 Chapter 25 of Carpenter's World Travels. Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 25 The Dog Derby of Alaska. I have just returned from a ride on the Puckmobile over the Dogcar Railroad that carries one from Nome across the gold-bearing plains to the mountains. The track is a narrow gauge built for steam engines by Charles D. Lane in 1900. The road did not pay and its only trains are little cars drawn by dogs, the nearest thing to a railroad now running on the Seward Peninsula. The Puckmobile consists of a platform on wheels with one or two rough seats fastened to it. The motive power is a team of from seven to fifteen dogs, harnessed to the front of the car by a long rope, and directed by the voice of the driver, who calls out G to turn them to the right, Ha to turn them to the left, and Mush to make them go faster. At the front of the team is a leader with his traces fastened to the end of the rope, and behind him, to a breast, come the rest of the team. The last two are perhaps eight or ten feet from the car. Each dog has a harness, much like that used for a horse. The collars are of soft leather, well padded, and the tough leather traces are fastened to the collars and appelled by straps across the dog's back. There are no bridles or halters, and the sole direction is by the voice of the motorman. The dogs obey quickly. They are eager to run and seem to enjoy pulling the car. Our ride was out over the tundra, which lies between the foothills of the mountains and the Bering Sea. The personal conductor was Mr. Fred M. Eyre of the Wild Goose Mining Company, who is noted as a mining engineer, and also as the owner of some of the best racing and freight dogs of this part of the world. The tundra consists of the decomposed vegetation under which is two or three feet of ice, mixed with muck and blue clay. There are many soft spots filled with water and many nigger heads or round masses of vegetation that turn as you step on them. In places on our trip the roadbed had sunken and water covered the track. At such places the dogs ran out on the banks to the water, and sometimes they made their way through the shallower pools. Now and then they broke into a gallop and we fairly flew over the rails. I am told they go twice as fast pulling the sled over the snow. The names of the dogs were Rover, Lizard, Leo, Bubbles, Ginger, Arrow and Ring. All were picked animals and all have taken part in the annual races to Solomon and Candle. The dog races of Nome are the great sporting events of the far northwest. They are to Alaska what the Derby is to England. They are talked of from one year's end to the other and as the time approaches the dogs which are to compete are the subjects of never-ending discussion. Thousands of dollars are bet on the races and nearly every man and woman has a wager of some kind or other. The greatest race is the All Alaska Sweepstakes run every April from Nome to Candle City on the Arctic Ocean and return. I am told that as much as $200,000 have been bet on that race and that the prizes have ranged all the way from $1,500 to $10,000. At one time when the prize was $10,000 in gold the money was presented in a massive silver loving cup. The owner of the winning team poured the coin into the lap of the driver keeping the cup only as a souvenir of the event. The distance in this race is 408 miles and the usual winning time is between three and four days. In 1910 it was made by Colonel Ramsey's team driven by John Johnson in 74 hours 14 minutes and 42 seconds, which was the record until Leonard Seppala the Norwegian driver of Mr. Lindeberg's Siberian team beat it by 40 minutes seven years later. In addition to the All Alaska Sweepstakes there are races every March from Nome to the Solomon River and back. This is known as the Solomon Derby and is over a distance of 64 miles. One year's winning team did this in six hours running at an average speed of more than 10 miles an hour. Among other features of the Solomon River Derby is the burden race in which the dogs run 75 miles carrying one passenger and 50 pounds of baggage. The passenger is usually a woman, the wife, daughter or sweetheart of the owner or driver. This trip has been made in less than eight hours. The burden race to Council City always ends in a ball. I asked Mr. Ayer, a winner of one of the Solomon Derbies, how the dogs were prepared for the race. He replied, they are trained, groomed and carefully fed for months beforehand. A part of the diet is fish, fresh mutton and eggs and during the race they get one meal of hamburger steak per day. Camps for food and water are established along the way. For three days prior to the race they are not taken out of the kennels but for three weeks before that time they are exercised in long distance runs. According to the code of the Nome Kennel Club, to avoid any suspicion of cruelty the drivers must bring back every dog dead or alive. The whip usually tied to the racing sled is to be used in case of a fight between the dogs but never to urge them on or to beat them. Blankets are carried along for the dogs as well as green veils for their eyes should the sun let snow be too glaring for them and flannel moccasins for their feet in case the ice cuts them up. At the relay camps every night every dog is an alcohol rub. Continuing in response to my questions Mr. Ayer said, I do not think that the native Alaska dogs are the fastest or best for racing purposes. My team is mostly made up of foxhounds and as a rule they can beat the malamutes in pulling, endurance and speed. I never carry a whip and do not yell at the dogs. They will respond to a word and it is easy to keep them at a speed of from 11 to 14 miles an hour. They enjoy the race and seem to realize what is expected of them. They will be as fresh at the end of 50 miles as at the beginning. Most of the racing of Alaska is under the direction of the Gnome Kennel Club founded by Albert Fink to improve the dogs used to transport minors and supplies. This club was organized before racing was thought of but the sport is doing much to improve the strain. Of later years many Russian stag hounds, Great Danes and Missouri birdhounds have been brought in. Crossing them with the native stock tends to produce better animals. There are here a large number of Siberian dogs which are smaller than the malamutes and look like wolf dogs in miniature. They are noted for their endurance. The races are famed for their fairness and absence of trickery. The only case in which an attempt has been made to beat the favorite team by fraud was in the candle race of 1914. When a blanket stuck with porcupine quills was laid on the track and lightly covered with snow so that any dogs that ran over it would have been lamed. The plotters who had directed their own teams to go out of the course to avoid this trap would surely have one had not the blanket been found just before the race. During the long winter, every postal card in every letter, newspaper and magazine that comes to Gnome has to be brought over 1500 miles of ice and snow by dog teams. The mail is taken from Fairbanks to Ruby, Iditarod and Fort Gibbon by dogs. And in fact, the whole of the interior of this great territory is dependent upon dogs for its winter transportation. In the summer, the dogs are sometimes used by the prospectors as pack animals and at the time of a gold stampede, their value rapidly rises, especially if a stampede occurs during the winter. In the summertime, you can get a good dog for $25. In the winter, you may have to pay $100 for the same animal. There are men in every large town who do little else than drive dog teams. The winter mail and freight are taken across the country on narrow sleds about 16 feet long. Such sleds will hold 800 pounds and will take from 9 to 19 dogs to haul them. The mail contractors are paid by the month, some of them making as much as $10 a day. One of the dog freighters tells me that the Mackenzie River Husky is about the best all-around trail dog to be found in the north. The Husky, like the Malamute, is a cross between a dog and a wolf and is an animal long known in Alaska. It was used by the Indians before the Hudson's Bay Company came to the northwest three centuries ago. The Husky is very hardy and noted for its good disposition. I ask how the dogs are handled on the trail. Each driver has his own methods was the reply. It is very important that the animals be treated well. If the trip is to be long and hard, the dog should be favored for two or three days at the start. This is to get them seasoned so that they will last throughout the journey. A good driver will save his team in every possible way. He will ride only when going downhill