These are samples of the journey throughout; but oh, the variety!—no two miles alike—and the panorama of beauty that unfolds before us!
"Each fir tree flings a bridal veil,
A bridal veil of shimmering white,
Like stately maidens tall and bright,
Slow marching as to solemn rite
Beside the ribbon of the trail."
Notice the beauty of the frost sparkling on the trees. The wonderful law that gives its own distinct varieties of frost crystals to each species of tree, fir, spruce, birch, cottonwood or alder, is exemplified so plainly here that, after the first examination, you can tell the kind of tree under the frost crystals by the shade of silver. The mountains tower above you, wind-swept, waving snow-banners. The vastness of that white hush awes and thrills you. A rough sound would be blasphemy in the solemn silence. The whole landscape is a poem.
To relate even the leading incidents of this "joy-mush" of three weeks would take up too much space. The longest distance we traveled in any one day was fifty-five miles; while our hardest and longest day's struggle through drifted snow and over a steep mountain pass yielded us only twelve miles of trail. In most of the roadhouses I found old friends, and, in several of them, Christian people who had been members of missions I had established in new mining camps. What grand times we had together! No fellowship is so warm and sweet as that of the wilderness. Of many adventures on the trail I can give but two.
One morning, about half-way from Iditarod to Seward, we left the fine cabin of French Joe, on the South Fork of the Kuskoquim River, under the two beautiful peaks, Mts. Egypt and Pyramid. We were making for Rainy Pass over the Alaskan Range. What follows is an extract from an account I wrote at the time.
The day out from Joe's I meet with my first disaster. We have nineteen miles of absolutely clear ice on the South Fork of the Kuskoquim. The river is full of air-holes and open riffles. The dogs swing along at a ripping pace, digging their toe nails into the hard ice, the sled slipping sideways and sliding dangerously near to the open places. Breeze often has to run ahead at full speed to choose a route, for there is no trail on the ice. Half-way up the river I "get gay," as Breeze calls it. I leave the handle-bars to find a route, and fall down hard on the smooth ice. A sharp pang strikes through the small of my back as if from a spear-thrust. I get up and go along, thinking the pain will cease, but soon I realize that I am in the grip of an old enemy, lumbago.
From this point on to Seward I cannot make a move without pain, sometimes so great that I gasp for breath. At night in the roadhouse I have great trouble in getting into my bunk, and sometimes Breeze has to lift me out in the morning. Were I at home I would be in bed for a couple of weeks with doctors and nurses fussing over me, but it is just as well that I cannot stop. I take the philosophy of an old fellow in the "Rainy Pass Roadhouse" near the summit of the range, who says the best cure for a lame back is to "keep on a-mushin'"!
Beyond Rainy Pass we drop into the canyon of Happy River, and here we have our famous moose-hunt. Soon after we enter the gorge we come upon its tracks—a big bull-moose. We have already traveled nearly thirty miles to-day, and are anxious to make the roadhouse twelve or fifteen miles further on; and now, here comes this big, blundering beast to poke our trail full of deep holes and excite our dogs. He is running ahead of us. The snow is five or six feet deep and he goes in almost to his back at every step. The walls of the canyon are sheer and he cannot escape up its side. The river turns and winds, and here and there are little patches of level ground, thick with large spruce trees.
For three miles we do not catch sight of the moose, but our dogs show that he is on ahead. In spite of my lame back I have to struggle on in front of them and bat "Leader" in the face with my cap, Breeze standing on the brake to keep them from running away. The moose tracks fill our trail for a while, smashing it all to pieces, then veer sideways to a little patch of woods, and the dogs go pell-mell in the moose track, burying our sled out of sight in the deep snow. Then we have to haul them around and lift the sled on the track again, and try to get them along the trail.
Three miles down the river we catch sight of the big moose, and the dogs go wild. "Sheep," who has been disposed to malinger, is the worst of the lot. He forgets all his maladies and weariness and dashes forward, but "Leader" will not leave the track and swings along as best he can, except when the moose is in full sight. Then I have to bat him in the face to keep the team in bounds. Our bells are tingling, our dogs barking and we are shouting. It is a fearsome thing to the bull-moose, this animated machine that is charging down the river at him. So on he struggles through the deep snow, spoiling our trail and filling my companion's mind with blasphemous thoughts which occasionally break out in expression, in spite of his respect for my "cloth."