CHAPTER VII.

THE MYNOOK CREEK DIGGINGS.

The next day, the 21st of August, we loaded up the Skookum again, and dropped away from Circle City with the current. The customs officers were short of rice, but they sent a pair of old slippers flying after us as we moved away; and several of the ladies who had been at the dance stood on the bank and waved us adieu. Soon the river broadened out, with many channels flowing amid a maze of low wooded islands. This was the beginning of the great Yukon Flats, which stretch in dreary monotony for so many miles below Circle City.

The wind blew strong, with gusts of rain, in the morning, and increased to a gale which lasted nearly all day. The proper channel was difficult to determine, and we were often sucked into some little channel or slough (pronounced "sloo"), only to find our way back again, after a long circuit, to the larger body of water, at a place near where we had left it. No hills were visible in any direction--nothing but the waste of waters, the sandspits, and the level wooded islands and banks. At night we reached Fort Yukon, a trading post, which is situated at the junction of the Porcupine with the Yukon; we had made the distance from Circle City, estimated at about eighty miles, in sixteen hours. So bewildering are the various channels here that one would hardly suspect that any stream entered the Yukon, and the current is so varied and sluggish that one might easily attempt to ascend the Porcupine, having the impression that he was still descending the Yukon--a delusion that would be dispelled after the first few miles.

Like other so-called "Forts" in the Alaskan country, Fort Yukon was simply a rough log building inhabited by one white man, who had a scanty stock of very poor provisions, such as flour and tea, to exchange for skins with the natives. Around the building the Indians had made their camp, as usual, a trading-post being always the nucleus of a dirty and foul-smelling congregation of natives. From one Indian we bought a whitefish, and on his presenting it to us whole, we motioned him to clean it; he did so, laying the entrails carefully on a board. He wished tea in exchange for it, and not being experienced in native trading, we gave him what we afterwards learned was ten or twelve times the usual price. We had the best English breakfast tea, and he was at first doubtful at this, having seen only the cheap black tea always sold to the natives; but he was vastly pleased at the quantity, and, laughing delightedly, proceeded to "treat" his friends on the occasion of his good fortune, by handing around the raw entrails of the fish, which they divided and ate without further ceremony.

Not liking to sleep within reach of the Indian dogs, who are very dangerous enemies to one's bacon, we dropped down the river half a mile below the post and made camp in a spruce grove--a beautiful spot, cool, and free from mosquitoes.

The next day we were still in the flats. There was a high wind blowing and the sky was spotted with curious clouds. Some were like cauliflowers in form; others were funnel-shaped; and still others were dark, with long black tentacles of rain. Whenever these tentacles passed over the river in a direction against the current, an ugly chop sea was the result, and our boat, stout dory though she was, shipped water in some of these places.

Floating down through the network of channels we suddenly ran hard upon a sand-bar, and it took a couple of hours' work to get us off, for as soon as we were lodged the sand which the Yukon waters carry began settling round the boat and banking it in, making it the hardest work imaginable to move it. While we were tugging and groaning in our efforts, a steamer--the Arctic--came down the river behind us, and being steered by experienced Indian pilots, struck the right channel only a short distance from us and floated past triumphantly. The deck was swarming with miners who were bound for St. Michael's, and they made many jocose remarks at our expense, offering to take word to our friends, and do other favors for us. We said nothing, though we fumed inwardly. Finally we succeeded in getting free, and floated off. Some time afterwards we saw behind us what appeared to be the smoke of another steamer; but when we stopped for lunch the craft caught up with us, and proved to be an ordinary open boat like our own, but with a Yukon stove made of sheet iron set up in it, whereon the solitary passenger cooked his dinner while he floated.

In the afternoon we caught sight of a bona fide steamer ahead of us, and as we came steadily closer, it seemed as if she must be stopping; soon we recognized the Arctic, and saw that the crew and all the passengers were laboring excitedly in many ways, trying to get the boat off the sand-bar on which she was stuck. We ran close by her, for there was water enough for our little boat, although the rapid deposit from the river had built up a bank to the surface of the water on one side of the steamer. We were sorry for these men, who were in a hurry to get to St. Michael's, and so on home; at the same time we could not resist the temptation to return to them their greetings of the morning, and offer to take letters to their friends. They did not seem to be so much amused at the joke as they had been in the morning--probably because they had heard it before.

We were several days floating through this monotonous part of the river. There were always the same banks of silt, from which portions, undercut by the current, were continually crashing into the stream; these were immediately taken up and hurried along by the current to form part of the vast deposit of mud which the Yukon has built up at its mouth, and which has filled up the Behring sea until it is shallow and dangerous. On the higher banks, which were forty feet or so above the river (it was then low water), spruce and other trees were growing, and as the soil which bore them was undercut, they too dropped into the river and started on their long journey to the sea. Along the vast tundra at the Yukon mouth, and the treeless shores of the Behring sea, the natives depend entirely upon these wandered trees for their fuel. The quantity brought down every year is enormous, for the stream is continually working its way sidewise, and cutting out fresh ground.

