 Chapter 33 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter Recording by Betty B. Chapter 33 Our Northern Game Preserve In Alaska, the United States has one of the finest hunting grounds for big game in all the world. As the country is opened up by railway lines and motor roads, more and more American hunters will take advantage of the territory's splendid opportunities for sports, which are now but little known. They will swarm over the Kenai Peninsula after the giant moose and the great brown bear. They will chase the caribou over the Tanana Valley, and will climb the Alaska Range to kill mountain sheep and goats. They will even make excursions to Mount McKinley, and some may go farther north to hunt the mighty walrus and the polar bear. The government has prepared for the coming of the hunters by enacting stringent laws defining the open seasons for certain animals, and has set aside great game preserves, one of which surrounds Mount McKinley. Every non-resident of Alaska is required to pay from $50 to $100 for a license to hunt in the territory with an additional payment of $150 to kill moose south of latitude 62. Moreover, the hunter is limited in the number of animals he may kill, and even the residents cannot ship out their meat or send their heads as trophies without a special license from the government of Alaska. It will cost the sportsman $40 to export one moose, but he can send four deer, two caribou, two sheep, two goats, and two brown bear for $10. The law forbids hunting of game animals with dogs or the use of shotguns larger than 10 gauge. The open season varies in different parts of the country. North of latitude 62, brown bear may be killed at any time, and moose, caribou, sheep, and sea lions from August 1st to December 10th. Walrus may be killed from May 10th to July 1st, and grouse, ptarmigan, and other birds from September 1st to March 1st. It is unlawful for any person in any one year to kill more than two moose. One walrus or sea lion, three caribou, three mountain sheep, three brown bear, or eight deer, and he must not have in his possession on any one day more than 25 grouse or ptarmigan. On the Kenai Peninsula, it is necessary to have a license guide who will charge from $5 to $10 a day. The guides, who may be either white men or Indians, are appointed by the governor and their names are published. During my trip across the Kenai Peninsula, I saw several sportsmen from the big cities of the states. Most of them were after the moose, which is abundant in that region, and they were enthusiastic over their prospects. It is now prohibited to shoot moose in southeastern Alaska, and it was not so long ago that the restriction on killing caribou in the Kenai Peninsula was abolished. It is estimated that there are still vast numbers of caribou on the barren lands of the far north. They live there in the summer and go southward in great herds for the winter. Several years ago, a drove of 30,000 came within a mile of Dawson and fed there on the hills. Men went out in automobiles to see them and great numbers were killed. The animals did not seem to be afraid of man, and even the automobiles did not create a stampede. About 45 miles from Fairbanks is a hill known as Porcupine Dome, where the hunters say the caribou of that region come together to start south in companies. They move in droves of thousands. After spending the winter in the south, they begin to straggle back again in herds of 100 or so along in February and March. Caribou are still seen as far south as the Lynn Canal, over 1,000 miles from their summer home. The chief food of the caribou is reindeer moss, and their favorite feeding grounds are the treeless parts of the territory, including the tundras along the coast of the Arctic Ocean and down to the Pacific side of the Alaska Peninsula. They scatter widely in summer and collect in bands in the fall. Each herd has its leader, and it is said that if the leader is killed, the rest of the herd becomes panic-stricken and stampedes back and forth until another caribou takes command. One large drove of caribou collects almost every year along the watershed between the Yukon and Tanana rivers. The hunters from Forty Mile, Eagle and Circle and the other mining towns of that region rely upon it for a part of their meat supply. I have seen a number of moose since I came to Alaska. I have watched them swimming in the Yukon flats as we passed through on the steamboat and have picked out several with my field glasses along the banks of the streams. They range over the timbered parts of the territory and are especially plentiful on the Kenai and Alaska Peninsula. Unlike the caribou, they feed in the mixed woods of spruce, poplar and birch along the river bottoms and on the sides of the hills. During the winter, they browse on the willows and young alders, digging the bushes out of the snow. The Kenai giant moose is the largest of the deer family. Antlers are offered for sale, which measures six feet from tip to tip, and now and then one finds a pair that is more than six feet in width. The moose are at their best at the close of the summer when they have grown fat on the rich vegetation. They are most easily caught when the mosquitoes are so bad as to drive them into the rivers and lakes. In the winter, they are hunted by men upon snowshoes. The moose are so heavy that they sink into the snow to their bellies when they get out of the sheltered places and will make for a lake or a river where they can travel over the ice from which the snow has been blown. It is not uncommon to find a baby moose or calf as a pet in the mining town. The calves are born during May and June and follow the cows until the next spring. The most delicious meat of Alaska is that of the mountain sheep. It brings higher prices than any other game in the market, but it is difficult to get and the supply is never abundant. A hunter at Fairbanks told me that he once saw 600 sheep in one drove. He thought himself lucky to have killed two before they got out of sight. These wild sheep are different from those of the Rocky Mountains. Their coats are more like hair than wool. The doll sheep, named for William H. Dahl, the Alaskan explorer, is pure white with horns of jet black. Mountain sheep are most numerous in the Kenai Peninsula and in the Alaska Range. There are some about Mount McKinley where good hunting grounds may be reached by railroad. There are also large numbers in the Endicott Mountains north of the Yukon, where for the most part they graze far above the Timberline. Some attempts are now being made to domesticate the mountain sheep. The lambs are caught and raised in captivity. A farmer near Copper Center, about 100 miles from Valdez, is trying to cross the sheep with some he has imported from Montana and other northern states. He has been successful with some of his rams and is bred from about a half dozen mountaineers. The cross results in a large tame animal whose fleece is a combination of hair and wool. The wool is thick and close to the hide while the hair extends out beyond it. The meat is said to be superior to that of any except the wild mountain sheep itself. Bears are to be found almost everywhere in Alaska. No less than 13 different varieties are recognized by the scientists. There are four general types, the brown, the grizzly, the black and the polar bear. With the exception of the polar bear, the brown bears are the biggest known. The largest of all are found on Kodiak Island in the Alaska Peninsula and about Yakutat, not far from Cordova. I have seen brown bear skins which were more than 10 feet long and 6 feet wide with fur upon them, 3 inches thick. I priced one in a store at Juno and it was $65. At Nome, all furs were cheap. I bought skins there of two baby grizzlies for $10 each and sent them home by parcel post. They weigh just under 20 pounds and it cost $2.40 to have them landed in Washington. Polar bear skins of enormous size are sold at Nome for $60 and $70, only a fraction of the price they would bring in the states. As for the common black bear, there are so many of them about the mining camps that they often break into the cabins when the owners are away. Every camp and village along the Yukon has one or more tame bear cubs which will eat out of your hand and go through tricks upon order. The polar bears of Alaska are found in Bering Sea and along the Arctic Ocean. The hunter who wishes to kill such game should go to Nome in the spring and travel over the ice fields northward into the Arctic. The bears move north and south with the ice drift. They come as far south as the Seal Islands and have been found as far north as Latitude 79. Their food is chiefly seals and fish. The great bears lie near holes in the