and most of the time he will run in front, keeping his sled in the trail by the G pole. In cold weather one would rather run or walk than ride. I have driven 54 miles in a day with the thermometer 53 degrees below zero. I ran almost the whole day and at the end it seemed to me as though my lungs were scalded. I have sledded when the thermometer was 72 degrees below zero. How many hours can you drive in a day? We try to make eight or ten hours but it is often best to drive only six. The stops have to be made according to the trail and the roadhouses. We always shelter the dogs at night if possible and most of the roadhouses have kennels for them. If there is no shelter, the native dog will bury himself in the snow or climb upon something above it. He bites the icicles out of his toes when he stops for the night. The feet of a dog are as important a factor in traveling as the feet of a horse. A close built foot with round balls and thick skin is essential to a trail dog. There must also be a very little hair between the toes otherwise the snow catches there and balls up and forms icicles that lame him. What do you feed the dogs on such trips? We usually carry dried salmon along to feed on the trail and at the end of the trip give them cooked meals of rice, tallowing fish. They get but one meal a day unless the running is hard when they have a lunch of dried salmon at noon. In the latter cases it is necessary to let them rest two hours after lunch otherwise they get sick. The stories of Alaska dogs are legion and their exploits surpass those of the famous St. Bernard's of the Alps. There are huskies and malamutes which have traveled tens of thousands of miles in harness and tales of how they have saved the lives of their owners when almost frozen to death or lost in the snow. Baldi of Gnome is the hero of one of these stories. Baldi was the leader of Scotty Allen's team in the all Alaska sweepstakes. During the race he felt that the sled was running light and looking back could see no signs of his master. He thereupon turned the team and went back over the trail several miles until he found Scotty lying pale and unconscious on the snow. He had been stunned by running into one of the iron posts marking the trail. Baldi stopped and lit the pallet face of the senseless man. He then set up a howl and scratched away at his driver's breast until Scotty came too and crawling back on the sled motioned him to go on with the race. This Baldi did and came out ahead. The story of this dog has been told in a little book entitled Baldi of Gnome written by Mrs. Esther Bird Saul Darling who has, better than any other writer, commemorated the virtues of the Alaskan dog. Mrs. Darling has owned several teams that have won the all Alaska sweepstakes. Every dog lover will appreciate this one of her poems. Sometimes one life has gone wrong with you and the world seems a dreary place. Has your dog ever silently crept to your feet? Is yearning eyes turned to your face? Has he made you feel that he understands and all that he asks of you? Is to share your lot, be it good or ill, with a chance to be loyal and true? Are you branded a failure? He does not know. A sinner? He does not care. Your master to him? That's all that counts. A word in his day is fair. Your birth and your station are nothing to him. A palace and hut are the same. And his love is yours in honor and peace, and it's yours through disaster and shame. Though others forget you and pass you by, he is ever your faithful friend, ready to give you the best that is his, unselfishly unto the end. End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 of Carpenter's World Travels. Alaska, Our Northern Wonderland, by Frank Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 26. Reindeer Meat for American Markets The day is coming when reindeer meat will be sold in our American markets, just like beef and mutton. This reindeer meat will come from Alaska. It will be shipped in cold storage steamers and trains to all towns of the United States and will form the basis of a large packing industry. There are now about 250,000 reindeer in the territory, and if the herds continue their present rate of increase, it is only a matter of a few years before they will pass the million mark. It is estimated that Alaska can support 10 million reindeer, and eventually the American housewife should be able to buy juicy steaks and roasts from Alaska as cheaply as those from our Western prairies. In fact, the industry has already reached the point where the Alaskan reindeer meat packers are urging Congress to protect them by a high tariff from competition in Norway and Sweden, which enjoy low costs of production and cheap freight rates to the United States. The reindeer meat packing industry of Alaska is at its beginning. The first shipments were made about 8 years ago when 25 reindeer carcasses were shipped to Seattle. The meat was sold at from 20 to 25 cents a pound, and sales have increased each year since. Just now they are beginning to slaughter the deer for this season's shipment. I saw the work going on in a slaughterhouse back of Nome. The butcher shop is a large, galvanized iron building with corrals adjoining and passageways through which the deer are dragged into the slaughterhouse. I climbed to the roof and looked at the animals. There were 50 in each corral. They were as fat as butter and in splendid condition. These reindeer had enormous antlers, but they were not at all fierce. I had expected to see larger and heavier animals. Though of the average reindeer size, they were not taller than three-month-old Jersey calves. The dressed carcass usually weighs about 150 pounds, but government experts predict that careful breeding will shortly double this weight. The deer I saw slaughtered belonged to a stock company organized at Nome to develop the industry. The company is a closed corporation with an authorized capital of $750,000 owned by men of large means. One, for instance, is Yafet Lindberg, who, as I have said, was employed by the United States government to bring a herd of reindeer from Norway to Alaska about 1898 during the time of the Great Famine in Dawson. The idea then was to land the reindeer on the Alaska coast and drive them over the mountains to the Klondike to feed the starving American miners. The deer were landed, but the undertaking was not a success as far as giving the miners a large supply of food was concerned. Do you think a market for the meat can be created in the United States? I inquired of Mr. Lindberg. Yes, he answered, there is already such a market in Europe. Norway and Sweden, as well as Finland and Russia, have been shipping large quantities of reindeer meat for years to the chief European centers and even to the United States. Once when I was at Panama, I saw reindeer meat from Norway among the government supplies bought for the Canal Zone employees. The northern part of Russia consumes more reindeer meat than either beef or mutton. With lower freight rates, I expect deer meat to compete with the present domestic and foreign meat supplies of the United States. It is delicious and there will be a demand for it among the meat eaters who like to have a change of diet now and then. The reindeer meat packers say that the day will come when the packing houses here will have as many byproducts as those of Chicago. At present they are able to sell the skins and horns only, in addition to the meat, but in the future the blood will be used for tankage, the hoofs for the making of glue, and certain of the bones for other purposes. The horns are sold by the pound to men in Nome who ship them away to be made into knife handles. The hides are in demand for buckskin gloves and for shoe uppers. Some of the skins are tanned and sold as furs. Died reindeer fur is more beautiful than the pony skin coats worn in the States. The fur is finer and the skins are lighter. More than 30 years ago, 16 reindeer were brought across Bearing Strait from Siberia to establish the first reindeer colony at Unilaska in the Aleutian Islands. That experiment was not successful and it was some years later before a real start was made. The government began to support them in 1892 and continued for 10 years being stopped by Russia's prohibition of further exportation of the animals. In 1902, nine herds had been established and the government owned some 2,000 deer worth about $56,000. In addition, the natives had 2800 valued at $71,000. Today there are 150,000 reindeer in native hands. The cost to the United States government of introducing reindeer into Alaska was $335,000. All told, only 1,280 head were imported. Besides the more than 200,000 there now, approximately 100,000 