Everywhere we noticed the effects of the ice which comes grinding down the river in the spring. The trees had been girdled by the ice and were dying, the underbrush cut down, the earth plowed up, and occasionally there were piles of pebbles where a grounded cake had melted and deposited its burden.

We used to camp on the gravel bars mostly, to avoid the mosquitoes; but every now and then a night was cool and even frosty, and the mosquitoes and gnats, after starting in their assault, were gradually numbed, and their buzzing grew fainter and fainter till it disappeared. When we felt such nights coming on, we camped in the spruce groves on the higher banks, built roaring fires and sat by them comfortably and smoked, looking out on the smooth river with the dark even fringe of trees between it and the sky with its snapping stars; and for the first time on our trip we began to have some of the pleasures which usually come to the camper-out.

We passed Indian hunting and fishing camps occasionally, and once a solitary white man engaged in cutting wood for the river steamers. The natives seemed always to have plenty to eat, and we frequently obtained from them fish, duck, moose, and berries. As we passed a camp the inhabitants would put out in their tiny birch-bark canoes, if we did not stop; and, overtaking us with ease, would hold up for purchase such articles as they had. The berries were in native dishes of hewn wood, or of birch-bark tied with wooden thongs, and were so quaint that we took them home as curiosities.

After several days in the Flats, we saw--when the clouds lifted after a prolonged rainstorm--that the course of the river was apparently barred by low mountains, level-topped, with occasional higher peaks rising above the general level, but all with smooth and rounded outlines. As we drew nearer we saw a narrow valley cutting through the mountains, and into this the river ran. Just before entering, we found a trading post, Fort Hamlin by name, and from the trader, who was the only white man here, we each bought a pair of Eskimo water-boots, made of the skin of the makalok or hair seal, soaked in oil. We had long ago worn out the most of our civilized foot-gear, and were obliged to adopt the native styles. These Eskimo boots often have soles of walrus, and yet they are too thin for walking over stones, so they are made very large, and dried grass is put into the bottom; the foot, too, is wrapped in as many thicknesses of cloth or skins as possible, and thus is protected against bruises and against the cold of the severest winter weather.

Leaving Fort Hamlin, we floated down through picturesque hills, on the sides of which the birch was beginning to yellow. Another day brought us to Mynook Creek, of which we had heard at Circle City as likely to be a good gold producer. At the mouth of the creek we found the temporary camps of a few prospectors, who were on their way up to stake out claims. There were also numerous Indians encamped in the vicinity--true savages, with very few words of English among them, "yes" "no" and "steamboat" making up almost their entire vocabulary.

A sort of chief among them was a Mynook, a half-breed with more Indian than white in his features. It was after him that the creek had been named (or rather renamed, for it had formerly been known as the Klanakakat or Klanachargut, the native name); he had been the first to discover gold, and was engaged in working a claim with a crew of natives, notwithstanding the fact that Indians have, according to our somewhat peculiar laws, no legal right to stake mines. He was a good-looking fellow with a fair knowledge of English, which he was very proud to air, especially the "cuss-words," which he introduced into conversation very gravely and irrelevantly. He said when he got dust enough he was going to "San Francisco," that being to him a general name for the world of the white men. He had always hired natives to work his claims, although he admitted that they did not work nearly as well as white people; they would labor only until they had a little money ahead, and then would quit until it was all spent, although it might be the very busiest season; and if perchance a steamboat was reported on the river, the gang to a man would drop pick and shovel and trot down the trail to the mouth of the creek, there to stand open-eyed and open-mouthed, gazing at the smoking monster which held them with a fascination stronger than even Mynook's displeasure.

We camped on the beach, and made preparations the next morning to visit the diggings. We separated, as usual, each taking a different route, and each hiring an Indian to accompany him and carry his pack. The first Indian I hired had on a new gingham jumper, and a sly smile which gave an impression that his subsequent actions did not belie. He wanted to be paid before starting, and when this was refused said he was hungry, and was so weak that he could not walk without food. So we administered to him a substantial breakfast, after which he disappeared and never could be found again. Soon another Indian presented himself--a particularly wicked looking fellow, with red bulging eyes that gave one a sort of shiver to look at him. He wanted to go with me, and I hired him, having no other choice. Then he too explained by gestures, that he was starving and must have some breakfast to keep him strong on his long walk; whereupon I explained, also by gestures, that the first Indian had gotten the second Indian's breakfast already, and that, having delivered the breakfast, the rest was no affair of mine (I having carried out my share of the transaction as was fitting), so that the only possible subject for discussion lay between him and the first Indian.

