Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled Part 10

[Sidenote: RUBBER ICE]

Near the Kornuchaket (or the mouth of Old Man Creek), where the Koyukuk receives a considerable tributary, we approached the most dangerous travelling we had had yet. The river here is swift and deep, and there are several islands set in it. Most of its surface was frozen, but the ice was very thin. William stopped the procession before we reached the bad stretch and went hastily over a part of it. Under his single weight we could see the ice-sheet undulating. It had been our rule that ice was not safe unless it took three blows of the axe to bring water, but this ice gave water at a blow. When William returned he made quite an harangue, which Arthur interpreted. He thought we could make it past the mouth of the creek, and if we could we should find good going to Moses'

Village. But we must go just as fast as we could travel; we must not let the sled stop an instant. The ice would bend and crack; but he thought if we went quickly we could get across. So for nearly a quarter of a mile we rushed that sled over "rubber" ice that swayed and cracked and yielded under our feet and under the sled, until we reached the bank of one of the islands, and then again we launched her and ran with her to the sh.o.r.e. Once one of my feet broke through, and immediately the water welled up all around--with the steamboat channel underneath--but without pause we increased our speed and made the strong sh.o.r.e ice safely at last. No man will ever doubt the plasticity, the "viscosity"

of ice, as it used to be styled in the old glacier controversies, who has pa.s.sed over the "rubber" ice that forms under certain circ.u.mstances and at certain seasons on these rivers.

We would never, I am sure, have attempted that ice had not William been with us. We would have struck a blow with the axe and declared it unsafe. Of course, it was unsafe; the whole journey was unsafe, but I am convinced that this thin, continuous sheet of ice, cus.h.i.+oned actually upon the surface of the water out of which it was growing, was really safer than much of the thicker but brittle, unsupported ice we had unhesitatingly come over. Chemists tell us that certain substances in the act of formation, which they call nascent substances, are extraordinarily active and potent, and it may be that ice in the same state has a special tenacity of texture which belongs to that state alone. I wish that I could have measured the thickness of that ice.

Where my foot went through I know it was very thin, but its thickness I will not venture to guess. There was the distinct feeling that the water was bearing the ice up and when it was punctured the water welled up with pressure behind it.

Beyond the Kornuchaket much more snow had fallen, and a few miles brought us to Moses' Village, called grandiosely "Arctic City," since a trader had established a store and a road-house there. At this spot a new overland mail trail from Tanana strikes the Koyukuk, and, although ten or twelve miles remained, we felt that our journey was done. My sled dogs were there, and, as I had not seen them for more than a year, that was a joyful reunion. Nanook's bark of welcome, which no one but I ever got with quite the same inflection, was as grateful to me as all the licking and s...o...b..ring of the others, for Nanook is a very independent beast, reserved in his demonstrations and not wearing his heart on his sleeve, so to speak. They were all glad to see me--Old Lingo and Nig, and even "Jimmy the Fake." Billy was dead. For fifteen or sixteen months they had been boarded here, and, since fish had been very scarce the preceding summer, their food had been chiefly bacon and rice and tallow, and there was a bill of close to four hundred dollars against us! Dogs are very expensive things in this expensive country. When used the winter through on the trail, and boarded the summer through at a fish camp, we estimate that it costs one hundred dollars per head per annum to feed a dog; so that the maintenance of a team of five dogs, which is the minimum practicable team, will cost five hundred dollars per annum for food alone.

[Sidenote: SATURATED SNOW]

When we had eaten a good supper and were reclining on spring cots in the bunk house, there was not one of us but confidently expected to be at the mission in the next forenoon. For a week past the natives had been going to and fro in three or four hours. The river was completely closed above here, and there was much more snow than we found below. So we hitched our own dogs to our own sled the next morning, when the doctor had visited a sick person or two, and started out on the last stretch of the journey. All went well until we had turned the long bend at the head of which the old, abandoned post of Bergman is situated, just on the Arctic Circle, but a mile or two beyond we were wallowing in saturated snow that stretched all across the river right up to the banks on either side. An overflow was in progress, the water running along the surface of the ice and soaking up the snow so that there was six inches of slush all over it. We struggled along awhile, though from the first it seemed hopeless, and then we gave it up and went back to the road-house. There would be no pa.s.sing that stretch of river with the sled until the cold had dealt with the overflow. It is almost always the unexpected that happens. The next morning I put on a pair of snow-shoes--Doctor Burke's knee forbade him their use--and taking William with me, mushed up through the slush and the snow to the mission, leaving the others to come on with the team so soon as they found it practicable.