have been killed for food or for shipment to the States. As it is estimated that the total increase in the original reindeer herds had been worth $6 million, the original investment of the government has increased about 2,000% in value in 30 years. The industry of reindeer raising has been developed through a system of apprenticeship. If a native youth wants to become a herd owner, he makes a contract with the school authorities to take a year's training, at the end of which he is given four female and two male deer. For the second year, he may keep five females and three males with annual increases until the fourth year, when he is given a herder certificate and left with six females and four males. He may then use the surplus males for food or sale. When his herd is between 50 and 150 strong, the herder is required to take on an apprentice and put him through the period of training. And as his herd increases, he must add more apprentices. According to the present laws, the Eskimos and Indians cannot sell their female deer, and private parties can acquire reindeer only from the Laplanders who brought them over and the missions which have some deer of their own independent of those belonging to the Eskimos. As to the number of deer Alaska can support, that has been put by the experts at a possible 10 million. The whole country is well adapted to reindeer raising and a lot of it is fit for nothing else. All told, it is estimated that there are in the territory 200,000 square miles or an area nearly five times as large as the state of New York, upon which the animals can pasture. They graze upon a peculiar kind of yellowish moss which covers the greater part of Northern Alaska. It is hard and tough and rather like coral. Its seldom grows over three inches high but spreads out over the ground. The reindeer will dig down under the snow with their hoofs to get at it. Among the men who have helped to build up the reindeer industry in Alaska is Mr. W. T. Lopp, head of the government schools of the territory. Mr. Lopp proposed to bring deer across Bearing Strait from Siberia at about the same time that Dr. Sheldon Jackson brought his first deer to the Aleutian Islands. A little later a number of deer were brought from Siberia and put in charge of Mr. Lopp at a station near Bearing Strait and from then until now he has had much to do with the reindeer owned by the natives. All of the reindeer herds so owned are under the charge of the Bureau of Education and today Mr. Lopp may be said to be the patriarchal head of the industry. The Eskimos, for whom Mr. Lopp has done so much, call him Tom Gora or Tom the Good Man. At one time Mr. Lopp with four Eskimos drove a herd of deer 750 miles across country to relieve a party of whalers who were starving on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. This trip lasted two months with the average temperature 20 or more degrees below zero. Part of the journey was over the floating ice of Katsabu Sound and when they got to the end of the ice the reindeer had to swim a short distance to the mainland. At first, Siberians were imported to teach the natives to handle the deer but they did not succeed and it was not until Mr. Lopp trained the young Eskimos that they were able to make much progress. Today they are expert in breeding and caring for them. They have large herds, some men owning as many as 1600 reindeer. One such might be called the Eskimo Reindeer King. He is one of the men who accompanied Mr. Lopp in his rescue of the whalers. His deer are worth $40,000. Said Mr. Lopp to me deer herding can be learned as easily as sheep herding and the Eskimo boys readily take to the business. Six or eight herders can take care of a thousand head of deer. The animals have to be driven about to where the moss patches are and watched lest they stray too far away. The herders live in tense or temporary huts. In the winter the deer are liable to stray several miles from camp and the boys go out in the morning to round them up. They are easily frightened and will scatter like a flock of sheep if approached by dogs. They chew the cud like a cow and if left to themselves will feed for a time and then lie down. The herders do not drive the reindeer but follow them. In summer the deer make straight for the seashore not only because they crave the salt which they do not find in the interior but because they are driven by the mosquitoes. The sea breezes blow away the mosquitoes. Mr. Lopp tells me that attempts to use the reindeer to transport freight and mail have not been successful. Many of the stories that have been published as to the speed of the reindeer are, he says, untrue. The ordinary deer cannot go more than 40 miles a day and it cannot make more than 25 miles a day on long journeys. The reindeer is not hardy in five or six days as long as one should be driven at a time. He says, Mr. Lopp, the deer has to get its own food on the way. The nutritive qualities of the moss are not as great as those of hay. You would not expect to drive a horse a long distance on hay and you cannot drive a reindeer a long distance on moss, especially if it has to travel all day and hunt for its moss at night. Only in the coldest parts of Alaska are reindeer used as teams and there by the Eskimos only. The usual sled load is about 300 pounds although as much as 1600 pounds has been carried by a single deer. An interesting development in the reindeer industry of Alaska, continued Mr. Lopp, is the holding of two annual reindeer fares. One of these is held at Akiak on the Upper Cuscoquem River and the other at Mary's Igloo on the Seward Peninsula. These fares are like the great stock shows of the United States as reindeer. The Eskimos bring their deer in from many miles around. They compete for prizes in lassoing, butchering, driving, feeding, and herding. They have races of many kinds and there are also prizes for the best kind of harness, sleds, and fur clothing. The prizes are contributed by the merchants of Nome, Seattle, and elsewhere. The fares, which last for several days, are the great events of the Eskimo year. Mary's Igloo fair began January 11th and lasted several days. Part of the time the thermometer was 35 degrees below zero, yet the people slept on the snow intense, without fire and all were comfortable in their sleeping bags of reindeer skin. The first event was the butchering of deer by three different methods and a discussion as to the best. In this contest, two Eskimos drove their knives to the heart at one blow. The others severed the jugular vein at the first stroke. The lassoing contest ran through three days and was won by the man who lassoed the most deer in 90 minutes. There were 800 deer in the herd used for this purpose and the winner lassoed 11 in the time allowed. The wild deer driving contest had 14 entries. Each of the contestants had to enter a herd and rope, throw, harness, hitch up and drive a hornless African bull one half mile to the river and return. He had then to unhitch, unharness and remove the halter, all unassisted. All together these fairs are proving a great success and they promise to increase in interest and profit as the years go on. Here is the way Uncle Sam himself sums up the reindeer industry of Alaska and what it has done for the Eskimo. The object of the importation was originally to furnish a supply for food and clothing to the Alaskan Eskimos in the vicinity of Bering Strait. Nomadic hunters and fishermen eking out a precarious existence upon the rapidly disappearing game animals and fish. Within less than a generation the reindeer industry has advanced through one entire stage of civilization, the Eskimos inhabiting the vast grazing lands from Point Barrow to the Aleutian Islands. It has raised them from the primitive to the pastoral stage. From nomadic hunters to civilized men having in their herds of reindeer assured support for themselves an opportunity to accumulate wealth. End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter The sleeper vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 27 Among the Eskimos I saw my first Eskimos along the lower Yukon. I met them again on the island of St. Michael and I find them here on the Seward Peninsula where there are said to be 3,500. Many people think that most of our Eskimos live along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. This is not true. Four fists of them are to be found south of the Arctic Circle and the majority of them live on coastal plains sloping down to Bering Sea. There are many Eskimos in the deltas of the Cuscoquem and Yukon rivers and their settlements are to be found also on the Alaskan Peninsula. So much has been published about the Eskimos. One