In the center of the right-hand wall is a small low window and beneath it the dining table. Right at the door where we stand, to our left, is the sheet-iron Yukon stove and behind it another food-laden shelf. A new floor of broad unplaned boards is under our feet, a wooden platform—it is a bed—stands in the left-hand corner by the stove. Clothes hang under the shelves; pots and pans upon the wall, snowshoes and saws; a rack for plates in one place, a cupboard for potatoes and turnips behind the door—the cellar it may be called; the trunk for a seat, boxes for chairs, one stool for style; axes here and boots innumerable there, and we have, I think, all that the eye can take in of this adventurers’ home!
Trees stood thick about our cabin when we first came there; and between it and the shore a dense and continuous thicket of large alders and sapling spruces. Day by day we cleared the ground; cutting avenues and vistas; then, though contented at first with these, enlarging them until they merged, and the sun began to shine about the cabin. It grew brighter then and drier,—nonsense! am I mistaking the daylight for the sun? I can remember but one or two fair days in all the three weeks of our first stay on the island.
FIRE WOOD
For a true record of this matter Olson’s diary shall be copied into these pages. It follows in full with his own phonetic spelling as leaven.
Sunday, Aug. 25th—Wary fin Day. over tu Hump Bay got 2 salmon an artist cam ar to Day and going to seward efter his outfit and ar going to sta Hear this Winter in the new Cabbin.
Wed. 28th.—Drisly rain and cold. Mr. Kint and is son arivd from seward this afternoon. goats out all night.
Thurs. 29th.—goats cam ome—12.30 p. m. Mr. Kint Working on the Cabbin fixing at up. Drisly rain all night and all day.
Fri. 30th.—Wary fin day and the goats vant for the montane igan. Help putting Windoes i to the Cabbin.
Sat. 31st.—Foggy day. Big steamer going to seward.
September
Sun. 1st.—Mead a trip around the island. Cloudy Day.
M. 2.—Big rainstorm from the S. E. goats all in the stabel.
T. 3.—Drisly rain all Day.
W. 4.—going to seward.
T. 5.—Came Home 1 P.M.
F. 6.—Drisly rain and Calm Wather.
S. 7.—S. E. rainstorm.
Sun. 8.—Big S. E. rainstorm.
M. 9.—Big S. E. rainstorm.
T. 10.—Big S. E. rainstorm.
W. 11.—first Colld night this fall. Clear Calm Day.
T. 12.—Clowdy and Calm. Tug and Barg going West.
F. 13.—Steamer from the Sought 5.30 P.M. Drisly rain and Calm.
S. 14.—raining Wary Hard. the litly angora queen ar in Hit this morning. Fraet steamer from West going to Seward.
Sun. 15.—raining Wary Hard all Day. the goats ar in the cabbin all Day sought Est storm.
M. 16.—S.E. rainstorm.
T. 17.—raining all Day. North Est storm With Caps and Wullys all over.
W. 18.—Wary fear day. Mr. Kint and the Boy vant to seward this morning.
T. 19.—raining heard all day steamer from West going to seward 4 P.M.
F. 20.—raining heard all Day.
S. 21.—Wary rof rainstorm from Soght Est. Wullys all over.
Sun. 22.—Steamer from West going to Seward 2 P.M. the tied vary Hie Comes clear up in the gras and the surf ar Stiring up all the Driftwood along the shore. raining lik Hell.
M. 23.—raining all Day.
T. 24.—Snow on top of the mountins on the maenland a tre mastid skuner from West going to Seward. toed by som gassboth raining to Day egan. Mr. Kint and son got ome to the island this Evening.
September fourteenth.
I stopped writing, for the fire had almost gone out and the cold wind blew in from two dozen great crevasses in the walls. The best of log cabins need recalking, I am told, once a year, and mine, roughly built as it is, needs it now in the worst way. Some openings are four or five inches wide by two feet long. We’ve gathered a great quantity of moss for calking, but it has rained so persistently that it cannot dry out to be fit for use.
Well, it rains and rains and rains. Since beginning this journal we’ve had not one fair day, and since we’ve been here on the island, seventeen days, there has been only one rainless day. There has been but one cloudless sunrise. I awoke that day just at dawn and looking across out of the tiny square window that faces the water could see the blue—the deep blue—mountains and the rosy western sky behind them. At last the sun rose somewhere and tipped the peaks and the hanging glaciers, growing and growing till the shadows of other peaks were driven down into the sea and the many ranges stood full in the morning light. The twilight hours are so wonderfully long here as the sun creeps down the horizon. Just think! there’ll be months this winter when we’ll not see the sun from our cove—only see it touching the peaks above us or the distant mountains. It will be a strange life without the dear, warm sun!