A NEW MODE OF TRAVEL.
Their stay in Skagway was brief. It was the point of parting between Colonel Snow and his young charges, as it was necessary for him to hasten a way westward to another part of Alaska on his mission, which would occupy some weeks. The boys parted with him reluctantly and with some little feeling of homesickness, but he promised to join them as early as possible and assured them that he had placed them in safe hands, with ample means for their return to Skagway should sickness or accident befall them.
Except for the brief glimpses of native and local Alaskan life which they had obtained during the stoppages of the steamer at Metlakatla, in the Annette Islands, a reservation set apart by Congress for the now civilized Tsimpsean Indians, a tribe which, with their devoted missionary head, William Duncan, immigrated from British Columbia to secure, it is said, greater religious liberty, and at Ketchikan, a thriving town, the boys here gained their first real impressions of Alaskan conditions. They found Skagway a town of about fifteen hundred people, set in a great natural amphitheatre surrounded by mountains capped with perpetual snow. It is connected with the outside world by a cable to Seattle, and by other parts of Alaska by telegraph, and has electric lights and a telephone system. A fine school building and several churches that reminded the young Scouts of many Hudson river towns, and wiped out the last remaining evidences of homesickness, were among the attractions, and the sight of a real railroad equipped with locomotives, cars, shops and station were among the marvels found where they had expected to find a wilderness.
It was from this town that thousands of prospectors and adventurers started in 1897 and 1898 in the rush to the Klondike, and Swiftwater told them many stories of the terrible winter trip over the White Pass in those years in which hundreds of men lost their lives and thousands of horses were killed.
With Colonel Snow they made one or two trips into the surrounding country, visiting the nearby Chilkat and Chilkoot villages, during two days that Swiftwater had gone over to White Horse in Yukon territory, at the other end of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad, a distance of 112 miles, to make arrangements for boats and Indian guides and boatmen to carry their machinery into the wilderness. The boys were greatly interested in this first near view of Alaskan Indian life in the two villages which they visited, and in comparing the natives with the Indians with whom they had been associated in their trip to the Canadian Rockies. The Alaskan Indians were shorter in build, more squatty in figure and broader faced than the Crees and the other Southern red men. Jack, who had been poking about into the various corners of the first village, which were composed of huts and sod houses, came back with a look very like disgust in his face.
“I say, Don,” he exclaimed, “for goodness sake don’t do anything to get adopted into this tribe,” referring to an episode of their journey in search of the lost mine, when Don had for obvious bravery been made a fullfledged Indian.
“Sure, I’ll na do anything to deserve it; it would be naething to be proud of. They do not look much like our friends in Canada.”
“There are two points in which I find they are identical,” said Jack.
“What are those?” asked Rand, “color and clothes?”
“No,” replied Jack, “dirt and dogs. The dirt must have been here when the Indian came onto this continent, but I’ve wondered whether the Indian found the dog when he came here or the dog found the Indian. They seem to have been inseparable ever since.”
“D-d-do you s’pose they have dog days up here so near the pole?” asked Pepper.
“Begorra, it looks to me as if all days might be dog days around here,” suggested Gerald, who was surrounded at that moment by at least a dozen of the hundred animals in the village.
“You would be surprised to know,” said Colonel Snow, “that the dog is really the most important animal, except perhaps the reindeer in our Northern possessions. Little of this country would have been explored or settled except for his good services. There was a time when as much as two thousand dollars has been paid for a good dog up here.”
The Indians were persistent peddlers, offering the handsome baskets, hats and blankets which they are peculiarly skilful in making, and the boys would have loaded themselves down with souvenirs had not Colonel Snow suggested that they would have plenty of time to supply themselves before they left for the south again.
Two days later, Swiftwater Jim, having returned from White Horse, and the freight having been taken from the steamer’s hold, it was placed on cars of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad; the “piano case” as it had come to be called having been put in storage until their return, and early in the morning of a June day the boys bade farewell to Colonel Snow and boarded the train for White Horse.
The journey required nearly six hours, but the first half was a stiff climb to the top of the pass and through such magnificent scenery of mountain and gorge that the boys scarcely noticed the passage of time, beguiled, as it was, with thrilling tales by Swiftwater Jim, with the story of the fight of the Argonauts against the winter horrors of this same trail in the early days of the great gold rush.
They arrived at White Horse about four o’clock in the afternoon, and were met by six halfbreed Indians headed by a well-known guide of that region known as Skookum Joe, who spoke good English and greeted Swiftwater as an old friend. He had been charged with securing the crews for the two boats that Swiftwater Jim was to use in the trip, and he introduced the men whom Jim greeted in the “pigeon” Siwash of that section, used as a means of communication with the natives who do not speak English.
“I send up river for um,” said Skookum Joe, “Dey know dat country. Good work when no rum; rum, no work,” referring to the prevalence of the liquor habit among the Indians since they have come into contact with the whites.
“This here is going to be a traveling lodge of the Cadets of Temperance, especially so far as natives is concerned,” said Swiftwater Jim, “and consequently everybody will work on this voyage.”