might think them an important part of the human race. As a matter of fact they number all told not more than 30,000 and of these only 10 or 15,000 live in Alaska. There are a few in Laos and in Greenland, some of whom are civilized, a few in Labrador also civilized and a greater number scattered through the northern part of the Canadian Dominion from Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Mackenzie River. There are also a few in Siberia but know where are they of any importance except as a racial curiosity and in a small way as trappers of furs for the world's markets. The Eskimos have a style of dress all their way but many of them especially in the towns wear much the same kind of clothing as the whites. Many of the women wear blouse like parkas of Calico trimmed with fur and hoods of cloth fringed with Wolverine which stands out from their faces. This is the most popular fur for parkas because in winter the breath does not freeze into icicles upon it as on other furs. The parka comes down over trousers tucked into long boots or mucklucks of hide. No matter what their dress it is easy to tell the Eskimos their faces are Mongolian in type. I've seen many just like them in my travels through Siberia and along the Great Wall in North China. The Eskimos eyes slant like those of the people of the desert of Gobi and their faces are of the same bronze or copper color. They are lighter than the North American Indians but they have the same high cheekbones that faces are square rather than long with little fat noses. The young men and women have rosy cheeks and their lips are bright red. Most of the elderly women have tattooed stripes extending vertically from the lower lip down the chin to indicate that they are married and now and then you see a man with a cuff button of bone thrust through the flesh near the edge of his mouth. The gnome Eskimos have black eyes and jet black hair which are in long braids down their backs. These people have a friendly honest look. They are full of fun and it takes but little to bring out a smile. They are naturally intelligent and good traders. I wish I could show you the Eskimo babies. They are the brightest sweetest and I might add the dirtiest little pieces of human clay that I have yet met within my travels over the world. They are full of fun and romp about mimicking their fathers and mothers and everybody else. Most of them are dressed in furs and some look like large fuzzy balls. As their parents have a superstition that if the children be photographed their souls will be under the control of the photographer. Even though he be far away they run from the camera. It required considerable coaxing for me to get my Eskimo children's photographs and I was able to succeed only by pointing the camera in another direction and then turning the camera away and making the snapshot before they understood they were being taken. Another Eskimo superstition is the belief that in every child is the soul of one of its ancestors. Therefore they will never punish their children for fear of insulting some respected great-grandfather or mother. A story is told in gnome of an Eskimo whose son was rather severely thrashed by a teacher at one of the government schools. He promptly shot the schoolmaster then a tribal council was called to see what was to be done where the Eskimos knew the man would be punished by the United States. By the decision of the council the murderer was made to dig his own grave and then he chose his nephew to shoot him as he stood beside it. Many of the natives now speak English and their children go to the government schools. 21 schools are maintained on the Seward Peninsula where 100 Eskimo children attend them. Some of them have good minds and many reach a high proficiency in reading and writing. One of the little girls recently went from here to Plattsburgh, New York where she entered the fifth grade. In a class below her in the same Eskimo school here in Alaska were two boys, one a full blooded Eskimo and the other the son of a white man. The white boy who had been to school in the states thought he could easily survive. At the end of the first week the Eskimo was at the head of the class a place he held throughout the year. That boy studied arithmetic including percentage, interest, commission, freight and profit and loss. He could calculate the cost of whale bone from the time it came from the whale until it was turned into goods and brought back to Alaska. These people are always smiling or laughing. They sing and seem to be fond of music and dancing. It was last night to one of their dances held in an old school house not far from the Eskimo section of Gnome. The school house had but one room about 30 feet square. It was walled with windows and the light of the midnight sun made the interior as bright as day. On a bench under the windows set the musicians eight Eskimos dressed in native costume and the room was filled with dancers. The music came from drums like tambourines consisting of a hoop as big around as a dishpan over which skin was tightly stretched. Each man pounded his drum with a little white rod the length of a walking stick. Some of the drums were larger than others and the eight musicians produced all the notes of the octave. They sang as they played and kept perfect time. The first dance was by five sturdy young men clad in long skin boots and trousers and shirts. All were gloves skin or fur and all were bare headed. The dancing was largely a series of postures. The men stamped the floor. They sprang into the air. They swung their arms this way and that keeping time to the music. They sang the while and loud raucous tones. Their voices changing in expression according to the story of the song. Now they seemed angry as though singing of war and again laughing when the tale was comic. Much dancing was like that of Russia and one or two of the dancers were natives of Siberia. Later women and girls entered the dance and at one time a young woman with a baby on her back stood in the center and let the fun. I cannot describe the enthusiasm of the Eskimo onlookers. Around the walls standing up or sitting on their heels were scores of these copper skin people. Their slanting eyes a shine and their hands clapping themselves in the music. The crowd was more appreciative than any I have ever seen at a concert or dance in the states. After the dancing was over we went outside the school house for an exhibition of blanket tossing. 20 or 30 of the natives surrounded a tanned walrus hide about 10 feet square holding it low with their hands. Then an Eskimo boy jumped into the middle of the hide. He stood upon his feet and at the word they jerk the hide taught sending him up into the air. As he fell they came closer together and then again through themselves back tossing him higher and higher and continuing to do so as long as he could keep his feet. Later an Eskimo girl took the boys place and then one or two of the strangers stepped on the hide and were tossed to the sky amid the hilarity of their Eskimo friends. We took up a collection distributing seeds among the performers. The day is long gone by when the Eskimos will give a polar bear skin or a bale of fox skins for a fish hook. They now know the value of their furs and bring them to the best markets. The other day the king of the diamede islands in Bering Strait midway between North America and Asia brought the annual fur catch of his people here to gnome for sale. The furs consisted of the skins of fox, bear and other animals worth several thousands of dollars. I watched the sale which was held in the hotel billiard room. The skins were spread out over the tables and the old chief clad all in furs said half doubled up in a chair smoking an Eskimo pipe accepting or rejecting the bids. His face was seen with wrinkles as so with tattooing and he reminded me of the Maori chiefs I've seen in New Zealand. His skin was dark brown but his bristly hair was as white as the fur of his polar fox skins. They told me he was honest and much respected. They said he was wealthy from an Eskimo standpoint being worth perhaps as much as ten thousand dollars and owning a schooner that cost him three thousand dollars. The Eskimos about gnome make their living by fishing and hunting and selling ivory carvings. I'm surprised at the exquisite to bring to the hotels to sell to the tourists. They use the tusks of the walrus carving upon them images of men, bears seals and wolves. They make cribbage boards of these tusks and paper knives and handles for canes and umbrellas. A very large walrus tusk was recently carved and sent to the president of the United States. Among the carvings sold are some of