The White Horse Rapids
"The Indians smear the hands and face with a mixture of grease and soot, which prevents the pest from biting. At some seasons in this country they are in such dense swarms that at night they will practically cover a mosquito netting, fairly touching each other and crowding through any kind of mesh. I have heard it asserted by people of experience that they form cooperative societies and assist each other through the meshes by pushing behind and pulling in front."
[CHAPTER XIV.]
DISCOVERY AND HISTORY.
The actual discovery of the great north-western peninsula of the American continent cannot be dated further back than the middle part of the eighteenth century. Its remoteness from the centres of European settlement and from the lines of trade and travel, and its inhospitable climate made Alaska one of the latest regions to yield to the advances of the explorer, surveyor and settler. At a date when the colonies on the North Atlantic coast of America numbered millions of prosperous people, already preparing to take independent rank among the nations of the world, the very existence of this enormous country was unknown. At a very early date, however, voyagers from many lands began their advances toward the far North-west, and the story of the discovery of Alaska must naturally include a brief outline of these.
As early as 1542 the Spanish adventurers Coronado and Juan Rodriguez de Cabrillo went up the Pacific coast of Mexico, and sailed for some distance along the coast of what is now the State of California. The memory of the former has been locally honored in California in the name of Coronado Beach. At this time the Spanish considered themselves sole masters of the South Sea, as the Pacific was called, and of all lands bordering upon it. But their supremacy there was soon disputed by the intrepid Sir Francis Drake. He not only ravaged their South American seaports, but, in 1579, sailed far to northward in a little schooner of two hundred tons, entered the Golden Gate, and refitted his vessel in what is now the harbor of San Francisco. Thirteen years later the Spaniards pressed still further up the coast. Apostolos Valerianos, best known as Juan de Fuca, sailed from Mexico and passed through the straits that bear his name, and discovered Puget Sound. There adventure from the south made pause for many years, still a weary distance from the Alaskan peninsula.
More than a hundred years after the voyages of Coronado, a different people, from a different direction, began to move toward the same goal. These were the Russians, who had already taken possession of the greater part of Siberia, and who were now persistently pushing on to the occupation of the whole realm between the Baltic and the Pacific. They had already gone eastward as far as the Kolyma River, and possessed the town of Nijni Kolymsk, in about 160° degrees east longitude. In 1646 they advanced still further. Isai Ignatieff, with several small vessels, sailed from the Kolyma, and effected a landing on Tchaun Bay, in the country of the Tchukchees. He found the trade in walrus ivory so profitable that his example was soon followed by others. The very next year the Cossack Simeon Deshneff, with four vessels, sailed eastward, to take possession of all the land in the name of the Russian crown. The Anadyr River, of which reports had been heard from the natives, was his goal. At the same time, Michael Stadukin led an expedition overland in the same direction. But both these enterprises failed. The year 1648, however, saw Deshneff's venture repeated. Three ships sailed for the Anadyr, commanded respectively by Simeon Deshneff, Gerasim Ankudinoff, and Feodor Alexieff. They reached Behring Strait, not knowing it was a strait, and Ankudinoff's vessel was wrecked on East Cape. He and his men were taken on the other vessels, and the expedition kept on. Deshneff made his way around Cape Navarin and Cape Olintorski to the coast of Kamtchatka. There his vessel was wrecked and he and his men made their way home overland, surveying, as they went, the Anadyr River. Again in 1652 Deshneff explored the Anadyr, in a boat, and the next year planned a trade-route, by sea, from that river to Yakutsk, on the Lena.