He seemed to be impressed with the logic of this, shouldered his pack and trotted off meekly enough. As we started, the smoke of a steamboat became visible down the river; the natives raised the excited cry of "shteemboot" and my guide showed signs of sitting down to wait for it to come and go before he should proceed with his journey. However, a few studiously stern looks, accompanied by prodding in his ribs with a stick, started him along the trail, to which he kept faithfully after that. This led through a thick growth of alder brush, across brooks, but always kept in the valley of the main stream, on each side of which were hills with the bare rocks peering from among the yellowing foliage.

After three hours' tramp, we turned up a little side valley, and soon came upon a claim that was being worked by a number of miners. This was the only active one on this creek, and with the exception of Mynook's claim on another small branch, the only one being exploited on Mynook Creek as a whole. Several other men, however, had staked claims and were engaged in building log cabins, preparatory to the winter's prospecting.

Here I dismissed my Indian, telling him by signs to come back again on the next day. During the two days he and I were out together, we did not utter an articulate sound in trying to communicate with one another. It was of no use, for he could not understand the English any better than I Yukon. So in this case I looked at him fixedly and silently, and pointed to the miner's cabin, laid my head on my hand and shut my eyes, signifying that I intended to sleep there. Then with my finger I followed in the sky the course the sun would take on the following day, halting at a point midway in the afternoon; then, pointing to him, I imitated the motion of a man carrying a pack, and with a rapid movement of the finger indicated the trail back to the mouth of the creek; finally with a comprehensive gesture I gave him to understand that he might do as he pleased in the meantime. He disappeared immediately, coming back at night to beg for food from my hosts; failing in that, he bivouacked at a camp-fire, with a few other Indians who were working on the creek, in front of the miner's log cabin, and before we were up in the morning had disappeared again. At exactly the appointed time the next day, however, he returned, ready for the harness, as red-eyed, dumb and vicious-looking as ever.

The sign language of all these Yukon Indians is wonderfully clever; it is also very complicated, and I have seen two natives conversing fluently behind a trader's back, using their faces and hands in rapid movements which, however, conveyed no idea to the uninitiated observer as to their meaning. Some of their signs which I have understood are remarkable for the clever selection of a distinguishing characteristic to designate a given object. For example, a white man was expressed by stroking the chin as if it were bearded. In this wild country razors were unknown and even scissors a rarity, so that all white men wore thick and usually bushy beards, while the natives had very little or no hair on their faces. Since I wore spectacles, I was described in sign language first by a gesture of stroking the beard, which indicated that I was a white man, and then by bending the thumb and forefinger in a circle, and peering through this circle, thereby sufficiently identifying me among others.

At the cabin where I spent the night was a man who had been on the exploring expedition of Lieutenant Allen some years before, when that young officer accomplished such a splendid journey under such great difficulties, through a barren and unknown country, ascending the Copper River, descending the Tanana, exploring the Koyukuk, and finally returning to St. Michael's by way of the Yukon. On learning that I was in the government service, this man insisted on my becoming his guest. He slept and ate in a little log cabin of his own, where he had a bed built of hewn wood, which was pretty exactly proportioned to his own length and breadth. By a little careful manipulation, however, we both managed to stretch out on it and as the night was frosty and our covering none of the thickest, neither of us objected to the proximity of the other, although we were so crowded that when one turned over the other had to do so at the same time. In the morning my "pardner," as he might fitly be called, had a savory breakfast well under way when I opened my eyes.

After our meal my host went to his work, while I undertook a journey a little further up the main stream to a tributary gulch. Here one man was engaged in prospecting--Oliver Miller, one of the remarkable prospectors of early Alaskan times. He had been in this region many years already, always prospecting, often lucky in finding, but never resting or stopping to reap the benefits of his discoveries, and always pushing restlessly onwards towards new and unexplored fields. In the early eighties he had been among the first who had come to the Forty Mile district from Stewart River and the other affluents of the Yukon above the international boundary. He discovered the creek still known by his name--Miller Creek,--which really lies at the headwaters of Sixty Mile Creek, but is separated only by a low dividing ridge from the gold-producing gulches at the head of Forty Mile Creek, and is therefore usually reckoned as a part of the Forty Mile district.