ice where the seals come up to breathe and grab them when their noses show on the surface. These bears are perfectly at home in the water and have been seen swimming in the Arctic 60 miles from land or ice. I am told by the hunters that they usually run on the approach of a man but that they will attack one when they are hungry. There is a story told here about an Eskimo at Point Barrow who got in the track of a bear which was running from a hunting party. The Eskimo who was shooting ducks sent a charge of shot into the bear who turned back, knocked the Eskimo down with one of his paws, bit off the top of the man's head and resumed his flight. There is only one animal in the polar region that can successfully fight the polar bear. That is the great walrus which often weighs more than a ton. The bears will attack the baby walrus but they are afraid of the sharp ivory tusks of the grown-ups which are sometimes two feet long. A full-grown walrus has been seen on the body of a dead whale keeping away a polar bear, hungrily swimming around it. A striking feature of Alaskan game is the provision that nature has made for their protection. Some of the birds and animals change their color in winter so that they cannot be seen against the snow. The tarmigan for instance which is one of the finest grouse of Alaska has a summer plumage of mottled brown while its winter coat is snow white. The same is true of the rabbits which are gray in the summer but snow white in the winter. The rabbits of southern Alaska are twice as large as those of our eastern states although not so large as they are to care. They are sometimes called snowshoe rabbits because their feet are so large and soft that animals can go over the snow without sinking. Rabbits are so numerous that they form the food of many wild animals. They are eaten by wolves, dogs and bears and even by the mink and the lynx. The eagles and ravens prey upon the rabbits and Indians hunt them in companies driving them to a center and then shooting them. They are also sneered or shot to feed the foxes on the fox farms. I met one fur farmer who had killed 2700 rabbits in one year as food for his foxes. Notwithstanding this the animals multiply so rapidly that they would overrun the country were it not for a plague that periodically kills them by thousands. I have been told that this plague comes every seven years and that it is usually followed by an increase in the moose and other wild game. When the rabbits are plentiful there are but few moose and when rabbits are scarce the moose are abundant. This may be from the fact that the rabbits injure the pastureage over which the moose feed in the same way that sheep will destroy it for other livestock. In the winter the rabbits live on the bark of the willows eating it down as the snow melts. In this way they destroy great thickets by girdling the trees. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 34 The Biggest Thing in Alaska The biggest thing in Alaska is the government railroad. By that I do not mean so much its 500 miles of tracks, its cars and equipment, or the number of tons and passengers it will haul but what it stands for in the future of the territory. It means the building of feeder wagon and motor roads and the construction of other railroads. It means cheaper coal, lower freight rates, lower living and mining costs. It means more lands and resources flung open to the settler and the prospector. It means a new era of development and prosperity for Alaskans. The act providing for government railroads in Alaska past March 12, 1914 authorized the building and operation of railroads here to an extent not to exceed 1000 miles and at a cost of not more than 35 million dollars. On this authorization President Wilson bought the Alaska Northern Railway and decided to extend it to Fairbanks, a distance of 472 miles at a cost of something like 27 million dollars. The construction of the road was entrusted to the Alaska Engineering Commission. Surveys began in June 1914 and dirt began to fly the following May. Steel was joined all the way from Seward to Fairbanks in the early spring of 1922. Today, Pullman cars and diners flashed through wilderness formerly traversed only by dog sleds. Mail now gets to Fairbanks from Seattle in nine days instead of from one to three months. Freight reaches its destination in three weeks last time then formerly. The original appropriation of 35 million dollars would doubtless have been sufficient except for the war conditions that brought higher wages and material costs. Later appropriations brought up the total for getting the line into full operation to 56 million dollars or just about eight times what we paid for the territory. 11 millions of the money provided by Congress were used in building wharves, laying out town sites, paving streets, constructing waterworks and sewage systems and developing coal mines along the right of way. According to Colonel Frederick Mears, Chairman of the Engineering Commission, the Alaska Railroad has cost about 80,000 dollars a mile inclusive of rolling stock in terminals or 67,600 per mile exclusive of SING. By way of comparison, in 1918 the property investment per mile on railways in the United States was something over 83,000 dollars. The three men originally appointed on the Alaska Engineering Commission were W. C. Edis, Frederick Mears and Thomas Riggs Jr. all of them extremely well fitted for their work. Just previous to his appointment, Mr. Edis, a western railroad builder with 30 years experience had been in charge of construction of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad out of San Francisco. Colonel Mears had been in railroad work for ten years in the West and in Panama. Mr. Riggs, later Governor of Alaska has been in the United States Geological Survey and immediately before his appointment was in charge of the Alaska International Boundary Survey so that he was entirely familiar with the territory. While the road was built not as a revenue getter but to open up the country in the opinion of men who have studied the situation in four or five years that will be on a self-supporting basis. It is estimated by the commission that ultimately the revenue will be in the neighborhood of one million dollars per annum which does not include any estimate for coal movements from the Matanuska fields to tide water for the United States Navy. While the southern terminus of the line is it Seward, the beginning of the old Alaska Northern Railway bought by Uncle Sam, new construction began at Anchorage on Ship Creek which became headquarters for the engineering commission. Anchorage, which rose amid the stumps of the trees that had such a little while ago to be cut out for its growth is now a thriving railroad town with pretty homes, stores, government shops, an electric lighting system, sewage and waterworks and one of the finest public schools in all Alaska. The school library contains more than a thousand reference books though it is a mere infant its population numbers over a thousand and it is next to Juneau the largest town in the territory. It already has a lively social life with its parties and dances, motion picture theaters and recreation park. There are many fraternal organizations as well as a farmers association, a fair association and an energetic women's club. I was so fortunate as to see Anchorage in the stump, tent and shack stage though it was growing marvelously fast. I give you my notes just as I pen them when I was on the spot seeing how Uncle Sam's engineers and executives were putting through their big job. I have come from sunrise the little mining settlement on Kenai Peninsula to Anchorage, the headquarters of the Alaskan Engineering Commission. Anchorage sprang into being when the president, like Aladdin rubbed the rusty old lamp of Congress and wished for that appropriation of $35 million for railroads in Alaska. The town is the nearest port to the Matanuska coal fields and when navigation in Cook Inlet is open, which is from five to seven months of the year, it will have perhaps the bulk of the coal trade. It is for this reason that the people here expect a big city at Anchorage. I look forward to it as a smelting and manufacturing center as well as a commercial port and are already talking of it as the financial heart of Alaska. I found the people of sewer jealous of Anchorage. They claim that their port will be the only real city at the southern end of the railroad because Resurrection Bay is free of ice throughout the year. All steamers going to Anchorage have to travel several hundred miles farther. They must come up Cook Inlet the Great Bay on the west of the peninsula, extending about 200 miles into the land. The Inlet in places is upward