mammoth ivory from the tusks of prehistoric animals which roamed Siberia and Alaska thousands of years ago. I have seen many such tusks since I came to this part of the world. They have been unearthed along the Klondike River and are to be seen in Dawson and Fairbanks, either preserved indoors or standing against buildings out in the open. At a mining camp outside a miner's cabin on the north fork of the Klondike, I found one as thick through as my leg. All of the Eskimo carving today is done with steel tools but there is work in existence that dates back to the stone age. The older Eskimos say that their ancestors used tools of flint and it is known that they have been carving ivory for many generations. Some of the very poorest of them and those that live in the most out-of-the-way places are noted for their fine work. They seem to do it for past time and make many toys for their children. They have a way of softening the bone, horn or ivory before they work it. To make the carvings more distinct, they etch lines on the surface with a black paint made of a mixture of gunpowder and blood. This, when put on the freshly cut bone, makes a permanent stain. The Eskimos are rapidly changing. They live differently from those described in most books of Arctic travel. On the Seward Peninsula, they have houses of wood and skin and the snow houses comparatively unknown except in the heart of winter. Some of their winter houses are cellars four or five feet deep and 20 or 25 feet square. Holes of driftwood are laid about the cellar to heighten the walls and timbers are placed across the top. Then dirt and sod are piled around the hole until they have what looks like a great mound of earth. In the center of the top about as large as the page of a newspaper across which is stretched a sheet of seal or walrus bladder to give light to the house below. The house is entered by a tunnel connected with a shaft or well six or seven feet deep in which is a ladder. Around the walls of the living room is a platform which is the sleeping place of the family. Such houses are so warm that the Eskimos often go almost naked while indoors. The dwellings are dark, badly ventilated and often infested with vermin. Some of the Eskimos near the white settlements are changing the style of their architecture. They are building homes above ground buying window sash and glass panes and doors like ours. Many of them are now using cook stoves in place of the old seal oil lamps and the white traders tell me that the Eskimo women are learning to cook. They bake an excellent bread with the aid of yeast made from hops which they buy at the store. These traders laugh at the story so often published of a tallow candle being the stick candy of the Eskimo boy. They say the natives are fond of fat but that their chief use of it is in connection with other foods. I ask one of these traders to tell me what goods he sold to the Eskimos. He replied, everything under the sun. The staples are sugar and flour, especially sugar. They like sweets and one Eskimo will eat more sugar than a whole family of whites. We sell them all sorts of canned goods such as peaches, apricots, jams and preserves. Of late they have been buying clothes including underwear and socks. They even buy thermos bottles to take along with them on their sealing trips. They want steel fish hooks and the best of guns. The Eskimo knows a good rifle. He usually buys a repeater for it. End of Chapter 27 Chapter 28 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B Chapter 28 School Republics of the Arctic Eskimo villages with town councils elected by the people. Eskimo schools governed as republics organized by the pupils. Cooperative stores run by the natives to get the most for their work and their money. Christian communities modeled upon the golden rule as much as any in the United States. These are some of the features of civilization developed by Uncle Sam among the natives of Alaska. The work was started by the missionaries shortly after we took possession of the territory. A decade later the government came to the aid of the missionaries and later still it took up the job as an independent undertaking. The advance has been steady and now Uncle Sam is really the great father of his copper skin children of the far north. He has already spent more than a million dollars upon their schools and is now laying out something like two hundred thousand dollars a year in educating and civilizing them. He is watching over their health. He is promoting their industries. He is teaching them self government and making them American citizens. He is in short up building them in every possible way. This work is being done by the Bureau of Education at Washington through its Alaskan division with headquarters at Seattle. It has superintendents traveling over the country and studying methods for the betterment of the natives. The chief of the Alaskan division is William T. Locke who came to the Bering Strait as a missionary teacher to the Eskimos when Benjamin Harrison was president. He has covered the entire Arctic coast with reindeer and has visited most of the interior on dog sleds. He covers thousands of miles every year on his inspection trips. According to Mr. Locke Alaska is about the largest school division on the face of the globe. The territory is divided into five districts each of which has its own superintendent. One of the districts is twice as big as Illinois while each of the four others is on the average larger than Missouri. Every one of the 67 government schools for the Eskimos and Indians of Alaska has its own building. These houses are usually one story and are made of frame or logs. They are heated by wood and are lighted during the dark days of the Arctic winter with kerosene oil or gasoline. In most of the schools five-hour sessions are held for five days of each week. The terms vary in length according to the seasons and the occupations of the locality. Lessons are cut short when the big hunts are on and the killing of a whale on the ice may give the children a vacation for a week. There are one or more white teachers in every school and every teacher is a social worker. The school house is the community center, the chief meeting place of the people. The little Eskimos are taught to honor old glory which floats over all school buildings. These children are shown the bad effects of drink and are not allowed to use tobacco in school. This is a great reform. Tobacco has always been common among the Eskimos who learned its use from visiting whalers. It was formerly a rarity to find a child over 10 years of age who did not smoke, chew or use snuff. Along cuts boo sound, the Eskimos mix their smoking tobacco with shredded willow pith to make it go further and they char the fungus of the spruce tree and mix the powder with finely cut black Kentucky tobacco for snuff. The use of alcoholic liquor long one of the curses of these natives is now on the decline. The poorest of whiskey and alcohol is smuggled in by the whalers and traded for furs. The Eskimos of the far north long ago learned how to distill alcohol from molasses, sugar and flour mixed with water and oil can. Into the can was inserted a gun barrel fitted with dough or clay to render the joints air tight. This gun barrel was then passed through a block of ice which condensed the steam from the mixture so that it came out drop by drop as a crude spirit. Sanitation is being taught by the teachers and doctors. Medical directors under the Bureau of Education visit the schools and instruct the teachers how to take care of the natives. There are now nine doctors and 14 nurses continually working among these people waging war on tuberculosis and other prevalent diseases but the number is not sufficient and larger appropriations from Congress are needed to provide an adequate medical service. The teachers do all they can to instruct the people how to take care of themselves. There are bathtubs in most of the schools once a week. Even the grownups occasionally come in for a wash. The teacher at Kivalina one of the Eskimo villages north of Bearing Strait says that the bathtub is one of the chief features of his school. During a single term 492 baths were recorded at the Kivalina school. In these baths, soap is now used and the disgusting make ships of the past have been fashion sweat baths still prevail. These are held once a week during the winter. The bathhouse is made of logs and sod. A fire is built on the earth in the center and the smoke comes out through a square hole in the roof. When everything is red hot the coals are covered and a skin is placed over the roof hole so that no heat escapes from the building. Perspiration