A mile before we reached the mission was the new village built by the Esquimaux--"Kobuk town" they call it--and right in front of the village the Malamute Riffle, a noted difficulty of navigation, was still running wide open, though all the rest of the river was long closed. Near the riffle the Kobuks had a fish-trap, and some who were busy getting out fish saw and recognised me, and the whole population came swarming out for greetings. It was good to see these kindly, simple people again, to shake their hands and hear their "I glad I see you," which is the general native greeting where there is any English at all. Every one must shake hands; even the babies on their mothers' backs stretch out their little fingers eagerly, and if they be too small for that, the mother will take the little hand and hold it out. At the bend we take a portage and a quarter of a mile brings us to the Allakaket, to the familiar modest buildings of the mission, with its new Koyukuk village gradually cl.u.s.tering round it. The whole scene was growing into almost the exact realisation of my dream when first I camped on this spot two years and nine months before. There was a distinct thrill of pleasure at the sight of the church. Built entirely of logs with the bark on, there was nothing visible anywhere about it but spruce bark, save for the gleam of the gilded cross that surmounted the little belfry. The roof, its regular construction finished, was covered with small spruce poles with the bark on, nailed together at the apex, and where it projected well beyond the gables its under-side was covered with bark, as well as the cornice all round that finished it off. Even the window-frames and the door-panels were covered with bark. It was of the same tone because of the selfsame substance as the forest still growing around it, and it gave at the first glance the satisfied impression of fitness. It gave the feeling that it belonged where it was placed. It is ill praising one's own work, but I had been keen to see how it would strike me, fresh from the outside, after a year's absence, and I was very glad indeed that it pleased me again.

[Sidenote: A STARVING WHITE MAN]

I had no more than entered upon the warm welcome that waited at Saint John's-in-the-Wilderness, and was still wondering at the homelike cosiness which the mission house had a.s.sumed under the deft hands of the two ladies who occupied it, when there came an Indian with word of a white man he had found starving in the wilderness fifteen miles away.

Another native with a dog team and a supply of immediate food was hastily despatched to bring the man in, and that night the poor emaciated fellow, looking like a man of sixty-five or seventy though he was really no more than forty, crawled out of the sled and tottered into the house. He had started out from Tanana two months before with two pack-horses to make his way across to the Koyukuk diggings, had lost his way and wandered aimlessly in that vast wilderness; one horse had been drowned, the other he had killed for meat. He had made a raft to come down the Kornutna (Old Man Creek) to the Koyukuk, knowing that there was a trading-post near its mouth, and had been frozen in and forced to abandon it. Since that time he had been living on a few spoonfuls of meal a day, with frozen berries, and once or twice a ptarmigan, and when Ned found him was at the last extremity and had given up, intending to die where he was.

That man's hunger was tremendous, but Miss Carter, having knowledge and experience of such cases, was apprehensive that if any large quant.i.ty of food were taken at a time there would be serious danger to him. So for a day or two he ate frequently but sparingly. A little later, as he grew stronger, to such extremes did his hunger pinch him that he would watch till there was no one looking and would go into the kitchen and steal food that was preparing, even taking it out of the frying-pan on the stove. He would be hungry immediately after having a full meal. In ten days he was sufficiently recovered to resume his journey to the diggings, and when I saw him at Coldfoot two months later I did not recognise him, so greatly had he changed from the poor shrunken creature that crept into the mission. We all think we have been hungry time and again; if ever we have gone a few days on short rations we are quite sure of it; this man had sounded the height and depth and stretched the length and breadth of it, and none of the rest of us really know what hunger means. I tried to get him to talk about it, but he said he wanted to forget it. He said he was ashamed to think of some of the things he had done and of some of the terrible thoughts that had come to him, and I pressed him no more. I have always felt that, even in its last hideousness of cannibalism, only G.o.d Himself can judge starvation.