Miller Creek was one of the richest creeks in the district and was soon staked out by eager prospectors; but Miller himself got restless, and saying the place was getting too crowded for him, sold his claim one day for what he could get, and investing the amount in "grub" and outfit, started out over the hills alone, prospecting. In the Birch Creek district, which was discovered later, he found gold again, but as soon as miners came in he sold out and went further. Now after many wanderings he was in Mynook Creek, and it was characteristic of the man that instead of being industriously engaged in washing gold in one of the already prospected tributaries nearer the Yukon, he had vanished into the brush, out of reach of the sound of pick and shovel, and was nosing around among the rocks and panning gravel.

According to directions, I left the trail, which indeed ran no further, and followed the bank of the main stream, working my way through the brush, till I came to a little brook, then went up along this nearly to where it emerged from a rocky gorge in the hills. At this point I came upon a grassy nook under the birches, where a fire was smouldering; and under a tree a man's heavy blankets were spread on a bed of green boughs, as if he had just stepped out. A couple of kettles were standing near the fire, and a coat was lying on the ground, while an axe was sticking in the tree above the blankets. There was no tent or any superfluities whatever, and it was evident that this camping outfit was one of those which a man may take on his back and wander over hill and dale with. Not hearing or seeing any sign of life, I sat down and waited, but no one appearing after half an hour, I began following a man's trail from the camp up the gorge, tracing him by the bent grass and broken twigs. After having gone a short distance, I heard the thumping of a pick on a rocky wall in front and above me, and gave a hail. The prospector came down very slowly, his manner not being so much that of a man who was sorry to see one--on the contrary, he was pleasant and cordial--as that of one who is reluctantly dragged away from a favorite employment. We went back to his camp under the birches and as it was now noon he invited me to dinner with him.

It was a sunny day, and the grass was warm and bright, with the shadow of the delicate leaves falling upon it; the mosquitoes had disappeared in this period of frosty nights and chilly days, so that the sylvan camp was ideal. Some boiled beans, boiled dried apples, and bread, baked before an open fire, constituted the meal; yet I remember to this day the flavor of each article, so delicious they appeared to my sharp appetite. Miller was embarrassed somewhat about dishes. He had by good luck two kettle covers, which served as plates for us, and he was, he explained, in the habit of using his sheath-knife to manage the rest, for he had neither table-knife, fork, nor spoon. I produced my own sheath-knife and assured him that I was born with it in my mouth, so to speak, and we set to eating cheerfully.

For a professional recluse, I found Miller very cordial and communicative. He travelled alone, he told me, not because he would not have been glad of company, but because it was hard to find any one to go with him, and almost impossible that two "pardners," even when at first agreeable, should remain very long without quarrelling; so he had decided, as the simplest solution, to carry out his ideas alone. He was in the habit of exploring the most remote parts of the territory, searching for minerals. He had tramped over the mountains between the Yukon and the Tanana, back and forth; and had been a thousand miles up the Koyukuk, to where it headed in a high range, climbing which, he had looked out upon the Arctic ocean. On returning down the river, he had been knocked out of his boat by a "sweeper" (a log which extends out from a bank over a stream, two or three feet above the water). The current was so rapid where he met with the accident that when he rose to the surface his boat was some distance ahead of him. He struck out swimming to catch up with it, but, as if animated with a perverse living spirit, the boat moved off on a swifter current toward the centre of the river. Soon he was in danger of being benumbed in the icy water, and he was exhausted from his efforts, yet he knew if he should swim to the banks and lose his boat he would eventually perish in the wilderness, without resource and hundreds of miles from the nearest human being. So he swam desperately, and when on the point of giving up and sinking, a check in the current ahead slackened the speed of the boat so that by an effort he was able to reach it and grasp the gunwale. But it was some time before he gathered strength enough to pull himself aboard.

The history of the prospectors in any new country, especially in Alaska, would be a record of intensely interesting pioneering. Unfortunately these men leave no record, and their hardships, lonely exploring tours and daring deeds, performed with a heroism so simple that it seems almost comical, have no chronicler. They penetrate the deserts, they climb the mountains, they ascend the streams, they dare with the crudest preparation the severest danger of nature. Some of them die, others return to civilization and become sailors or car-conductors or janitors; but they are of the stuff that keeps the nation alive. By that I do not mean the false or imitation prospector, who has no courage or patience, but only the greed of gold. Thousands of such poured into Alaska after the Klondike boom, and many of them turned back at the first sight of Chilkoot Pass, which is nothing to frighten a strong boy of twelve. Many more got enough of Alaska in floating down the Yukon, and kept on straight to St. Michael's, scarcely stopping in any of the mining regions; thereby benefiting the transportation companies greatly, and adding much to the territory's sudden apparent prosperity. But before the Klondike rush nearly all the Alaskans were of the hardy true pioneer type I write about.

In the afternoon I returned, and finding my Indian punctually on hand at the appointed time, we went back to the Yukon together.