is induced by beating the body with bundles of willows. The Eskimo bathers sit on a platform at one end of the house and the heat serves in place of towels for drawing them. Sometimes they rush out from this bath and pour over themselves water from holes in the ice. I have been greatly interested in the Eskimo school republics established all along the coast of the Arctic ocean as well as in the Seward Peninsula and in the Yukon and Cuscoquem basins. There is one at Wainwright between Icy Cape and Point Barrow which has enacted its own school laws and governs itself under the teacher's guidance. All pupils who can read in the first reader are eligible for membership. The officers consist of a president, mayor and judge each with a term of one month. There is a council which meets every Friday afternoon when the president takes the chair and laws are enacted. No bill can become a law unless it is passed by the council and signed by the mayor. Among the laws are no citizen shall speak Eskimo in the school room. No citizen shall whisper or look behind in school time. No citizen shall be noisy or rude. He shall not wear his skin parka into the school room and he shall be fined if he comes to school with a dirty face or uncombed hair. The laws define the duties of the citizen pupils and the work each is to do in keeping the school clean. There are records of attendance of the game killed by the village hunters of the weather and also of the amount of paper, pencils and books used. The mayor of this school has three police officers. One is a truan officer, one a health officer and another the monitor of the kindergarten. One of the police officers is always present in the school room even during the recess and after hours when the school house is used as a sort of club. In the arena the school republic has a president, vice president, judge, two peace officers, two health officers and two commissioners of work. The health officers watch over the cleanliness of all the children in the village. They make everyone clean himself of vermin and when a new child comes to school he is taken to the bathroom where his hair is combed and his body rigidly inspected. He is made to wash his hands and face and if his clothing is dirty he is taken home to have it washed or changed. The commissioners of work are responsible for the manual labor of the school such as taking care of the fires sweeping the school room and bringing in ice and snow for the bath tank. Kilalina, like nearly all the Eskimo villages of the far north has a town council. The council is composed of five men. Three are old Eskimos and the other two are younger men who can read, write and speak English. The council takes charge of all matters relating to the village including supplies of food and fuel. One year the stock of firewood was not sufficient. The next summer under the direction of the council driftwood was brought down on rafts from the beach 20 miles away and a municipal woodpile large enough for the following winter was built. The council is now considering the supply of dried fish for next season and will establish municipal fish traps along the rivers. The Eskimo town at Noatek on the Noatek river some distance above Kotsbu sound in Arctic Alaska has a government consisting of five trustees who settle all disputes among the people. It has also annually elected peace officers. These men have kept liquor from coming into their village. The teacher there says that not one drop of liquor was brought into Noatek during the whole last winter. One of the most interesting schools of Alaska is that at Point Barrow the farthest north school in the world. The settlement there consists of six or eight white men in addition to the teacher and about 200 natives. The whites are engaged in whaling. The Eskimos fish and trap and catch whales and seals. They have also reindeer which add to their income and on the whole they are well to do. The school house at Point Barrow includes the home of the teacher. It has a blacksmith shop with portable forge and the boys are taught how to use the white man's tools. They learn carpentry and make all sorts of things from dog chains to coverings for canoes. The shop itself was built by volunteer labor. The school at Selawik has a sewing department and a sewing machine. The machine is used by the women of the village and girls come from miles around to learn how to make garments. It is used by the young men too in making sails for their boats. In one school on the Arctic Ocean there are three classes in cooking each week. The girls make bread, rolls, biscuits and donuts both at school and at home. Sourdough biscuits and hotcakes are now to be had in every igloo and they have great feasts on Thanksgiving and Christmas sometimes cooked for the whole village by the girl pupils. The advance in sewing among the Eskimos is remarkable. Not many years ago a great part of the sewing was done with bone needles and the only materials were skins. The skins were so hard that they had to be chewed in the mouth before the needle would go through and there are many Eskimo women with teeth ground down to the gums by their work as seamstresses. Every school now has its sewing class and in some of them an hour a day is devoted to making garments of one kind or another. Smaller girls hem towels or dish cloths and make gingham aprons for the girls of the cooking class. In one school, every girl above the primary grade has made a dress for herself. The older girls also make dresses for the smaller children. In some of the schools they are embroidering on cotton the birds, flowers and animals of Alaska. Instruction in darning and mending is given to both boys and girls. The Eskimo children are learning and are passing from the stage of barter to credit and cash. Arithmetic lessons include problems on the buying and selling of goods, the selling of furs and the importation of articles from the outside. At Point Barrow, the advanced classes use the price lists in the mail order catalogs and estimate what things cost in furs. They compute the expense of sending fox skins to Seattle by mail and figure out the value of bear skins, whale bone and ivory. Money values are thoroughly explained and the relations of time and distance are taught. In the past, these things had little significance among the Eskimos. Distance was reckoned by the number of sleeps during a journey. The Wainwright School, for instance, is three sleeps south of Point Barrow and one sleep north of Icy Cape. End of Chapter 28 Chapter 29 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska, our northern wonderland, by Frank Carpenter. This recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Chapter 29 Furs Seals and Fox Farms As I write, the Steamship Victoria is carrying me across Bering Sea. We have just left the Pribiloff Islands, where there are now more than half a million furs seals. Of this number, over 150,000 are breeding females, each of which can be relied upon to yield one baby a year. Of the babies, one half will be males, whose skins will sometime be sold in the firm markets of the world, adding to the enormous profits we have already cleared from the islands. But what are the Pribiloffs and just where do they lie on the map of the world? They are really rocky, volcanic peaks in the midst of Bering Sea, so small that they would not make a fly spec on a chart of the Pacific Ocean the size of the billiard table. They have an area all told of less than 60 square miles, and are about the most forbidding looking places on earth. The islands are composed of alternate stretches of sand and broken rock, in some cases backed by cliffs, rising 400 feet high. They are in one of the gloomiest parts of the ocean. In the winter, they are surrounded by ice flows and ice birds, while in summer they are wrapped in fog. The sun seldom shines upon them, and it is only by means of the compass and chart that ships are able to make their way there. The nearest land is the Aleutian chain over 200 miles to the south. From time immemorial, the Pribiloffs have been one of the chief breeding places of the fur seal, and since their discovery, they have supplied most of the seal skins of the world. There are today only three seal rookeries or breeding places of any importance. One of these belongs to Uruguay, one to the Russians and one to the United States. The first is the Lobos Islands, off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. The Russian rookery is in the western part of Bering Sea. The United States rookery on the Pribiloffs is the largest and most profitable of all. From it, more than two million skins were taken during the latter part of the last