After three hours' tramp, we turned up a little side valley, and soon came upon a claim that was being worked by a number of miners. This was the only active one on this creek, and with the exception of Mynook's claim on another small branch, the only one being exploited on Mynook Creek as a whole. Several other men, however, had staked claims and were engaged in building log cabins, preparatory to the winter's prospecting.
Here I dismissed my Indian, telling him by signs to come back again on the next day. During the two days he and I were out together, we did not utter an articulate sound in trying to communicate with one another. It was of no use, for he could not understand the English any better than I Yukon. So in this case I looked at him fixedly and silently, and pointed to the miner's cabin, laid my head on my hand and shut my eyes, signifying that I intended to sleep there. Then with my finger I followed in the sky the course the sun would take on the following day, halting at a point midway in the afternoon; then, pointing to him, I imitated the motion of a man carrying a pack, and with a rapid movement of the finger indicated the trail back to the mouth of the creek; finally with a comprehensive gesture I gave him to understand that he might do as he pleased in the meantime. He disappeared immediately, coming back at night to beg for food from my hosts; failing in that, he bivouacked at a camp-fire, with a few other Indians who were working on the creek, in front of the miner's log cabin, and before we were up in the morning had disappeared again. At exactly the appointed time the next day, however, he returned, ready for the harness, as red-eyed, dumb and vicious-looking as ever.
The sign language of all these Yukon Indians is wonderfully clever; it is also very complicated, and I have seen two natives conversing fluently behind a trader's back, using their faces and hands in rapid movements which, however, conveyed no idea to the uninitiated observer as to their meaning. Some of their signs which I have understood are remarkable for the clever selection of a distinguishing characteristic to designate a given object. For example, a white man was expressed by stroking the chin as if it were bearded. In this wild country razors were unknown and even scissors a rarity, so that all white men wore thick and usually bushy beards, while the natives had very little or no hair on their faces. Since I wore spectacles, I was described in sign language first by a gesture of stroking the beard, which indicated that I was a white man, and then by bending the thumb and forefinger in a circle, and peering through this circle, thereby sufficiently identifying me among others.
At the cabin where I spent the night was a man who had been on the exploring expedition of Lieutenant Allen some years before, when that young officer accomplished such a splendid journey under such great difficulties, through a barren and unknown country, ascending the Copper River, descending the Tanana, exploring the Koyukuk, and finally returning to St. Michael's by way of the Yukon. On learning that I was in the government service, this man insisted on my becoming his guest. He slept and ate in a little log cabin of his own, where he had a bed built of hewn wood, which was pretty exactly proportioned to his own length and breadth. By a little careful manipulation, however, we both managed to stretch out on it and as the night was frosty and our covering none of the thickest, neither of us objected to the proximity of the other, although we were so crowded that when one turned over the other had to do so at the same time. In the morning my "pardner," as he might fitly be called, had a savory breakfast well under way when I opened my eyes.
After our meal my host went to his work, while I undertook a journey a little further up the main stream to a tributary gulch. Here one man was engaged in prospecting—Oliver Miller, one of the remarkable prospectors of early Alaskan times. He had been in this region many years already, always prospecting, often lucky in finding, but never resting or stopping to reap the benefits of his discoveries, and always pushing restlessly onwards towards new and unexplored fields. In the early eighties he had been among the first who had come to the Forty Mile district from Stewart River and the other affluents of the Yukon above the international boundary. He discovered the creek still known by his name—Miller Creek,—which really lies at the headwaters of Sixty Mile Creek, but is separated only by a low dividing ridge from the gold-producing gulches at the head of Forty Mile Creek, and is therefore usually reckoned as a part of the Forty Mile district.
Miller Creek was one of the richest creeks in the district and was soon staked out by eager prospectors; but Miller himself got restless, and saying the place was getting too crowded for him, sold his claim one day for what he could get, and investing the amount in "grub" and outfit, started out over the hills alone, prospecting. In the Birch Creek district, which was discovered later, he found gold again, but as soon as miners came in he sold out and went further. Now after many wanderings he was in Mynook Creek, and it was characteristic of the man that instead of being industriously engaged in washing gold in one of the already prospected tributaries nearer the Yukon, he had vanished into the brush, out of reach of the sound of pick and shovel, and was nosing around among the rocks and panning gravel.