As the cases of machinery were removed from the cars they were opened and the assembled parts as far as possible taken to pieces. These the Indians wrapped in heavy canvas, making convenient bundles or “packs” for handling, and obviating the necessity of transporting the heavy material of the cases. Bundled together the entire freight was transported by teams to the water front, where were tied up two commodious shallow flat-bottomed boats into which it was loaded. To this was added provisions sufficient for two months, which Swiftwater had contracted for on his previous visit to the town, and sundry tents, tools and blankets.
Much of the clothing with which the boys had provided themselves had been left at Skagway as it was not needed for the present season. As it was necessary to pay duties on the machinery which had been brought from the United States into the Canadian territory, and to give bond for the two arms and personal equipment which was to be taken into the woods, but eventually returned to American territory, Swiftwater visited the Custom House, and while there introduced the Scouts to the Commissioner of Customs, who spent part of the remainder of the afternoon in showing the boys the town and the natural beauties surrounding it.
Among other places they visited the barracks, where they were introduced to the small squad of Northwestern Mounted Police, the splendid organization maintained by the Canadian Government for the preservation of order in its western and northwestern possessions. Its members are recruited from among ex-soldiers of the British army, with a reputation for hardihood and intrepidity second to none.
The station squad, composed of four members, received the boys cordially, and showed considerable interest in the organization of the Boy Scouts in the United States. Major McClintock, head of the station, apologized for the necessity of registering the young men at the barracks as police regulations required.
“This is a vast and wild territory, and we police, who are responsible for law and order here are few and far between. It is necessary for the safety of all that we know as far as possible just who the people are who come into Yukon territory. Besides, this country is a refuge for hundreds of men who find life unpleasant in more civilized sections, and we must keep them under supervision. By the way, I have just received notification from the United States marshal at Ketchikan that three queer characters dropped off the steamer from Seattle there and were heading for the Klondike, and would probably pass through here, and he asks us to keep an eye on them. Thus far I have seen nothing of them.”
“Dublin, Rae and Monkey,” exclaimed Rand.
“Oh; you know them, do you?” said Major McClintock.
“Jack here knows them very well,” said Dick with a grin.
“Chance for more detective work, Jack,” urged Rand.
“Faith, he might join the Mounted Police,” cried Gerald. “Major, won’t you give Jack a chance with your troop?”
The boys joined in the laugh, and Jack, who had begun to enjoy the joke on himself, told Major McClintock of their various encounters with the three men, and all that was known of their careers.
“Well,” said the officer, “we’ll keep a sharp eye out for them.”
The head of the Mounted Police, who seemed very familiar with the Boy Scouts of Great Britain, told them something of the great organization in England headed by General Baden-Powell, with whom he himself had served in South Africa.
As they bade him good night the Major said that the jurisdiction of his post extended over the territory to which they were going, and that some time during their stay there one of his patrols would call on them.
At an early hour the next morning, Swiftwater and the boys went down to the boats, aboard which the Indian crews had passed the night, and were there joined by Skookum Joe, who was to go with them as far as the mouth of the confluent upon which Colonel Snow’s land was located, at which point he was to join a steamer running on down the Yukon River to Dawson.
They floated out upon the swift current of the Lewes River, which many miles further away is joined by the Pelly to make the Yukon, the Behring Sea, some eighteen hundred miles away.
The passage down the Lewes was comparatively easy except for the rapids through which the Indian boatmen guided the flat-bottomed craft by long steering oars, one at each end and one at the side. Swiftwater had placed himself and Jack, Don and Gerald in one boat, and assigned Skookum Joe and Rand, Pepper and Dick to the other.
The run through the small canyons and the rapids was an exciting one to the boys, who were unused to such rough waters, where it seemed almost impossible at times to avoid the dangerous rocks that reared their heads above the current. By Swiftwater’s direction the boys were allowed to take a hand at the oars at times, beside the Indian oarsman, to accustom them somewhat to the ticklish navigation of the rivers. While they found the navigation something new, their previous experience in canoe work had taught them sufficiently “the feel of the water” to make them fairly useful.
Pepper, who always threw a good deal of enthusiasm into anything he attempted to do, was barely saved from going overboard several times, and when once left alone with the side oar, succeeded in dipping the blade under a piece of hidden rock and was thrown by the swift motion of the boat high in the air, alighting somewhat breathless on the mass of tarpaulined freight in front of him, luckily without serious injury. The oar, however, went by the board and was lost.
“Wh-wh-what was that?” gasped Pepper, as he got his wind again and began to caress his ribs where the oar handle had struck him.
“I’ve only got one guess,” laughed Dick, “but I should say it was the bottom of the river,” while Rand sarcastically suggested that it wasn’t part of the business of this expedition to try and clear the channel of the Lewes.
It was eight o’clock in the evening, and the sun in that high latitude was still visible when the boats reached the mouth of the stream known as Gold Creek, which entered the Lewes from the southeast. It was some miles up this confluent that Colonel Snow’s land lay, and by direction of Swiftwater the Indian boatmen skilfully rounded the batteaus out of the current of the Lewes into the Creek and into a little backwater formed by a projecting sandy point between the two streams. Here the water was fairly deep, and as no trees came down to the water’s edge two of the Indians held the boat up to the bank, while the third sprang ashore with coils of rope and two long iron stakes which he drove deep into the gravel and sand, and tied the stern and bow of the boat to the bank. The other boat was fastened the same way, and Swiftwater, springing ashore and stretching his long legs, cried: “All ashore; we’ll make camp here, tonight.”