century. And even now, under the strict government regulation of seal killing, it sends to the great fur seals at St. Louis some 15,000 skins every year. The Pribiloff Islands were named for the Russian sea captain who discovered them just 10 years after our Declaration of Independence was signed. The Russians had heard from the Aleutian Islanders a tradition that the fur seals came from the north and they scouted over Bering Sea for 18 years before they found just where the breeding place was. Pribiloff spent three years searching for them and he cruised for weeks near the islands without being able to find them. One story relates how he heard the seals barking and then ran into the island of St. George, which was covered with the animals. A few weeks later he discovered St. Paul and a half million skins were taken that year. The chief market for the furs was China and the Russians grew rich from their sales. At one time they took so many skins that the killing was stopped for some years, the females being spared. This was the case at the time we bought Alaska when the herd contained it is estimated from 2 to 5 million animals. After the United States took possession the islands were leased by the government to the Alaska commercial company, which paid a rental of $55,000 per annum and a royalty of $2.62 on each skin taken. That company killed almost 2 million seals during the 20 years it held the Pribiloffs. After that they were leased to the northern commercial company at $60,000 a year and attacks of about $10 a skin. The latter company took several hundred thousand skins. At the expiration of its lease in 1910 the government took over the islands. The sealing industry is now managed by the Bureau of Fisheries under the Department of Commerce. The first seal comes to the islands only during the summer. For the rest of the year his life is spent in the sea. He arrives at the Pribiloffs in the late spring and his winter comes on, makes his way southward through the Aleutians and down as far as California. Some of the large males winter in the Gulf of Alaska while the ones will go as far south as the latitude of San Francisco. The females go very far south. In coming back the adult males get to the breeding grounds about the 1st of May. The females and the older bachelors stay away until June. The two year olds come along in July and the yearlings in the latter part of August and in early September. A full-grown bull often measures 6 or 7 feet in length and 6 feet between the tips of the outstretched four flippers. He weighs from 100 to 500 pounds. The cow seals are between 4 and 5 feet long and often weigh up to 100 pounds. The pups when first born are about a foot long and weigh only 3 or 4 pounds. They are born on the land and the mothers have to teach them to swim. They begin to learn at 2 months of age and soon become so skillful that at the end of the season they go away with their eggs and remain for 6 months in the ocean without landing at all. The first seal industry is just a stock raising business and the animals can be controlled in the breeding season even more easily than horses or cows. The males do not begin to breed until they are 5 years old when they develop a wig or mane which distinguishes them from the younger animals. The cows begin to bear at 3 years and continue for a decade or more. The males under 5 years old and those unable to secure and control harems are called bachelors. The superfluous males are the ones killed for furs. The seals are polygamous and each bull of full size claims the right to as many cows as he can appropriate. In some cases, the fiercest of the bulls have had as many as 75 cows but experts have found that each harem bull should have only about 35 cows to keep a herd at its best. In their summer migration to the Pribilofs each of the old bulls picks out a spot on the rocks near the water about 50 feet in circumference which he intends to use as a home for himself and his harem. About a month later the cows begin to come and he sees that he gets his share, fighting any other bull who attempts to come into his territory. A short time after the cows arrive each gives birth to a pup and from that time on she goes out to see now and then to get food. She often swims as far as 300 miles away to find good feeding grounds. The bulls which are fat upon their arrival eat nothing for several months or until near the end of the breeding season. After that they occasionally go out for a meal but come back to the islands. There is very little seafood about the Pribilofs and at present horse feeding grounds are about 100 miles away. The best are on the submerged plateaus or banks situated a little north of the Aleutian islands. The seals eat chiefly squid but are fond also of herring, smelts, salmon and other kinds of fish upon which they gorge themselves whenever they can. They can sleep in the water resting on their backs with their hind flippers held aloft and their noses just above the surface. While on the land they sleep the greater part of the time and one can frequently see the master of the harem and his cows and even the pups all fast asleep. During the summer the pups suckle their mothers living upon milk until the approach of cold weather when they have learned to swim and can catch their own fish and squid. As winter comes on the cows and pups start away first and the bulls and bachelors follow sometime later. I am told that the best furs are coming from the animals of three and four years and the government aims to kill only the surplus bachelors of those ages. The cows are all kept for breeding. The killing which is done after a regular system begins about the last of June and ends before the first of September. Each seal selected to be killed is done by a blow on the head with a heavy club and while he is still unconscious he is stabbed to the heart and blood. The dead seals are laid in rows to be skinned by the natives. They leave on the skin a layer of fat from a fourth to a half inch thick and work so skillfully that the skin comes off as a sort of bag with two round holes at the front where the four flippers went through. The most expert can skin a seal in two minutes. The next process is salting and curing the skins which are then packed up in pairs and shipped to the markets. Formerly all of them were sent to London and the world's market for raw furs. There they were graded according to size and quality and sold at auction in lots of 100. In 1910 the average price obtained by the government for about 13,000 skins taken on these islands was $33. Since the world war the government's fur auctions have been held at St. Louis. In a recent year 14,852 seal skins were sold at the average of $115 a skin. By the treaties made in 1911 the killing of the animals at sea has been largely stopped. We have our revenue cutters on guard about the islands and we watch for Japanese, English or American sealing pirates. In the past a fleet of such boats watched for the seals as they swam to and from their feeding grounds and as they made their way northward and southward during the year. The seals were also destroyed by the White House as well as the bulls to such an extent that they took about 900,000 skins in the 30 years prior to 1911. They destroyed more skins and they secured the estimates being that for every skin taken 4 or 5 seals were killed and lost. Moreover many of the females so destroyed were with pup or had pups on land which were left to starve. If the mother seal dies there is young for the seal will not suckle any but her own offspring. The total losses from pelagic sealing ran high into the millions. Besides the seal fisheries on the Pribilofs the herds of blue foxes maintained there by the Bureau of Fisheries are sources of considerable revenue to the United States. Nearly a thousand skins have been sold in a year bringing in $80,000. In the Pribilofs the fox herds are allowed to run at large but in the Aleutians and the islands of southeastern Alaska where many foxes are raised they are usually kept in pens on regular fox farms. Fox farming appears to be one of the big coming industries of southern and southeastern Alaska mainly on the coast or islands. Climatic conditions seem to favor especially the blue foxes which are decidedly more prolific than the black or the silver foxes though the skins of the latter bring the best prices. I have visited some of Alaska's fox farms. At a distance such a farm looks like a great chicken yard with walls of woven wire and little coops inside. The wire is much like chicken wire but is made of tough steel and reaches as high as that about a tennis court. At the bottom it is sunk about four feet and is