Gold Hunting in Alaska

by Joseph Grinnell

After a big pow-wow it has been decided to divide for the winter. Ten men are to take the "Helen." with supplies, and push up the river as far as possible. They think they can do some mining during the winter. We who are destined to live together here for eight mouths are Dr. Coffin, C. C. Reynolds. Harry Reynolds, Clyde Baldwin, Cox. Brown. Rivers, Wyse and myself. Time will prove if this is a congenial combination. We shall resemble California canned goods in our narrow limits, and the winter will show our "keeping qualities." Andy and Albert, our Swede sailors, leave us to-day. They were hired and do not belong to the company, and will return to Kotzebue, where they hope to ship for St. Michaels.

Our Winter Cabin.

Camp Penelope, Kowak River, Sept. 13.—Our cabin is done. It measures 25 × 30 feet. We moved in on the 7th. The river rose very high and threatened to inundate our tents. The place where they were is now under water. Our cabin roof was not a success. It was too flat. On the night we moved in it rained heavily, and about 2 a. m. we were roused by the water pouring in on our beds and our precious supplies. We got to work without delay. The roof could not be repaired without rebuilding it, so we spread it all over with flies and tent cloth, which froze stiff for the winter, and now we are dry. When the cabin was started it was intended for our whole party, but there is no room to spare even now with only nine occupants. The foundation was leveled on the side of the knoll, so that the top of the hill is nearly as high as the roof and the earth is banked the rest of the way over the wall. That leaves no point for the north wind to strike the house. We made a lean-to on the west and the door from the cabin opens into it. We have two windows, which we brought with us, fitted on the south. The interior of the cabin is a single room seven feet high. It has a gable a foot or two higher, which gives "ample breathing space." as I told the boys, but which I have my eye on as a storeroom for my collection. The roof above this structure is fearfully and wonderfully made. If it had a trifle more pitch to it, to make it shed water, it would be better. A heavy ridge-pole and stringers run lengthwise, and over these are closely laid poles, the butts at the eaves along the sides, and the slender tops bent over and clinched on the opposite side of the roof. Above the poles is packed a thick layer of moss. Above the moss is a layer of heavy sod with the dirt side up. Above all is a layer of spruce boughs like shingles. These boughs grow thick and flat, with needles pointing the same way, so they make good roofing.

The logs of the walls are chinked tightly with the moss. The floor is the natural sand. We did not cut the timber from near the house on account of the protection it gives us from the north winds. Trees large and long enough for building purposes are not very numerous, and we had to carry them a good ways. A few are as large as twenty inches at the butt, but mostly they are from ten to fifteen inches. It is all that eight of us can do to struggle along with one of these logs, they are so heavy, and we put them on rollers sometimes. Four of the men can easily carry one of the twenty-four foot logs, but a green spruce log of any size is always heavier than it looks.

Start for the Hunt River, Towing our Boat.

I have initiated "Brownie" into the secret mysteries of the cook stove, and am one of the regular laborers now, working hard ten hours a day. But yet it is fun; for we are working for ourselves, with but the clean woods all about us, and there is a fascination in chopping up the spruces, their delightful fragrance permeating everywhere.

Sept. 19.—Six of us have just returned from a trip up the Hunt River—Harry Reynolds, Wyse, Cox, Rivers, Clyde and myself. I was culinary officer as usual. We had the eighteen-foot sealing boat, and It was loaded pretty heavily. The whole of us had to work for it, one in the stern of the boat to steer, one wading at the tow-line as near the boat as possible, to lift it over snags, and the other four tugging at the tow-line. We wore hip boots and outside of them oil-skin trousers tied around the ankles. Even with this outfit we were constantly getting into the water all over. Rivers got a soaking the first day. He shot a duck and jumped out of the boat in pursuit. The bottom is so plain through the water that it is deceptive, and he went in up to his waist, but he grabbed the side of the boat to keep from going under. He got his duck—and a ducking thrown in. We had to pull him in and to the shore, where we got him out of his wet clothes. In the afternoon Wyse also got a ducking by falling into a pool as he was scrambling up a steep bank. We found good camping-places. We had two tents, which we put up facing each other, with a flap left up on the side of one of them for a door. The two were heated by the sheet-iron camp-stove. At noon we did not put up the tents, but got dinner in the open—flapjacks, coffee and bacon. I shot two geese the first day out, which gave us a couple of meals. They were young and so fat I could not save their skins. But I made a drawing of one of them so that I could be positive of their identity. Looking them up when I got home where my books are, I found them to be the Hutchins goose. The doctor and I shot two white-fronted geese on the banks of the Kowak. We see a good many, but they also see us and we have to do a good deal of sneaking through the bushes to get any.

We had some narrow escapes, especially Cox, who fell into a whirlpool. He was dragged off his feet by the rushing water, but we pulled him into the boat after a frightful struggle.