Part 7

July 8. Up a little after 6; breakfast; and then comes in a native from the mission with two letters and information that the _Agnes_, the little mail-carrier boat, has arrived during the night and is waiting for me to take me to Marshall and to Old Hamilton, whence another boat will take me in a day or two to St. Michael. So get ready in a minute, put my baggage on a native's boat, pay my bill, leave another lot of good friends, and row to the mission. There is the little dinghy _Agnes_ with its "accommodation" for three passengers already two-thirds filled up, and towing two big logs as a freight. Put my things partly in a "bunk," partly on the roof, give good-byes to Betsch and the teacher, help to push off the boat which is stuck in the mud, and we are off for another Yukon chapter.

We pass by the lower end of the "32 kashim" slough--no sign of any site--all recently made flats. If there is anything left of the old sites it must be at the foot of the hills, or has been covered with silt. The site is so favorable that in all probability there was once there a good-sized settlement, but due to river action and the jungle it could not be located. Mr. Betsch visited the place that day, and again with some old natives on another occasion, without being more fortunate.

Cloudy, slightly drizzly day, no trace of sun, mists over the tops of the hills. Could not stand it in the boat, so sitting on my box on the roof of the boat, wrapped, due to the cold, in a blanket.

A little below the "32 kashim" slough a small stream enters from inland--a place to be examined; but this boat can not stop for such a purpose.

A half mile or so farther down a few graves and crosses, with remnants of a native habitation.

Over 3 miles down, just beyond first bluff, fine site, with low hills stretching far beyond it--now but a few empty, half-ruined native houses. Should be explored.

South of second rocky bluff a live camp, and farther down another.

The left side of the river is still all flats as far as one can see, but about 17 miles below Russian Mission human bones came out of a bank there (on a slough).

MARSHALL

At 3 p. m. reach Marshall, a little cheerful-looking mining town, high on a bank. See the place, identify the skeleton from the above-mentioned bank as that of a missing white man, see telegraph operator, postmaster, teacher, commissioner. Sun comes out, is warm. Almost no mosquitoes here and no gnats. Hills above and beyond town belong already to the coast range and are barren of trees, even largely bare of shrubs and bushes. Leave 4.30.

Soon after Marshall--after passing by an Eskimo village (white man's style of buildings)--leave the hills and enter flats on both sides. This is the beginning of the delta region. River like glass, and it is warm in the sun but very perceptibly cooler when sun is hidden.

The boat has only three bunks, and there are five of us with the two pilots. But on the last trip up, there were, fortunately only for about eight hours, seven, including two women and a child, and that without any privacy or conveniences whatsoever. It is almost criminal, and they charge a very steep fare. However, for me it will soon be over--only about 36 hours. Still it is hard to believe this is yet in the United States and presumably under some sort of supervision.

Which brings me to a realization that the first half of my journey--the preliminary survey of the Yukon--is slowly closing; a little, and it will be the sea and other conditions, which also brings the realization that I have seen much but learned not greatly. What should be done would be to own a suitable fast boat; to locate on each of the more important old sites a party for careful, prolonged excavation; and to try to locate, in the rear of or on the higher places on the present river flats, more ancient sites than are known to date. These steps, together with the enlisting of the interest in these matters of every prospector, miner, and trader, would before many years lead to much substantial knowledge.

Friday, July 9. Must keep up these notes, for they alone keep me posted on the day and date; even then I am not always sure. There are no Sundays in nature.

Slept in my bag on the roof of the _Agnes_. Her namesake must have been one of these goodly but insufficient and but indifferently clean native women, plodding, doing not a little work, but wanting in many a thing. It was cold and dreary, but I found an additional blanket, and so, with mosquito netting about my head--one or two got in anyway--would have slept quite well had it not been for a dog. At about 1 a. m. we stopped in front of a little place called also "Mountain Village." And almost at once we began to hear a most piteous and insistent wail of a dog who either had colic or thirst or hunger, and he kept it up with but little stops for what seemed like two hours, making my sleep, at least, impossible.

