4V 
 
 The Story of the Bishop Rowe 
 Hospital in Skag'way, Alaska 
 
 BY ISABEL M. EMBERLEY 
 
 II Copies of this pamphlet may be obtained without 
 cost by asking the Corresponding Secretary, 281 Fourth 
 Avenue, New York, for the Leaflet, Number 804 
 TT All offerings for missions, including those in Alaska, 
 should be sent to George C. Thomas, Treasurer, Domes- 
 tic and Foreign Missionary Society, 281 Fourth Avenue, 
 New York, N. Y. 
 
 Second Edition, March, 1905. 2M. 
 
THE BISHOP ROWE HOSPITAL, SKAGWAY 
 The Bishop and Miss Carter, head-nurse, stand on the platform 
 
 The Story of the Bishop Rowe Hospital 
 
 In Skagway, Alaska 
 
 BY ISABEL M. EMBERLEY 
 
 SKAGWAY is really the entrance 
 port to the vast interior section 
 of Eastern Alaska. It is situated 
 in the southeastern part of 
 Alaska, at the head of the Lynn Canal 
 and the mouth of the Skagway Eiver. 
 There are many legends of the origin of 
 the strange name of the valley — not all 
 pleasant ones ; hut the one I care most to 
 believe is the story of a beautiful Indian 
 girl named Skagway. Fleeing from her 
 husband, whose anger was aroused by her 
 gentle deeds, she saw, when exhausted 
 and almost overtaken, the mountains 
 open before her for a refuge, and close 
 again when her pursuer would have 
 passed through. The story goes on to 
 tell how she lay down and gave up her 
 spirit in peace. One of our most beau- 
 tiful mountains bearing on its long sum- 
 mit the roughly indicated outlines of a 
 colossal recumbent figure, with peaceful 
 upturned face and quiet folded hands, is 
 said to be a monument to her goodness 
 and her woes. 
 
 Fifteen miles above us, at the summit 
 of the White Pass, are the two flags 
 which mark the boundary between Amer- 
 ican and Canadian territory. The 
 Skagway Valley is very narrow, and is 
 enfolded among great mountains from 
 1,000 to 8,000 feet high, which com- 
 pletely shut us in on the east and west. 
 Looking northward up the valley toward 
 the White Pass, one sees rank upon rank 
 of solemn snowy peaks — two and two, 
 two and two, parting to give narrow 
 passage to the turbulent little Skagway 
 Eiver. The mountain walls are extreme- 
 ly steep and rugged, scarred by great 
 landslides and torn by gorges down 
 which snow-fed torrents run. During the 
 winter these cascades are locked in ice, 
 but for several months in the year the air 
 is full of their roaring. Some of these 
 mountains bear great glaciers, and it is 
 even surmised that ages ago the whole 
 valley, from mountain top to mountain 
 top, was filled with ice. 
 
 Through this valley, and extending 
 
across the mountain range, is the old 
 Brackett Trail, the first road built over 
 the White Pass. A rough and toilsome 
 road it must have been to those who, 
 lured by the lust of gold, crowded by 
 thousands toward the new Eldorado, 
 when, in 1897, the world wondered at the 
 stories of the fabulous riches of the 
 Klondike region. Before the White 
 Pass was known, the only trail over the 
 mountains crossed the Chilooot Pass, a 
 shorter, but much more hazardous jour- 
 ney. At the time of the Klondike 
 stampede, however, some Indians told of 
 the existence of the Wliite Pass, and 
 very shortly travel was directed to the 
 new route. So Skagway came to be. 
 Adventurers coming by thousands from 
 the south bought their outfit and pro- 
 visions here, and the dogs or horses by 
 which they transported them over the 
 mountains to the great highway of the 
 Yukon. This was called "packing over 
 the trail," and weary work it must have 
 been. When sickness broke out among 
 
 the stampeders, no aid was at hand, and 
 many never reached the golden land 
 toward which their faces were set. 
 
 The history of our Church mission in 
 Skagway is almost coincident with that 
 of the town itself. In 1897, the Eev. 
 James L. Campbell, m.d., under the 
 appointment of Bishop Eowe, began 
 holding services. In the following year 
 the Kev. L. J. H. Wooden took charge. 
 Early in 1900, the llev. James G. Cam- 
 eron was appointed to the mission, and 
 has served it continuously since then. 
 The Church property is admirably lo- 
 cated, and during the term of Mr. Cam- 
 eron's service a good church and a mod- 
 est clergy house have been erected at a 
 cost of about $4,000. The mission now 
 has about forty communicants and takes 
 pride in endeavoring to help on the work 
 of missions elsewhere. The change in 
 the character of the town and the con- 
 sequent loss of population has, of course, 
 affected the mission; but its work goes 
 on, and both congregation and Sunday- 
 
 THB TOWN OP SKAGWAY IS LIKE THE PALM OP ONE'S HAND, WITH THE 
 LONG WHARVES REACHING OUT LIKE FINGERS 
 
school make their offerings for general 
 missions. A vested choir, a Junior Aux- 
 iliary and a Boys' Guild are among the 
 parish organizations. 
 
 In 1899 a railroad was completed 
 across the Alaska range of the Eocky 
 Mountains from Skagway to White- 
 horse, forming the connecting link be- 
 tween the waters of the North Pacific 
 Ocean and the head of the Yukon. This 
 is the only railroad of any length in the 
 country, and covers 112 miles. Travers- 
 ing a country wild and rocky beyond de- 
 scription, winding in and out among 
 great mountains, and reaching an eleva- 
 tion of 3,000 feet in the first fifteen 
 miles, its construction was considered a 
 remarkable feat in railroad building. 
 This road completely changed the situa- 
 tion regarding transportation, and 
 marked the waning of Skagway's pros- 
 perity. The miner no longer lingers here 
 to purchase his supplies and the dogs or 
 horses to "pack" them over the great 
 divide, but brings everything up from 
 the States or "Vancouver, and only stops 
 over between the arrival of his steamer 
 and the departure of the train. 
 
 At the entrance to the Chilcoot Pass, 
 the old route, a town, Dyea, had sprung 
 up and prospered. When the new trail 
 was opened, and miners no longer passed 
 through Dyea on their way to the gold- 
 fields it declined, and now is altogether 
 deserted, its tenantless houses and owner- 
 less hotels OTpen to anyone who will enter. 
 So towns are born, and so they die in 
 Alaska — their prosperity depending al- 
 together upon their relation to the 
 richest "strikes" of gold. A certain sort 
 of permanency is assured Skagway, as 
 the terminus of the railroad and steamer 
 lines, but it is extremely doubtful if it 
 will grow much beyond its present state. 
 In 1898 there were 6,000 or 7,000 in- 
 habitants; now they number about 1,200. 
 
 The establishment of saloons and 
 gambling houses was the first care of the 
 settlers, and these, needless to say, have 
 thriven while other lines of business 
 have declined. Together with the houses 
 of prostitution, which I believe are not 
 only countenanced but licensed, these are 
 
 the greatest powers for evil that the 
 Church has to fight here. 
 
 A town like this has of necessity a 
 shifting population, and as someone has 
 said, we minister not so much to a com- 
 munity as to a procession. A consider- 
 able part of the population is composed 
 of isolated individuals — either those of 
 the reckless and vagrant type, who have 
 long since been lost track of by their 
 families and are wanderers upon the 
 earth, or those, who, with families in the 
 States or Canada, have come here hop- 
 ing to make a fortune for them. A good 
 many of the patients cared for at this 
 hospital, especially in its early days, have 
 been those of the first sort, and I know 
 that through the influence of the de- 
 voted workers here in the past two years 
 — Miss Carter and Miss Langdon — more 
 than one has been persuaded to take a 
 different course, and has at least tried 
 to communicate with his relatives. The 
 second class, from their very loneliness, 
 and perhaps, too, because disappointment 
 waits so many of them, too often fall a 
 prey to the dissipations offered. Not 
 long ago a young man who had accumu- 
 lated $7,000 in Dawson and was on his 
 way out of the country to visit his home, 
 went into one of the gambling houses 
 here, and lost every penny in one after- 
 noon. This is no uncommon experience. 
 Sometimes men bring their families 
 here, and then proceed alone to the gold- 
 fields of the interior, to new and un- 
 opened country where means of com- 
 munication are altogether cut off, and 
 are not heard of for months, perhaps 
 never. The hardships and dangers of the 
 trail and the new camps claim many 
 victims. 
 
 There is still another element in the 
 population, composed of the officials of 
 the transportation companies, the army 
 men, and those engaged in business here, 
 but they, too, are constantly changing. 
 No one thinks of making a permanent 
 home here or of staying for any longer 
 period than will suffice to accumulate 
 the money they desire. There are three 
 mission churches here beside our own — 
 Eoman Catholic, Methodist and Presby- 
 
terian. A hospital is maintained by the 
 railroad and its employees for the care 
 of their own. The only manufacturing 
 interest is a brewery. 
 
 Our Church hospital, now known as 
 the Bishop Eowe Hospital, was founded 
 by a group of the townspeople on Feb- 
 ruary 19th, 1898, to meet the emergency 
 of the great epidemic of spinal menin- 
 gitis which then swept the region. The 
 largest log cabin in town — sixteen by 
 twenty-four feet — was purchased with 
 funds raised by subscription, a nurse 
 secured, and the venture started bravely 
 under the name of the Skagway Union 
 
 i 
 
 Hospital. So groat was the emergency 
 that not even beds were provided, and 
 patients were cared for lying side by 
 side on the floor. Men died unknown and 
 uncared for in their tents and cabins. 
 Primitive as the hospital arrangements 
 were, it proved an incalculable good in 
 that time of scourge. The cabin was a 
 story-and-a-half structure of rough logs, 
 consisting of two rooms, the lower six 
 feet five inches high (which, by the way, 
 still serves as our men's ward), con- 
 nected by a rude stairway in one comer 
 with an upper chamber under the slop- 
 ing roof. So far as we can ascertain, 
 there was no room besides these two — 
 not even a kitchen — though the old 
 
 records refer occasionally to the "annex" 
 which we take to have been a near-by 
 cabin secured for temporary use when 
 there were too many patients to be 
 crowded into this building. The records 
 of those early days are very meagre and 
 disconnected. It has been a work of 
 great difSculty to piece them together 
 into anything like a connecti;d history of 
 the hospital. One wonders how, in the 
 space of only six years, things should 
 have passed out of memory; but very few 
 people can be found now who were here 
 in 1898, and fewer who can tell us any- 
 thing about the hospital. 
 
 On April 6th, 1898, when the hospital 
 was hardly more than six weeks old, 
 those who controlled it asked Bishop 
 Eowe to assume charge and ownership. 
 They made over to him the cabin and 
 the lot on which it stood, stipulating 
 that he should make an immediate out- 
 lay of $1,000 in building. The old books 
 show that in the first year the Bishop 
 paid into the hospital funds for build- 
 ing and running expenses the sum of 
 $3,000. A frame building of a story and 
 a half was added close to the south wall 
 of the log cabin, and this was enlarged 
 as need demanded and funds allowed, till 
 it presents, architecturally, a strange and 
 wonderful appearance. 
 
From February 19tli, 1898, when the 
 hospital was started, till the end of that 
 year, the number of patients cared for 
 was 97; from February 19th, 1898, to 
 January 1st, 1904, the total number was 
 360. Something over sixty ^pev cent, of 
 the work has been charity. Under the 
 Union Hospital management Miss Anna 
 Dickey was matron, and she remained 
 under Bishop Eowe till May, 1899, when 
 Miss Hildur Lidstrom was appointed 
 by the Board of Managers, and took 
 charge with Mrs. Mary Bow as her as- 
 sistant. In June, 1900, Miss Lidstrom 
 resigned, and as there was no volunteer 
 to fill her place the Bishop retained Mrs. 
 Bow, who was not under the Board, as 
 matron. In July, 1902, Miss Clara M. 
 Carter, deaconess, of Massachusetts, 
 came out, bringing with her as assist- 
 ant Miss Florence G. Langdon, from the 
 same state. 
 
 At first the patients were 
 largely cases of spinal men- 
 ingitis, and the death rate 
 was very large. Later, when 
 the epidemic subsided, and 
 during the most prosperous 
 days of the town, they were 
 mostly men brought in from 
 the trail, cases of accident or 
 frost-bite or of pneumonia or 
 some of the other diseases 
 resulting from hardship and 
 exposure. At one time — in 
 1899, I think — there was a 
 succession of cases of ty- 
 phoid fever. That has 
 changed a good deal. We get 
 some accident cases now, but 
 the work is largely medical, 
 such cases as would be found 
 anywhere in a small town. 
 We usually have three or 
 four patients, sometimes as 
 many as six or seven, and 
 occasionally for short peri- 
 ods have had only one or two. 
 Since there have been three 
 workers here, we have been 
 able to do some outside nurs- 
 ing. 
 
 The hospital stands a little 
 
 AN INDIAN 
 TOTEM POLE 
 
 apart from and to the north of the town, 
 in the full sweep of the bitter wind that 
 all winter long blows over the White 
 Pass. It faces the eastern mountains, 
 and only the width of the river separates 
 it from the western bluffs. From our 
 front door and windows we look directly 
 across and up to the splendid snow- 
 crowned peaks of Dewey, McKinley and 
 Gnome Mountains, standing out sharp 
 and clear against the sky or veiled in 
 misty cloud. 
 
 Including the two buildings — which 
 are connected — we have on the lower 
 floor an entrance hall, which also serves 
 as our sitting room, with the men's ward 
 of four beds opening off on one side and 
 the little office and two small rooms for 
 patients on the other; a tiny dining room 
 which we can rarely use in winter on ac- 
 count of the cold ; a little drug room, and 
 a fairly good-sized kitchen. 
 Upstairs is the women's ward 
 of two beds — impossible to 
 heat, and therefore uninhab- 
 itable most of the year — an 
 obstetrical room, linen closet 
 and operating room, my 
 small } edroom, which used to 
 be the lumber room, and 
 the sloping-roofed chamber 
 over the men's ward which 
 Miss Carter and Miss Lang- 
 don have occupied together. 
 The whole building is in very 
 bad condition, and, if the 
 work is to continue, the prob- 
 lem of suitable housing is 
 one we shall have to meet at 
 once. The great north winds 
 come through our very walls, 
 so that it is absolutely im- 
 possible to keep comfortably 
 warm in winter. During the 
 coldest weather in January, 
 1904, we were obliged to 
 draw the bed of our one pa- 
 tient in the men's ward as 
 close to the stove as possible. 
 Yet, between his bed and the 
 huge fire we kept con- 
 stantly going, a glass of 
 water froze solidly, and 
 
BASIL SAWYER WOULD BE GLAD TO TELL 
 WHAT HE THINKS OF THE GOOD A 
 MISSIONARY HOSPITAL DOES 
 
 this occurred repeatedly. We, who were 
 well, got along fairly comfortably, but 
 the patients suffered severely. 
 
 There has been no lack of work here 
 to keep the nurses busy — especially as we 
 rarely have a servant, and have to divide 
 all the duties of the household amongst 
 us. Our housekeeping problem is much 
 complicated by the lack of plumbing in 
 the house and the fact that we have no 
 running water; the care of the stoves by 
 which the house is heated is no small 
 item in the daily tasks. We take turn 
 about on night duty as a rule, the one 
 who is to take the watch trying to get an 
 hour or two of sleep during the day, but 
 this is not always possible, and one 
 often has to take busy nights for long 
 periods with little opportunity for day- 
 time naps. We try to get to one service 
 apiece on Sundays, and when there are 
 few patients get out as much as possible. 
 On Sunday afternoons, Mr. Cameron, the 
 rector of Our Saviour's Church, says 
 evensong at the hospital. Sometimes 
 
 some of the choristers come, too, and the 
 patients always especially enjoy the sing- 
 ing. On Wednesdays and Fridays, at 
 noon, Mr. Cameron comes to hold the 
 little service of intercession for missions, 
 and for that we four, who are trying to 
 uphold the Church's standard here, al- 
 ways try to get together. 
 
 A few typical instances will help to 
 give some idea of the work the hospital 
 is doing: 
 
 Shortly before Christmas a young 
 Indian woman, dying of tuberculosis, 
 was brought to us from a wretched cabin 
 where her whole family lived in one 
 room in a state of unspeakable filth. 
 Such a pathetic little figure she was, and 
 so dirty! She was very happy in her 
 clean white bed, and touchingly grateful 
 for the little we could do to make her 
 comfortable. Though she had had Chris- 
 tian teaching, she had not been baptized, 
 and a few days before Christmas the rite 
 was administered. Fannie spoke very 
 little English and I, who cared for her, 
 knew no Chinook, but we managed to 
 carry on long conversations. I tried to 
 tell her what Christmas meant. She 
 knew who Christ was, but of the manner 
 of His coming and of His life she was 
 altogether ignorant. When I told her 
 that Christmas was kept as the time when 
 He came to earth, she was greatly 
 alarmed, thinking He would come this 
 Christmas Day. So I told her the Story 
 as simply as I could, one day while I 
 braided her beautiful hair, and it was 
 cheering to see her face brighten as she 
 understood. I taught her the words 
 "Merry Christmas" to say to all who 
 came to see her on Christmas Day, but 
 she didn't catch the meaning. Every 
 time I entered her room for days her 
 weak little voice piped up its "Mer-ry 
 Ohrist-a-mas," and she never said it to 
 anyone else. Dear little soul, how she 
 did enjoy the Day ! HI and dying as she 
 was, we carried her to the ward where 
 the tree stood. There was something 
 she could understand, lights and gay 
 decorations and loving good-fellowship. 
 And when the gifts were distributed, she 
 
