Part 7

Oh, boys, you'll never know the real joy of living till you take a winter trip with dog-sled in Alaska. The keen, fine air, lung-filling, invigorating; your dogs yelping with eagerness, their feet twinkling, the sled screaming its delight; frost-diamonds sparkling from every branch, frost-symphonies played by the ice-harps under your feet; your own struggle, achievement, triumph, against and over the cold, the difficulties of the trail, the long miles.

"The morning breaks, the stars grow pale, Your huskies leap, shrill shrieks the sled; You follow free with flying tread; A joy to live! What joy! to thread The fluted ribbon of the trail."

It was near the sunset of a beautiful, bright day that I swung into Joe's clearing. For three days I had been headed almost directly towards Dinali--The Great One, and Dinah's Wife (Mt. McKinley and Mt. Foraker). Higher and higher these majestic mountains heaved their mighty shoulders. The country became more broken and rugged. Lesser mountains raised their white heads all around me. Only a few inches of snow covered the ground instead of the six to ten feet that prevailed farther west. The character of the trees had changed--more birch, cottonwood and other deciduous timber; less tamarack, hemlock and swamp spruce.

Signs of abundant life were everywhere. Fox, wolf, lynx and wolverine tracks criss-crossed the snow in all directions; great moose tracks going in a straight line, and the imprint of thousands of caribou hoofs crossing and obliterating each other, but keeping in the same general direction showed the presence of abundance of big game; while grouse, ptarmigan and rabbit tracks were so numerous that my dogs were kept excited and on the "keen jump" every minute.

On the bank of a small river, in a clearing of a couple of acres cut out of a forest of great fir and cedar trees, stood Joe's log-cabin roadhouse. Enough of the big trees had been left standing to shade the house. In front of it were a dozen cozy log dog-kennels, and behind it was a garden enclosed in a picket and wire fence.

As soon as "Leader's" bells gave shrill notice of my arrival the door flew open, a bright little figure in gingham and moccasins, with yellow hair flying and blue eyes sparkling, rushed at me, and I received the first good hug that I had experienced since leaving my wife and daughters in the East a year before.

A cheery voice cried, "Oh, you dear old man, you. I've been watching for you every day for two weeks. I was so afraid you weren't coming!"

Joe's welcome, though not so demonstrative, was none the less hearty. It was worth dog-mushing two hundred and fifty miles to have such a reception. As soon as I stepped into the house I was made keenly aware that I was in the home of hunters and trappers. In all my wide experience of wilderness homes I had never seen one like this. The long, low cabin had two rooms. The smaller was kitchen and dining-room, having a sheet-iron range and home-made tables, shelves and chairs. The larger room had a good sized sheet-iron heating stove in the center, and was almost filled with bunks in tiers of three each, built in double rows the length of the room. A little chamber enclosed with snowy caribou buck-skin, the skins sewn together most skillfully with sinew thread, was Nina's bedroom. The poles which formed the floors had been hewn and laid so carefully that they looked like boards. The tables and shelves were of whipsawed lumber, every article showing painstaking skill.

"Joe and I made the cabin and everything in and about it, all ourselves," Nina boasted.

"What!" I exclaimed, "you two rolled up these heavy logs, without any help?"

"Yes, indeed. We used block-and-tackle. It isn't so hard when you know how; and it was great fun."

"But the lumber for the doors and tables and window-sash--it's so true and smooth and beautiful; how did you get that?" I asked.

"Whipsawed and hand-planed it all," she replied. "You see, we came here two years ago this month, just after we were married. The Government was surveying this trail, and we thought we'd build this roadhouse and pick up a few dollars taking care of travelers. But chiefly we chose this place because it was so beautiful and such a game country. Then it has never been prospected for gold.

"Joe and I each had a good dog-team and sled when we were married. We loaded the sleds with tools, hardware, stoves and dishes, glass for the windows, some flour, sugar, beans and a few other groceries, and brought our traps and plenty of ammunition for our guns. It was hard breaking trail through the deep snow on the east side of the Alaska Range, but nice going on this side. We mushed the two hundred and fifty miles from the coast in two weeks; and had some time for trapping before warm weather."

"How do you get 'outside' in the summer time?" I inquired.

"We can't, and we don't need to. We spent that first summer building this house, making garden, gathering berries, drying fish, hunting and getting ready for the winter. Almost all our wants are supplied right here. From the middle of April till the middle of October we don't see a human being, except now and then an Indian, or a stray prospector."

"What a lonesome life!" I exclaimed.

"Now, Doctor, I know you don't mean that," protested Nina. "Why, this is the most companionable place in the world. It is full of friendly creatures. The winter before I was married I spent three months in San Francisco. I nearly died, I was so lonely and homesick. I'd meet thousands of people on the streets every day, and not get a word or smile from one of them. I wouldn't give my little 'Red' for the whole crowd."

"Who's Red?" I asked.

Nina leaned forward and made a squeaking noise with her lips. Instantly a little furry creature of a bright scarlet color, with a short tail, jumped out of a box in the corner, ran to her and up her hand and arm to her shoulder and then down to her knee, where he stood stiffly erect like a soldier at attention. He was so quick and comical in his motions and so full of tricks that he kept us laughing.

"I had three Reds," explained Nina, "but a weasel got two of them before I got the weasel. I have had many other pets besides the wood-mice. There isn't a creature in all the forest that would do me harm unless I hurt it first. And I don't have a grudge against any of them, except the hawks and owls that come after my chickens."

The most striking feature about the cabin, however, was the abundance and variety of furs and other trophies of the chase. Adorning and almost covering one end of the room was an enormous moose head. At the other end was a wonderful caribou head. Over the windows were beautiful heads of the white mountain sheep, the bighorn of the Northwest.

But the pelts! Great bunches of mink, marten, fisher, otter, muskrat and beaver; scores of red fox, with here and there a priceless black or silver fox; lynx, wolf, wolverine and black bear.

"We have four lines of traps, each five miles long," explained Nina; "and Joe and I each take two lines every other day, spending the alternate days caring for the skins. We are making bear traps now, getting ready for Bruin when he comes out of his den. We have about four thousand dollars' worth of furs caught this winter, and we'll make it five before warm weather."

But the most imposing objects of all in the cabin were two tremendous rugs--the skins of the _ursus gigas_ or Kodiak bear--the largest of existing carnivorous mammals. Joe had learned something of taxidermy, and the heads were nicely preserved, the big teeth and claws showing, the skins being lined with red blankets. The largest of these rugs was over twelve feet long, the distance from nose to tail over ten feet, the lateral spread being almost as great. The fur was a rich brown in color, deep, thick and soft.

At my exclamation of wonder and admiration, Joe began eagerly to tell me the story of the rugs; but his wife stopped him.

"Better wait till after supper, Joe," she said.

Ah, that supper! The supreme physical pleasure of it lingers in my memory still. Moose soup with potatoes, turnips, carrots and onions from their garden in it; fresh grayling, caught in the fall and frozen; ruffed grouse pie; roast mountain sheep--the best meat that grows; omelet made of eggs laid that day; moose-nose cheese, delicately pickled; fine sour-dough bread with raspberry jam and currant jelly; pie made of fresh blueberries, the berries having been picked in the fall and preserved by the simple process of pouring water on them and letting them freeze. All of these viands, except the bread, being the products of Nina's labor or marksmanship, made them doubly sweet. Where else in the world could you get a meal like that--or the appetite to devour it all?

"Well," began Joe, when, sated, I lay back in the easy-chair curiously fashioned of moose horns, while the young couple washed the dishes, "I'm mighty proud of them rugs. They're Nina's, both of 'em, and I reckon there's no other girl in the world would of tackled the job she did, and got away with it. It scares me every time I think of it, and I don't know whether I'd oughter scold her or pet her up."

"Nonsense!" protested his wife; "you know you'd have done exactly as I did if you'd been here."

"Maybe I would," he retorted, "but I wouldn't of let _you_ take that risk."

"It was the first of last November," he resumed. "I'd taken the two sleds and all the dogs, as soon as I thought the ice was strong enough, and I'd gone two hundred miles to the store at Ophir to lay in our winter's outfit. The ice towards the coast wasn't strong enough to make safe mushin', and Nina was all alone here for more'n three weeks. I knowed she would make the reg'lar round of the traps and keep things goin' just as usual. She's never learned to be afraid--that girl.

"Well, one mornin' she was gettin' breakfast, when she heard a little noise outside. She opened the door, and there, within twenty-five feet of her, were three big Kodiak bears. Two of them stood up on their hin' feet when she opened the door, while the other kept smellin' around for grub."

"Goodness, Nina!" I exclaimed. "What was your first thought when you saw the big brutes so close?"

"Well," she answered, smiling, "my first thought was, 'What beautiful rugs those are on the backs of the bears! I want those rugs.'"

"Yes," Joe went on, "and so she stepped slowly back, inch by inch into the house, and softly closed the door so as not to _scare_ the bears--they as big as a house and her such a leetle mite of a thing. She took down that 30-40 Winchester, there, and filled the magazine full (it chambers ten); and then she done a plumb foolish thing. I know darned well what I'd 'a' done. I'd 'a' poked the moss out between the logs, there, and stuck my rifle through and had some 'vantage."

"What did Nina do?" I asked.

"Why, she threw the door wide open and stepped right out in front of it. Up came all three bears, this time, on their hind feet. Nina's lightnin' on the snap shot, and before the big he-bear was straightened up he got it right between the eyes. Down he tumbled, and the other two was out of sight around the kennel there before she could throw another shell into the gun and aim." Joe pointed to a log dog-house about two rods in front of the door.

"Nina raced pell-mell past the kennel to get another shot, and there she saw the big she-bear, standin' up behind the dog-house, awaitin' for her, not a gun's length away. Nina swung around and fired pointblank into the bear's breast. It went down on all-fours and came for her with open mouth. There was nothing for it but to keep on shootin'. She worked the lever of her gun mighty fast. She put five bullets into the beast before she quieted it. She never saw the third bear again."

"Why, Nina!" I cried, as soon as I could get my breath. "You foolish child! Your escape was miraculous! It frightens me to hear Joe tell of it. Weren't you dreadfully scared when you saw that great brute jump at you like that?"

"Oh, no," laughed the girl. "I was too busy to get scared. But I was awfully provoked because the other one got away."

Other details of Nina's great adventure followed--how it took her three days to skin the two bears, she having to climb a tree to adjust the block and tackle so as to move the heavy carcases; and how Joe "blubbered" when he got home and saw them, and knew the peril his beloved had encountered.

Nina is an exceptional woman, but still she is truly a type. There is something in "that great, big, broad land, way up yonder," that stiffens the moral fiber, enlarges the spirit and makes the people unafraid. The white settlers of Alaska, while by no means all saints, are as a class the strongest, bravest and most resourceful people I know. I have not heard from my brave little chum for several years. I presume she is still living her joyous, fearless, Christian life in what John Muir used to call my "beautiful, fruitful wilderness." Here's to her; God bless her!

VIII

THE ABSURD WALRUS

Lewis Carroll's famous lines about the Walrus and the Carpenter will always hold their place at the very top of humorous poems. For besides being funny they have a quality of truth which the careless reader little suspects:

"The time has come," the walrus said, "To talk of many things, Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, Of cabbages and kings; And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings."

The very few men who have been acquainted with the walrus in his native haunts know that the author of "Alice in Wonderland" in these verses "hits the nail on the head," and, perhaps unwittingly, gives an insight into the true character of the walrus as the most inconsistent, grotesque and absurd of all beasts.

It was my good fortune the summer of 1913 to be one of a company of six hunters on board the three-masted power schooner, _P. J. Abler_, which sailed along the Alaskan and Siberian coasts for six thousand miles and pounded its way northward into the Arctic ice-pack to within sixteen degrees of the Pole.

The ship itself was of unusual pattern. Her owner called her the _Mudhen_. Her three masts stood stiff and straight in a row and were the same height. Her lines were not particularly elegant, and her small engine could only push her through calm seas at the rate of five miles an hour. But she was a comfortable ship and had one quality in particular which overbalanced all the drawbacks and made her the boat for us--she was built for "bucking ice." She had extra heavy timbers, especially about her bow. In spite of her slowness, she was an ideal craft for venturing into Arctic ice-floes. She would come at a good speed, bow on, against a huge berg and bring up with a jar that would shake her as a rat shaken by a terrier, and send your plate of polar bear meat into your lap. Then she would recover from her backward bounce and calmly proceed on her way undented and unharmed. Mr. Scull of Philadelphia, who has sailed the world over, could never get used to bumping the ice. He and I would be bent over the chess board, absorbed in a difficult situation, when--bang! would go the schooner against the ice, and recoil, trembling like a hound. I would grab for the tottering chessmen, while Scull would jump right into the air with his hair standing straight up on each side of his bald pate like the ears of a horned owl. He would rush frantically out of the cabin door, lean far over the vessel's side, train his big eye-glasses on the ship's bow and watch for signs of her filling. Then he would come back muttering strange words in any of the five or six languages of which he is the master, and resume his study of the game, only to repeat the performance at the next bump. "Oh!" he would say, "it hurts me more than it hurts the ship"; which was undoubtedly true. I always had better luck in chess with Scull when we were bucking ice.

The personnel of our party was like some landscapes, varied and interesting. The commander of the expedition and its manager, was Captain Kleinschmidt, sailor, miner, hunter, author and moving-picture man. He chartered the _Abler_ and hired her crew, who were as cosmopolitan as it is possible for crew to be--the captain, a Swede; the mate, a Dane; the engineers (brothers) German-Americans; the cook, a "Jap"; the crew composed of one American, one Russian and five Eskimos. There were two taxidermists to take care of the birdskins, bugs, mammals, etc., collected.

Of the four hunters, who, with Captain Kleinschmidt, financed the expedition, three were from Philadelphia: Scull, our polyglot interpreter, a publisher of books; Collins, a manufacturer; and Lovering, a young man who had lived part of his life in Wyoming. The fourth, Dr. Elting, was a surgeon of reputation from Albany, N. Y. All were experienced hunters, Scull and Collins having followed trails in Africa and America, Dr. Elting in the Western States and Canada, and Lovering in the West. As for myself, the guest without responsibility or care, "taken along," as the captain said, "to lend dignity to the expedition," you can call me by my common names: "The Sour-dough Preacher," "The Mushing Parson," "The Alaska Sky-Pilot," or any of half a dozen Northwestern cognomens, of all of which I am equally proud.

My object in joining this expedition was, first, to have a big hunt and a grand rest. But, more than the outing, I valued the privilege of exploring ground untrodden by the missionary, and, if possible, doing something towards bringing the Gospel to the heathen Eskimo of the Alaskan and Siberian shores.

We were all "out for a lark," glad beyond expression to be hundreds of miles from a telegram or newspaper, to be able to wear our dirty clothes and eat in our shirtsleeves without shame; to forget that such things existed as automobiles or stiff collars or dinner parties. We had four months of a royal good time--along the Asiatic Coast after Siberian sheep, on the Alaska Peninsula for caribou and brown bears, on Kenai Peninsula after moose, white sheep and black bear, among the islands of the Southern Alaska Coast and Bering Sea with the bird and seal rookeries, and pursuing polar bear amid the ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean.

We visited many Eskimo villages; we shot for the museums hundreds of varieties of birds on the Siberian and Alaskan Coasts; we captured new species of beetles, moths, butterflies and other insects; the camera fiends and moving-picture man reveled in novel scenes, animate and inanimate. We buffeted storms, pounded ice and sailed sunny seas.

But the climax of our joyous outing was the three or four days we spent among the walrus herds off the Northern Siberian Coast. Scull and Collins, who had hunted everything in Africa from dikdik to rhinoceros, declared that none of their experiences in that continent approached in thrilling interest their days with the walrus herds.

For the walrus is _sui generis_: there is no other mammal at all like him in appearance, habits, habitat or characteristics. He is the least known or written about of all the larger animals. No thorough study has ever been made of him. More is known of the habits of the extinct woolly elephant--the mammoth, whose bones, tusks, and even hair and skin we find on the Alaskan Coast--than the walrus. And what has been written and the common ideas concerning this animal are so erroneous as to be funny.

A century or so ago a naturalist-traveler, writing about the Eskimos and the _morse_, as the walrus was then called, said that the tusks of the animal are for the purpose of pulling himself up the icy mountains where he lives; that his habit is to thus work his way up to the top of the dizziest peak; that the Eskimos pursue him there and cut holes through the thick skin of his flippers unknown to the huge pachyderm, whose hide is impervious to sensation. Then, having passed strong ropes through these holes and tied them to the jutting crags, they raise a hullabaloo, and the walrus, alarmed, precipitating himself down the mountain, jerks off his skin, which the Eskimos then use in the construction of their boats and houses. The year before our hunt, a California gentleman, interested in Captain K.'s moving pictures, asked him whether the walrus brought forth their young alive or laid eggs and hatched them.

In May, 1913, when discussing my proposed outing with some of my ministerial brethren, at the General Assembly at Atlanta, a good Doctor of Divinity tried to deter me from undertaking it because of its dangerous character.

"Is it not true, Dr. Young," he asked with great solicitude, "that the walrus sometimes devours human flesh?"

I patiently explained that the walrus has no incisors, no teeth at all but flat grinders, level with the gums and far back in the jaws, "and therefore he cannot rend or eat anything so very tough as a missionary"; and that moreover his mouth is situated back of a narrow opening of three or four inches in width between his tusks, so that nothing bulky can enter it. "He might drown me but he couldn't eat me!"

The "D. D." listened with open skepticism and put this poser: "How then can he devour his prey?"

"What prey?" I asked.

"Why, the seals and salmon and other large sea animals on which he feeds."

Again I sternly suppressed my rising emotions: "But he doesn't eat these things. He couldn't catch them and doesn't want them. He is only a clam-eater. His tusks are not spears, but an admirably constructed clam-hoe. He could not live without them; and his stiff whiskers form a fine brush to clean the clams of mud before he dines off them."

The good brother glanced from one to another of the listening group with a look that plainly said: "How sad it is that such shameless prevaricators will even slip into the ministry;" and walked off muttering something about consulting "authorities."

Illustrating my own roving habits, while a pioneer missionary in Alaska, I have sometimes said, using a common simile, that I "had no more home than a jack-rabbit." I am changing this now to a stronger expression; "no more home than a walrus." He is the most constantly on the move of all the vagabonds. Even when sleeping he is moving, for the only home the poor fellow has is the ice-cakes which form in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, entirely filling the former and in the winter crowding down the latter to about fifty-eight degrees, north latitude. The walrus herds, for the greater part of the year, keep on the borders of this great field of ice. In the summer when the Bering Sea ice melts and also that of the southern part of the Arctic Ocean, the walrus keeps on the flat ice-cakes which float over the great clam beds of these shallow seas. As the ice forms in the fall and the ice-floes extend southward he sets out on a long swim ahead of the fast freezing ice, resting occasionally on the Siberian shore, the Diomedes, St. Lawrence, St. Matthews and other islands. When the ice-field has extended to its southern limit he resumes his ice-house-boat habit and returns north in the spring.