of 50 miles wide, but it narrows at the northern end and is only a few miles across in Nick Arm where Anchorage is situated. The lower part of the Inlet owing to the warm Japanese current is open throughout the year. The upper part freezes along in October or November and for a great part of the winter ships cannot come in. The place is one of high tides. The sea rises from 45 to 65 feet in the arms of the Inlet and rushes in twice a day in a wall, forming a bore of somewhat the same nature as those in the Bay of Fundy or in the Hugley River up which one goes to Calcutta. I had some experience with the tide incoming from sunrise to Anchorage. We had to leave sunrise when the water was high which was not until midnight. Our boat was a launch about 18 feet long with a 12 horsepower gasoline engine. There were bench seats around the side and only a canvas for cover. The owner of the boat was a German storekeeper of Sunrise and the engineer was his son, a boy of 18. The man refused to go unless he got at least 30 dollars but we managed to drum up seven passengers. Mr. George Parks of the Government Land Office five prospectors and myself. It took us about eight hours to go the hundred miles and the German was over six days getting back home. We went out of Turnigan Arm to Fire Island and after lying there for an hour to avoid the rough water came on through Nick Arm to Ship Creek and had to wait several hours more before the tide rose so that we could land. We might have taken a dory and tramp to the beach but the mud at Anchorage is of a blue glacial as sticky as glue. The steamers usually anchor some distance from shore and all freight is landed in lighters. The government wharf is high up on piles and there are platforms a little below the floors of the warehouses upon which the lighters are anchored. They come in when the tide is high and as it falls are upheld by the platforms so they can be unloaded at leisure. I like the way our engineers are handling their job. There is no red here at Anchorage. Fuss and feathers are absent. The engineer commissioners are as plain as pipe stems tramping along with the men and going about the work on foot or on horseback. The two-story house put up for the commission here would not rent for over $15 a month in the states. Most of the clerks do their work in tents or log cabins. The forestry department is a two-room shack with folding cuts. The commissary building is of logs and the stables nearby where from 50 to 100 horses are lodged are of canvas. The hotel or mess room for the men and government employees is a log cabin where three meals are served for a dollar a day. I have yet to meet an official who puts on any heirs. Most of them go about with their pants and their boots and the clothes worn by the three commissioners would hardly bring the value of the wool in them at a second hand store. The railroad men receive higher wages than those paid for similar work in the states. The laborers employed are of all nationalities while not a few are Alaskans. The engineers tell me they find it difficult to get Americans to do the rough work. They all want to be foremen, bosses, or timekeepers. They are willing to work hard as prospectors and miners but they do not like to handle the pick and shovel at so much per day. The Alaskans are doing much of the clearing and have taken many contracts for ties. Today I went over the part of the road bed near Anchorage. The new railway looks as if it might form an exhibit in a national exposition. It goes through the woods but the land on each side of the track has been cleared and ditches drain away every bit of the water. I have never seen a better looking road bed anywhere. It compares favorably in appearance with that of the Pennsylvania or the New York Central. The engineers have the advantage here of building along hills formed of gravel and all that has been necessary to get material for the fills has been to drive cuts into the hills at the side of the track. These cuts are then roofed over and the cars are run into the bank and loaded by gravity. I understand that this is the character of much of the route between here and Fairbanks and that a large part of the track will be easy to keep in repair. A great deal of apprehension has been felt by many who do not understand Alaskan conditions over the difficulty of keeping the road open in winter. The commission expects to have comparatively little trouble from the cold or the snowfall. The heaviest snows are near the coast and snow sheds will be established there and in the region about Turnigan Arm. There is much less snow in the interior. The maximum fall at the summit of the main mountain range is only about 7 feet and this can easily be controlled by rotary snow plows attached to the engines. At Anchorage the snow seldom reaches a depth of more than 2 feet and the deepest snowfall is not over 3 feet. During my stay at Anchorage I have learned about the country through which the railroad will go from Mr. Thomas Riggs Jr. who is personally gone again and again over every foot of the ground. He tells me that most of the region has not yet been inspected. The land is covered with moss and other vegetation which so hides the rocks that it is hard to tell what there is. It is known, however, that the road will give easy access to many rich gold deposits and it is certain that mining camps will spring up here and there all along the way from Seward to Fairbanks. There is quartz gold near the line of the Alaskan Northern and there are quartz and placer mines in other parts of the Kenai Peninsula. 40 miles north of Anchorage is Willow Creek which has a number of mines with a 10-stamp mill. A little farther north is the Talkeetna River where there is good farming land. That part of the country is made up of plains and valleys spotted with groves and covered with grass. A short distance to the west of it are the Yentna and Squentna mining districts where prospectors are taking out placer gold. One of the most promising mining districts along the new railroad is near Broad Pass where the line crosses the mountains at an altitude of 2,400 feet above the sea. The pass is about 5 miles in width and there are mountains on each side of it 8 or 9,000 feet high. Off to the west can be seen Mount McKinley 65 miles away and on the east are the Cathedral Mountains and Mount Hayes which is almost as high as Fujiyama or Pikes Peak. To the west of Broad Pass discoveries of low grade quartz gold are reported. Farther over in the foothills of Mount McKinley is the Kuntishna mining district which has gold, antimony and other metals. There are 60 odd miners and trappers there now and some of them are doing quite well. Farther along the line are the Ninana coal fields and then come the Tolovana coal region not far from the route between Ninana and Fairbanks. The most important of all the mining regions so far discovered is that around Fairbanks itself. The Tanana Valley Railroad a narrow gauge road extending for 40 miles north from Fairbanks into the Placer mining district has been purchased and is a part of the government railway system. This gives this rich mining district a direct rail connection with the outside. The Alaskan mining regions will profit exceedingly by fuel that will come over the railroad. Those of the Kenai Peninsula the Matanuska Valley and all south of Broad Pass now have cheap coal from the Chikolun coal fields whereas those on the northern side of the pass and in the Tanana Valley may be supplied by the great coal deposits of the Ninana region. The Chikolun coal which is from the Matanuska fields is said to be equal to the Pocahontas. A branch of the railroad runs out from the main line at Matanuska Junction to Chikolun. The government has mined and tested many hundred tons of it on the vessels of the Navy and it is found to be excellent. It can be used for cooking and it will be the first Alaskan coal of commerce. The Ninana fields are a vast extent. The railroad passes through them and it is downgrade all the way from there to Fairbanks. The coal deposits extend from the railroad eastward for a distance of perhaps 100 miles. Alcropics can be seen on the cliffs and in places the veins are 40 feet thick. The coal is a high grade lignite suitable for all local commercial purposes. It is not good enough to bear exportation but it will be of enormous value to the miners in the interior. In order to appreciate what this coal means to the mining regions it must be remembered that most of the gold deposits are in frozen ground. The frost and ice go down to bedrock. The earth has been frozen for ages and it has to be thawed out by fire or steam. A single gold mine would often consume from 10 to 12 cords of wood a day and