Saturday, July 9. Morning. Cold, cloudy, rough--head almost beginning to feel uncomfortable, the boat is tossing so much. A teacher comes aboard with an inflamed hand which I fix; a few questions, the mail bag, and we are off again. Enter a slough where it is less rough and warmer. Later the sun will probably come out again. This evening we shall be at Old Hamilton and then a new anxiety--how to get to St. Michael.

Just had a little walk over the roof--my roof, for the other two passengers prefer to sleep in the gassy, dingy room below, though how they can stand it is beyond my medical ken. It is four short steps long, or five half steps in an oblique direction.

Every object in distance appears magnified all along the river for many days now. An old snag will look like a boat or a man, hills look higher, a boat looks much more pretentious than she proves to be on meeting.

Firs and spruce have now completely disappeared, also forests of birch, etc., are reduced to brush both on flats and lower parts of hills. Very large portion of the hills in distance just greenish with grass and lichens, not even a brush.

9.45 a. m. Meet the _Matanuska_ bound upward. Looked from distance like an ocean steamer; from near, just a lumbering, moderate-sized river boat with a barge in front. But a whole lot better than ours.

The scenery has become monotonous. The gray river, although only one of the "mouths," is broad, and the country is all low. Nothing but bushy or grassy cut banks on the right, and mud flats, "smoking" under the wind, to low banks on left. It is a little warmer and the warm sun shows itself occasionally, but I still need the wrapping of a double blanket. The wind luckily is with us and the waves not too bad.

Noon. Passing "Fish village"; a few huts and tents.

No "camps" here outside the few villages; just an endless dreary waste and water.

New Hamilton--a few native huts only now--no whites.

Reach Old Hamilton--about a dozen houses with a warehouse, a store of the Northern Commercial Co., and a nice looking but now unoccupied school.

Here the governor told me there was somewhere a skull waiting for me, and the storekeeper would tell me of it. But when we arrive there are only two or three natives to meet us. The storekeeper, who is also postmaster, is said to be sick in bed. He is supposed to have an ulcer or some other bad thing of the stomach. So we go to his house and find him in bed, with a lot of medicine bottles on a table next to him. Is alone; no wife. Shows no enthusiasm in seeing me, though heard of my coming. Reads letters--no attention to me. Gets up--I ask him about his illness--answers like a man carrying a chip on his shoulder. Goes to store to attend to mail, and barely asks me to follow. I wait in store; he finishes mail and goes out--orders the Eskimo present out gruffly, and to me says, "You may stay in the store; I'll be back." But I wait and wait, and finally decide the man for some reason is unwilling to help me. Asked him before he went out about the _Matanuska_, but he told me she might not be back from Holy Cross in a month, trying doubtless to discourage me to stay. On going toward the _Agnes_ I find him sitting on a log and talking to a couple of men from a tugboat that has arrived--just talk, no business, judging from their laughing. So I go on the boat, write a few words to Mr. Townsend of the Bureau of Fisheries, who makes this place his headquarters, and with some feeling hand this to the man, telling him at the same time that plainly he does not wish to assist me in any way. This, of course, rouses him; he gets red and says a few lame words, ending with, "Do you think I would touch any of them dam things or that I would let any of my men (natives) touch them? Not on your life!" So I leave Old Hamilton, for he is the only white man there now. But the place had other distinctions. Until recently, I am told, they have had a teacher, a young girl, who in her zeal had the natives collect all the burial boxes with their contents and had them all thrown into the river. Not long after she accomplished that she left. The storekeeper told me that "If I want them so bad I could pick them up (skulls and bones) along the river where the water washed them out after the teacher threw them in." Luckily there were not many "Old Hamiltons."