[Sidenote: TWO INTERPRETERS]

Here began my first experience of the difficulties of conducting a mission at the same place for two different races of natives speaking totally different languages. Although the Indian language spoken here is the same as at Tanana, and much of the liturgy, etc., had been put into that tongue by Mr. Prevost and was therefore available, yet it was found impracticable to have two sets of services whenever the church was used, for both races would always attend anyway. Since the mastery of the two tongues was out of the question, and there were no translations at all into the Esquimau, it became a question of teaching the Esquimaux to take part in an Indian service or dropping both vernaculars altogether and conducting the service in English. After much doubt and experiment the latter was resolved upon, and the whole service of prayer and praise is in English. When the lessons are read and the address delivered it is necessary to use two interpreters; the minister delivers his sentence in English, then the Koyukuk interpreter puts it in Indian, and when he is done the Esquimau interpreter puts it into that tongue.

It is a very tedious business, this double interpretation and a twenty-minute sermon takes fully an hour to deliver, but there is no help for it. The singing is hearty and enthusiastic though the repertory is wisely very limited; and here, north of the Arctic Circle, is a vested choir of eight or ten Kobuk and Koyukuk boys who lead the singing and lead it very well.

Already the influence of the mission and the school was very marked.

Given the native off by himself like this, in the hands of those in whom he has learned to place entire confidence, remote from debasing agencies, and his improvement is evident and his survival a.s.sured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DOUBLE INTERPRETATION AT THE ALLAKAKET.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WIND-SWEPT YUKON WITHIN THE RAMPARTS.]

In two days the doctor and Arthur and the team came up, and so was brought to a happy conclusion a perilous journey over the first ice. One is often glad to have had experiences that one would by no means repeat, and this is a case in point. We had learned a good deal about ice; we had taken liberties with ice that none of us had ever thought before could be taken with impunity; we had learned to trust ice and at the same time to distrust it and in some measure to discriminate about it.

The "last ice" is bad, but the "first ice" is much worse, and all three of us were agreed that we wanted no more travelling over it and no more pulling of a sled "by the back of the face."

Then followed a very happy, busy time of several weeks while the river ice was consolidating and the land trails establis.h.i.+ng; happy with its manifold evidences of the rapid advance the natives were making under Miss Carter's able and beneficent sway, busy with the instruction of people eager to learn. It was busy and happy for Doctor Burke also; busy with the many ailments he relieved, happy with the beginnings of an attachment which two years later culminated in his marriage to Miss Carter's colleague at this mission.

CHAPTER VII

THE KOYUKUK TO THE YUKON AND TO TANANA--CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS AT SAINT JOHN'S-IN-THE-WILDERNESS

LEAVING Fort Yukon on the 26th of November, 1909, and going again over almost the same route we followed during the first journey described in this volume, we reached the new mission at the Allakaket on the Koyukuk River on the 14th of December, after a period of almost continual cold.

The climate of the interior of Alaska varies as much as any climate. The previous year, continuing the journey described in "The First Ice," I had pa.s.sed over this same route in the opposite direction, between the same dates, with the thermometer well above zero the whole time. This trip the _mean_ of the minimum reading at night, the noon reading, and the reading at start and finish of each day's journey was -38 1/4. Many days in that three weeks we travelled all day at 45 and 50 below zero, and we spent one night in camp at 49 below.

It was the beginning of a severe winter, with much snow north of the Yukon and long periods of great cold.

[Sidenote: BIRTH, BURIAL, AND DANCING]

The two weeks or so spent at the mission of Saint John's-in-the-Wilderness was enjoyed as only a rest is enjoyed after making such a journey; as only Christmas is enjoyed at such a native mission. It is the time of the whole year for the people; they come in from near and far intent upon the festival in both of its aspects, religious and social, and they enter so heartily into all that is provided for them that one does not know which to admire most, their simple, earnest piety or the whole-hearted enthusiasm of their sports and pastimes. Right out of church they go to the frozen river, old men and maidens, young men and matrons, mothers with babies on their backs and their skirts tucked up, and they quickly line up and are kicking the football stuffed with moose hair and covered with moose hide in the native game that their forefathers played ages before "Rugby" was invented.[B] When the church-bell rings, back they all troop again, to take their places and listen patiently and reverently to the long, double-interpreted service, the babies still on their mothers' backs, sometimes asleep, sometimes waking up and crying, comforted by slinging them round and applying their lips to the fountain of nourishment and solace.

On the nights when there is no church service there is feasting and dancing. The native dance is a very simple affair, entirely without any objectionable feature, and one cannot see any reason in the world for attempting to suppress it. A man and a woman get out in the middle of the floor and dance opposite one another without touching at all. The moccasined toes of an expert man in this dance move with surprising rapidity, the woman, with eyes downcast, the picture of demureness, sways slightly from side to side and moves on her toes in rhythm to the man's movement. Presently another man jumps up and the first man yields his place; then another woman comes forward and the first woman yields her place, and so the dance goes on.

