Alaska Part 60

In winter all the mails are carried by dogs, covering hundreds of miles.

Half a mile below Forty-Mile the town of Cudahy was founded in 1892 by the North American Trading and Transportation Company, as a rival settlement.

Fifty miles below Forty-Mile, at the confluence of Mission Creek with the Yukon, is Eagle, having a population of three or four hundred people. It has the most northerly customs office and military post, Fort Egbert, belonging to the United States, and is the terminus of the Valdez-Eagle mail route and telegraph line. It is also of importance as being but a few miles from the boundary.

Fort Egbert is a two-company post, and usually, as at the time of our visit, two companies are stationed there. The winter of 1904-1905 was the gayest in the social history of the fort. Several ladies, the wives and the sisters of officers, were there, and these, with the wife of the company's agent and other residents of the town, formed a brilliant and refined social club.

From November the 27th to January the 16th the sun does not appear above the hills to the south. The two "great" days at Eagle are the 16th of January,--"when the sun comes back,"--and the day "when the ice breaks in the river," usually the 12th of May. On the former occasion the people a.s.semble, like a band of sun-wors.h.i.+ppers, and celebrate its return.

The vegetable and flower gardens of Eagle were a revelation of what may be expected in the agricultural and floral line in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle. Potatoes, cabbages, cauliflower, lettuce, turnips, radishes, and other vegetables were in a state of spendthrift luxuriance that cannot be imagined by one who has not travelled in a country where vegetables grow day and night.

In winter Eagle is a lonely place. The only mail it receives is the monthly mail pa.s.sing through from Dawson to Nome by dog sleds; and no magazines, papers, or parcels are carried.

It was from Eagle that the first news was sent out to the world concerning Captain Amundsen's wonderful discovery of the Northwest Pa.s.sage; here he arrived in midwinter after a long, hard journey by dog team from the Arctic Ocean and sent out the news which so many brave navigators of early days would have given their lives to be able to announce.

Within five years a railroad will probably connect Eagle with the coast at Valdez; meantime, there is a good government trail, poled by a government telegraph line.

Eagle came into existence in 1898, and the fort was established in 1899.

"Woodings-up" are picturesque features of Yukon travel. When the steamer does not land at a wood yard, mail is tied around a stick and thrown ash.o.r.e. Fancy standing, a forlorn and homesick creature, on the bank of this great river and watching a letter from home caught by the rus.h.i.+ng current and borne away! Yet this frequently happens, for heart affairs are small matters in the Arctic Circle and receive but scant consideration.

On the Upper Yukon wood is five dollars a cord; on the Lower, seven dollars; and a cord an hour is thrust into the immense and roaring furnaces.

During "wooding-up" times pa.s.sengers go ash.o.r.e and enjoy the forest.

There are red and black currants, crab-apples, two varieties of salmon-berries, five of huckleberries, and strawberries. The high-bush cranberries are very pretty, with their red berries and delicate foliage.

Nation is a settlement of a dozen log cabins roofed with dirt and flowers, the roofs projecting prettily over the front porches. The wife of the storekeeper has lived here twenty-five years, and has been "outside" only once in twelve years. Pa.s.sengers usually go ash.o.r.e especially to meet her, and are always cordially welcomed, but are never permitted to condole with her on her isolated life. The spell of the Yukon has her in thrall, and content s.h.i.+nes upon her brow as a star.

Those who go ash.o.r.e to pity, return with the dull ache of envy in their worldly hearts; for there be things on the Yukon that no worldly heart can understand.

We left Eagle in the forenoon and at midnight landed at Circle City, which received this name because it was first supposed to be located within the Arctic Circle. We found natives building houses at that hour, and this is my most vivid remembrance of Circle. Gold was discovered on Birch Creek, within eight miles of the settlement, as early as 1892; and until the Klondike excitement this was the most populous camp on the Yukon, more than a thousand miners being quartered in the vicinity. Like other camps, it was then depopulated; but many miners have now returned and a brilliant discovery in this vicinity may yet startle the world.

The output of gold for 1906 was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

About three hundred miners are operating on tributaries up Birch Creek.

The great commercial companies are established at all these settlements on the Yukon, where they have large stores and warehouses.

Early on the following morning we were on deck to cross the Arctic Circle. One has a feeling that a line with icicles dangling from it must be strung overhead, under which one pa.s.ses into the enchanted realm of the real North.

"Feel that?" asked the man from Iowa of a big, unsmiling Englishman.

"Feel--er--what?" said the Englishman.

"That shock. It felt like stepping on the third rail of an electric railway."

But the Iowa humor was scorned, and the Englishman walked away.

We soon landed at Fort Yukon, the only landing in the Arctic Circle and the most northerly point on the Yukon. This post was established at the mouth of the Porcupine in 1847 by A. H. McMurray, of the Hudson Bay Company, and was moved in 1864 a mile lower on the Yukon, on account of the undermining of the bank by the wash of the river. During the early days of this post goods were brought from York Factory on Hudson Bay, four thousand miles distant, and were two years in transit. The whole Hudson Bay system, according to Dall, was one of exacting tyranny that almost equalled that of the Russian Company. The white men were urged to marry Indian, or native, women, to attach them to the country. The provisions sent in were few and these were consumed by the commanders of the trading posts or given to chiefs, to induce them to bring in furs.

The white men received three pounds of tea and six of sugar annually, and no flour. This scanty supply was uncertain and often failed. Two suits of clothes were granted to the men, but nothing else until the furs were all purchased. If anything remained after the Indians were satisfied, the men were permitted to purchase; but Indians are rarely satisfied.

Fort Yukon has never been of importance as a mining centre, but has long been a great fur trading post for the Indians up the Porcupine. This trade has waned, however, and little remains but an Indian village and the old buildings of the post. We walked a mile into the woods to an old graveyard in a still, dim grove, probably the only one in the Arctic Circle.

CHAPTER XLVI

The Yukon is a mighty and a beautiful river, and its memory becomes more haunting and more compelling with the pa.s.sage of time. From the slender blue stream of its source, it grows, in its twenty-three hundred miles of wandering to the sea, to a width of sixty miles at its mouth. In its great course it widens, narrows, and widens; cuts through the foot-hills of vast mountain systems, spreads over flats, makes many splendid sweeping curves, and slides into hundreds of narrow channels around spruce-covered islands.

It is divided into four great districts, each of which has its own characteristic features. The valley extending from White Horse to some distance below Dawson is called the "upper Yukon," or "upper Ramparts,"

the river having a width of half a mile and a current of four or five miles an hour, and the valley in this district being from one to three miles in width.

Following this are the great "Flats"--of which one hears from his first hour on the Yukon; then, the "Ramparts"; and last, the "lower Yukon" or "lower river."

The Flats are vast lowlands stretching for two hundred miles along the river, with a width in places of a hundred miles. Their very monotony is picturesque and fascinates by its immensity. Countless islands are constantly forming, appearing and disappearing in the whimsical changes of the currents. Indian, white, and half-breed pilots patrol these reaches, guiding one steamer down and another up, and by constant travel keeping themselves fairly familiar with the changing currents.

Yet even these pilots frequently fail in their calculations.

At Eagle a couple of gentlemen joined our party down the river on the _Campbell_, expecting to meet the same day and return on the famous _Sarah_--as famous as a steamer as is the island of the same name on the inland pa.s.sage; but they went on and on and the _Sarah_ came not. One day, two days, three days, went by and they were still with us. One was in the customs service and his time was precious. Whenever we approached a bend in the river, they stood in the bow of the boat, eagerly staring ahead; but not until the fourth day did the cry of "_Sarah_" ring through our steamer. Hastening on deck, we beheld her, white and s.h.i.+ning, on a sand-bar, where she had been lying for several days, notwithstanding the fact that she had an experienced pilot aboard.

Throughout the Flats lies a vast network of islands, estimated as high as ten thousand in number, threaded by countless channels, many of which have strong currents, while others are but still, sluggish sloughs.

Mountains line the far horizon lines, but so far away that they frequently appear as clouds of bluish pearl piled along the sky; at other times snow-peaks are distinctly visible. Cottonwoods, birches, and spruce trees cover the islands so heavily that, from the lower deck of a steamer, one would believe that he was drifting down the single channel of a narrow river, instead of down one channel of a river twenty miles wide.

It is within the Arctic Circle that the Yukon makes its sweeping bend from its northwest course to the southwest, and here it is entered by the Porcupine; twenty miles farther, by the Chandelar; and just above the Ramparts, by the Dall. These are the three important rivers of this stretch of the Yukon.