before the railroad could bring cheap coal nothing but wood could be used. The fact that wood costing over $30 a cord is giving way as mine fuel to lignite coal costing $6 a ton delivered will result in enormous areas of low grade gold bearing regions being worked. It means the opening of many new quartz properties and a great increase in the valleys and benches where the gravel can be washed over by dredging and hydraulic sluicing. In addition to the cheap coal supplies to be furnished by the government railroad southeastern Alaska is much interested in the 22 mile Alaska anthracite railroad from a point on controller bay to the Bering River field where there is coal equal to the Matanuska variety. It is the field which the Guggenheims were popularly supposed to be gobbling when the great excitement about conservation in Alaska began and it is to a certain extent accessible to Cordova and the Copper River Railroad. There are now about 500 farms in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys not far from Anchorage and there are many new homesteads in the Tanana valley. All of these farms are being operated with the view to supplying the local market and they are raising considerable produce but by no means enough to supply the demands. The Railroad Commission is trying to bring about a system of cooperation between the merchants and the homesteaders which will lead to less importation from the outside and a greater sale for local products. Many of the farms are springing up around the new towns being laid out at every possible traffic center. End of Chapter 34 Chapter 35 of Carpenters World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter. This recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B Chapter 35 Mount McKinley The Most High McKinley The Highest Mountain on the North American continent was known to the Indians as Denali, the Most High. It was used as a landmark in their journeys and stories of it form a part of their folklore. Most of the world's great peaks rise from a high plateau. Mount McKinley, with its snow-crowned head four miles aloft in the clouds, towers up from a low tundra shelf. No other mountain known rises so high over its own base. It is this which gives it such an effect of supreme height and grandeur. I have seen Mount McKinley from the hills of the Tanana Valley near Fairbanks. It is visible in many parts of Alaska and is more and more tourists visited and Mount McKinley National Park it will become as well known as Fujiama, Mont Blanc or Pike's Peak. It will rank as one of the scenic wonders of the world and the grandest mountain on earth. If you will take an airplane and shoot straight up for four miles you will be on a level with its summit and when you stand on its slope at the end of the road where the automobile will land you after leaving the cars you will have a mountain view which cannot be equaled in the Alps, the Andes or the Himalayas. I have traveled all of these regions. I have seen most of the greatest mountains of the world. Take Akincagua, the giant of the Andes. It actually is half mile higher above the sea than Mount McKinley but the best views of it are to be had only when you are a mile and a half or two miles above the sea and then you see it over other peaks which dwarf is altitude. One of the best places to see Mount Everest is on the southern slope of the Himalayas. I saw it from Tiger Hill not far from Darjeeling where I was about a mile and a half above the sea. I started out in the darkness of the mountain. I saw it from the top of the mountain and it was clear and the sun's rays made the mighty peak look like frosted silver but one could not realize that he was gazing at the highest known point of the globe. Mount Everest is almost 6 miles above the sea but my view was cut off by Chincauga which is only 1,000 feet lower and that mountain was dwarfed to show the stupendous height of Mount McKinley. The north side of the mountain rises almost precipitously and standing on the northern foothills one has an unobstructed view of 17 or 18,000 feet of mountain walls. I can give you a close view of Mount McKinley only from hearsay and from the magnificent pictures of Belmore Brown, the noted mountain climber of the Campfire Club of America. He is an explorer and the author of the Conquest of Mount McKinley. He has attempted the ascent of Mount McKinley both from the south and the north and at one time he succeeded in reaching within a few hundred feet of the top. He has been over the great part of the region which has been enclosed in the park and is given the committees of Congress a graphic representation of the wonders of the mountain and of the great droves of wild game to be found on the slopes. I have cured some of my best impressions of the park from him. I have also talked with Charles Sheldon of the Boone and Crockett Club of New York about his experiences on the slope of Mount McKinley. He is another of the great authorities on this out of the way game region. He built a cabin on the mountain side some years ago and spent a winter or so there studying the game of the country and collecting specimens for the U.S. Biological Survey. In addition to these two men I have met in Alaska members of every party connected with the attempts to climb the mountain with the exception that is of those in the party of Dr. Cook of North Polar Fing. The great mountain was known to the Russians and was mentioned by George Vancouver the navigator after whom Vancouver Island was named. He came into Cook Inlet and reached the site of the present town of Anchorage in 1794. His records describe his view of stupendous snow mountains apparently detached from each other. He must have seen Mount McKinley, Mount Foraker and others. It was not until 11 years after we took over Alaska that two prospectors named Mayo and Harper made a trip 300 miles up the Tanana River and on their return mentioned an enormous ice mountain they had seen in the south. In 1889 another prospector named Densmore gave an enthusiastic account of the mountain but it was not until 1896 that W.A. Dickey a Princeton graduate traveled through the Susitna Valley and made an extended description of it. Mr. Dickey named it after President McKinley recording that name in a letter published in the New York Sun in 1897. Dickey estimated its height as 20,000 feet. A little later George Eldridge and Robert Muldrow of our Geological Survey took its height by triangulation at 20,300 feet. The generally accepted figure although I have seen estimates which make it two or 300 feet higher. Another remarkable survey was made of a part of the region by Dr. Alfred Brooks and D.L. Rayburn in 1902. They were the first men to set their feet upon the slopes of Mount McKinley. I have talked with Dr. Brooks about his experiences. He made a reconnaissance survey of the western and northwestern face and was the first to lay out a plan for attempting an ascent. Dr. Brooks estimates the height of Mount McKinley at 20,300 feet, a Mount Foreaker at 17,000 feet, Mount St. Elias at 18,024 feet and Mount Logan at 19,539 feet. And now it is the ascent of this giant peak. The first man to attempt it was James Wickersham, a former delegate to Congress from the territory. Judge Wickersham has told me how he caught sight of it from far up the Yukon when he first came to Alaska and determined to do what he could to reach its summit. It was in May 1903 after holding his first term of court at Fairbanks that he set out with four men and two mules. He then ascended to the head of navigation on the Kantishna. He left the river and struck across the country to the base of the mountain. But he tried to ascend by the Peter's Glacier and was stopped by the enormous ice-covered cliffs of the North Peak. He came back saying that only a balloon could ever take one to the top. He spent a week in attempting the climb and it was only when his provisions gave out that he returned to Fairbanks. The next attempt was made by Dr. Cook who claimed that he stood on the peak and gave an illustrated lecture at Washington telling how he got there. This, like his North Polar expedition, was afterwards shown up as a fraud. The first real assent of Mount McKinley was made in February 1910 by a party of mining prospectors backed by three saloon keepers of Fairbanks. The prospectors were Thomas Lloyd, Charles McGonigal, William Taylor and Peter Anderson. One of the saloon keepers was Big Bill McPhee, whom I met in Fairbanks. He and the two others each put up $500 for the journey, which some sufficed for the needs of the party. I had a talk in the Tanana Club at Fairbanks with Tom Lloyd who headed the party and also with Taylor and Anderson with whom I traveled on the Tanana River from