nome. You'll hear different 
 stories, to be sure, of how they got there but this is the right one, for 
 
 117 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 I've seen the boat they came in lying there oflf the beach. Well, they 
 came and saw the gold but none of them could say for certain what it 
 was. So one of them went off to get a man from the party of pros- 
 pectors with whom the young fellow had come to Alaska. At last 
 they got him there and he proved that it was sure enough gold. 
 They staked their claims and began to work them. But word of gold 
 travels fast and already others began to come. The miner of that 
 first party drew up mining laws for the coimtry and these were en- 
 forced. I was up on the Yukon when I heard of the first find at Nome. 
 I went down and arrived there in the fall, a little more than a year 
 after the strike. By that time there was quite a number there. 
 
 " Some man had drawn up a plan of a town and was selling lots. 
 I bought one on the northwest comer of the block. It was on the 
 tundra. (Tundra is vegetation covered ice, soggy to a foot's depth.) 
 There was a tent on my lot and some wood, so I bought those too. 
 But shortly after when I came home one day from prospecting I found 
 that both the tent and the wood had been stolen. I bought lumber 
 for the frame of a new tent. It cost me thirty dollars; that is, fifty 
 cents a foot. By that time all kinds of people were pouring into Nome. 
 They were taking out gold on the creek, those that had claims, at the 
 rate of $5000 in a couple of hours. It was so heavy in the sand you 
 couldn't handle a pan-full. 
 
 " Someone cut into my tent and cleaned me out — but I had nothing 
 much besides a jack-knife. I borrowed ten dollars and went to 
 work at a dollar an hour. A couple of rascals had come there, a judge 
 and a lawyer ; and they began to get busy swindling everybody out of 
 their titles to claims. It was said openly that if you saw anyone's 
 claim ' jump it, * and the lawyers would make more money for you 
 than you could get out in gold. There was no use in a man without 
 money trying to hold a claim. And the crowd that was there ! Gam- 
 blers, sharps, actors, — men and women of every kind — and they did 
 act so foolish! — all out of their heads over the gold. The brothels 
 were running wide open and robberies occurred in the town by day- 
 light. Every man slept with his gun beside him and if he shot it was 
 to kill. The robbers chloroformed men as they slept in their tents. 
 
 118 
 
WOMAN 
 
HOME 
 
 There were thousands of people then and you could look out on the 
 beach and see them swarming like flies. Everything was overturned 
 for gold, — the entire beach for ten miles both ways from Nome was 
 shoveled off into the sea. They dug under the Indian village till the 
 houses fell in, and even imder the graveyard. " 
 
 And so Olson's story continues. A story of his life would really be 
 — as an old pioneer in Seward told me — a history of Alaska. Because 
 Olson has never succeeded he has been everjrwhere and tried every- 
 thing. I have not done him justice in my abridgment of his Nome 
 story. His recollections are so intimate. He remembers the words 
 spoken in every situation and never, no matter how much an adven- 
 ture centers in himself, does he depart in what he tells of himself 
 from his character as I know him. 
 
 I would not have devoted all of the time I have to this day's entry 
 if I had not a good day's work to my credit including the conception of 
 a new picture so vivid that the doing of it will be mere copying. It is 
 the " North Wind. " Surely after the past four days I may tell with 
 authority of that wild Prince from the North. 
 
 Wednesday, December eleventh. 
 
 Yesterday was too gloomy a day for me to risk a page in this jour- 
 nal. As to weather it was another fierce one, cold and windy. As to 
 work accomplished — nothing. Olson in his cabin, on such a day, is 
 a treat to see. I open the door and enter. There he sits near the 
 stove, a black astrakhan cap on his head and the two female goats in 
 full possession of the cabin. Nanny the milch goat is a most affec- 
 tionate creature. She lays her head on Olson's lap and as he scratches 
 her head her eyes close in blissful content. 
 
 '* See her pretty little face, " says Olson, " and her lovely lips. " 
 He's certainly the kindest creature to animals — and to human ones 
 too we have good reason to know. 
 
 121 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 To-day it is milder. The vapor is thick on the bay but it lies low 
 upon the water and the magnificent mountains sparkle in the sunlight. 
 
 Work has gone better for me and it has been a day not without 
 accomplishment. I baked bread— beautiful bread, cut wood, helped 
 Olson a bit, and had a glorious rough-house with my son. He's a 
 great fighter. I train him for the fights he's bound to have some day 
 by letting him attack me with all his strength; and that has come 
 to be not a little thing. 
 
 Friday, December thirteenth. 
 
 In the midst of letter writing I stop to note down a dramatic cloud 
 effect. That's the way the day's work goes. If I'm out-of-doors busy 
 with the saw or axe I jump at once to my paints when an idea comes. 
 It's a fine life and more and more I realize that for me at least such 
 isolation — not from my friends but from the unfriendly world — is the 
 only right life for me. My energy is too unrestrained to have offered 
 to it the bait for fight and play that the city holds out, without its being 
 spent in absolutely profitless and trivial enterprises. And here what 
 
 122 
 
HOME 
 
 a haven of peace ! Almost the last touch is added to its perfection by 
 the sweet nature of the old man Olson. I have never known such a 
 man. I'm no admirer of the " picturesqueness " of rustic character. 
 Seen close to it's generally damnably stupid and coarse. I have seen 
 the working class from near at hand and without illusion. But Olson I 
 he has such tact and understanding, such kindness and courtesy as 
 put him outside of all classes, where true men belong. 
 
 To-night it looked like the picture I have drawn. These are 
 beautiful days. Yesterday it was as calm in our little cove as one 
 would look for on a summer's day. The day was blue and mild, a day 
 for work. I made of my " North Wind " the most beautiful pic- 
 ture that ever was. I stood it facing outwards in the doorway and 
 from far off it still showed as vivid, more vivid, and brilliant than 
 nature itself. It's the first time I've taken my pictures into the broad 
 light. There's where they should be seen. 
 
 Last night was calm until four o'clock in the morning. Then the 
 wind again struck in and the trees roared and the roof creaked and 
 groaned. To-day it was calmer. We began by felling a tall spruce 
 more than two feet in diameter. It lies now near the cabin a great 
 screen of evergreen. Its wood should last us many weeks. I painted 
 out-of-doors on two pictures. That's bitterly cold work — to crouch 
 down in the snow ; through bent knees the blood goes slowly, feet are 
 nmnbed, fingers stiffen. But then the warm cabin is near. . . . 
 
 This minute I've returned from splitting wood out in the moon- 
 light. On days when painting goes with spirit the chores are left 
 undone. 
 
 If only it were possible to put down faithfully all of Olson's 
 stories ! Last night he told of his return to San Francisco from the 
 Yukon thirty years ago, how the little band of weather-beaten, 
 crippled miners appeared on their return to civilization. Olson was on 
 crutches from scurvy, his beard and hair were of a year's growth; 
 
 123 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 all were in their working clothes, all bearded, brown, free spirited. 
 And their wealth they carried on them in bags, gold, some to $7000 
 worth. As Olson tells it you yourself live in that day. You hear the 
 German landlady of the "Chicago Hotel" in San Francisco, a 
 motherly woman who put all the grub on the table at once so you could 
 help yourself, say, *' You boys have some of you been in Alaska for 
 years and I know about how you've lived. Now that you're back you 
 must have a hankering for some things. Tell me whatever you want 
 and I'll get it for you. " And up spoke one big fellow, " I remember 
 how my mother used to have cabbage. I want you to get me one big 
 head and cook it and let me have it all to myself!" 
 
 That night they went to the music halls in their miners' clothes 
 all as they were, and drank gallons of beer; and from the boxes and 
 the balconies the girls all clamored to be asked to join them — who 
 were such free spenders. Two days later they were paid in coin for 
 their gold — by the mint — and all went to the tailors and got them fine 
 suits of clothes. . . . And so it continues. And he told of Custer's 
 massacre. And, to-night of the sagacity of horses in leading a trapper 
 back to the traps he'd set and maybe lost. When a horse swims with 
 you across a stream guide him with your hand on his neck, but pull 
 not ever so little on the line or he'll rear backwards in the water and 
 likely drown himself and you. 
 
 Saturday, December fourteenth. 
 
 A pretty useless day. No work accomplished but the daily chores. 
 What is there to say of such a day. Olson brought over his letter to 
 Kathleen to-night and read it to us. It's just like him to be really 
 himself even at letter writing. The letter is full of nice humor. 
 " She'll think what kind of an old fool is that," he said, " but what 
 do I care. I'll just say whatever I feel like saying." And he always 
 does. In a mild way he lives Blake's proverb, "Always speak the 
 
 124 
 
FOREBODING 
 
HOME 
 
 truth and base men will avoid you." Some people have found Olson 
 very rough and ill-mannered. 
 
 Made bread to-night and stamped about seventy-five envelopes 
 with my device. To-night it is mild and overcast. A light snow has 
 begun to fall. So far this winter the fall of snow has been extremely 
 light. It should bank up almost to the cabin's eaves. . . . My bed 
 awaits me. Good-night. 
 
 Sunday, December fifteenth. 
 
 This is another day that is hardly worth recording, one that would 
 not be missed from a life. 
 
 It's time something were again said about yoxmg Rockwell who is 
 the real, live, crowning beauty of the commimity. Weeks have passed 
 since I last recorded his fresh delight in everything here. It is the 
 same to-day. For hours he plays alone out-of-doors. Now he's an 
 animal crawling on all fours along the trunk of a tree that I have 
 felled, going out upon its horizontal branches as the porcupines do, 
 hiding himself in the foliage and growling fiercely — hours long it 
 seems — while the foolish goats flee in terror and the foxes race wildly 
 up and down the extent of their corral. Again he's a browsing creature 
 eating the spruce needles with decided relish, — doing it so seriously. 
 Truly he lives the part he plays when it is one of his beloved wild 
 creatures. Then he tears up and down the beach mounted like a four- 
 year-old kid on a stick horse, yelling as loud as he can, going to the 
 water's edge, and racing the swell as it mounts the slope. And pres- 
 ently I capture him for his end of the saw. At that he no longer 
 knows fatigue, — he's as good as a man. He really never tires and the 
 work goes on with a fine, jolly good-will that makes of the hardest 
 chore one of the day's pleasures. Rockwell is lonely at times; but 
 if he tells me he'd like somebody to play with he's sure to add in the 
 same breath, "Ah well, never mind." 
 
 127 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 I don't know how such a haphazard education if continued would 
 fit him for participation in the " practical " affairs of life. But I am 
 convinced that if all the little beauties of spirit that can now be seen 
 budding could be allowed free, clean growth, quite away from the 
 brutal hand of mass influences, we'd have nothing less than the full 
 and perfect flowering of a human soul ; — and in our reachings toward 
 supermanhood none can do more. 
 
 Here, as an example, is an achievement of his imagination that it is 
 hard to pictxire as surviving long in the atmosphere of a large school. 
 Rockwell for two or three years has called himself the " mother of 
 all things. " It is not a figure of speech with him but an attitude to- 
 wards life. If it were the creed of a great poet — and it could be — 
 the discerning critic might discover it to be of the profoundest signifi- 
 cance in modem thought. In little Rockwell it is of one piece with his 
 whole spirit which expresses itself in his love for all animals, the 
 fiercest to the mildest, and for all growing things. The least manifes- 
 tation of that which is thought to be typical cruelty of boys outrages 
 his whole nature. 
 
 I am far from believing Rockwell to be a unique example of 
 childhood. I think that while cruelty appears uppermost where boys 
 herd together, the love of animals is no less characteristic of many 
 sensitive children. But of this I am certain, — that nothing will make 
 a child more ridiculous in the eyes of the mob child than this most 
 perfect and most beautiful attitude of some children toward Ufe. In 
 considering the education of a child and weighing what is to be gained 
 or lost by one system or another I am inclined to think that no gain 
 can outweigh the loss to a child of its loving, non-predatory impulses. 
 
 Tuesday, December seventeenth. 
 
 Once a miner died and presently fotmd his way to the gates of 
 heaven. 
 
 128 
 
LONE MAN 
 
HOME 
 
 " What do you want? " said St. Peter. 
 
 " To come in, of course." 
 
 *' What sort of man are you? " 
 
 "I'm a miner." 
 
 " Well," said St. Peter, " we've never had anyone of that kind 
 here before, so I suppose you might as well come in." 
 
 But the miner once within the gates fell to tearing up the golden 
 streets of heaven, digging ditches and tunnels all over the place and 
 making a frightful mess of it all. At last a second miner presented 
 himself at the gates. 
 
