N
NOV. 15. 1898.—The boys returned last night very weary. They gave us the news much as the "Flying Dutchman" had. Six of our Upper Penelope boys have started for the Koyukuk with four months' provisions. They are Miller. Foote, Alec, Stevenson, Shafer and Casey. They carry eighteen hundred pounds on two sleds, three men to each sled. Shaul has gone to the Pick River, where "good indications" are reported. That leaves Wilson, McCullough and Farrar at the Upper Camp. Dr. Coffin has little faith in the news. He fears it is an unfounded rumor like many another. Moreover our doctor thinks it foolhardy and dangerous to start on such a trip, and he is anxious about the boys who have gone. None of them have had any experience with cold weather, being California boys. Casey, in fact, was never outside of Los Angeles county, until this trip, and none of the crowd are dressed for severe weather. They have but little fur clothing. However, timber covers most of the country they will cross, and they will, of course, put up a cabin if necessary. You couldn't entice the doctor out on such a trip for all the gold in Alaska. It ranged down to thirty-five degrees below zero while he and the boys were out, and they camped several nights, although at all the camps on the river hospitality reigned. The doctor had one finger frozen. He says he did not suspect it was nipped until he warmed his hands over the camp fire. It is very easy to be frozen without knowing it, even with the thermometer only thirty-five degrees below. But what about sixty below zero?
News has come to us that hundreds of other men are waiting to get to Kotzebue at the earliest possible moment. The gold-hunters up the river are mostly doing nothing, waiting for spring to open so they can go home. A few are sinking shafts in favorable localities, but as yet without success, though there are some "indications," whatever these are. It is a great undertaking to dig a hole in frozen ground. Fires are built and kept burning for some time and then removed, and the thawed dirt and gravel taken out. This process is repeated again and again, and the result is dreadfully slow. Frozen ground is tougher than rock to dig in. McCullough. Wilson and Farrar are starting such a hole at their camp.
Our enthusiasm about the new strike on the Koyukuk is subsiding. We sing no more impromptu songs. But we have six men in that direction, and if they are fortunate enough to get through they will send two men back for provisions.
Meanwhile I am collecting chickadees and redpolls. A couple or three of our leading men, who shall be nameless in this connection, are homesick. Yes, blue. They will be seen in Southern California as soon as they can crawl out of the Kowak country on their hands and knees. Now, watch and see who they are.
Three of our neighbors started up the river yesterday with a load of eleven hundred pounds on a sled. They started on the smooth ice all right, but five miles north the sand has covered the ice clear across the river. They were stuck there and, after struggling over the sand for a few hours, gave it up and returned. The Iowa boys have not started yet, but are spending more time in making good sleds and fixing skates on their runners. If they start at all, which I doubt, they will certainly have better success than others. Dr. Coffin declares he is going to stay by and in our good, warm cabin the rest of the winter. He is quite pessimistic to-night. He predicts much suffering this winter. He found in his recent travels that open fireplaces are a failure. Cabins heated by them are cold. There is too much draft and the temperature cools off quickly when the fire dies down. We have two stoves, and water never freezes over in the cabin.
Nov. 18.—We just had a dreadful catastrophe. C. C. had set his keg of yeast on the rafters above the stove to keep warm and do its "work." Harry Reynolds had some poles near by across the rafters. The latter gentleman is at work on his new sled and, repairing one of the poles, reached for it rather hastily. As a result the yeast keg turned over. The doctor was sitting beneath, calmly reading some good book, when nearly the entire contents, a gallon of sour yeast, poured on to his unprotected head and down his neck, and spread itself out as if to shield him from any other danger. What a sight, it is impossible for me to portray. Not content with deluging the poor medico, the stuff slopped over everything in the vicinity of two or three yards. Several of us had a dose, but none was so seriously affected as the doctor, who is even now at work on his clothes with warm water and a sponge. The smell of sour dough permeates the atmosphere. Brown remarks that it reminds him of the extremely sour odor which filled the cabin of the "Penelope" the first night out from San Francisco.
For my part I think it convenient to have these little interruptions—when they fall on another man's head. It livens things up.
Scaffold Burial.