Ninana to Chena. The men got to the foothills about the 1st of March 1910. Lloyd, who had been hunting mountain sheep in the region, led the party up to slope by easy passes and made his way over the great Muldrow Glacier. It took them about 25 days to get to the head of the glacier with their dogs and supplies, and it was on the 10th of April that Taylor, Anderson and McGonigal made the final part of the assent, crawling over the ice by means of irons strapped to their moccasins and with hooked poles in their hands. They did not tie themselves together with ropes and there was no cutting of steps. It was every man for himself and they gradually climbed the ice of the north peak of the mountain carrying a 14 foot flagstaff with them. They planted this on the peak where it stands to this day. The top of the mountain is somewhat like a horseshoe. It is an extinct volcano and the south point is perhaps 300 feet higher than the north point. Tom Lloyd, Pete Anderson Billy Taylor and Charlie McGonigal could easily have gone over and climbed the south peak, but they wanted their flag where they mistakenly believed it would be seen by telescope at Fairbanks 150 miles away. The honor of the highest assent goes to the party headed by Arch Deacon Stuck, who with Harry Carstens, the Alaska scout and guide reached the top of the south peak in 1913. Belmore Brown had come within about 100 feet of it the year before that, but an earthquake which had shaken down the great ice masses and the blizzard which came up at that altitude prevented his getting to the summit. As to the feet of Harry Carstens and Arch Deacon Stuck, I got the story of it from Harry Carstens as we sat and chatted together in Big Bill McPhee's store at Fairbanks. Harry Carstens is a young trapper and hunter famous for his nerve on the trail. He is a noted guide and takes out rich hunters when they come to the Yukon. He brought the first male into Fairbanks and took the first letters into the Kentishna. He made the trip up the mountain in partnership with the Arch Deacon the latter furnishing $1,000 for the expenses against Carstens experience. The understanding being that the two were to divide the proceeds from Arch Deacon Stuck's book and lecture describing the assent. The men were 52 days on the way of which 50 days were spent going up and only two coming down. You can get a graphic description of the journey by reading Arch Deacon Stuck's book entitled The Ascent of Mount Denali. Mount McKinley dominates the greatest of the government's reserves, Mount McKinley National Park. This park has an area of over 2,500 square miles or more than twice the size of Rhode Island. There are rich waterfalls and rushing streams. Mighty glaciers sweep down the mountain sides. Muldrow glacier is 35 miles long. The largest glacier of the Swiss Alps is only 16 miles in length. Here in there great lava flows from the old volcanoes make patches of vivid brown and green and purple and red. Wild animals throng the whole area and now that they are protected by the government will make the park the largest and best populated game preserve of this continent. The only place I know that at all compares with it is the strip two miles wide running from Mombasa on the east coast of Africa to Lake Victoria, 600 miles inland. That strip a mile wide on each side of the railroad fairly swarms with zebra and antelope of various kinds. It will be the same in the Mount McKinley Park. That region has thousands of caribou or American reindeer. Belmore Brown saw 125 in one herd and they sometimes move back and forth over the park in droves of thousands. Charles Sheldon tells me that he counted 500 mountain sheep in one day. The park is also the haunt of the bear and the beaver. It has moose in the low timber and bushes along the streams and there are foxes, rabbits and many varieties of birds found in Alaska. It will be the most interesting place for the study of natural history. Protected by law, most of the animals will become so tame that they will not run at the approach of tourists and will be preserved for all time among the wonders of our fauna. Here to for this region has been practically inaccessible to the ordinary traveler, but the railroad will make the region almost as easy to reach as any national parks. At one place the trains pass within 15 miles of the park. Moreover the foothills of the northern slope of the mountains are such that roadways can be easily made up one little valley after another so that tourists may go by wagons or automobiles right to the foot of the mountain. End of Chapter 35 Chapter 36 of Carpenters World Travels. Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 36, The Story of Kennecott. Cordova, 200 miles across Prince William Sound from Seward is the copper center of Alaska. The ore coming down to the port is from only two or three mines, but they represent one of the most extensive and richest of the copper areas of the world. More than 400 copper locations have already been made and the ore belt is known to be over 70 miles long and 20 miles wide. These deposits are so rich that Alaska may become as noted for its copper as it has been for gold. The first train load of ore that came down to Cordova contained metal to the value of more than a half million dollars and that now on the wharves is worth from 12 to 15 thousand dollars a carload. The ore is brought down from the Kennecott mines in Saxe, each containing from 150 to 200 pounds of ore carrying 28 dollars worth of copper. The ore of the Kennecott mines is so rich in copper that it can be dug from the earth, turned into metal and put on the market at a cost of a few cents a pound. The average ores they are now taking out are over 20 percent and the average part of them carries much as 72 percent. In comparison, the copper ores of Arizona yield about 5 percent. Those of Montana about 3 and those of Michigan less than 1 percent. Do you wonder that the Kennecott mines pay? The native metal was used by the Copper River Indians before white men entered the territory. Old spear and arrowheads of it have been found in the sluice and ceremonial knives of copper are even now employed by the natives in cutting the salmon taken at the beginning of the catch. Long before the Russians sold Alaska to us, they had discovered that copper existed there. They had nuggets and small household utensils of beaten copper. They found no large deposits, however, and it was not until a generation after we had taken possession that prospectors on their way from Prince William Sound to Dijk learned about the Copper River region. In the same year, the United States Geological Survey reported a similar copper belt on the northern slope of the Randgolt Mountains about 200 miles south of Fairbanks. The most important discovery was that of the Kennecott mines which were developed by the Morgan Guggenheim Syndicate. These deposits were discovered in 1900 by two miners prospecting near here and a little later the property was investigated by Mr. Stephen A. Birch, a young mining engineer who brought it to the attention of the capitalists and organized the projects which have made it one of the greatest copper mines of the world. It was through a talk with Mr. Birch that I learned the story of the discovery, said he. It began with the mining excitement that followed the rush to the Klondike. Among the prospectors then moving about here and there over Alaska were 11 working under a partnership agreement. These men went in pairs first drawing lots to see which section of the country they should take. The district of the upper Chattina River was drawn by Clarence Warner and Jack Smith who had tramped so extensively over the mountains of Arizona that he was known as the Arizona Centipede. Toward the end of the summer of 1900 Warner and Smith had gone carefully over the section allotted to them and had found nothing and were about to leave and despair. Their grub was fast diminishing and when they came to the Kennecott River they decided to end their work by prospecting the land between Kennecott Glacier and Nicholas Creek and if nothing was found to give up for the year. They had gone only three miles when Warner sprained his ankle on one of the rocks and the two set down by a stream to rest. While eating their lunch Smith called Warner's attention to a large green patch in the rocks on the side of the mountain. He said it looked strange and that they ought to go up and see just what it was. Warner replied that Smith might go if he would but he didn't intend to climb that far to look at a sheep pasture. He thought the green patch was grass and that it was one of the feeding grounds of the mountain sheep found on the hills of this part of Alaska. Discouraged by