[69] "The Goldsmith of Nome," by Sam Dunham. (Neale Publishing Company, Washington, D.C.)
That these lines, however, do not apply to all Alaskan missionaries I can testify from a personal knowledge of our good friend Mr. Lopp's comfortless, primitive life, and unselfish devotion to the cause of Christianity.
CHAPTER XVI
A RIVER OF GOLD
The heading of this chapter is not suggested by a flight of fancy, but by solid fact, for there is not a mile along either bank of the Yukon River, over 2000 miles long from the great lakes to Bering Sea, where you cannot dip in a pan and get a colour. Gold may not be found in paying quantities so near the main stream, but it is there.
From Nome to Dawson City is about 1600 miles, the terminus of the Yukon River steamers being St. Michael, on Bering Sea. When I was at this place in 1896, it consisted of two or three small buildings of the "Alaska Commercial Company," a Russian church and ruined stockade, and about a dozen Eskimo wigwams. During my stay there, on that occasion, one small cargo-boat arrived from the South, and a solitary whaler put in for water, their appearance causing wild excitement amongst the few white settlers.
Although the civilisation of Nome City had somewhat prepared me for surprises, I scarcely expected to find St. Michael converted from a squalid settlement into a modern city almost as fine as Nome itself. For here also were a large hotel, good shops, electric light, and a roadstead alive with shipping of every description from the Eskimo kayak to the towering liner from 'Frisco. We arrived at 6 A.M. after a twelve hours' journey from Nome, but even at that early hour the clang of a ship-yard and shriek of steam syrens were awakening the once silent and desolate waters of Norton Sound. St. Michael feeds and clothes the Alaskan miner, despatches goods and stores into the remotest corner of this barren land, and has thus rapidly grown from a dreary little settlement into a centre of mercantile activity. Seven years ago I journeyed down the Yukon towards Siberia and a problematical Paris in a small crowded steamer, built of roughly hewn logs, and propelled by a fussy little engine of mediæval construction. We then slept on planks, dined in our shirt-sleeves, and scrambled for meals which a respectable dog would have turned from in disgust. On the present occasion we embarked on board a floating palace, a huge stern-wheeler, as large and luxuriously appointed as the most modern Mississippi flyer. The Hannah's airy deck-halls were of dainty white, picked out with gold, some of the well-furnished state-rooms had baths attached, and a perfect cuisine partly atoned for the wearisome monotony of a long river voyage.
A delay here of twenty-four hours enabled me to re-visit the places I had known only too well while wearily awaiting the Bear here for five weeks in 1896. But everything was changed beyond recognition. Only two landmarks remained of the old St. Michael: the agency of the "Alaska Commercial Company," and the wooden church built by the Russians during their occupation of the country.[70] A native hut near the beach, where I was wont to smoke my evening pipe with an old Eskimo fisherman, was now a circulating library; the ramshackle rest-house, once crowded with "Toughs," a fashionable hotel with a verandah and five o'clock tea-tables for the use of the select. And here I may note that tea is, or was, all that the traveller can get here, for St. Michael is now a military reservation, where even the sale of beer or claret is strictly prohibited. My old friend Mikouline would have fared badly throughout this part of the journey, for from here on to Dawson City alcoholic refreshment of any kind was absolutely unprocurable, and although the heat was tropical, iced water, not always of the purest description, was the only cold beverage obtainable at St. Michael or on the river. I was afterwards informed that the initiated always carry their own cellar, and having a rooted antipathy to tea at dinner (especially when served in conjunction with tinned soup), regretted that I had not ascertained this fact before we left Nome.