We met here a boat from St. Michael with Mr. Frank P. Williams, the well-known postmaster and trader of St. Michael, who comes for the two men, my fellow passengers. We get acquainted and, to escape the gases of the _Agnes_, I go with them. The boat is heavier and free from fumes, though without accommodation. At about 7 p. m. we arrive at Kotlik, at the mouth of the river--an abandoned wireless station, a store, and four tents of natives. But the old wireless building, now the storekeeper's house, is the dwelling place of a clean white man, Mr. Backlund, who is now "outside," but with whom Mr. Williams is in some partnership; so we occupy the building. Outside the wind has risen to half a gale and there are squalls of rain and drizzle. The _Agnes_ has to "tie to," as she would be swamped in the open. My boxes and bedding, which were on the roof of the _Agnes_, are soaked, though the contents will be dry. So both boats are fastened to a little "dock," and we soon have fire in the stove, supper, and then--it is 11 p. m.--a bed, not overclean, somewhat smelly, but a bed and free from mosquitoes, rain, wind, and cold.

July 10. Up at 6.30. Outside a storm and rain--just like one of the three-day northeasters with us, and cool. Both boats were to leave, but are unable to do so. I find that Mr. Williams's tug will come back here and go to St. Michael on the 13th, so arrange with Mr. Williams to take me and leave the _Agnes_ for good. This partly because I learn of two graveyards near, one 1½, the other 4½ miles distant.

After lunch, rain for a while ceasing, I set out for the nearer burial place. This is already a tundra country--treeless and bush-less flats overgrown with a thick coat of moss, into which feet bury themselves as in a cushion, and dotted with innumerable swampy depressions with high swamp grass. Walking over all this is very difficult--lucky I have rubber boots. Even so, it is no easy matter, except where a little native trail is encountered.

The graveyard, belonging to the now abandoned little village above Kotlik, consists of only about half a dozen adult graves. These consist of boxes of heavy lumber laid on a base raised above the ground level, and covered with other heavy boards. Some of the burials are quite recent. Open three older ones. In two the remains are too fresh yet, but from one secure a good female skeleton, which I pack in a practically new heavy pail, thrown out probably on the occasion of the last funeral. Then back, farther out, to avoid notice, through swamps and over moss, and with a recurring wind-driven drizzle against which my umbrella is but a weak protection.

Reach home quite wet and a bit tired. Have to undress and, wrapped in a blanket, dry my clothes and underwear about the stove.

Nothing further this day and evening--just wind and heavy low clouds and rain.

July 11. Up at 4.40. Weather has moderated. The _Agnes_ left at 4 and Mr. Williams's boat, due to favorable tide, must soon go also. Breakfast, and all leave me before 6.

Yesterday we brought up my needs--i. e., collection of skeletal material--to the few natives here, explaining to them everything, and they do not object in the least. One of them, in fact, is to take me to-day to the more distant cemetery in a rowboat and help me in my work.

My man, after being sent for, comes at a little after 7. He is a good-looking and well-behaving Eskimo of about 35. He brings a good-sized tin rowboat--a whaling or navy boat probably; but "he leaks a whole lot." The oarlocks are not fastened to the boat, the plate of one is loose, and the oars are crudely homemade of driftwood and pieces of lumber fastened on with nails; in one the shaft is crooked, while the other is much heavier. But we start, with the sky still leaden and gray but no wind and calm water. I row and he paddles; then he rows and I paddle. We carry but the camera, a little lunch, a heavier coat each, and a box and two bags for the specimens. We pass a number of broods of little ducks, the mother prancing before us until the young are in safety, and there are several species of new kinds (to me) of water birds, some of which fly right above us, examining us. In the distance we see a big abandoned dredge, then a few empty log houses and "barabras" on the bank of a stream and the edge of the tundra. This is Pastolik, our destination. There is no one anywhere near, an ideal condition for work, if work there'll be. And there will be--for almost immediately upon landing I see, beginning at a few rods distance on the tundra, a series (about 50) of old graves, in all grades of mossiness and preservation. A few are, we later find, quite late, but the majority are old--60 years and over according to information given by the natives of Kotlik. They do not, except perhaps the few late ones, seem to belong to anyone still living. Yet "Pashtolik," as they wrote it then, used to be a place of some importance in the Russian times, and even later.