Warner's objection Smith was about to give up when he saw in the bed the stream a piece of float or chip of mineral bearing rock. He picked it up and he and Warner studied it together. They broke it in two. As the fracture had a silvery look they thought it was silver. They found more of the float in the creek the pieces increasing in number as they walked up the stream and gradually leading them to the spot they had thought a sheep pasture. Then they saw that the outcropping was copper from what proved to be the first copper mine ever discovered. Now the first thing a prospector does after making a strike is to select a name for his find continued Mr. Birch. The question was what they should call the new mine. Old Jack Smith who was ahead of Warner and first saw the possibilities turned to his partner and said by God Warner she's a bonanza to which Warner replied well Jack that's a good name for her we'll call her the bonanza mine the bonanza it has proved to be after only four and one half years operation it yielded over eight million dollars in dividends and then began earning at the rate of more than six millions per annum. So far no one knows the actual extent of the deposit and it is safe to say that it will be paying dividends for generations to come when the prospectors return to the rest of their party at Valdez Mr. Birch was there on behalf of himself and certain analysts of New York City looking for promising mining investments the prospectors told him about their discovery and showed him the specimens of ore and he agreed to make an examination the following spring if they would give him an option upon it. The next season Birch returned to Alaska and found the deposit all and more than had been claimed he then secured a new option agreeing to pay $100,000 to each of the 11 members of the party. To make this option perfectly valid he had to secure the signatures of the 11 prospectors and all who were interested with them. Some of the men had been grub-staked by others so that the money had to be divided among 32 claimants each of whom had to agree to the deal. The establishment of the titles involved several lawsuits one of which was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States and it was five years before the Alaska syndicate was able to begin actual development work. Although this syndicate had to put approximately 25 million dollars into the property including the expense of building the Copper River Railway there is no doubt that they have got back the worth of their money. They have already received more than the purchase price and dividends and the market value of the property is several times what it cost. Further on in our conversation Mr. Birch spoke of the copper deposits on the island of Latush in Prince William Sound. That island has rich copper loads but the ore is of an entirely different character from that of the bonanza and the jumbo nearby. The Latush mines are low-grade producers their ore is a chalcopyrite which averages about 3% copper it is quarried from the hillsides over looking the water and is treated by the flotation process. The story of the discovery of the Latush copper mine which was told me by an old prospector at Seward is quite as interesting as that of the bonanza. The Latush mine was the result of a mess of bad clams. A number of minors were sailing along the shores of Latush Island when they stopped at a clam bed and dug up enough for a meal. They cooked the clams but before eating them found that they were deadly poisonous on account of the copperus in them. One of the men suggested that the copperus must come from copper deposits nearby and that they had better stop and prospect the rocks. The outcome was the discovery of these great deposits of low-grade copper or almost on the edge of the sea. The miners decided to develop the property for themselves but the ore contained such a small percentage of metal that they could not make it pay. They kept on mining however with the idea that the deposits were so large that they could not make the property at a big price. Finally one of them named Beatson announced that he was disgusted and was going outside for the winner. He took some of the ore with him and went to New York where he induced a rich relative to advance him $30,000 to purchase the property with the understanding that Beatson was to retain his own share. Beatson then came back to Latush but before he did so he sold $30,000 each which he sewed inside the lining of his Mackinac. When he came to the mine it was with a sad face. He said that capital was tight and the public not prone to invest. He kept on preaching hard times and at last cast such a gloom over the camp that the others of the party decided to sell if they could get any kind of a price for the mine. They were in this mood when Beatson asked them to name $1,000. Before showing his money Beatson asked, are you sure you would take that price if I could find the money? When the other miners replied in the affirmative he asked them to put their offer in writing. Thinking he was bluffing they did so. He thereupon ripped open his coat and handed out the sum in $1,000 banknotes. The yellow bills looked so good that the men took them and the mine became his. Beatson then began to develop the Alaska Syndicate which is now operating it at a profit. I have not learned the price but I'm told that it was high enough to drop Mr. Beatson into Easy Street for the rest of his life. Copper mining requires capital so that it has not attracted the small prospector as gold has done. But it is said that a billion dollars worth of copper is in site in Alaska and the one nugget weighing three tons has been found so far mining costs have been so high that only ore with a large copper content will make the work pay. The ore has to be shipped to the states to be smelted which means much rehandling besides the long and expensive hull. There is plenty of coal suitable for the smelters close to the copper regions. The Bering River which is now reached by the Alaska Anthrocyte Railroad. As soon as these fields are developed and cheap coal is available smelters will undoubtedly and operated close to the copper mines. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of Carpenters World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter This recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B Chapter 37 on the Copper River Railway So far as I know the Copper River and Northwestern Railway is the only line in the world that takes its passengers right to the foot of magnificent glaciers and allows them to examine these greatest wonders of nature while the train waits. Within an hour of the arrival of our steamer at Cordova an excursion train started out from the wharf and the tourists onboard were carried a distance of about 50 miles up the Copper River Valley to the miles and child's glaciers. Two mighty streams of ice were almost facing each other on opposite sides of the track. Leaving Cordova the road winds around the hills high over the water hanging to rocky cliffs covered with dense vegetation. A little later it enters the mouth of the Copper River Valley and skirts Eak Lake which fills a star shaped depression scooped out by some ancient glacier. The lake is almost entirely shut in abruptly from the water's edge. After following the winding shores of this lake for four miles the line crosses the Eak River which carries the glacial waters of the lake out to the sea. It is by this river that the boats from Cordova go into and out from the lake and during the summer months the stream is gay with canoes, row boats and power craft of every description. The lake teams with fish and it has some trout. During the winter it is sometimes frozen over and is used for skating and slaying. There is some fishing down there through holes in the ice. Leaving the lake we passed through a forest of spruce and wound our way over the Copper River Delta crossing stream after stream from the great glaciers of the interior. The flats extend for 16 miles east and west. A wide expanse of green level land, half swamps with water here and there showing out of the green. Blocks of ducks and geese rose from these ponds as our train passed. We could often see walls of green ice from our train. The glaciers reached the clouds that dark rainy day. The ice seemed to be looking at us over the trees. We saw the graves of some minors who had tried in vain to get through to the Klondike by this route in the gold rush of 1898. A little further on we cross the river Kowloon and at mile 34 came to the bridge over Hot Cake Channel, so called because a party of engineers were shut up there during the railway construction and for weeks had nothing to eat but hotcakes. All