 "Not on your life," said St. Peter. "We have one miner here 
 and we only wish we knew some way to get rid of him. He's tearing 
 up the whole place. 
 
 "Only let me in," said the second miner, "and I'll promise to 
 get rid of that fellow for you." So St. Peter admitted him. 
 
 This second miner easily found the other who was hard at work 
 amid a shower of flying earth. Going up to him he cried in an under- 
 tone: "Partner! They've struck gold in Hell! " 
 
 The miner dropped his work and sprang toward the gates. 
 "Peter, Peter, open, open! Let me out of Heaven, I'm off to 
 Hell!" 
 
 What a book of yams and jokes this is becoming! To-day 
 work went a Uttle better — and the weather a Uttle worse. It 
 pours. For the end of December it is wonderfully mild; but 
 then I expect Uttle really cold weather here. To-night it is full 
 moon. The tide is at its highest for the year and the southeast 
 wind piles the water up till it reaches and overflows the land. 
 Olson expects it to touch his house to-night if the wind continues. 
 Tree trunks, uprooted somewhere from the soil, monstrous and 
 grotesque, grind along our beach; the water is full of driftwood 
 and wreckage. 
 
 131 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Wednesday, December eighteenth. 
 
 There's a little bucket of dough that stands forever on the shelf 
 behind the stove. Sour dough is made with yeast, flour, and water 
 to the consistency of a bread sponge and then allowed to stand in- 
 definitely. For all that you take out you add more flour and water to 
 what's left in the bucket and that shortly is as fit for use as the origi- 
 nal mixture. Alaskans use it extensively as the basis for bread and 
 hot cakes. You add but a pinch of soda and a Uttle water to the 
 proper consistency and it's all ready for use. The old time Alaskans 
 rejoice in the honorable title of " Sour Doughs." 
 
 Olson's cabin in Seward stands comfortably on a little lot in a 
 quite thickly settled part of the town. I wondered at his aflluence in 
 possessing a house and lot. Here is its history as he told it to me to- 
 night. When Olson first came to Seward he built — or he bought 
 already built — a little cabin standing on a part of the beach now occu- 
 pied by the railroad yard. In course of time he went to Valdez for a 
 winter's work. Returning, he found no cabin. It was gone from that 
 spot and he has not found it since. But corporations and govern- 
 ments are nothing to Olson when he feels himself injured. He went 
 to one official and said, *' See here ! Winter's at hand and I have no 
 house, what are you going to do about it?" Well, they would see 
 what could be done, and in time referred him to a higher authority. 
 "I want a cabin," Olson said to this one. "If you don't give me the 
 lumber to build one with I'll have to steal it from you. I have no 
 money and no cabin. Winter is here and I'm certainly going to live 
 in a cabin this winter." So they gave him an old shed to tear down 
 and use but told him not to build on the beach. The town of Seward 
 was laid off in lots. By the stakes Olson could tell a lot from a street, 
 and fair and square on a lot, somebody's lot, he put his cabin. The 
 owner of the land was tolerant and let it stay there a few years ; but 
 one day he ordered Olson's house taken off. So Olson carried it 
 
 132 
 
HOME 
 
 somehow out into the middle of the street where it fitted in nicely 
 among the tree stumps. Well and good for a little time till in the 
 summer before last the town of Seward improved that street and sent 
 a man and team to remove the stumps. "If you're paid to remove 
 the stumps you may as well move my house for me, " said Olson. 
 "Where to?" asked the man. "You can suit yourself," said Olson. 
 So the cabin was again planted on a "desirable" lot of somebody's, 
 — and there it stands to-day, neat and trim, with a little wooden walk 
 connecting its doorway with the plank sidewalk of the street. Alaska 
 is, to be sure, a great free country ! 
 
 To-day has been wonderfully mild and comfortable. From time 
 to time the rain has fallen gently. Over the water the clouds have 
 drooped, hiding the mountain peaks. The sea has been glassy save 
 for the long swell— and this more to be heard upon the beach than 
 seen. Rockwell and I at dusk walked the shore out to the point be- 
 tween the coves. We saw the glowing sky where the sun had set, 
 the mountainous islands to the southward, and our own cove and its 
 mountain ramparts — beautiful in the black and white of the spruces 
 and the snow. If I but had my prepared canvas I'd make large studies 
 of the many views from this point. 
 
 Rockwell at dinner begged me repeatedly to have part of his 
 junket besides my own. I wondered at it for although he is always 
 considerate and polite this was almost too much. And in other ways 
 I noticed his alacrity to be obliging. Later in the day he told me, 
 after much embarrassment, that he had made up his mind to be 
 nicer about everything and to do more for me, — and yet I had pre- 
 viously f oimd no fault with him ; how could I ! So ends a day ; — and 
 again I think that in this country I would gladly live for years. 
 
 133 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CHRISTMAS 
 
 Thursday, December nineteenth. 
 
 ^^^^^^HIS day is never to be forgotten, so beautiful, so calm, 
 £^^^ so still with the earth and every branch and tree muffled 
 A in deep, feathery, new-fallen snow. And all day the 
 
 ^^^^^ softest clouds have drifted lazily over the heaven 
 shrouding the land here and there in veils of falling 
 snow, while elsewhere or through the snow itself the sun shone. 
 Golden shadows, dazzling peaks, fairy tracery of branches against the 
 blue summer sea ! It was a day to Live, — and work could be forgotten. 
 So Rockwell and I explored the woods, at first reverently tread- 
 ing one path that the snow about us might still lie undisturbed. 
 But soon the cub in the boy broke out and he rolled in the 
 deepest thickets, shook the trees down upon himself, lay still 
 in the snow for me to cover him completely, washed his face till 
 it was crimson, and wound up with a naked snow-bath. I photo- 
 
 134 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 graphed him standing thus in the deep snow at the water's edge 
 with the mountains far ofif behind him. Then he dried himself 
 at the roaring fire we'd made ready and felt like a new boy — if 
 that can be imagined. We both sketched out-of-doors for a little 
 while in the morning like young lady amateurs. I tried it again 
 two or three times throughout the day with indifferent results ; it 
 was too beautiful. We cut wood too, and that went with a zest. 
 While Rockwell dried himself after his bath I searched in the 
 woods for a Christmas tree and cut a fair-sized one at last for 
 its top. Christmas is right upon us now. To-night the cranberries 
 stew on the stove. 
 
 Friday, December twentieth. 
 
 The beautiful snow is fast going under the falling rain! With 
 only five more days before Christmas it is probable we'll have 
 little if any snow on the ground then. A snowless Christmas in 
 Alaska ! 
 
 This day was as uneventful as could be. Part of the morning was 
 consumed in putting a new handle into the sledge hammer. It was 
 too dark to paint long, really hardly an hour of daylight. These days 
 slip by so easily and with so little accomplished! Only by burning 
 midnight oil can much be done. 
 
 Sunday, December twenty-second. 
 
 Both yesterday and to-day it has poured rain. They've not been 
 tmpleasant days, however. Occasional let-ups have allowed us 
 to cut wood and get water without inconvenience. This morning 
 Olson, fearing that a continuance of the mild weather would melt 
 the ice in the lake and send his bags of fish to the bottom, went 
 out to the center of the lake where they hung suspended through 
 
 135 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 a hole in the ice and brought them in. But so precarious has the 
 ice become that he carried a rope and took me along in case of 
 trouble. To get out upon the ice we had to go some distance along 
 the lake's shore. 
 
 Returning we missed meeting Rockwell who had gone to join us. 
 Not for some time did it occur to me to call him. It was well I did 
 call. The poor boy on not seeing us had suddenly concluded we were 
 drowned. A strip of water separated him from the ice. He was on 
 the point of wading into this at the moment I called him. He was still 
 terribly excited when he reached us. 
 
 Both days I have been occupied with humble, housewifely duties, 
 — baking, washing, mending, and now the cabin is adorned with our 
 drying clothes. Here where water must be carried so far it is the 
 wet days that are wash days. Darning is a wretched nuisance. 
 We should have socks enough to tide us over our stay here. Last 
 night after Rockwell had been put to bed I sat down and did two 
 of the best drawings I have made. At half past twelve I finished 
 them, and then to calm my elation a bit for sleep read in the 
 " Odyssey." At this my second reading of the book it's as in- 
 tensely interesting — or more so — than before. As a story it is in- 
 comparably better than the "Iliad." To me it is full of suggestions 
 for wonderful pictures. 
 
 Ten days from now it comes due for Olson to go to Seward. If 
 only then we have mild, calm weather ! But as yet we have seen no 
 steamer go to Seward since early in the month. It looks as if the 
 steamship companies had combined to deprive Alaska of its Christ- 
 mas mail and freight in a policy of making the deadlock with the 
 government over the mail contracts intolerable. Meanwhile, instead 
 of serving us, the jaunty little naval cruisers that summered here in 
 idleness doubtless loaf away the winter months in comfortable south- 
 em ports. 
 
 136 
 
CAIN 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 Monday, December twenty-third. 
 
 Up to this morning the hard warm rain continued, and now the 
 stars are all out and it might be thought a night in spring. At eight- 
 thirty I walked over in sneakers and underwear for a moment's call 
 on Olson, but he had gone to bed. And now although we'll have no 
 snow the weather is fair for Christmas. 
 
 If Olson believes, as he says, that Christmas will pass as any other 
 day he is quite wrong. The tree waits to be set up and it will surely be 
 a thing of beauty blazing with its many candles in this somber log in- 
 terior. I've given up the idea of dressing Olson as Santa Claus in goat's 
 wool whiskers. Santa Claus without presents would move us to tears. 
 There are a few little gifts, — a pocketknife and a kitchen set of knife, 
 fork, and can-opener for Olson. An old broken fountain pen for Rock- 
 well, some sticks of candy, — and the diimer ! What shall it be? Wait 1 
 
 It is midnight. I've just finished a good drawing. The lamp is 
 about at its accustomed low mark — yesterday it had to be filled twice ! 
 Those nights when without a clock I sat up so late and to so uncertain 
 an hour I have discovered by the lamp and clock together to have been 
 really long. My bedtime then was after two or three o'clock — but I 
 arose later. To-day I finished a little picture for Olson and so did 
 Rockwell. These were forgotten in my list of presents as I've just 
 ^iwitten it. I have shown in my picture the king of the island himself 
 striding out to feed the goats while Billy, rearing on his hind legs, 
 tries to steal the food on the way. Rockwell's picture is of Olson 
 surrounded by all the goats in a more peaceful mood. Olson's cabin 
 is in the background. I wish we had more to give the good old man. 
 At any rate he dines with us. 
 
 Christmas Eve! 
 
 We've cleaned house, stowed everything away upon shelves and 
 hooks and in corners, moved even my easel aside ; decorated the roof 
 
 139 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 timbers with dense hemlock boughs, stowed quantities of wood 
 behind the stove — for there must be no work on that holiday — 
 and now both Rockwell and I are in a state of suppressed excitement 
 over to-morrow. 
 
 What a strange thing ! Nothing is coming to us, no change in any 
 respect in the routine of our lives but what we make ourselves, — and 
 yet the day looms so large and magnificent before us ! I suppose the 
 greatest festivals of our lives are those at which we dance ourselves. 
 You need nothing from outside, — not even illusion. Certainly chil- 
 dren need to be given scarcely an idea to develop out of it an atmos- 
 phere of mystery and expectation as real and thrilling to themselves 
 as if it rested upon true belief. 
 
 Well, the tree is ready, cut to length with a cross at the foot to 
 stand upon, and a cardboard and tin-foil star to hang at its top. And 
 now as to Christmas weather. This morning, as might just as well 
 have been expected, was again overcast. Toward evening light snow 
 began to fall. It soon turned to rain and the rain now has settled 
 down to a gentle, even, all-night-and-day pace. Let it snow or 
 rain and grow dark at midday! The better shall be our good 
 Christmas cheer within. This is the true Christmas land. The day 
 should be dark, the house further overshadowed by the woods, tall 
 and black. And there in the midst of that somber, dreadful gloom 
 the Christmas tree should blaze in glory unrivaled by moon or sun 
 or star. 
 
 Christmas Day on Fox Island. 
 
 It is mild ; the ground is almost bare and a warm rain falls. First 
 the Christmas tree all dripping wet is brought into the house and set 
 upon its feet. It is nine feet and a half high and just touches the peak 
 of the cabin. There it stands and dries its leaves while Rockwell and 
 I prepare the feast. 
 
 140 
 
SUPERMAN 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 Both stoves are kept burning and the open door lets in the 
 cool air. Everything goes beautifully ; the wood bums as it should, 
 the oven heats, the kettle boils, the beans stew, the bread browns 
 in the oven just right, and the new pudding sauce foams up as 
 rich and delicious as if instead of the first it were the hundredth 
 time I'd made it. And now everything is ready. The clock stands 
 at a quarter to three. Night has about fallen and lamp light is 
 in the cabin. 
 
 " Run, Rockwell, out-of-doors and play awhile." Quickly I stow 
 the presents about the tree, hang sticks of candy from it, and light 
 the candles. 
 
 Rockwell runs for Mr. Olson, and just as they approach the cabin 
 the door opens and fairyland is revealed to them. It is wonderful. 
 The interior of the cabin is illuminated as never before, as perhaps 
 no cabin interior ever was among these wild mountains. Then all 
 amazed and wondering those two children come in. Who knows 
 which is the more entranced? 
 
 Then Olson and I drink in deep solemnity a silent toast ; and the 
 old man says, "I'd give everything — yes everything I have in the 
 world — to have your wife here now! " 
 
 And the presents are handed out. For Olson this picture from 
 Rockwell. Ah, he thinks it's wonderful! Then for Rockwell this 
 book — a surprise from Seward. Next for Olson a painting, a kitchen 
 set, and a pocketknife. By this time he's quite overcome. It's the 
 first Christmas he has ever had! And Rockwell, when he is handed 
 two old copies of the ** Geographic Magazine " cries in amazement, 
 " Why I thought I was to have no presents ! " But he gets besides a 
 pocketknife and the broken fountain pen and sits on the bed looking 
 at the things as if they were the most wonderful of gifts. 
 
 Dinner is now set upon the table. Olson adjusts his glasses and 
 reads the formal menu that lies at his place. 
 
 143 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 So we feast and have a jolly good time. 
 
 Pec fife) 
 
 ♦ €rtiree *■ 
 
 JfioQ/tefft a fa. ^o^JslancC 
 
 hearts ct /a Xcsvrrecf'QA >3o/ 
 ^vr/»^(es Cn Cajsero/e 
 
 C ranbe rry Uavei 
 
 f JJessert 
 
 J'^um T^i/ctdtn/^ A(.(zon</cjto 
 
 It is a true party and looks like 
 one. Rockwell and I are in clean 
 white shirts, Olson is magnificent 
 in a new flannel shirt and his Sun- 
 day trousers and waistcoat. He 
 wears a silk tie and in it a gold 
 nugget pin. He is shaven, and 
 clipped about the ears. How grand 
 he looks! The food is good and 
 plentiful, the night is long, only the 
 Christmas candles are short-Uved 
 and we extinguish them to save 
 them for another time. Finally as 
 the night deepens Olson leaves us 
 amid mutual expressions of delight 
 in each other's friendship, and Rock- 
 well and I tumble into bed. 
 
 The next day and the next it is 
 mild, resting — the weather seems to 
 be — at this peaceful holiday season. 
 We cut no wood and do little work. 
 We write long letters, both of us, 
 and consume at meal-time the food 
 left over from Christmas. I read the 
 
 j^vf, x^.,e>.r son-bori "Odyssey," great story! Just now 
 
 jVo„„ su,re^ jVomr Ctccer I am past that magnificent slaughter 
 
 *■ of the wooers, else these delayed 
 
 ^uscc Ay ^Ac German Qarxot . pages wouM Still bo uuwritten. A 
 
 few more Odysseys to read here in this wild place and one could 
 
 forget the modern world and return in manners and speech and 
 
 144 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 thought to the heroic age. That would be an adventure worth try- 
 ing ! Maybe we are not so deeply permeated with the culture of to- 
 day that we could not throw it off. Surely the spirit of the heroes 
 strikes home to our hearts as we read of them in the ancient books. 
 
 Sattirday, December twenty-eighth. 
 
 For the first time in days the sun has risen in a clear sky and 
 shone upon the mountains across from us. It is colder, for ice has 
 formed again on the tub of water out-of-doors. But there is a little 
 wind. 
 
 I am writing in preparation for Olson's trip. He too is making 
 ready. Food for the foxes is on the stove for many days' feeding, 
 his engine gets a little burnishing — it's no insignificant voyage to 
 Seward in the winter. If only it holds out fair and calm until a steamer 
 comes! There's the hitch now. We have seen none go to Seward 
 since the first of the month. 
 
 To-morrow probably the Christmas tree must come down. The 
 hemlock trimmings shed all over the cabin till to-day I tore them out. 
 Last night we had our final lighting of the tree. Rockwell and I stood 
 out-of-doors and looked in at it. What a marvelous sight in the 
 wilderness. If only some hapless castaways had strayed in upon us 
 lured by that light ! We sang Christmas carols out there in the dark, 
 did a Christmas dance on the shore, and then came in and while the 
 tree still burned told each other stories. Rockwell's story was about 
 the adventures of some children in the woods, full of thrilling climaxes. 
 It came by the yard. I told him of an Indian boy who, longing for 
 Christmas, went out into the dark woods at night and closed his eyes. 
 And how behind his closed eyes he found a world rich in everything 
 the other lacked. There was his Christmas tree and to it came the 
 wild animals. They got each a present, the mother porcupine a box 
 of little silken balls to stick onto her quills for decoration, and the 
 
 145 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 father porcupine a toothbrush because his large teeth were so very 
 yellow. After the story it was bedtime. Well . . . this fair day has 
 passed, and with the night have come clouds and a cold gloom fore- 
 boding snow. But I have learned to expect nothing of the weather 
 but what it gives us. 
 
 Sunday, December twenty-ninth. 
 
 Squirlie's birthday party. Squirlie is seated in a condensed milk 
 box. At his back hangs a brown sweater. About him stand his 
 presents consisting chiefly of feathers. The table is spread with the 
 feast in shells and the whole is brilliantly illuminated by a Christmas 
 tree candle. Long life to Squirlie and may he never fall to pieces nor 
 be devoured by moths ! 
 
 Monday, December thirtieth. 
 
 Yesterday it rained gently, to-day it pours. I sit here with the 
 door open and the stove slumbering — such weather in this country 
 that the world believes to be an iceberg ! But in Seward and on the 
 mountains no doubt it is snowing enough. To-day I made so good a 
 drawing that I'm sitting up as if the flight of time and the coming of 
 morning were no concern of mine. It is half -past twelve ! 
 
 New Year's Eve! Tuesday. This is the tenth anniversary of 
 Rockwell's parents and I have kept it as well as I could, working all 
 day upon a drawing for his mother and to-night holding a kind of song 
 service with Rockwell. Rockwell, who at nine years has every reason 
 to celebrate to-day, however he may feel at twenty-nine, has written 
 his mother a sweet little letter. I'm terribly homesick to-night and 
 don't know what to say about it in these genial pages. It has been a 
 solemn day. 
 
 When Olson was here to-night I began from playing the flute to 
 sing. He was delighted and I continued. What a strange performance 
 
 146 
 
nmiOlHIllinmi ■»••>■ 
 
 THE NORTH WIND 
 
CHRISTMAS 
 
 here in the wilderness, a little boy, an old man, listening as I sing 
 loudly and solemnly to them without accompaniment. Olson brought 
 us a pan of goat's milk to-day, as he often does. I make junket of it 
 and it is a truly delicious dish, ever so much better than when made 
 of cow's milk. It resembles a jelly of pure cream. 
 
 It has rained hard most of the day. At times a mist has hung in a 
 band halfway up the mountain's height across the bay. It is a remark- 
 able sight. To-night is as warm as any night in spring or autumn. 
 It thaws continually and even the ice that once covered the ground 
 beneath the snow is fast disappearing. The year goes out without a 
 steamer having been seen to come with the Christmas mail. 
 
 It is close to midnight. I have one secret resolution to make for 
 the new year and, that I may make it as earnestly and as truly as 
 possible, the stars and the black sky shall be my witness. And so 
 with the year nineteen hundred and eighteen I end this page. 
 
 149 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 NEW YEAR 
 
 ^^^^i^^O Rockwell who asked what happened on the New Year 
 
 ^^^^ that everybody sat up to see it come we tried hard to 
 
 A tell all sorts of yarns about explosions and rumblings, 
 
 ^^^^^ but he wouldn't believe a bit of it. He might have 
 
 said, "How can anything like that happen here where 
 
 nothing ever comes from the sky except rain?" 
 
 So far the new year is just exactly like the old's latter end but 
 that it is more joyous. And the joy came at eleven-thirty P.M. of 
 January first, gliding by about two miles out in the bay, a dazzle of 
 lights like a fairy citadel, the STEAMER ! At my cry Rockwell sat 
 up in bed and gazed too. Olson unfortunately was in bed and we did 
 not call him. So I set at once to work writing, tying up parcels, making 
 lists, until two o'clock of this morning. 
 
 At eight we had Olson out of bed. I hung about there threatening 
 him, ordering him, begging him to hurry. Old men are hard to move 
 fast. He shaved standing up there in his cabin with the door wide 
 open and the goats playing about him. I let him have a bite of break- 
 fast, but not much. The dory had to be unbound — for we tie them to 
 the ground — and turned right-side up, and loaded and launched, — but 
 
 150 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 all that only after half an hour's cranking of the engine, the infernal 
 things ! It would look like snow one minute and be fair the next ; but 
 it held fair enough finally for Olson to get off and disappear— to our 
 immense joy. He laughs at our eagerness to get him off for the maU. 
 Yesterday was Olson's day for celebrating and many times we 
 drank to the New Year together. But I would work, to his disgust. 
 Still he understands pretty well the strange madness that possesses 
 me, and is not at all unsympathetic. I explained to him one day the 
 difference between working to suit yourself and working to suit other 
 people. He'd defy the world at any time he chose no matter how 
 poor his fortunes. 
 
 Well, now we wait for mail. Already I'm impatient for Olson's 
 return and that cannot well be before the day after to-morrow. Rock- 
 well and I walked around the bay in the afternoon more to have a 
 look toward Seward where our mail comes from than for anything 
 else. But Seward was hidden in falling snow. All the bay was 
 shrouded in mist and snow. But our own cove was beautiful to look 
 back upon with its white peaks and dark forest, and far down at the 
 water's edge our tiny cabins from one of which the thick smoKe of 
 the smoldering fire curled upwards. 
 
 Sunday, January fifth. 
 
 Olson is still away. It is wearing to wait this way in hope,— for 
 we will hope even if the wind blows and the snow falls. And so it has 
 done. The day following Olson's departure it was wonderfully fair 
 and calm, but the next day, it being the day he should have returned, 
 a heavy snowstorm set in. And to-day with less snow there was 
 more wind,— not so much that he could not have come but enough 
 that he didn't. We walked down the beach and scanned the bay 
 with the glasses, and up to dark I looked continually for the little 
 boat to be rounding the headland. 
 
 151 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 It seems as if that were all the news, but the days have really been 
 full of work and other interest. The snow itself, lying deep and light 
 and over all^even the tree tops— is a delight. Rockwell and I 
 played bear and hunter to-day tracking each other in the woods. 
 Only the goats are miserable these days with their browse all covered 
 but what they can gnaw from the tree trunks. Billy at this season is 
 
 ANOTHER OF ROCKWELL'S DRAWINGS 
 
 a fury. One has really to go armed with a clout. Yesterday he burst 
 in the door of Olson's shed and then inside managed to shut the 
 door on himself. When I investigated the strange banging that I'd 
 been hearing for some time, I found him. He had even piled things 
 against the door. While no actual damage has been done he has 
 tossed every blessed thing about with his horns. Boxes, pails, sacks 
 of grain, cans, rope, tools, all lie piled in confusion about the floor. 
 It does no good to beat the creature. He will learn nothing. It is 
 about one-thirty a. m. I've written more than I intended writing. 
 My heart is set upon the mail and nothing else. 
 
 152 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 Monday, January sixth. 
 
 With Olson still away and the mail with him what can there be to 
 report. It snows. It is so mild that we walk about hatless, coatless, 
 mittenless. Drip, drip, drip, goes it from the eaves continuously. 
 The snow has fallen from the trees. On the ground it lies deep and 
 heavy. To-morrow maybe we shall take to snowshoes. Rockwell 
 and I each took a trip along the beach to look for Olson. As I stood 
 there peering into the haze toward Seward a head arose from the 
 water close to me. It was a seal. He looked all about him for the 
 greatest while, went imder, reappeared again near by once more, and 
 then was gone. Billy burst open that shed of Olson's again. Some 
 day I shall murder a goat ! 
 
 Wednesday, January eighth. 
 
 Two more days and Olson still away. I'm furious at him. Yester- 
 day he could well have come, to-day it has been impossible. We 
 seem to do little here but wait. Even at the height of to-day's storm 
 I found myself continually going to the little window to look for a boat. 
 Rain and snow, rain and snow ! Ah, if only we had our mail here — 
 then these warm, white days would be delightful. Yesterday we wore 
 our snowshoes for the first time, but only to tramp down the cove and 
 look toward Seward. 
 
 The only recompense for Olson's absence is Nanny's milk. I'm 
 an expert milker now and can do the job before she finishes her cup 
 of oats. I have to, for at the finish she leaps madly to escape me. 
 Goat's milk junket and orange marmalade ; sublime ! 
 
 Friday, January tenth. 
 
 One hour ago it was as beautiful a moonlit night as one ever 
 beheld. The softest veils of cloud passed the moon and cast over the 
 
 153 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 earth endlessly varied, luminous shadows. The mountain tops, trees, 
 rocks, and all, are covered with new snow ; the valleys and the lower 
 levels are black where rain has cleared the trees. It is so beautiful 
 here at times that it seems hard to bear. And now at this moment 
 the rain falls as if it had fallen for all time and never would cease. Oh 
 Olson, Olson ! Is it anything to you in your old age to be so madly 
 wanted? Here it truly is conceivable that any condition of bad 
 weather could visit us for months without relief. There seems no 
 rhyme or reason to it until you see it as the reverse of marvelously 
 fair weather ; a blue sky is here as wrong as rain in a rainless desert 
 land. 
 
 Nothing has happened. I am making good drawings and have 
 made two small woodcuts. Billy to-day again tackled the door of 
 Olson's shed. My fixing of the lock proved too good. That held — 
 while he burst the door to pieces. I caught him at the finish of it; 
 I become a maniac at such a time. I pursued the beast with a club 
 in a mad chase through the heavy snow, catching him often enough 
 to get some satisfaction at least in the beating I gave him. He fears 
 me now and that's something gained. But it's a bad matter both for 
 Billy and for me. 
 
 It is now after midnight and I've just finished a drawing. Rock- 
 well is concerned about these late hours and when I told him that I 
 could work so very well alone at night he seriously suggested that 
 I send him out in the daytime to stay all day without dinner so that I 
 could work better. I'm reading about King Arthur and the round 
 table to him; that's good for both of us. He has made himself a 
 lance and a sword and to-morrow I expect to confer some sort of 
 knighthood upon him. Apropos of the book of King Arthur, Rockwell 
 said to-day, "I don't think the pictures in the book are half nice 
 enough. I think of a wonderful picture when you read the story and 
 then when I see the one in the book I'm disappointed." And these 
 
 154 
 
WELTSCHMERZ 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 King Arthur pictiires are rarely good in execution. It just shows that 
 one need not attempt to pahn o£f unimaginative stuff, much less trash, 
 on children. The greatest artists are none too good to make the 
 drawings for children's books. Imagination and romance in pictures 
 and stories a child asks for above all, and those qualities in illustra- 
 tion are the rarest. 
 
 Monday, January thirteenth. 
 
 Of the three days that have again passed two have been quite 
 fair enough for Olson to have come. Both yesterday and to-day 
 Rockwell and I made frequent trips down the shore to look for 
 him. It is terribly depressing to have your heart set upon that 
 mail that doesn't come. I begin to think that some other cause 
 than the weather holds Olson away. It is possible that the steamer 
 we saw going to Seward was no mail steamer, and that Olson, 
 who has gone for his pension money, is waiting for a mail. I feel 
 like making no record of these days. I take pleasure only in their 
 quick passage. 
 
 Saturday night Rockwell received the order of knighthood. For 
 three quarters of an hour he stayed upon his knees watching over his 
 arms. He was all that time as motionless as stone and as silent. 
 Now he is Sir Lancelot of the Lake and jousts all day with imaginary 
 giants and wicked knights. He has rescued one queen for himself 
 but as yet none for me. 
 
 We have run about some on our snowshoes, though the snow is 
 nowhere deep enough for that except along the shore. The weather 
 is still mild — hardly freezing at all — and it forever successively 
 rains, snows, and hails. All the animals are still alive. I don't 
 love them, they're rather a nuisance. Nothing could be less 
 amusing than a blue fox, — small creatures, excessively timid, of 
 cowed demeanor. Saturday I had to get a bag of fish from the 
 
 157 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 lake where they had been soaking and cook up another great sup- 
 ply of fox food. 
 
 Wednesday, January fifteenth. 
 
 Yesterday to begin with a snowstorm and then a clear, gray day. 
 To-day blue sky in the morning, a north wind and bitter cold ; gray 
 again at noon and mild. By the geological survey report of Kenai 
 Peninsular, January should average in temperature at Seward six- 
 teen degrees. From now on it must average close to zero to give us 
 sixteen for the month. Here it's not as cold as New York. Rockwell 
 bathed to-night standing within six feet of the open door. I have 
 definitely decided that Olson stays for some cause other than the 
 weather, although to-day and yesterday he could not have come. 
 We snowshoed a bit to-day. Alaska snowshoes are certainly the 
 easiest that ever were to travel on. 
 
 Thursday, January sixteenth. 
 
 Well, after to-day there remains no doubt that Olson stays away 
 purposely — unless he's sick or dead. Rockwell's theory that Seward 
 has been totally swept away by a terrible fire, with every man, woman, 
 and child of its inhabitants, I disproved to-night. We walked down 
 the beach and there were the lights of the great city brighter it seemed 
 than ever. Either there has been no mail boat at all since early in 
 December or there has been no mail from Juneau whence Olson's 
 "check-que," as he calls it, comes. Well it profits us nothing to 
 speculate on this. 
 
 The day has been glorious, mild, fair, with snow everjrwhere even 
 on the trees. The snow sticks to the mountain tops even to the 
 steepest, barest peaks painting them all a spotless, dazzling white. 
 It's a marvelous sight. Rockwell and I journeyed around the point 
 to-day and saw the sun again. To-night in the brilliant moonlight 
 
 158 
 
VICTORY 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 I snowshoed around the cove. There never was so beautiful a land 
 as this ! Now at midnight the moon is overhead. Our clearing seems 
 as bright as day, — and the shadows are so dark! From the little 
 window the lamplight shines out through the fringe of icicles along 
 the eaves, and they glisten like diamonds. And in the still air the 
 smoke ascends straight up into the blue night sky. 
 
 Saturday, January eighteenth. 
 
 Two beautiful days, these last. And to-night the wind blows and 
 the snow falls and it is very cold. The days are uneventful. We 
 journey many times down the beach over our snowshoe trail. That's 
 our out-of-doors diversion, — to look up the bay toward Seward. But 
 the view is beautiful. Loftier mountains, more volcano shaped are 
 about Seward, and they're dazzling white. 
 
 Yesterday Rockwell found otter tracks crossing from the salt 
 water to the lake, — a lot of them. It's wonderful to think that those 
 fine creatures have crossed the five long miles of water. Their foot- 
 prints are as large as a good-sized dog's. They seem to have a great 
 time frisking about as they travel. On one little slope they have 
 made a slide. No footprints are there at all, — only the smoothly 
 worn track. We see no wild life as a rule but the eagles. They're all 
 about in plenty, magnificent birds when seen close to, and when flying 
 at the moimtain's height still surprisingly large. 
 
 The milk goat is dry, — so that's one chore less. Rockwell feeds 
 the goats every day, but I can't trust him with the foxes; he'd leave 
 the door open as likely as not. (It was reserved for Olson himself to 
 let this happen. May twenty-ninth he writes in a letter to me : 
 
 " Had a skear or acksedent on the eighteenth, i vas putteng som grase in 
 to the fox Corrals an i most heav left the hok of van i turnd around the dor vas 
 open and i. fox goan the litle femall in the Corall naxst to the goat Hous. And 
 the fox var over at the tant i cald to em et vas suppertam to Com bake and get 
 
 i6i 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 Bom sepper aad He sat down and luckt at me bot finly mosed of op in the Hill. 
 i take the other fox and put em in the other Corall and left the 2— tow Coralls 
 open and put feed in the seam es nothing ad apen. the first night i did not 
 sleep vary val. the sakond night and not showing up, bot naxst morning i Came 
 out to the Corall the feed vas goin en the pan and the fox vas sleping on the 
 box var he allves du and i felt a litle Beatter van the doors ar shut.") 
 
 I'm hard at work painting by day and drawing at night. Twenty- 
 five good drawings are done. On the fair, warm days Rockwell spends 
 most of his time out-of-doors. Being Sir Lancelot still delights him 
 and there's not a stump in the vicinity that has not been scarred by 
 his attacks with lance and sword. These stumps are really mostly 
 all giants. I am now reading the Department of Agriculture year 
 book. It's very instructive. 
 
 162 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 Tuesday, January twenty-first 
 
 The north wind rages to-night. It is cold and clear starlight. 
 With the violent wind-gusts the snow sweeps by in clouds — sweeps 
 by except for what sweeps tn. Over my work table it descends in a 
 fine, wet spray so that I've had to cover that place with canvas and 
 work elsewhere. A wild day it has been and a wild night is before us. 
 And yesterday was little brother to it. 
 
 These days are wonderful but they are terrible. It is thrilling now 
 with Olson absent to refiect that we are absolutely cut off from all 
 mankind, that we cannot, in this raging sea, return to the world nor 
 the world come to us. Barriers must secure your isolation in order 
 that you may experience the full significance of it. The romance of 
 an adventxu-e hangs upon slender threads. A banana peeling on a 
 mountain top tames the wilderness. Much of the glory of this Alaska 
 is in the knowledge I have that the next bay — which I may never 
 choose to enter — is uninhabited, that beyond those mountains across 
 the water is a vast region that no man has ever trodden, a terrible 
 ice-bound wilderness. 
 
 We begin to think less of Olson's return. I have settled to my 
 work and can imagine things continuing as they are for weeks. They 
 will continue so unless the wind forsakes the north. Two days ago 
 after a very cold night we awoke to thunder and lightning — and snow 1 
 In two hours the sun was out. That afternoon I stripped and danced 
 awhile in the snow — a little while. Then, after a hot bath, out again 
 in my nakedness for a roll in the snow, dressed, — and felt a new man. 
 Rockwell loves it all more and more. He seems absolutely contented 
 and spends hours a day outdoors. 
 
 What a marvel is a child's imagination ! It is a treat for Rockwell 
 to play " man-eater " at bedtime and attack me furiously. And if at 
 any time I'll just enter his pretend-world it's all he can wish for. 
 Another filthy mess of fox-food has been prepared and a new sack of 
 
 163 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 salt fish put to soak in the lake. I do hate that chore. Pioneering I 
 relish; ranching I despise, at least blue fox ranching. The miserable 
 things slink about so in such sick and mean spirited fashion. 
 
 Thursday, January twenty-third. 
 
 Sometimes the smoke goes up the flue— and sometimes down. 
 And that's not good for the fire. I sit within six inches of the stove 
 with a frozen nose and icy feet. The wind sifts through the walls. 
 Now, with our moss calking shrunken and dried and shriveled 
 further with the cold, our cabin would be light without windows. 
 These are so far the coldest days of winter. Although it blows 
 straight from the north, whence only fair weather comes, the day is 
 dark with drifting snow cloud high. The water of the bay is hidden 
 in driving vapor. We cut wood and stuff it everlastingly into the 
 stove. To-day seventy pieces for the ravenous air-tight, big chunks, 
 have been cut and split — and we'll cut again to-morrow. But with all 
 the trouble of cold weather we'd be mightily disappointed if the winter 
 slipped by without it. 
 
 It's a real satisfaction to find that my calculations in suppUes, in 
 bedding, in heating equipment were just right for conditions here. 
 We're running low now in cereals and milk but we had plaimed to 
 visit Seward this month to restock. Olson's absence is quite outside 
 of all plans. If he isn't sick it's hard to explain reasonably in any way. 
 
 For the past three weeks I have made on an average no less than 
 one good drawing a day, really drawings I'm delighted with. I've 
 struck a fine stride and moreover a good system for my work here to 
 continue upon. During the day I paint out-of-doors from nature by 
 way of fixing the forms and above all the color of the out-of-doors in 
 my mind. Then after dark I go into a trance for a while with Rockwell 
 subdued into absolute silence. I lie down or sit with closed eyes 
 until I " see " a composition, — then I make a quick note of it or may- 
 
 164 
 
ZARATHUSTRA AND HIS PLAYMATES 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 be give an hour's time to perfecting the arrangement on a small scale. 
 Then when that's done I'm care free. Rockwell and I play cards for 
 half an hour, I get supper, he goes to bed. When he's naked I get him 
 to pose for me in some needed fantastic position, and make a note of 
 the anatomy in the gestitfe of my contemplated drawing. Little Rock- 
 well's tender form is my model perhaps for some huge, hairy ruffian. 
 It's a great joke how I use him. Generally I have to feel for the bone 
 or tendon that I want to place correctly. 
 
 Last night I drew laughing to myself. A lion was my subject. I 
 have often envied Blake and some of the old masters their ignorance 
 of certain forms that let them be at times so delightfully, impressively 
 naive. I've thought it matters not a bit how little you know about the 
 living form provided you proceed to draw the thing according to some 
 definite, consistent idea. Don't conceal your ignorance with a slur, 
 be definite and precise even there. Well, by golly, this lion gave me 
 my chance to be unsophisticated; such a silly, smirking beast as I 
 drew! At last it became somewhat rational and a little dignified, 
 but it still looks like a judge in a great wig. But a lion that lets a 
 naked youth sleep in his paws as this one does may be expected to be 
 a little imbeastly. When I began to write these pages to-night the 
 stars were out. Now it snows or hails on the roof! 
 
 Saturday, January twenty-fifth. 
 It is bitterly cold weather, as cold continuously as I've ever ex- 
 perienced. Both yesterday and to-day the wind has been excep- 
 tionally violent and the air full of flying snow. Both of Olson's water 
 barrels — in the house — have frozen solid. One bulged and bm-st 
 the bottom rolling itself off onto the fioor. 
 
 Sunday, January twenty-sixth. 
 A day of hard work with Rockwell in bed for a change. Just a 
 little stomach upset — and he's all right now. Felled a tree and cut 
 
 167 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 up fifteen feet of it, taking advantage of this glorious day. It was much 
 milder than for days it has been and it still holds so to-night. There's 
 no wind and that makes ever so much difference in the cabin. Now 
 if it will hold calm and mild for a day we'll see whether or not Olson 
 is yet ready to return. 
 
 Tuesday, January twenty-eighth. 
 
 I'm reading "Zarathustra," "Write with blood, and thou wilt 
 learn that blood is spirit." So that book was written. Last night I 
 made a drawing of Zarathustra leading the ugliest man by the hand 
 out into the night to behold the round moon and the silver water- 
 fall. What a book to illustrate! The translator of it says that 
 Zarathustra is such a being as Nietzsche would have Uked him- 
 self to be, — in other words his ideal man. It seems to me that 
 the ideal of a man is the real man. You are that which in your 
 soul you choose to be; your most beautiful and cherished vision 
 is yourself. What are the true, normal conditions of life for any 
 man but just those perfect conditions with which he would ideally 
 surround himself. A man is not a sum of discordant tenden- 
 cies — ^but rather a being perfect for one special place; and this is 
 Olson's creed. 
 
 My chief criticism of Zarathustra is his taste for propagan- 
 da. Why, after all, concern himself with the mob. In picturing 
 his hero as a teacher has not Nietzsche been tricked away from 
 a true ideal to an historical one? Of necessity the great selfish 
 figures of all time have gone down to oblivion. It's the will of 
 human society that only the benefactors of mankind shall be 
 cherished in memory. A pure ideal is to be the thing yourself, 
 concerning yourself no bit with proving it. And if the onward 
 path of mankind seems to go another way than yours — proud soul, 
 let it. 
 
 i68 
 
FROZEN FALL 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 Wednesday, January twenty-ninth. 
 
 Alaska can be cold I Monday broke all records for the winter. 
 Tuesday made that seem balmy. It was so bitterly cold here last 
 night in our "tight little cabin" that we had to laugh. Until ten 
 o'clock when I went to bed the large stove was continuously red hot 
 and r unn ing at full blast. And yet by then the water pails were 
 frozen two inches thick — but ten feet from the stove and open water 
 at supper time, my fountain pen was frozen on the table, Rockwell 
 required a hot water bottle in bed, the fox food was solid ice, my paste 
 was frozen, and that's all. My potatoes and milk I had stood near the 
 stove. At twelve o'clock the clock stopped — starting again from the 
 warmth of breakfast cooking. I put the water pail at night behind 
 the stove close to it, and yet it was solid in the morning. We bum an 
 unbehevable amount of wood, at least a cord a week in one stove. 
 So I figure we earn a dollar a day cutting wood. We felled another 
 tree to-day and cut most of it up. Still we manage to gain steadily with 
 our wood pile always in anticipation of worse weather. Last night at 
 sundown the bay appeared indescribably dramatic. Dense clouds 
 of vapor were rising from the water obscuring all but a few peaks of 
 the mountains and darkening the bay. But above the sun shone 
 dazzlingly on the peaks and through the thinner vapor, coloring this 
 like flames. It was as if a terrible fire raged over the bay. This 
 morning for hours it was dark from clouds of vapor. They swept in 
 over our land and coated the trees of the shore with white frost. 
 
 Yesterday I had to go to the lake and chop out a bag of fish for the 
 foxes. I returned covered with ice and the fish were frozen solid 
 before I reached the cabin. I cut them up to-day with the axe and 
 cooked a week's supply of food for the foxes. 
 
 Rockwell has been a trump. The weather can't be too cold for 
 him. This morning he pulled his end of the saw without rest. He 
 rarely goes out now without his horse, lance, and sword and he ad- 
 
 171 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 dresses me always as " My lord." Surely Lancelot himself was no 
 gentler knight. And now it's bedtime. The cold is less than last 
 night but still I sit huddled at the stove. It is the bitter wind that 
 makes the trouble. 
 
 Thursday, January thirtieth. 
 
 A Splendid day of wood cutting. It was milder and quite windless 
 in our cove, although in the bay there were whitecaps. A light snow 
 had begun to fall by noon and it continues. To increase our lead on 
 the weather we set to work upon a twenty-eight inch tree. We had to 
 throw it somewhat against its natural lean and it was a terrible job. 
 The wedge would not enter the frozen tree and when it at last did it 
 wouldn't lift the great mass that rested on it. Only after an hour's 
 continuous pounding with the heavy sledge-hammer did I drive the 
 wedge in clear to the head, and then the great tree fell. The fall of 
 one of these monsters — for to us they seem gigantic — is thrilling. 
 This one went straight where we had aimed it, down a narrow avenue 
 in the woods. Ripping and crashing it fell carrying down a smaller 
 tree with its limbs. Then Rockwell and I set to work with the saw. 
 When the drums were split we hauled them to the cabin on Olson's 
 Yukon sled. And now our wood pile is a joyous sight, while within 
 the cabin we have a whole, cold day's supply. 
 
 Last night just as I was going to bed Rockwell began to talk in his 
 sleep about some wild adventure with his imaginary savages. I asked 
 him if he were cold. "No, my lord," he murmured and slept on. 
 Very fine barley soup to-day. Water in which barley had been boiled, 
 two bouillon cubes, onions browned in bacon fat. Rockwell said it 
 was the best yet. 
 
 Saturday, February first. 
 Again the days are like spring. Yesterday began the thaw and to- 
 day continues it with rain most of the time. So we've stayed within 
 
 172 
 
THE HERMIT 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 doors, Sir Lancelot and my lordship working here at our craft. I have 
 just completed my second drawing for the day. One a day has been 
 the rate for a month — but yesterday the spirit didn't work. But the 
 news! A great, old tramp steamer entered yesterday. That must 
 carry mail and freight and send Olson back to us. If only it were a 
 regular liner I'd know for sure. It is possible this steamer has been 
 chartered to relieve the situation. Well — the next fair, calm day will 
 show. 
 
 Sunday, February second. 
 
 It's before supper. Rockwell, who has just run out-of-doors for a 
 romp, calls at this moment that he has lost his slipper in the snow and 
 is barefooted. Out-of-doors is to us like another room. Mornings 
 we wash in the snow, invariably. And with a mug of water in hand 
 clean oiir teeth out there — and this in the coldest weather. We scour 
 our pots with snow before washing them, throw the dish water right 
 out of the door, and generally are in and out all day. ... It is surely 
 nonsense to think that changes of temperature give men colds. 
 Neither of us has had a trace of a cold this winter, we haven't even 
 used handkerchiefs — only sleeves. Nor does it give one a cold to be 
 cold. I've tried that often enough to know. And a variable climate 
 has, too, nothing to do with it, for what variableness could exceed 
 an Alaska winter. Colds, like bad temper and loss of faith, are a 
 malady of the city crowd. 
 
 It rains — this moment, the next it will hail — and then snow. 
 Sometime to-day the sun has shone, sometime the wind has blown, 
 and for the rest been calm. Altogether it has been too uncertain for 
 us to expect Olson. And now for the sour-dough hot cakes and 
 supper. For Rockwell, barley, " the marrow of men." 
 
 Rockwell to-day asked me how kings earned their living. I said 
 they didn't earn it — just got the people to give it to them. 
 
 175 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 "What's that," he said laughing, "some sort of a joke they play 
 on the people? " 
 
 So I guess it takes education to appreciate privilege. Incidentally, 
 the war must be over and the heroes, having proved by their might 
 that might does not make right — or that it does? ( !) now have doffed 
 the soldier's uniform of glory for the little-honored clothes of toil 
 
 Monday, February third. 
 
 We are in the second month of Olson's absence. To-day it 
 stormed mostly ; heavy snow in the morning. Through the thick of it 
 we heard faintly a steamer whistle. It seemed to be receding, out- 
 ward bound. At four o'clock while a light snow fell the lightning 
 played merrily and thunder crashed. It is like this : snow for half an 
 hour, then rain — silence and calm for a few minutes. Suddenly huge 
 hailstones pelt the roof, for all the world like rocks. This lasts a few 
 seconds, there's a fierce gust of wind showering ice and snow from 
 the tree tops down upon us, again calm and silence — and the per- 
 formance is ready to begin again. 
 
 Tuesday, February fourth. 
 
 It has been so changeable to-day that we are still uncertain of 
 Olson's intentions. We snowshoed down the beach in the beautiful, 
 soft, new snow so at least to have a look toward Seward. There lay 
 the bay calm and beautiful — and spotless. The scale of things is so 
 tremendous here that I've little idea how far we shall be able to see 
 the little, bobbing boat when it does come. 
 
 We sawed a lot of wood to-day bringing our pile clear up into the 
 gable peak. It becomes a mania seeing the pile grow. In quiet 
 weather we cut to forestall the storm ; in the storm we still cut to be 
 well ahead for days that may be worse. It is beautifully mild now. 
 ■On February first Rockwell brought in some budding twigs. The 
 
 176 
 
ECSTASY 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 alders all seem to be in bud and some charming, red-stemmed shrubs 
 as well. It is midnight and past. My drawing is finished, the stove is 
 piled for the night, cereal and beans in place upon it, so — Good-night. 
 
 Wednesday, February fifth. 
 
 A beautiful snowstorm all the day and to-night, still and mild. 
 Rockwell has been out in it all day dressed in my overalls and mittens. 
 He plays seal and swims in the deep snow. We built a snow house 
 together. It is now about seven feet in diameter inside and as cozy 
 as can be. I'm sure Rockwell will want to sleep there when it's 
 finished. A curtain of icicles hangs before our little window. 
 
 I have carefully figured the cost of our living here from the food 
 bills, all of which I have kept. I have bought $i 14.82 worth of pro- 
 visions. I still have on hand $19. 10 worth. For one hundred and fifty 
 days it has cost us sixty-four cents a day for two, or thirty-two cents 
 each, — a Httle over ten cents a meal. This for the current high prices 
 everywhere and additionally high in Alaska seems very reasonable 
 living. The figures include the very expensive Christmas luxuries. 
 
 Friday, February seventh. 
 
 Yesterday, THE SUN ! For how many days he might have been 
 shining at us I don't know, for it has been cloudy. However at noon 
 it was all over the ground about us and shining in at my window. 
 What a joyous sight after months of shadow ! To-night the sun at set- 
 ting again almost reached us. And yesterday as if spring had already 
 come we begin the day with snow baths at sunrise. Ha ! That's the 
 real morning bath! And to-day again. We step out-of-doors and 
 plunge full length into the deep snow, scour our bodies with it, and 
 rush back into the sheltering house and the red-hot stove. To Rock- 
 well belongs all credit, or blame, for this madness. He will do it — 
 and I'm ashamed not to follow. These two days have been cold and 
 
 179 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 windy, north days, — but how beautiful! All of the day Rockwell 
 plays out-of-doors swimming in the deep snow, now a seal, again a 
 walrus. Gee, he's the great fellow for northern weather. Cooked 
 the filthy fox mess yesterday, washed clothes to-day, sawed wood on 
 both. Now it's twelve-thirty at night and I'm tired. 
 
 Saturday, February eighth. 
 
 All about me stand the drawings of my series, the *' Mad Hermit." 
 They look mighty fine to me. Myself with whiskers and hair ! First, 
 to-day, when the storm abated a bit, we sank a bag of fish in the lake 
 and then started on snowshoes for the ridge to the eastward. The 
 snow lay in the woods there heavy and deep. No breath of wind had 
 touched it. The small trees, loaded, bent double making shapes like 
 frozen fountains. Some little trees with their branches starting far 
 from the ground formed with their drooping limbs domed chambers 
 about their stems. Coming down it was great sport. We could slide 
 down even in our sticky snowshoes. Rockwell, who was soaked 
 through, undressed and spent the afternoon naked, playing wild 
 animal about the cabin. Then at six-thirty we both had hot baths, 
 and snow baths following. I begin to relish the snow bath. Rockwell 
 was the picture of health and beauty afterwards with his rose-red 
 cheeks and blue eyes. 
 
 Monday, February tenth. 
 
 Yesterday morning I bathed in a snowstorm, this morning it was 
 too terribly, howlingly blusterous to run out into it. And now since 
 one o'clock it is as calm and mild as it ever could be. Within the 
 cabin it's even more cozy than usual. The snow is banked up against 
 the big window to a third the window's height. By day the light seems 
 curtained, by night doubly bright from reflected lamplight. Heavy 
 drifts are everywhere. Last night fine snow filtered in upon our faces 
 
 1 80 
 
NEW YEAR 
 
 as we slept but not enough to be uncomfortable. The cabin is for- 
 tunately placed as to drifts and our door-yard remains clear with a 
 splendid bathing bank skirting it. Rockwell is at work now upon 
 multiplication tables. He's a real student and is always seriously 
 occupied with something in his hours indoors. 
 
 i8i 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 OLSON! 
 
 ^m E returned last night, the eleventh of February, in a 
 
 ^B^k blaze of glory! Ah, the wonder of it and of all he 
 
 ^ ■ ■ brought. Rockwell and I sat at our cards just before 
 
 I 9 M supper-time. The day, a calm one, a fair one, had 
 
 ^^^ ^^ passed and Olson again had not come. We were 
 
 downcast. Every possible cause for his continued 
 
 absence had been reviewed in my mind. To wait longer was 
 
 not to be endured. And so we sat with far-ofif thoughts and toyed 
 
 with the silly cards. Suddenly the long, clear sound of a boat's 
 
 horn reached us from the night outdoors. We ran and peered 
 
 into the darkness. At last we saw a black spot moving far out 
 
 on the water. Oh Godl it was entering the cove. In what a 
 
 frenzy of excitement we hurried down the beach! Nearer they 
 
 come and nearer, men's voices, the little cabin light, and the vessel 
 
 gliding toward us ; they're abreast of us, they drop anchor. " Olson, 
 
 Olson," I shout, "Olson, is that you?" "He's aboard," is an- 
 
 182 
 
OLSON! 
 
 swered, " How are you, and how's the little boy? " We see them 
 loading a dory from the vessel's deck, — and now they row it to the 
 shore. It's good to see a fine young fisherman and shake his hand. 
 Again and once again the loads are ferried in and carried up the 
 long and slippery low-tide beach. Rockwell has lighted Olson's 
 lamp, he sweeps his cabin, and starts the fire in the stove. At the last 
 load I slip aboard the vessel. lam "wanted." There stands Olson 
 swaying gigantic on the deck above us as we bump the side. A bear's 
 greeting ! Olson is radiant, radiant and mellow with the joy of home- 
 coming and the warmth of tasted spirits. The skipper I know, yes ! 
 the good Englishman, Hogg, who had us once to dinner at his camp. 
 Down in the cabin in the heat and fumes of a cooking feast we tip the 
 friendly bottle. 
 
 Ah ! tell me not, abstainer, of any glories you have known. One 
 night, one midnight out on the black waters of a Newfoundland harbor, 
 the million stars above, and on the wretched vessel's deck the hoard 
 of half-drunk, soul-starved men saying their passionate farewells, — 
 on the dull plain of their life a flash of lightning revealing an abyss ; — 
 this night on the still, dark cove of Resurrection Bay, rimmed with 
 wild mountains and the wilderness, strong men about you, mad, 
 loosened speech and winged, prophetic vision, — God ! but sane day- 
 light seeing seems to touch but the white, hard surface of where life is 
 hidden. 
 
 From the hot cabin I climbed the boat's ladder, up, up onto the 
 world's heights. Ah, how the cold, clean wind from the wide spaces 
 then swept my soul, and how close about my head the dome of heaven 
 and the stars ! This is no earth-ship but the deck of a meteor vessel 
 that I tread, the moon ship of the ancient northern gods. 
 
 I row ashore for Rockwell, stow the goods higher on the beach, 
 and we return aboard for supper. Over Rockwell the skipper makes a 
 great fuss, says he's a famous oarsman and could beat his daddy, a 
 
 183 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 fine, big, strong boy. Warm hearted skipper ! — and he reaches again 
 for the bottle and I drink. It's vinegar! Profuse apologies, and the 
 right one is found. 
 
 We eat, we stuff !— and then the three of us, Rockwell laden with 
 presents of fruit, say good-night and row ashore. Poor, tired Olson 
 has little strength to move the heavy loads from the beach. No matter, 
 I struggle alone and finally stow them in his cabin, a great pile. Then 
 a cup of coffee with the old man, a little furious talk about the war, — 
 fury at a world that could mess things so, — and home to bed where 
 already Rockwell slept. 
 
 This morning the icy bath. Then without breakfast we began 
 upon our mail. What a wonderful Christmas at last I The bed was 
 piled high with presents, the table high with letters. We sorted and 
 gloated like hungry tigers that in the ecstasy of possession merely 
 lick their food. All through the morning and deep into the afternoon 
 I read the mail. Unwashed dishes stood about, for meals we but 
 ate what was at hand. (Here follows in the journal a list two pages 
 long of presents, of books — what a shelf of them! — woolen clothes 
 and sheepskin slippers, music for the flute, plum-pudding, candy, 
 chocolate, cigarettes, — and ever so much more.) And that being 
 about seven times as much as we've ever had before is all. Ah, in 
 the wilderness you love your friends and they too think of you. Better 
 than all, though, are the letters; such friendly letters never were 
 before. 
 
 Friday, February fourteenth. 
 
 The days go like the wind. So warm to-day and yesterday 1 We 
 live out-of-doors. Now as I write the door stands open and the soft, 
 moist, spring air enters to dispel the fumes of turpentine. I primed 
 eight canvases to-day, six of which I had also stretched. This 
 afternoon I painted at the northern end of the beach almost be- 
 
 184 
 
X 
 
 PELAGIC REVERIE 
 
OLSON! 
 
 neath a frozen waterfall, an emerald of huge size and wonderful 
 form. 
 
 Rockwell is in high spirits. I think the augmentation of our diet 
 brought by Olson's return will do him a lot of good. We had cut down 
 on our use of milk to a can in two or three days. Now we may live on 
 fish which Olson has in such quantities that we're to help ourselves. 
 Olson has insisted on my accepting a fifty-pound sack of flour for my 
 services during his six weeks' absence, and I expect to find it hard to 
 be allowed to return the cereals that I am borrowing. What a con- 
 trast this free-handed country to the mean spirit of Newfoundland ! 
 
 Monday, February seventeenth. 
 
 Three days ! and what has happened? I guess that on the first of 
 them I stretched and painted canvas. On the second all day I painted 
 out-of-doors, it was quite summer-like and the sun shone through dia- 
 mond-dripping trees. And to-day I have written from early morning 
 before breakfast until now, eleven at night. I have decided to go to 
 Seward in a few days. It has become necessary to go back to New 
 York very soon. I told Rockwell of this to-day and his eyes have 
 scarcely been dry since. He has reasoned with me and inquired into 
 every detail of the situation. He doesn't want to go to New York 
 nor even to live in the country in the East. There'll be no ocean 
 near nor any warm pond for bathing. And not even the thought that 
 elsewhere he'd have playmates weighs against his love for this spot. 
 
 You should see Sir Lancelot now. His clothes are outgrown and 
 outworn. They hang in tatters about him. His trousers are burst 
 from the knee to the hip, his overalls that cover them are rags. His 
 shirt is buttonless but for two in front. From above tattered elbows 
 his sleeves hang in ribbons. His hair is long and shaggy; where it 
 hung over his eyes I have cut it off short. But, his fair cheeks are as 
 pink as roses, his eyes are beautiful and blue, his lips are red, and his 
 
 187 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 face glows always with expression. So we don't care a rap for the 
 rest — only Rockwell does ! One day after he had regarded for a long 
 time a certain unfortunate photograph of himself in which he looked 
 like an idiot, he said, " Father, I'd like to dress up some day and put 
 on my best clothes and brush my hair, — because I want to see if I 
 really look like I do in this picture." Rockwell loves to look well and 
 it's a real treat for him to dress up. So, that being the case and his 
 tidy nature being so well assured I don't trouble a bit to adorn him. 
 He cleans his teeth regularly and likes to do it. Mornings we get 
 up together and go through a set of Dr. Sargent's exercises, do them 
 with great energy. Then we go naked out-of-doors. The period of 
 chattering teeth is past. No matter what the weather is we go calmly 
 out into it, lie down in the drift, look up into the sky, and then scrub 
 ourselves with snow. It's the finest bath in the world. 
 
 It rains to-day — or snows. The snow lies three feet deep on the 
 level. At our windows it is above the sills. In Seward, — have I 
 written this before? — it lies so deep that one can't see across the 
 street. The snow is the deepest, and that last cold snap the coldest, 
 of any winter remembered or recorded. The cold was very many 
 degrees below zero. So we have experienced a true winter. We're 
 so glad to know it. 
 
 Tuesday, February eighteenth. 
 
 Such mild weather ! With the fire nearly out it's hot indoors to- 
 night. A little snow, a little rain, but altogether a pleasant day. It's 
 always pleasant when I paint well. To-day I redeemed two straying 
 pictures and they're among the elect now. To-night a steamer en- 
 tered from the westward, the Curacao, long expected. She must 
 have been here two or three days ago and since then been to Seldovia. 
 With incredible slowness she crept over the water. What old hulks 
 they do put onto this Alaska service. 
 
 i88 
 
PRISON BARS 
 
OLSON! 
 
 Rockwell's mothering of all things exceeded reason to-day. He 
 put two sticks of wood on the fire after I had intended it to go out. 
 I removed them, blazing merrily. " Don't " cried RockweU seriously, 
 " you'll hurt the fire's feelings. " 
 
 Rockwell cleared off the boat to-day. Next we must dig her out. 
 To-morrow the engine must be put in order. We must find a hole in 
 the gasoline tank and solder it and then coax it into starting. It is on 
 such jobs that whole precious days are wasted. 
 
 Rockwell loves every foot of this spot of land. To-night he spoke 
 of the beauties of the lake, its steep wooded shores, clean and pebbly, 
 and the one low, clear, and level spot where we approached the water. 
 He had planned to live this summer the day long on the shores of the 
 lake, naked, playing in and out of the water or paddUng some craft 
 about. I thought of putting up a tent in some mossy deU along the 
 shore and letting Rockwell sleep there nights alone and learn early 
 the wonders of a hermit's life. And none of it is to be ! 
 
 Wednesday, February nineteenth. 
 
 It rains and storms. But to-day we repaired the engine and we're 
 ready to start for Seward when it clears. Above every other thought 
 now is the sad reaUzation that our days on this beloved island are 
 nearing an end. What is it that endears it so to a man near forty and 
 a little boy of nine? We have such widely different outlooks upon life. 
 It may be that Alaska stands midway between us, and that I, turning 
 backward from the crowded world that I have known and learned to 
 fear, meet Rockwell in his forward march from nothing— to this. 
 If that be so we have met only for a moment for such perfect sym- 
 pathy. His love will pass on from this and mine will grow dissatisfied 
 and wander stiU. But I think it's otherwise. It seems that we have 
 both together by chance turned out of the beaten, crowded way and 
 come to stand face to face with that infinite and unfathomable thing 
 
 191 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 which is the wilderness; and here we have found OURSELVES— 
 for the wilderness is nothing else. It is a kind of living mirror that 
 gives back as its own all and only all that the imagination of a man 
 brings to it. It is that which we believe it to be. So here we have 
 stood, we two, and if we have not shuddered at the emptiness of the 
 abyss and fled from its loneliness, it is because of the wealth of our 
 own souls that filled the void with imagery, warmed it, and gave it 
 speech and understanding. This vast, wild land we have made a 
 child's world and a man's. 
 
 I know nothing in all Ufe more beautiful than the perfect 
 belief of Rockwell in his Paradise here. Unopposed, his romance 
 has kindled every object on the homestead ; so that now for hours 
 he can steal about in the forest, on the beach, along the lake, — 
 in absolute contentment, for it is wonderland itself. The "King's 
 road," the "Giant's path" where stand the gummy "ten-pound 
 butter tree" and all the giants with whom Sir Lancelot must joust, 
 the magpie's grave marked with a cross, the otter's cave, the marvel- 
 ous frozen stream; those strange wild people, the Treaps, who visit 
 these shores occasionally to hunt the white man for his skin as the 
 white man has hunted their dear animals ; rain-bears and wild-cat- 
 eaters — appalling animals that inhabit the dark woods but are good 
 friends to Rockwell. Every log and rotten stimip, the gnarled trees, 
 with or without "butter," every mound and path, the rocks, the 
 streams, each is a being in itself ; and with those most living goats, and 
 the brilliant magpies, the pretty, little, dingy sparrows, the glorious 
 and virtuous porcupines, the black, black crows, the great and noble 
 eagle, the rare spider and the rarer fly, and the wonderful, strong, 
 sleek otters that leap in sport through the snow and coast down-hill, 
 they make a world of romance that has thrilled one little boy to 
 the very bottom of his soul. To live here, to accumulate about him 
 more and more animals and shelter them from harm, to live forever 
 
 192 
 
RUNNING WATER 
 
OLSON! 
 
 or, if he must, grow old, and very old ; here marry — not a Seward 
 girl but one more beautiful — or an Indian ! — here raise a great family 
 — and here die. That now is the ideal of little Rockwell. And if we, 
 his family, all of us, would coimt we must come here to him where 
 with patriarchal magnificence and dignity he will care for us. 
 
 Thiirsday, February twentieth. 
 
 All day out-of-doors, both of us. In the morning Rockwell and I 
 journeyed around the point between the two coves of the island. It's 
 a rocky promontory with a great jumble of bowlders at its base that 
 one must scramble over. These are generally wet and slippery and 
 not much fun. However we went well around and I set up my canvas 
 and painted while Rockwell crawled about in caves and crevasses 
 playing some sort of wild beast. The wind rose as I finished and made 
 it difficult to convey my wet canvas without damaging it. And in the 
 afternoon again I painted on two pictures out-of-doors. That's to 
 be my work now till the time I go. To-morrow if the day is right we 
 start for Seward. Our boat is dug out of the snow, our goods are 
 packed, the engine chafes at the throttle. I am tired to-night and it is 
 bedtime. 
 
 Sunday, February twenty-third. 
 
 Friday was calm. We left the island at about eleven — after the 
 usual hours fussing with the engine. At Hogg's camp we called in 
 for something to bale with, for the boat, being leaky, had taken in a lot 
 of water. No one at home — so I stole a bowl from the shed and we 
 proceeded. By then the sun shone upon us and we could observe, 
 what we later confirmed at Seward, that the sun shines at the head 
 of the bay while the island, our island, is shrouded in clouds. Quite 
 different conditions prevail in the two localities. With us it is warmer 
 and much wetter. The recorded rainfall for Seward, that some time 
 
 195 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 ago seemed incredibly small, does not fit Fox Island at all. Olson's 
 records for last summer show prevailing rainy weather — and Seward 
 rejoiced in unprecedented sunshine ! And during these three days 
 in Seward now, days wonderfully fair, thick clouds have always been 
 over Fox Island. And even the wind blows there when Seward's 
 waters are calm. 
 
 And so on Friday we reached Seward with flying colors, stowed our 
 boat up high, put the engine into Olson's cabin, and walked again the 
 streets of civilization. Here everyone is friendly. The first night 
 Rockwell dined out at one house and slept at another with a lot of 
 children. What must they have thought of his underclothes ! I went 
 supperless — writing letters instead. And then flute music at the 
 postmaster's. Next day very early the steamer came and the day 
 passed for me in the wild excitement of receiving mail. 
 
 Wednesday, February twenty-sixth. 
 
 Yesterday we came home ! We left Seward with only a light load 
 aboard. It blew briskly in the bay from the north. Before we 
 reached Caine's Head there was a splendid, white-crested chop racing 
 along with us. Midway across it was about all the engine could have 
 stood. The propeller is not set at enough depth in our boat and in 
 yesterday's sea it was most of the time out of water, racing at a furious 
 pace. Then the boat would naturally lose steerage way and we'd 
 swing far out of our course. But it was great sport. Into it we could 
 have made no headway; before it nothing could stop us. And the 
 engine kept right on going ! — only as usual it was continually falling 
 apart. On Friday the flywheel came loose six times, the muffler four, 
 and the valve spring fell off and stayed off. Coming back all went well 
 till we were in the roughest sea; then the muffler came loose. Not 
 wanting to stop the engine in that sea I spent half the time on my 
 knees holding the tiller in one hand and the muffler nut with a pair 
 
 196 
 
IMMANENCE 
 
OLSONl 
 
 of pliers in the other. Rockwell bailed most of the time. The boat 
 leaks like a sieve. 
 
 And how fine to get home again ! Only an hour and we were again 
 seated at dinner in our warm cabin. Rockwell said it was hard for 
 him to remember whether Mr. Olson or we had just been to Seward. 
 I brought Olson a battery boz and batteries as a present. He was 
 much pleased. But particularly his mail pleased him. I saw him soon 
 after our arrival seated with his spectacles on studying his letters. 
 He rarely gets any. This time came a post-card and letter from 
 Rockwell's mother. 
 
 The day passed and evening came. Then appeared entering our 
 cove a cabined gasoUne boat. Two young fellows came ashore and 
 we all chatted in Olson's cabin. One had tiis wife aboard. They 
 claimed to be hunting a stray boat, — but Olson whispered to me later, 
 dramatically, that they were doubtless out dragging somewhere for 
 a cache of whiskey. Lots of whiskey has been sunk in the bay. 
 Marks were taken at the time to determine its location and now the 
 owners as need arises fish up what they want. It's just like the buried 
 treasure of the days of piracy. Doubtiess there are now many charts 
 extant with the position of liquid treasure marked upon them. 
 
 To-day has been again overcast but beautifully mild. It is really 
 a wonderful climate. Rockwell makes the most of these last days. 
 He went this morning to the ridge's top east of us, and this afternoon 
 high up on the mountain side. He now wants to stay here and become 
 a wild man. There is no question in my mind about his entire willing- 
 ness, his desire, to be left here when I go. 
 
 199 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 TWILIGHT 
 
 ^^^^^^^HE first of March! If only the dull weather would 
 
 M^^^ clear up I could get more done these last days here. 
 
 ^ Fifteen brand-new canvases hang from my ridge pole 
 
 ^^^^ waiting for pictures to adorn them. To-day is the 
 
 only day that work out-of-doors has been quite out of 
 
 the question. It snows hard. Last Thursday morning Rockwell and I 
 
 began to take our morning baths in the bay — the snow having become 
 
 too hard. And now at just seven-fifteen — on cloudy mornings, 
 
 clothed in sneakers we scamper down the shore and plunge into the 
 
 waves. Brrrrrrrr ! it's cold, but mighty good. Olson, after predictmg 
 
 for some time a dire end to our morning performances, has at last 
 
 evinced enough curiosity to drag himself out of bed and come over 
 
 to see. But he has not yet been early enough to catch us. 
 
 The days are lengthening rapidly. It is now after six o'clock in 
 the evening and our lamp's not lighted ! 
 
 Last time in Seward Olson bought a lot of odds and ends of 
 molding for picture frames. And now, with my help, all the little 
 things that we have given him are gorgeously framed. On the little 
 picture of himself that I painted he has what he calls a "comofiag" 
 
 200 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 frame ; it's made of different moldings on the four sides. Well, Olson 
 is mighty proud of his pictures. He's really very fond of us. People 
 in Seward say he talks of us continually. And there it is thought 
 quite remarkable how I have managed with the " crazy " old man. 
 I guess the craziness explains it. I picture with horror having as a 
 constant companion here one of the fine, stalwart, shrewd, honest, 
 wholesome-to-sterility Americans that our country likes to be so 
 proud of. 
 
 I told Olson of Kathleen's amusement over the brusque ending of 
 his letter, " Answer this if you feel like it — and if you don't it's all the 
 same to me. " 
 
 "Well," he said, "that's the way it is here in Alaska; if anyone 
 don't like the way a man does he can go to Hell!" 
 
 I've heard an amusing story about Olson and his goats at a little 
 Seward exposition at which they were shown. They put his two goats 
 into narrow packing boxes that their dirt might not fall onto the floor 
 of the building. Olson arrived and seeing the plight of his pets flew 
 into a rage. He lifted them out, hurled the packing boxes out of the 
 door into the street, and denounced the fair-committee for their 
 abuse of animals. And although the whole place tumbled about the 
 old man's ears, he won, and saw his goats given an honorable amount 
 of freedom in a special enclosure — curtained ofif, "admission to see 
 the goats ten cents," — which notice Olson promptly disregarded, 
 letting everyone in — and a big crowd at that — free. 
 
 Monday, March third. 
 
 Inauguration day passed here without event. In this ideal com- 
 munity of Fox Island we're so little concerned with law — the only law 
 that bears on us at all we delight in breaking — that one wonders how 
 far no government can be carried. One goes back to first principles 
 in such speculation, endows man again with inaUenable rights or at 
 
 201 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 least inalienable desires, and then has simply to wonder how much 
 of the love of order there is in the natural man. The fact that a large 
 proportion of mankind can live and die without any definite knowledge 
 of the laws of the community and without ever running counter to the 
 forces of law is sign enough that most of the law code is but a writing 
 down of what the average man naturally wants to do or keep from 
 doing. There's a sharp difference between such "common" law 
 and the exceptional law that strikes at the personal liberty of a man, 
 laws concerning morals, temperance, or that conscript unwilling men 
 for war. In all law there is tyranny, in these laws tyranny shows its 
 hand. The man who wants true freedom must escape from the whole 
 thing. If only such souls could gravitate to a common center and 
 build the new community with inherent law and order as its sole 
 guide ! — well, we have returned to the problem. A state that was 
 truly interested in progress would dedicate a portion of its territory 
 to such an experiment. But no state is interested in anything but the 
 gain of one class, which means the oppression of the rest. How farci- 
 cal sound these days ** Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." 
 "No government without the consent of the governed," and other 
 old-fashioned principles. But they have still to be reckoned with till 
 the last Bolshevik has been converted into a prosperous tradesman 
 and the last idealist is dead. And now for Fox Island. 
 
 The weather is dull and gray — only last evening an hour before 
 sundown the clouds suddenly vanished out of the heavens and the 
 sun shone as warm and beautiful as on the fairest summer day. Then 
 I sat out-of-doors and painted while the snow and ice melted and 
 dripped all about. The mornings are cold, doubly cold it seems when 
 in the half-light of dawn and perhaps a driving snow squall we nm 
 naked down the long stretch of beach and plunge into the bay. I work 
 ceaselessly. Time flies like mad and the day of our departure is 
 close. 
 
 202 
 
THE VISION 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 Tuesday, March fourth. 
 
 A day of snow and rain spent by us indoors, Rockwell hard at 
 work upon his chart of '* Trobbeabl Island " — a wonderful imaginary 
 land where his own strange species of wild animals live — and I wash- 
 ing and mending. My seaman's bag, damaged on its way here in the 
 hold of the steamer, is now quite professionally patched, and the 
 knee of my blue overalls shines with a square patch of white canvas. 
 
 Olson was welcome and spent much of the day with us. He has 
 reread Kathleen's letter to him and is charmed with it. He feels 
 authorized by it to keep me here longer and surely does his best to 
 persuade me. He treasures the picture little Kathleen sent him. All 
 these things, the letters and little trifles that we have given him will 
 be stored away in his too empty box of treasures among a very few old 
 letters and a photograph or two of pioneer ladies and gentlemen in the 
 dress-up costumes of thirty years ago. These scant treasures, what a 
 memorial of a very lonely life ! He showed me to-day a photograph of 
 Tom Crane, an old associate of his in Idaho, and two large, splendid 
 looking women. Crane's wife and his wife's sister. The wife was 
 frozen to death in the snow while on a short journey with her husband. 
 He lost both feet. Olson led the rescue party bringing in with great 
 difficulty the dead woman and then tending Crane through long, pain- 
 ful days until his crippled recovery. 
 
 Thursday, March sixth. 
 
 It's mighty hard work, this painting under pressure. I'm too tired 
 to attempt more than the briefest record on this page of two days' 
 doings. Yesterday it was gray. At sundown it cleared giving us the 
 most splendid and beautiful sunset, the sun sinking behind the purple, 
 snowy moimtains and throwing its rays upward into a seething red- 
 hot mass of clouds. I painted most of the afternoon out-of-doors. 
 
 To-day we bathed at sunrise, brisk and cold and clear. The 
 
 205 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 morning tide was so exceedingly low that I ran dry shod clear around 
 the north side of the cove until the whole upper bay was visible. 
 Olson had not known it could be done. Returning we put Olson's 
 boat into the water and Rockwell and I embarked with my painting 
 outfit. I landed on the point I had just visited afoot. Rockwell in 
 jumping ashore with the painter timed it badly, slipped, and fell full 
 length into the surf of the ground swell, the dory almost riding over 
 him. I roared with laughter — to his great fury. He rowed about in 
 the harbor for almost two hours returning to bring me home. In the 
 afternoon we repeated our excursion — all but the water sports — going 
 this time to the south side of the cove. Rockwell's a good little oars- 
 man and above all to be trusted to do as he's told to — a vice in 
 grown-ups, a virtue in children. 
 
 Friday, March seventh. 
 
 That to-day began in snow and cloud matters not, — it ended in a 
 glory. Olson, Rockwell, and I sat that late afternoon far out on the 
 bay basking in the warmth of a summer sun, rocked gently on a blue 
 summer sea. For hours we had explored the island's western shore, 
 skirtmg its tumbled reefs, riding through perilous straits right up to 
 where the eddying water seethed at some jagged chasm's mouth. 
 That's fine adventuring 1 flirting with danger, safe enough but close — 
 so close to death. We landed on the beach of Sunny Cove, found in 
 the dark thicket the moldering ruins of an old feed house of the foxes, 
 gruesome with the staring bones of devoured carcasses. And then 
 we younger ones dashed up the sheer, snow-covered eastward ridge 
 —dashed on all fours digging our feet into the snow, clinging with 
 hands as to a ladder. There at the top two or three hundred feet 
 above the bay we overlooked the farthest seaward mountains of Cape 
 Resurrection, then Barwell Island and the open sea. 
 
 Ah, to see again that far horizon ! Wander where you will over all 
 
 206 
 
THE IMPERISHABLE 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 the world, from every valley seeing forever new hills calling you to 
 climb them, from every mountain top farther peaks enticing you. 
 Always the distant land looks fairest, tiU you are made at last a rest- 
 less wanderer never reaching home — aever — until you stand one 
 day on the last peak on the border of the interminable sea, stopped 
 by the finality of that. 
 
 From our feet the cliff dropped in a V-shaped divide straight down 
 to the green ocean; and at its base the ground swell curled, broke 
 white and eddied. The jagged mountains across shone white against 
 black clouds, — what peaks! huge and sharp like the teeth of the 
 Fenris-Wolf. 
 
 We hurried back to Olson who waited in the boat. That side — 
 the cove and the more familiar mountains to the westward — lay half 
 shrouded in fast dissolving mist. The descent was real sport. We 
 just sat down and slid clear to the bottom, going at toboggan pace. 
 Poor Olson, who watched us from below, was aghast. On the shore 
 I foimd a long, thick bamboo pole, doubtless carried directly here from 
 the orient by the Japanese current. We longed to go across to Bear 
 Glacier that we could now see, a broad, incUned plane, spotless white, 
 with the tallest mountains rising steeply from its borders. But it was 
 too late and we returned home. The wonders of this coiintry, of this 
 one bay in fact, it would take years to know! 
 
 Monday, March tenth. 
 On the eighth it snowed hard all day and both of us worked at our 
 trade indoors. The ninth dawned fresh and clear and cold. It was too 
 windy to go out onto the bay as we had intended, so, not to be entirely 
 cheated out of an excursion, we packed a bag of various supplies and 
 set off for the ridge to the eastward. 
 
 It was glorious in the woods. New fallen snow lay upon the tree 
 branches; the stm touched only the tallest tops, the wind rustled 
 - 2og 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 them now and then and made it snow again below. We came out 
 upon the summit of the ridge more to the north than we had ever been 
 before and from there beheld again the open sea. Nothing can be 
 more wonderful than to emerge from the dense forest onto such a 
 view 1 Right on the ridge we built a fire beneath the arched roots of 
 a large tree. Rockwell will long remember that wonderful chimney 
 beneath the roots. I painted on one of the canvases I had brought 
 while Rockwell played about or cut wood for the fire. Presently 
 the can of beans that we'd laid in the ashes went pop ! — and we knew 
 that dinner was ready. So we sat down and ate the good beans, bread 
 and peanut butter, and chocolate, — while our backs sizzled and our 
 bellies froze. But we loved it and Rockwell proposed that we spend 
 three or four days there like that. Then after more painting and some 
 play in the snow we came home again. 
 
 But the beautiful days must be busy ones for me. I painted out on 
 the lake for an hour or more ; after that again — this time the glorious 
 sunset. After supper bread to bake and then, tired out, early to 
 sleep in our great, hard, comfortable bed. Olson would have started 
 to-day had the weather been moderate. But it has blown fiercely 
 from the north — and still it blows. All day I worked packing and now 
 my boxes are made and nearly filled. It is surely true that we are 
 going ! All day it has seemed to me to be fall. We had thought of 
 that before during these recent days. We scent it and feel it. I 
 believe that it's the end of a real summer in our lives that we taste 
 the sadness of. 
 
 Tuesday, March eleventh. 
 
 It blows incessantly, cold and clear, — blue days. I have painted 
 most of to-day, first indoors, and then outdoors commencing a large 
 picture. Olson has been with us much of the time. He treasures 
 every little memento we can give him. In his pocket-book are snap- 
 
 210 
 
THE STAR-LIGHTER 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 shots of Kathleen, Clara, and Barbara. He wanted Barbara's curl 
 that I have— but I couldn't give hun that. It looks as if we should all 
 go to Seward together. This wind is likely to hold until the full moon 
 passes — and that's still some days off. My trunk is about packed and 
 what remains can be done in a very few hours. 
 
 Speaking to Olson to-night about the possibility of a shipwrecked 
 man being able to support life on this coast for any length of time he 
 told of a native boy of Unga, "crazy Simyon," who lived four years 
 at Nigger Head, a wild part of Unga Island, with no shelter but a hole 
 in a sand bank, no fire, no weapons or clothes, or tools ; a first-hand 
 story, long, wild, terrible, beginning with a boy's theft of sacrificial 
 wine, and ending in madness and murder. 
 
 Thursday, March thirteenth. 
 
 Last night was bitterly cold. I had to get up repeatedly to attend 
 to the fire. The wind howled and the vapor flew and Rockwell and I 
 hugged close together beneath the blankets. Day dawned still icy 
 cold. By noon it began to snow and the afternoon was calm and mild. 
 And now again the wind blows fiercely from the northeast and we're 
 freezing cold ! The day was spent in packing. The dismantled cabin 
 looks forlorn. 
 
 Sunday, March sixteenth. 
 
 With the full moon has come the most perfect calm. If it holds 
 through to-morrow we shall leave the island. The past three days 
 have been busy ones. Bitterly cold weather has prevailed with the 
 wind unceasingly from the north — almost the coldest days of the 
 winter. Still I did some painting out-of-doors every day until yester- 
 day, trying hard to pin upon the canvas a little more of the infinite 
 splendors of this place. Meanwhile our packing was carried on. We 
 have made a thoroughly good job of it — I hope ! But who can tell 
 
 213 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 what strain a trip of so many thousand miles will put upon our crates 
 and bundles? But for a promise we had made Olson to go with him 
 
 DEAKfST noiTHEK 
 
 X \jCtJMyd-^(MJ^ UXZ^ -uj~-(iu&^ yT)JJtX<^ ZtAjt^ 
 
 c.tvTZ-' ^oyn oo^tlA^rb ^^^ ^--iri^o^. 
 
 MARCH 1 t^^ 
 
 TBS «L1.«T DAT. NO TUNC r. 
 
 BAD ^9^<fe @<22i'T '^IS 
 
 TAT E 
 
 C?RE/Vr<?. I L I |C& ?(? <ffAR /v|RdLSPK*« 
 
 to Sunny Bay and Humpback Creek — on the eastern mainland — we'd 
 have gone this day to Seward. 
 
 By noon the most perfect calm had settled upon the water. The 
 sky was cloudless, and although really it was still very cold the bright 
 
 214 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 sun looked like warmth — and that helped a lot. So Olson's little 
 engine, sputtering, stammering, stopping a great deal, carried us upon 
 our trip. At Humpback Creek there are falls maybe thirty feet high, 
 perfect falls tumbling sheer down from a plateau into a deep round 
 basin. The falls to-day were frozen and spread wide over the face of 
 the cliff ; but it was easy to imagine the grace of their summer form. 
 We had to hurry from here or be stranded by the rapidly retreating 
 tide. Next we went to a spot on the bay where Rockwell and I might 
 have lived had we not met Olson that fair Simday in August. A little 
 cabin stood there — open to the weather through doorway and window 
 but otherwise snug and comfortable. Still, even with that great 
 wonder, the fall, so near, that spot was not to be compared with our 
 own Fox Island home. Next we went to Sunny Bay to visit the old 
 trapper who has been wintering there — the same who stopped last 
 fall at our island while on his way to camp. The old fellow came to 
 meet us as we landed, a feeble, emaciated figure. He has been sick 
 all winter and has done practically no trapping. What a forlorn latter 
 end for a man ! He drags himself about each day, cuts wood, lugs 
 water, cooks, and when he stoops dizziness overcomes him. He sets 
 a small circle of traps and drags himself around to tend them. His 
 whole winter's work is twelve ermine and two mink — thirty or forty 
 dollars' worth at the most. We offered to bring the old man back with 
 us and from here on to Seward — but he preferred to stay there a few 
 days longer. 
 
 And now I sit here with our packed household goods about 
 me, empty walls and a dismantled home. Still we hardly realize 
 that this beautiful adventure of ours has come to an end. The 
 enchantment of it has been complete; it has possessed us to the 
 very last. How long such happiness could hold, such quiet life 
 continue to fill up the full measure of human desires only a long 
 experience could teach. The still, deep cup of the wilderness is 
 
 215 
 
WILDERNESS 
 
 potent with wisdom. Only to have tasted it is to have moved a 
 lifetime forward to a finer youth. 
 
 Tuesday, March eighteenth. 
 
 Fox Island is behind us. Last August Olson picked us up as 
 strangers and towed us to his island; yesterday, after nearly seven 
 months there with him we climbed again into our dories and crossed 
 the bay — and now we extend the helping hand to the old man and 
 tow him and his faltering engine back to Seward. The day dawned 
 cold and windy. We proceeded however at once to the completion 
 of our packing and the loading of the boat. 
 
 A little after noon the wind moderating slightly we persuaded 
 Olson to come with us. My engine working beautifully carried both 
 boats along till the other little motor could be prevailed upon to start. 
 In the bay the wind was fresh and the chop high. Half-way across the 
 wind had risen and the water flew. Olson's engine worked so poorly 
 that most of the time I had the full strain of his dory on the line. I 
 feared the old man's courage would give out as the sea increased, and 
 I grinned at him reassuringly from time to time. Finally, however, as 
 the white-crested waves seemed to rush ever more fiercely upon us 
 his face grew solemn. He waved to us to turn and run back to the 
 island. But the tow line was fast in my boat and I neither chose to 
 turn nor loosen it. Showing our backs to him we ran for the shelter 
 of Caine's Head — and made it. From there onward we skirted the 
 cliffs and found it smooth enough. The wind again died out and 
 we entered Seward over a glassy sea. 
 
 And now at last it is over. Fox Island will soon become in our 
 memories like a dream or vision, a remote experience too wonderful, 
 for the full liberty we knew there and the deep peace, to be remem- 
 bered or believed in as a real experience in life. It was for us Ufe as 
 
 216 
 
TWILIGHT 
 
 it should be, serene and wholesome ; love — but no hate, faith without 
 disillusionment, the absolute for the toiling hands of man and 
 for his soaring spirit. Olson of the deep experience, strong, brave, 
 generous and gentle like a child; and his island — like Paradise. 
 Ah God, — and now the world again ! 
 
 \ 
 
 217 
 

 C^hart of the entrance to 
 
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