We settle in an empty native house, and I start investigation. The older graves are found widely spread in several clusters, but a few are isolated at a distance.

The graves are all aboveground and resemble in substance those along the lower Yukon (Bonasila and downward). They consist of a base of small logs or splits; a rude box about 3 feet long by about 2 feet wide, of heavy, unpainted, unnailed, split boards; four posts near the four corners; a cover, unjoined, of two to three heavy split boards; two crosspieces over this, at head and base, perforated and sliding over the upright posts, and a few half splits (smaller drift logs split in two) laid over the top of the crosspieces.

On the first cover lies as a rule a stone--generally a piece of a slab or a good-sized pebble--unworked, though now and then showing some trace of use. The pebble is generally broken.

When the grave is opened there is usually over the body, as a canopy on a light frame, a large (probably caribou) skin--rarely birch bark. Neither covers or envelops the body but simply forms a covering over it, with some space between it and the body. The body lies flexed, on left or (rarely) right side, with the head toward (or near) the east (same as at Bonasila). It is often covered with or enveloped in a native matting. There are but few traces of clothing on women; none on men. And very seldom is there anything else in the coffin.

Some of the oldest graves were found tumbled down and could not be examined. The moss and roots envelop the bones, and it is a tough job to get them out; also they eat the bones and destroy them. Even in the older boxes, however, the downward part of the skeleton--generally the left--is, due to moisture, usually in much worse state of preservation than the upper.

Children have been buried in large native wooden dishes and these were in some cases placed on the top of adult graves, but more generally about these, or even apart.

Many household articles, from matches and pails to dishes, alarm clocks, lamps, etc., are placed upon the ground near the more recent dead. Excavation would probably recover here many older objects, though wood decays.

The wind has died down and the flat is as full of mosquitoes as a Jersey salt meadow, and there is an occasional gnat. They bite, and, having been almost free of the pest at Kotlik, I failed to take my "juice" along, so just have to do the best possible. The gnats enter even the eyes, however.

Work as never before. Decide to utilize the rare opportunity to the limit, and to take the whole skeletons, not merely the skulls, leaving only the few fresher ones and those that are badly damaged. A great Sunday; burial after burial; opening the wooden grave--taking out and marking on the spot bone after bone--fighting mosquitoes all the while--and packing temporarily in any convenient receptacle. Fortunately there are quite a few boxes and pails and oil cans on the spot, left by the dredge people and the few natives who evidently sometimes come to the place. At about 2 eat lunch--coffee (the Eskimo put what was for three cups into about two quarts of water, so there is but a suggestion of coffee), raw smoked fish for me and eggs with bacon (left over from breakfast) for my companion, and on again until about 5 p. m. or a little later. Last two or three hours, however, work with some difficulty. A gnat bit me in an eyelid, or got into my eye, and that has now swollen so that I can hardly see with it. My Eskimo, however, is about all I could wish. He just looks at me working in a matter-of-fact way, and carries the filled boxes, or looks around for something I could take with me, and even helps on a few occasions with the bones, finding evidently the whole proceeding quite right and natural. Brings me, among other things, an old copper teakettle, but to his wonder I do not want it and leave it. I find a fine large walrus-ivory doll and a handsome decorated "kantág" (wooden bowl), besides smaller objects, and also a large piece of a poor quality clay pot (no pottery now), with a fragment of a decorated border as on the lower Yukon.

Pack up, we load on the boat--lucky now she is so spacious--get into the shallow river--the tide has run out--push the boat out and start for home.

Thus far we had but slight drizzles. But the clouds now grow heavier, and as we have much farther to row than this morning, due to the low water, we are caught by showers. The last mile or so we have to hurry, see a big rain approaching. My man pushes her with a pole while I row all I can, with both hands, with the heavy oar. Of course the whole population of Kotlik has to see our arrival. And more, too, for in our absence a schooner came in with wood and a number of the natives. They talk, but no one is either angry or excited. We two carry the boxes, pails, etc.--grass covered--into the house; how lucky I am now alone. Inside I remove the wet grass from them--the bones, too, are somewhat wet--then pay my Eskimo $5, which again is taken as a matter-of-fact thing, without thanks, but he well deserved the amount, even if I rowed a full half.

It is 9 p. m. My man comes again, we have a modest supper, he some left-over meat and I again the smoked fish, which I feel is strengthening me as well as agreeing with my stomach, and then to rest, quite earned to-day. Seldom have done as much in a day. Thirty-three graves collected, with over twenty nearly complete skeletons, and all restored so that I had to take considerable care not to go again into some already emptied. But this place should be dug over. The tundra in a few years swallows up everything on the surface. It literally buries or assimilates bones and all other objects, the moss and other vegetation with probably blown dust covering them very effectively. Finding anything below the surface and that even a foot or more, as was actually experienced, means something quite different under these conditions than it might elsewhere.

Monday, July 12. Slept fairly well and feel refreshed, but the eye still badly swollen. The Eskimo believe, I think, I got it from the bones. Yet they are quite sensible--a marked mental difference between them and the Yukon Indians.

Breakfast before 7--cereal, raw smoked fish, and coffee. Then pack. At the store buy empty gasoline boxes, but no nails to be had, and no packing. Lunch at 1--macaroni, raw smoked fish, sauerkraut, coffee; then pack again, fix boxes, break old ones to get nails, even pull a few unnecessary ones from the boards of the house, go see my man's wife, a hopeless consumptive, and at 6 through with all except cleaning. Another fair work-day, 12 tightly packed boxes. Then clean up, burn rubbish, and ready for departure early to-morrow.

Supper--macaroni, raw smoked fish, greengage plums, a little sauerkraut, and coffee. Then a little walk outside, watch Eskimo women and children jump the rope (hilariously, but awkwardly), and go in to catch up with my notes. Nobody scowls at me, so that although they probably fear me as a "medicine man" they are not at all resentful for what I did yesterday. They are grown-up children, much more tractable than the Indians. But otherwise they show so much in common with the Indian that the more one sees of them the more he grows drawn to the belief of the original (and that not so far distant) identity of their parentage. It seems the Eskimo and the Indian are after all no more than two diverging fingers of one and the same hand; or they were so a bit farther back. Mental differences there are, yet these are no more than may be found in different tribes of the Indians or different groups of other races.

Tuesday, July 13. Rise a little after 6. Eye still sore after Sunday's gnat and sweat and dirt; must use boric acid frequently. An Eskimo actually said yesterday it was a sickness from touching the bones. A little breakfast--have no more salmon strips, so just cereal, canned plums, and coffee. And then with the help of two young Eskimo carry my spoils and baggage on to the tug, which has come for me. By about 7 start. Good-by Kotlik, what little there is of it.

At 9 arrive at Mr. Williams's reindeer camp farther up the coast. There are five tents and two small log houses of natives--the herders with their families, dogs, and fish racks; and three whites, Mr. Williams, owner of the boat and of most of the herd of about 8,000 animals; Mr. Palmer, of the United States Biological Survey; and a Dane, Mr. Posielt, here for the Biological Survey of Canada. All are already at the corral some distance over the hill, branding, counting, etc., the great reindeer herd, which belong to several owners.

A short walk along the shore brings me in sight of the herd. The animals can be heard grunting a good distance off. The herd is so large and so compact that it looks like a forest of horns. The animals keep on moving in streams, but remain in the herd. They go to the shore to drink some of the salty water, instead of salt. All is of interest, even though the branding, the cutting off of big slices from the ears, and castration, is rather cruel.

At lunch, for the first time, reindeer meat, a select steak. It is tender and decidedly good. Has no special flavor and is poor in fat, but tender and good.

Afternoon, once more to the corral, and then various things, including a photograph of a little impromptu native group.