the way to the foot of the mountains the engineers had to wade through the mud to lay out the route and it was hard to find a solid road bed. At mile 29 we were only 32 miles from the Bering River Coalfield and miles farther on came to the narrow passage between the miles and child's glaciers. Here the road crosses the miles glacier bridge which costs more than a million and a half to build and then goes on its way up the mountains. There are a number of smaller glaciers visible from the train but those we came to see are the miles and the childs the two mightiest ones in all the valley. Child's Glacier is within a quarter of a mile or so of the track and miles glacier is in plain sight as you sit in the cars facing the bridge. Of these two the miles is by far the larger. It begins in the snow fields of the mountains and it is probably 50 miles long. Where it enters the Copper River Valley it spreads out in a great bulb which at the end is six and one half miles across. It is about 12 and one half miles around the whole front. Our train stopped on a switch near the bridge in plain sight of both glaciers and we had an hour or so to look about. We left our cars and made our way to the terminal moraine of the glacier which is made up of rocks of all sizes. The vegetation had now disappeared and we stood on the bank of a river with glacial waters that look like skim milk. We were right under a mighty ice wall that ascended straight up from the water to a greater height than that of the dome capitol at Washington. This wall is washed by the river. It extends along the banks of the stream for a length of four miles and runs back for more than 10 miles up the valley. It is composed of broken and uneven cliffs of pale green ice from which huge masses are continually falling. We could see in here the ice blocks breaking off as we stood under the wall on the opposite bank of the Milky River. First came a hurricane which sounded like a battery of heavy artillery. Then a mass of pure white weighing thousands of tons broke loose from the glacier, seemed to hang in midair for an instant then plunged down into the stream with a thunderous roar sending up a high cloud of spray. A moment later the mist had cleared away and the ice block could be seen rising and falling sending waves almost to our feet. The breaking of the ice is caused by pressure from the Great Ice River as it flows slowly down from the heights. The movement of the glacier varies in speed from time to time. During the years 1906, 1907 and 1908 it came forward only two or three feet a day. But in 1909 its motion increased to five or six feet and in August 1910 it was advancing at the rate of 30 or 40 feet daily. After that it began to slow up and in June 1911 it was moving less than two feet per day. Scientists made careful observations and photographs of the child's glacier at the time of its greatest activity. They would come out in the morning to find tons of ice resting where their cameras had stood the day previous and to see a great tree perhaps a hundred years old prone on the ground with its butt beneath the glacier. The night the tree had been upright and the ice some distance away. In this movement the ice acted like so many plows ripping up the earth to bedrock and piling up the turf and bushes 10 or 15 feet higher than the level of the plain. In view of what the engineers did in constructing this line it would seem no idle boast to say they could even fight off the advance of the glacier. The route lay through one of the ruggedest with glaciers, glacial streams, rapids and canyons to be conquered. In the delta flats there was hardly any ground fit for construction camps and the only fuel was green alders and willows. Sometimes it took six months to get material up the river from Cordova to the glacial region. Sometimes as the surveying parties got farther inland they worked with the thermometer at 50 below zero. In summer much construction material had to be towed up the river by men pushing their way through the cottonwood thickets while others waited in the stream to keep the boats off the rocks. In winter it had to be sledded over ice sometimes piled up in barriers, sometimes filled with dangerous potholes. The most remarkable engineering feat on the route though was the building of the 1150 foot bridge across the river between the miles and the miles glaciers. For a time the fate of the million and a half dollar investment hung by a hair. Thousands of piles driven deep into the bottom of the river and frozen into seven feet of ice formed the temporary foundation of the third and last span. The bridge builders were working with breathless haste to beat the spring thaw. Before they had a chance to make fast the last span the ice began while one gang chopped the ice with axes and melted it with steam pipes. Another with block and tackle not only stopped the moving span but inch by inch dragged it back into place where at last it was bolted and riveted. Now around each pier is a row of 80 pound rails one foot apart to act as an ice breaker. Like the White Pass Line the Copper River Railway was built for business reasons and it went straight ahead in the face of these enormous difficulties. Construction began in 1906 and the 196 miles of track was completed five years later. The total cost was 20 million dollars or about $100,000 a mile but the road has paid for the root taps the Wrangle Range the richest known mineral section of Alaska. This range has gold, copper and silver and the finest copper mines in the world. End of Chapter 37 Chapter 38 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter this recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B Chapter 38 Women on America's Last Frontier You toast the men of Alaska. God bless them everyone. They gave their best they stood the test of the land of the midnight sun. But what of that brave woman who mushed close by their side she took the trail they thought her frail all hardships she decried. The sweetheart wife or mother she came for love alone. She stifled fear fought back each tear and built anew the home. A toast to the Alaska woman from Ketchikan to Nome she's worth more gold than earth gold. A toast to woman home. I quote these lines from the club book of the Kigo Aya Koska or Northern Lights. The name of the up and coming women's club of Nome. This club reflects the dawn of women's work in northern Alaska. The Kigo Aya Koska has its own house a delightful little cottage on one of the main streets of Nome and even has a surplus in its treasury. It has its civic homes, its cleanup day, its annual entertainment for husbands of the members and its yearly farewell party for those going outside for the winter. Its study classes run throughout the year. The women who belong to it are typical of the cultured women in other parts of the territory. They are well dressed, well bred and well educated. Not a few are college graduates and all are more hospitable than is common throughout the states. Many of them have lived in Alaska for years and their stories of conditions present and past are especially interesting. It was not until 1898 when gold was discovered in the Klondike that many women came to Alaska. Those who were here before that were chiefly the wives of government officials or officers of the army and navy some of whom lived at the posts and others at the chief towns along the coast. There were also the wives of missionaries at Sitka and other places in southeastern Alaska and occasionally the wife of a sea captain or trapper. The first woman to establish a home on Cook Inlet was Mother White the wife of a whaler who made voyages to Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. She built a log cabin store and roadhouse on the shore about 200 miles from the site of the new town of Anchorage. There Miss Martha White was born, the first white child to see the light of day in that part of the world. When the work began on the government railway, she was chosen to drive the first spike. It is more than 20 years since Mrs. White established her store and roadhouse. She dealt with the Indians and trappers and later on started a fish cannery and saltery. In one year she put up 2,000 barrels of salted salmon. She made considerable money which she invested in mining. She went in the gold stampede to Sunrise on Ternigan Arm where she made so much that she might have retired in comfort. Then bad luck came. She put her winnings into unsuccessful properties and lost them. She went back to the roadhouse business and established little hotels at Hope City and Sunrise. These were a success and she gradually accumulated some property. In the meantime her daughter was growing up and Mother White decided to leave Alaska