For a variety, of late years there is an occasional "white-man's dance,"

of the quadrille or the waltz kind, but the natives much prefer their own dancing. Here at the Allakaket the presence of the Esquimaux adds picturesqueness and strangeness, and the Esquimau dance, which consists of a series of jerky att.i.tudinisings, with every muscle tense, to a curious monotonous chant and the beating of a drum, is a never-failing source of amus.e.m.e.nt to the Indians.

An old man's funeral in the morning away up on the high bluff overlooking the mission, a birth in the evening, a dance the same night--so goes the drama of life in this little, isolated native world.

So soon as these people make up their minds that one of their number is sick unto death they make the coffin, for when trees must be felled and lumber whipsawed from them, it is well to be forehanded.

[Sidenote: "BEFORE" AND "AFTER"]

There is one old woman living up there yet whose coffin had been made three times. When it becomes evident that the unfavourable prognosis was mistaken the coffin is torn apart and made into shelves or some other article of household utility. It seems very cold-blooded, but it is easy to misjudge these people. The emotion of grief is real with them, I believe, but transient. They are matter-of-fact and entirely devoid of pretence, and when once a funeral has taken place and the service is all over they dismiss the gloomy event from their minds as soon as possible. The night of old Mesuk's death, however, there were fires lighted on all the trails and before most of the Esquimau cabins, the object of which was probably to frighten the spirit away from the dwellings of the living. We shall get the better of these superst.i.tions by and by, but superst.i.tions die hard, not only amongst Esquimaux.

Moreover, practices like this linger as traditional practices long after their superst.i.tious content is dissipated, and men of feeling do not wantonly lay hands on ancient traditional custom. I think that if I were an Esquimau and knew that from immemorial antiquity fires had been lighted on the trails and outside the doors upon the death of my ancestors, I should be tempted to kindle them myself upon an occasion, however firmly I held the Communion of Saints and the Safe Repose of the Blessed. And I am quite sure that if I were a Thlinket I should set up a totem-pole despite all the missionaries in the world. When one comes to think about it dispa.s.sionately, there is really nothing in Christianity averse to the kindling of corpse fires or the blazoning of native heraldry. When all the little superst.i.tions and peculiar picturesque customs are abolished out of the world it will be a much less interesting world than it is to-day. If there were any evidence or reason to believe that morality and religion will be furthered by the brow-beating or cajoling of the little peoples into a close similitude of the white race in dress and manners and customs, all other considerations would, of course, be swallowed up in a glad welcome of such advance. But almost the exact opposite is true. The young Indian or Esquimau, who by much mixing with white men has been "wised up," as the expressive phrase goes here, is commonly one of the least useful, the least attractive, the least moral of his kind. We have many such on the Yukon--young men who work on the steamboats in the summer and do odd jobs and hang around the stores in winter, and will not condescend to fish any more or to hunt or trap unless driven by the pinch of hunger.

Show me an Indian who affects the white man in garb, in speech, in general habits, and external characteristics, and it will be easy to show an Indian whose death would be little loss to his community or his race; while the native woman who aspires to dress herself like a white woman has very commonly the purpose of attracting the attention of the white men. I think the young Indian man I recall as the best dressed, most debonair, and most completely "civilised," was living in idleness upon the bounty of the white trader whom every one knew to be his wife's paramour, and was impudently careless of the general knowledge.

Of all the photographs that ill.u.s.trate missionary publications--and I have contributed enough villainous half-tones to warrant me in a criticism--the ones I dislike most are of the "Before and After" type.

Here is a group of savages clad in skins, or furs, or feathers, or palm fibre, or some patient, skilful weave of native wool or gra.s.s; in each case clad congruously with their environment and out of the products it affords. Set against it is the same or a similar group clad out of the slop-shop, clad in hickory s.h.i.+rts and blue-jean trousers, clad so that, if faces could be changed as easily as clothing, they would pa.s.s for any commonplace group of whites anywhere. And, as if such change were in itself the symbol and guarantee of a change from all that is brutal and idolatrous to all that is gentle and Christian, there follows the triumphant "Before and After" inscription. All the fitness has gone, all the individuality, all the clever adaptation of indigenous material, all the artistic and human interest; and a self-conscious smirk of superiority radiates over made-by-the-million factory garments instead.

Whenever I see such contrasting photographs there comes over me a shamed, perverse recollection of a pair of engravings by Hogarth, usually suppressed, which a London bookseller once pulled out of a portfolio in the back room of his shop and showed me. They bore the same t.i.tle.

I profess myself a friend of the native tongue because it is the native tongue--the easy, familiar, natural vehicle of expression; of the native dress because it is almost always comfortable and comely; of the native customs, whenever they are not unhealthy or demoralising, because they are the distinctive heritage of a people; and again, of tongue, dress, and customs alike, if you will, simply because they are dissimilar.

[Sidenote: A BARREN UNIFORMITY]

For it has always seemed a trumpery notion that uniformity in these things has any connection with the upbuilding of a people, has any ethical relation at all, and I have always wondered that so trumpery a notion should have so wide an influence. Moreover, is it not a little curious that, whereas the trend of biological evolution on its upward course, as Spencer a.s.sures us, is towards differentiation and dissimilarity, the trend of sociological evolution should be so marked towards this bald and barren uniformity? But these be deep matters.

I have never been able to join in the reproach of superciliousness so often applied to the lines of that n.o.blest of missionary hymns in which Bishop Heber asks, "Can we, whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high, Can we, to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?" If that be superciliousness, it is an essential superciliousness of Christianity itself, for the question lies at the very core of our religion and will not cease to be asked so long as the world contains those who believe with all their hearts, and those who do not believe because they have not heard. I never listen to that hymn without emotion, it can still "shake me like a cry Of trumpets going by." But the question that seems to stir the souls of some missionaries and most school-teachers, "Can we deny to these unfortunate heathen our millinery, our 'Old Oaken Bucket,'

our Mr. and our Mrs.," leaves me quite cold.

Here was the weekly afternoon routine at this mission, only the mornings being devoted to books and cla.s.ses: On Monday the children brought their soiled clothes of the week to the schoolroom and washed them; on Tuesday they were dried and ironed; on Wednesday they were mended; on Thursday a juvenile "society" did some sort of work for another mission; on Friday every child in the village had a hot bath. Now, let a routine of that sort be kept up, week after week, month after month, year after year, during the whole school life of a child, and it is bound to leave its mark; and there is no other way in which the same mark may be made.

At the Allakaket is fine example of what, I think, is the best rule in the world for the inferior races--the absolute rule of a devoted, intelligent, capable gentlewoman. We are but now writing the indentures of their apprentices.h.i.+p to self-government in the elective village councils we have set up; it is good for them to serve it under this loving and unquestioned despotism.

[Sidenote: MATTERS METEOROLOGICAL]

During all that Christmas season the temperature was subject to such violent fluctuations that a chart of them would look like the picture showing the comparative heights of mountains, that used to be presented under "The World in Hemispheres" in the school geographies. A minimum of 52 below zero and a maximum of 10 below, was followed by a minimum of 53 below and a maximum of 18 below, and that by a minimum of 56 below and a maximum of 14 below, while on Christmas Day itself we registered a minimum of 58 below zero and a maximum of 1 above, a range of 59 in less than twelve hours. At a time of the year when the sun has scarcely any effect upon the temperature such tremendous changes point to corresponding atmospheric disturbances, and each rise was caused by the irruption of clouds upon a clear sky and was followed by a fall of snow.

It is a beautifully simple process. Driven into these regions by some compelling current of the upper atmosphere comes a ma.s.s of warm air laden with moisture--a cloud. As it comes in contact with the cold air of the region it parts with its heat, and the temperature of the lower air rises. Having parted with its heat, it can no longer contain its moisture; and, having parted with its moisture, it ceases to exist. The cold of the earth and of its immediate air envelope has seized upon that cloud and devoured it, and the cold resumes its sway. So have I opened the door of a crowded cabin, when an Indian dance or other gathering was in progress, at 50 or 60 below zero, and the cold, dry air meeting the hot, moist air has caused an immediate fall of snow on the threshold.

After the abrupt rise in temperature on Christmas Day, the snow began to fall heavily, with a barometer continually falling until it reached 27.98 inches, the lowest point recorded here (at an elevation of about 500 feet above the sea) in two years and a half--and before the snow ceased three feet had fallen.

Our winter itinerary called us to leave the Allakaket immediately after New Year's Day, and our route lay overland through a totally uninhabited country for nearly one hundred and fifty miles, to Tanana on the Yukon.