hugged hers to her heart, and only 
 thanked us with shining eyes. She could 
 not be persuaded to part with them even 
 for a moment, and when, a week later 
 on the Feast of the Circumcision, she fell 
 asleep, I took the crumpled treasures 
 from under her pillow. The light had 
 gone out of her eyes then, but as I closed 
 them the beautiful words of the Hebrew 
 prophet came into my thoughts, "Thine 
 eyes shall see the King in His beauty; 
 they shall behold the land that is very 
 far off." 
 
 Late last fall a young woman came to 
 us, ill and almost friendless. Her hus- 
 band, if he really was her husband, was 
 in prison for a heinous crime, and she 
 had fled from him. We kept her with 
 us and she did what she could in the 
 house till her little one came. Such a 
 lovely baby, a black-eyed, black-haired, 
 plump darling, who slept and grew and 
 gladdened his mother's heart just as he 
 ought, and looked like a little bird in a 
 nest as he lay in his clothes basket among 
 big Alaska blankets. We had no crib 
 then, but since the Junior G. F. S. of St. 
 Mark's Church, Southboro, Mass., has 
 provided one. In January, the mother, 
 now strong and well and happy with her 
 baby, went from us and took up work by 
 which she can support herself and child. 
 It was good to be able to help her in her 
 sore need. The Sunday after Christmas 
 the baby was baptized at the hospital. 
 The Baptismal Office was said in the 
 ward, for we like to bring the beautiful 
 services of the Church as near to our 
 people as possible. 
 
 Again, a short time ago I was sent to 
 the home of a woman who was too ill 
 to be brought over the rough roads to 
 the hospital, and for two terrible weeks 
 fought death with her, only to be de- 
 feated in the end. After the last things 
 
 were done for her, I returned to the hos- 
 pital, bringing her little ten-months-old 
 baby with me to remain while the father 
 tpok the mother's body to her eastern 
 home for burial, and made arrangements 
 for the care of his child. 
 
 One patient has been oared for in the 
 hospital — gratuitously — for a year and a 
 half. He is dying of consumption. For 
 twenty years he prospected this country 
 for gold, and the fact that now, helpless 
 and dying, he is homeless and penniless, 
 tells a story that many lives have re- 
 peated in this sad land. He was sent 
 to the hospital with an acute attack of 
 pneumonia one bitterly cold day in the 
 winter of 1902. As Miss Langdon was 
 helping to undress him she peeled off 
 shirt after shirt, and thought she should 
 never get to the man. At the fifth she 
 asked him how many there were. "Oh, 
 I don't know, ma'am," he gasped, for he 
 had hardly any breath; "every time I 
 tuk a leetle more cold I put another one 
 on." There were nine, and less corpu- 
 lent but surely more comfortable, he was 
 put into a clean, warm bed. Bob has 
 been quite happy and contented with us, 
 and has endured a good deal more than 
 he thought was necessary in the way of 
 baths, etc., rather than hurt our feelings 
 by complaints. He is very weak now, 
 and may pass from all his pain and dis- 
 appointment any day. 
 
 Our work is accomplished under diffi- 
 cult conditions, but we can adjust our- 
 selves to them. Perhaps the hardest 
 thing to bear is the intellectual starva- 
 tion in a place like this. We must always 
 be giving out of ourselves and there is 
 little opportunity for replenishment. 
 But on the spiritual side there are many 
 compensations, for we are conscious of 
 the presence of the King in a far land 
 and rejoice in doing His work. 
 
 When this article was written the staff at Skagway consisted of the Rev. 
 J. G. Cameron, in charge of St. Saviour's Church, and Miss Clara M. Carter, 
 Miss Florence Langdon, and Miss Isabel M. Bmberley, nurses. V?ithin a few 
 weeks there have heen many changes. Mr. Cameron has come East on leave 
 of absence, and his place is filled by the Rev. C. E. Rice, formerly of Circle 
 City ; Miss Carter has been sent to take charge of the new St. Matthew's Hos- 
 pital at Fairbanks, and ill health has compelled Miss Emberley to retire tem- 
 porarily. Miss Langdon is now alone at the hospital. Bishop Rowe is anxious 
 to send her an assistant without delay. The cost of maintaining the Skagway 
 work in both church and hospital with the present staff is $1,700 a year.