and go to the states to educate her. She moved to Chicago and opened a little store there which supported her until Martha's education was finished. And then came that longing to go back to Alaska that permeates the souls of all who have made their homes here. It's so obsessed Mrs. White that she left her daughter in Chicago and went alone to the North. With tears in her eyes there were so many camps of Hope and Sunrise. Many of the old prospectors whom she had known were still there and she felt that here were her friends and her home. She returned to Chicago to get her daughter and when the work on the Alaskan Railroad began she was one of the first on the ground at the New Town of Anchorage. She came in with a stock of lumber and canvas and before a rail was laid down her sleeping tent was equipped with bunks one over the other like those of a sleeping car and each bed brought her a dollar a night. When the new site for Anchorage was chosen she built a frame hotel on the main street. Another woman who has made good in Alaska is Mrs. Harriet Pullen of Pullen House at which I stopped in Skagway. By her kindness to the old miners and stranded prospectors she has earned the love mother of the north. Mrs. Pullen came to Skagway at the time of the gold rush to the Klondike. The daughter of a well to do settler on Puget Sound she was a widow with three little sons at the time gold was discovered. She decided to go to the gold mines. She was almost penniless when she landed in Alaska and when a miner came to the steamer to hire a cook for his camp she asked for the job and got it. She did work for a boarding house where her sourdough flap checks, soda biscuits and apple pies were soon famous. Seeing that big money was being made in freighting goods over the mountains she sent her first savings back to Seattle and brought in six horses from her father's farm. She also imported a wagon and started freighting over the trail. She drove the horses herself making her customers load their own goods. She got such high rates that she was soon clearing up $5 a day. At the end of the first season she was $1,000 ahead and this gave her enough to build a cottage and start a hotel. From that time on she's been able not only to live well and make money but to give her children as good an education as our country affords. The boys went to school in Skagway where they worked at odd hours and during vacation to help their mother. Later they were sent to the University of Washington where their first boy was drowned at Juneau. One of the other two was the first appointee from Alaska to West Point and another graduated at the University of Washington. Both sons did valiant service in the world war. General Pershing said he wished he had a regiment of Poland's. Another woman came north from Juneau where she had been working in a laundry. She was blonde 45 years of age when 250 pounds from Lake Lindemann through to Lake La Barge and made her way on down to Circle City. She started a laundry and bake shop selling her bread for from 50 cents to a dollar a loaf. Later on she came to the Klondike and staked out a claim on El Dorado Creek from which she realized $300,000. The women of the gold rush days did all sorts of things and underwent every hardship to get to the gold camps. Many were stranded at Skagway or Daya, the ports of the foot of the mountains over which the trails led to the gold camps. One woman over 75 years old came north with the rush. She had no money to get over the trail so she started in selling newspapers at from 25 to 50 cents each, the current prices of those days. She was so old that she aroused sympathy and a rich miner would often give her $5 paper and tell her to keep the change. All this time she was sleeping in a piano box in a little cabin. Friends, fearing she would freeze during the winter, got her people in Montana to write her to come home. When she left Skagway she had $2,000 earned in her newspaper selling. The old type of roughly dressed frontier woman is rapidly passing. The mining of the rich camps is going into the hands of large capital and there are but few women who have big mining investments. Margaret Mitchell, who called herself the quartz queen of the Klondike, believed that the $180 odd million worth of gold that has been washed out in grains and dust from the creeks and basin of the Klondike must have been ground off from rich veins nearby. In her search for the mother loads, for years she took up and bought quartz claims. Some of her properties are said to carry good values. Margaret Mitchell was always one of the first to rush to every new mining field and in this way got the nickname Stampede Mag. She also watched out for claims that lapsed through the carelessness of owners in failing to do the assessment work annually required. Every now and then she picked up a valuable claim and sometimes one belonging to the big capitalists. I understand that when she jumped one such claim the millionaires had to pay her $6,000 before she would release the new title thus acquired. I met Stampede Mitchell and found her a bronze faced energetic woman of middle age with a firm faith in the existence of quartz gold in the upper Yukon. At Anchorage I often breakfasted at the Two Girls Waffle House. The two girls were bright-eyed, rosy cheeked, plump young women who came from Seattle to Anchorage when it was first started and opened an eating place on the flats. When the town was moved to the hills they put their house on a wagon and moved with the times. Whenever I went to meals at their place the counter was filled for their waffles served hot from the griddle with plenty of good butter, syrup and coffee were enough to make a hungry man's mouth water. I found many other women in business at Anchorage. Some were typists others clerks in stores and others proprietors of shops of their own. There was a woman and one of the best dry goods and notions stores in town was kept by a pretty red-haired girl under 30. Another young lady who had come up from Illinois and was staying at my hotel told me she is always pined for the free life of the north and was going to open a millinery shop. She had a thousand dollars worth of stock coming up from the states. The larger towns of the Alaska of today have perhaps one half as many women as men. The tents and the shacks of the past have given place to comfortable homes with gardens and flowers and the social conditions are not far different from those of the towns of the states. Every town of any size has a women's club like that at Nome. The Juno women's club recently gave a reception to the women's club of Douglas Island. It was held in the city hall and among the papers read was one on English literature. Another on the local towns of Europe and a third on early English with readings from Chaucer. The Fairbanks club has been especially interested in civic matters. Its members write editorials for the local newspapers on how to improve sanitary and educational conditions and they have done a great deal to help the town. The same is true of every women's club in the country from Ketchikan to Nome. The clubs keep close watch on the schools and are more or less literary in character. The women of Alaska come from all parts of the world and many of them have traveled extensively. They have broad ideas of public affairs and their discussions take a wide range. But it seems to me I could write forever about Alaska. I have traveled widely over the world visiting all the continents and most of the countries. But I have yet to find a place more delightful or more interesting in the world. It is said of the river Nile that he who drinks of its waters always comes back to Egypt. I feel much the same about Alaska. Most of the prospectors, tourists and travelers who might have met in these journeys are making their second or third visit to these wonderful wilds. Just where the charm lies it is hard to say. It may be in the air which fills one's lungs with such invigoration that one seems to be breathing champagne. It may be in the scenery which is equal to any in New Zealand or Switzerland or in the wildness which gives one the sensation of being an original explorer like Christopher Columbus or Hernando De Soto. The magic of Alaska is perhaps best expressed by Robert Service's Spell of the Yukon. There's a land where the mountains are nameless and the rivers all run God knows where. There are lives that are airing nameless and deaths that just hang by a hair. There are hardships that nobody reckons. There are valleys unpeople and still. There's a land oh it beckons and beckons and I want to go back and I will. End of Chapter 38 End of Carpenters World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland