Both the Eskimos and the Indians are lovers of music, and the former readily yield to emotion when they hear melodious strains. When a "Buluga," or white whale, is killed, a feast is held and the natives sing their songs and dance. The music of stringed instruments invariably moves them to tears. At a recent Thanksgiving service in Fairbanks, some visiting Indians were invited to sing "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful." With evident pleasure, they sang it as follows:—
"Oni, tsenuan whuduguduwhuta yilh;
Oni, yuwhun dutlish, oni nokhlhan,
Oni, dodutalokhlho,
Oni, dodutalokhlho,
Oni, dodutalokhlho,
Lud."
At Point Barrow, three hundred miles northeast of Behring Strait, an old Eskimo who could not speak one word of English was heard to whistle "The Holy City," and it filled the hearer's heart with home-loneliness. A trader had sold the old native music-lover a phonograph, receiving in pay two white polar bear-skins, worth several hundred dollars.
Some one gave an ordinary French harp to a little Eskimo lad on our steamer; and from early morning until late at night he sat on a companionway, alone, indifferent to all passers-by, blowing out softly and sweetly with dark lips the prisoned beauty of his soul.
All the islands of Behring Sea, as well as the coast of the Arctic Ocean, are inhabited by Eskimos. From the largest island, St. Lawrence, to the small Diomede on the American side, they have settlements and schools. St. Lawrence is eighty miles long by fifteen in width; while the Diomede is only two miles by one. The natives beg pitifully for education—"to be smart, like the white man." We shrink from their filth and their immorality, but we teach them nothing better; yet we might see through their asking eyes down into their starved souls if we would but look.
In many ways Nome is the most interesting place in Alaska. It is at once so pagan and so civilized; so crude and so refined. It is the golden gateway through which thousands of people pass each summer to and from the interior of Alaska. Treeless and harborless it began and has continued, surmounting all obstacles that lay in its way of becoming a city. It has a water system that supplies its household needs, with steam pipes laid parallel to the water pipes, to thaw them in winter—and then it has not a yard of sewerage. It has a wireless telegraph station, a telephone service, and electric-light plant; and it is seeking municipal steam-heating. Electric lighting is excessively high, owing to the price of coal, and many use lamps and candles. There are three good newspapers, which play important parts in the politics of Alaska—the Nugget, the Gold-Digger, and the News; three banks, with capital stocks ranging from one to two hundred thousand dollars, each of which has an assay-office; two good public schools; three churches; hospitals; and a telephone system connecting all the creeks and camps within a radius of fifty miles with Nome. The orders of Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Eagles, and Arctic Brotherhood have clubs at Nome. The Arctic Brotherhood is the most popular order of the North, and the more important entertainments are usually given under its auspices and are held in its club-rooms; the wives of its members form the most exclusive society of the North.
The spirit of Nome is restless; it is the spirit of the gold-seeker, the seafarer, the victim of wanderlust; and it soon gets into even the visitor's blood. Millions of dollars have been taken out of the sands whereon Nome is now built, and millions more may be waiting beneath it. It seemed as though every man in Nome should be digging—on the beach, in the streets, in cellars.
"Why are not all these men digging?" I asked, and they laughed at me.
"Because every inch of tundra for miles back is located."
"Then why do not the locators dig, dig, day and night?"