Many complain of the monotony of the Flats; but for me, there was not one dull or uninteresting hour on the Yukon. In my quiet home on summer evenings I can still see the men taking soundings from the square bow of our steamer and hear their hoa.r.s.e cries:--

"Six feet starboard! Five feet port! Seven feet starboard! Five feet port! Five feet starboard! Four feet port!" At the latter cry the silent watchers of the pilot-house came to attention, and we proceeded under slow bell until a greater depth was reached.

On the sh.o.r.es, as we swept past, we caught glimpses of dark figures and Indian villages, or, farther down the river, primitive Eskimo settlements; and the stillness, the pure and sparkling air, the untouched wilderness, the blue smoke of a wood-chopper's lonely fire, the wide s.p.a.ces swimming over us and on all sides of us, charmed our senses as only the elemental forces of nature can charm. One longs to stay awake always on this river; to pace the wide decks and be one with the solitude and the stillness that are not of the earth, as we know it, but of G.o.d, as we have dreamed of him.

The blue hills of the Ramparts are seen long before entering them. The valley contracts into a kind of canyon, from which the rampart-like walls of solid stone rise abruptly from the water. The hills are not so high as those of the Upper Ramparts, which bear marked resemblance to the lower; and although many consider the latter more picturesque, I must confess that I found no beauty below Dawson so majestic as that above. Many of the hills here have a rose-colored tinge, like the hills of Lake Bennett.

In places the river does not reach a width of half a mile and is deep and swift. The shadows between the high rock-bluffs and pinnacled cliffs take on the mysterious purple tones of twilight; many of the hills are covered with spruce, whose dark green blends agreeably with the gray and rose color. The bends here are sharp and many; at the Rapids the current is exceedingly rapid, and Dall reported a fall of twelve feet to the half mile, with the water running in sheets of foam over a granite island in the middle of the stream. This was on June 1, 1866. In August, 1883, Schwatka, after many hours of anxiety and dread of the reputed rapids, inquired of Indians and learned that he had already pa.s.sed them.

They were not formidable at the time of our voyage,--August,--and it is only during high stages of water that they present a bar to navigation.

We reached Rampart at six o'clock in the morning. After Tanana, this is the loveliest place on the Yukon. Its sparkling, emerald beauty shone under a silvery blue sky. There was a long street of artistic log houses and stores on a commanding bluff, up which paths wound from the water.

Roofs covered with earth and flowers, carried out in brilliant bloom over the porches, added the characteristic Yukon touch. Every door-yard and window blazed with color. Narrow paths ran through tall fireweed and gra.s.ses over and around the hill--each path terminating, like a winding lane, in a pretty log-cabin home. There was an atmosphere of cleanliness, tidiness, and thrift not found in other settlements along the Yukon.

Captain Mayo, who, with McQuesten, founded Rampart in 1873, still lives here. The two commercial companies have large stores and warehouses; and residences were comfortably, and even luxuriously, furnished.

Rampart is two hundred and thirty miles below Fort Yukon, and is about halfway between Dawson and the sea. It has a population of four or five hundred people--when they are in from the mines!--and almost as many fighting, hungry dogs. Its street winds, and the buildings follow its windings; sometimes it stops altogether, and the buildings stop with it--then both go on again; and in front of all the public buildings are clean rustic benches, where one may sit and "look to the rose about him." The river here is half a mile wide, and on its opposite sh.o.r.e the green fields of the government experimental station slope up from the water.

Gold was discovered on Minook Creek, half a mile from town, in 1895, and the camp is regarded as one of the most even producers in Alaska. In 1906, despite an unusually dry season, the output of the district was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

In the afternoon of the same day we reached Tanana, which is, as I have said, the most beautiful place on the Yukon. It has a splendid site on a level plateau; and all the springlike greenness, the cleanliness and order, the luxuriant vegetation, of Dawson, are outdone here. One walks in a maze of delight along streets of tropic, instead of arctic, bloom.

The log houses are set far back from the streets, and the deep dooryards are seas of tremulous color, through which neat paths lead to flower-roofed homes. Cleanliness, color, and perfume are everywhere delights, but on the lonely Yukon their unexpectedness is enchanting.

In 1900 Fort Gibbon was established here, and this post has the most attractive surroundings of any in Alaska. Tanana is situated at the mouth of the Tanana River, seventy-five miles below Rampart, and pa.s.sengers for Fairbanks connect here with luxurious steamers for a voyage of three hundred miles up the Tanana. It is a beautiful voyage and it ends at the most progressive and metropolitan town of the North.