According to directions, I left the trail, which indeed ran no further, and followed the bank of the main stream, working my way through the brush, till I came to a little brook, then went up along this nearly to where it emerged from a rocky gorge in the hills. At this point I came upon a grassy nook under the birches, where a fire was smouldering; and under a tree a man's heavy blankets were spread on a bed of green boughs, as if he had just stepped out. A couple of kettles were standing near the fire, and a coat was lying on the ground, while an axe was sticking in the tree above the blankets. There was no tent or any superfluities whatever, and it was evident that this camping outfit was one of those which a man may take on his back and wander over hill and dale with. Not hearing or seeing any sign of life, I sat down and waited, but no one appearing after half an hour, I began following a man's trail from the camp up the gorge, tracing him by the bent grass and broken twigs. After having gone a short distance, I heard the thumping of a pick on a rocky wall in front and above me, and gave a hail. The prospector came down very slowly, his manner not being so much that of a man who was sorry to see one—on the contrary, he was pleasant and cordial—as that of one who is reluctantly dragged away from a favorite employment. We went back to his camp under the birches and as it was now noon he invited me to dinner with him.
It was a sunny day, and the grass was warm and bright, with the shadow of the delicate leaves falling upon it; the mosquitoes had disappeared in this period of frosty nights and chilly days, so that the sylvan camp was ideal. Some boiled beans, boiled dried apples, and bread, baked before an open fire, constituted the meal; yet I remember to this day the flavor of each article, so delicious they appeared to my sharp appetite. Miller was embarrassed somewhat about dishes. He had by good luck two kettle covers, which served as plates for us, and he was, he explained, in the habit of using his sheath-knife to manage the rest, for he had neither table-knife, fork, nor spoon. I produced my own sheath-knife and assured him that I was born with it in my mouth, so to speak, and we set to eating cheerfully.
For a professional recluse, I found Miller very cordial and communicative. He travelled alone, he told me, not because he would not have been glad of company, but because it was hard to find any one to go with him, and almost impossible that two "pardners," even when at first agreeable, should remain very long without quarrelling; so he had decided, as the simplest solution, to carry out his ideas alone. He was in the habit of exploring the most remote parts of the territory, searching for minerals. He had tramped over the mountains between the Yukon and the Tanana, back and forth; and had been a thousand miles up the Koyukuk, to where it headed in a high range, climbing which, he had looked out upon the Arctic ocean. On returning down the river, he had been knocked out of his boat by a "sweeper" (a log which extends out from a bank over a stream, two or three feet above the water). The current was so rapid where he met with the accident that when he rose to the surface his boat was some distance ahead of him. He struck out swimming to catch up with it, but, as if animated with a perverse living spirit, the boat moved off on a swifter current toward the centre of the river. Soon he was in danger of being benumbed in the icy water, and he was exhausted from his efforts, yet he knew if he should swim to the banks and lose his boat he would eventually perish in the wilderness, without resource and hundreds of miles from the nearest human being. So he swam desperately, and when on the point of giving up and sinking, a check in the current ahead slackened the speed of the boat so that by an effort he was able to reach it and grasp the gunwale. But it was some time before he gathered strength enough to pull himself aboard.
The history of the prospectors in any new country, especially in Alaska, would be a record of intensely interesting pioneering. Unfortunately these men leave no record, and their hardships, lonely exploring tours and daring deeds, performed with a heroism so simple that it seems almost comical, have no chronicler. They penetrate the deserts, they climb the mountains, they ascend the streams, they dare with the crudest preparation the severest danger of nature. Some of them die, others return to civilization and become sailors or car-conductors or janitors; but they are of the stuff that keeps the nation alive. By that I do not mean the false or imitation prospector, who has no courage or patience, but only the greed of gold. Thousands of such poured into Alaska after the Klondike boom, and many of them turned back at the first sight of Chilkoot Pass, which is nothing to frighten a strong boy of twelve. Many more got enough of Alaska in floating down the Yukon, and kept on straight to St. Michael's, scarcely stopping in any of the mining regions; thereby benefiting the transportation companies greatly, and adding much to the territory's sudden apparent prosperity. But before the Klondike rush nearly all the Alaskans were of the hardy true pioneer type I write about.