then bent over so that it runs under the ground for two feet to prevent the foxes from burrowing them under it. At the top the wire has an overhang of two feet this is to keep the foxes from climbing out of the pen. Each fox pen has its own kennel made of boards. It is entered by a board chute up which the fox runs when it goes in but sometimes a wooden pipe a foot square serves as an entrance. The foxes run in and out of these pipes and usually carry their food inside to eat it. Usually but one pair of foxes is kept in a single pen. The animals are so timid that they have to be handled carefully especially in the mating season when they are sensitive to strange sights, noises and smells. Most of the fox farmers will not permit visitors to enter their property for fear they will frighten the foxes. When excited the animals grow crazy and sometimes eat their young. On the other hand they get acquainted with their keepers and some time that strangers can handle them. During my visit to a fox farm on the Tanana river my daughter who was with me picked up two little silver grey fellows the size of kittens and hugged them to her while I made a snapshot. Those foxes are worth a thousand dollars a piece. The baby foxes often kept to nursery pens to themselves have long bushy tails little sharp noses and eyes sparkling like jet. The same pens are sometimes baby martens with heads not bigger than a baby's fist and eyes the size of a blackheaded pin. The Martin has a gorgeous yellow throat. The rest of his fur is a rich brown. It is really a sable and is sometimes known as the Alaska sable the best of which are equal to the sables of Russia. On the same farm I saw one litter of foxes being mothered by a cat. She had three baby foxes which would be worth from $500 to $1,000 a piece and possibly more. The mother of these foxes was a very nervous animal and the farmer feared she might kill her young so they were taken away and given to the cat in place of her kittens which seemed to be a satisfactory arrangement for both cat and baby foxes. It seems that it is necessary to have cats around a fox farm for such complications. There is a story that one man in eastern Canada lost a litter of silver foxes because he would not pay a high price for a cat. The mother of the foxes had died and in looking around to find a cat in the proper condition the farmer discovered but one. The owner of the cat appreciating his need said he would not sell his cat for less than $500. The fox farmer indignantly refused. The result was that he lost five little foxes that might have been worth $2,500 and all for a $500 cat. One fox raised by a cat at Fairbanks had a pelt valued at $800. There is a great demand among the fox farmers for wild foxes for breeding. One is paid as high as $1,000 a piece for black foxes and $100 and upward for red ones. There is a closed season for killing foxes but some of the farmers have been paying the Indians the live young they catch and shipping them to the east as ranch bred. Not long ago the government fur warden found 42 live young in the hands of Indians and turned them all loose. This number included 16 blacks worth at least $1,000 a piece. When they let the foxes go from $16,000 to $20,000 fled off into the woods. The Indians could not help themselves for fear of the law. When an Indian finds a fox nest he watches it until the closed season is over and then tries to catch the foxes with traps so protected by wrappings that they will hold the animals without injuring them. End of Chapter 29 Chapter 30 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter Recording by Betty B Chapter 30 The Illusion Islands The least known parts of Uncle Sam's dominions are the Illusion Islands the shores of which I am now coasting. I have crossed Bering Sea and traveled along the Alaska Peninsula a great tongue of land extending from the southwestern end of the territory as far as from New York to Cleveland. I have skirted the coast under the shadow of the Katmai volcano which a few years ago spread a coat of ashes broadcast over the nearby and have seen something of the island of Kodiak the largest in Alaska where the government is now experimenting in dairy and stock farming. The whole of this region is practically unknown. Bering Sea is twice as big as Hudson Bay it has a greater area than the Gulf of Mexico. It is as long from north to south as from Chicago to New Orleans and its width is greater than the distance between the mouth of the Hudson and the Missouri River at Omaha. The sea is colder than the Pacific Ocean from which it is shut off by the Illusion Islands and the climatic conditions are such that it is usually shrouded in fog. It is noted for its storms and during the winter a great part of it is covered with ice. When we left Nome the water was smooth and we had no wind to speak of all the way to the Illusions. The sky was bright with fleecy clouds floating here and there through it while now and then a fog bank or so was to be seen in the distance. There was not enough breeze to raise whitecaps. There the color of the water was green. A day or so later it changed to a deep blue caused by the greater depth or possibly by the clouds. The northern half of Bering Sea is so shallow that if you could drop the Washington Monument down into it the aluminum tip would reach above the surface of the waves. Farther south along the Illusions it reaches a depth of almost two miles. Near the islands are the great banks somewhat like those of Newfoundland upon which fee tens of millions of cod and halibut. They are among the best fishing banks of the world and are a big asset in our aquatic wealth. As we came south I talked with the captain about his voyages. During the open season from June to October he makes five or six round trips from Seattle to Gnome. The ships often break their way in through floating ice and go out chased by jack frost. The ice comes to Gnome almost in a night. It freezes first along the beach and the whole sea becomes mushy. The water is covered with whitecaps of slush. Then a cold spell will come and the sea will freeze far out from the shore. The ice may not be thick at first and it breaks with the tide and floats away. If the wind blows toward the land it is driven on to the beach and banks up. When the winter is established the ice may extend from Gnome as far as Nunivac Island and floats in from the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait. When the ice breaks in the spring it goes almost as fast as it comes in the fall. A channel may form between the shore and the solid frozen body and there may be a river of water with banks of ice on each side. Sometimes the earliest passengers are landed upon the ice and the ships are frozen in. I shall not forget my first site of the Aleutian Islands. We had passed no land for two days when we came to the island of Nunivac at the end of the Alaska Peninsula which forms the beginning of the great chain of islands reaching from Alaska almost to Asia. The islands lie in a crescent over the sea. They form the arc of an enormous circle reaching from the western to the eastern hemisphere. Nunivac lies on our side of the world but at two the last of our islands is in the Orient, 1500 miles distant and not very far from Kamchatka. At our polling station on the island of Casca which is in the eastern hemisphere the evening twilight has not disappeared when the sun is rising in Maine. John Bull often boasts that the sun never sets on British possessions. The same is true of Uncle Sam's Dominions when we take in Atu Island and the Philippine archipelago. The Aleutians are the heads of volcanoes which have been almost drowned in the sea. The island of Nunivac has two active volcanoes. Shishaldon, the highest of these mountains has an altitude of more than 9,000 feet. We could see it only as we sailed through Nunivac Pass. The foothills were green but far up the sides the grass was lost in the snow of the mountains and the peak was hidden in clouds. During our passage the sun seemed to set between the ship and the island. There was a great black cloud floating in the sky between us and Nunivac. Out of the bottom of the cloud came four broad shafts of light making a translucent veil between the island and losing themselves in the sea. Through the rainbow huge shafts we could plainly see the smoky outlines of the island beyond. The rays of the sun seemed to mark the end of this side of the world in Nunivac to belong to the other side. Above the black cloud from which came the rainbow veil the sky was a brilliant blue and higher still were golden clouds painted by the hidden sun. It was a combination of high and land and sea that I have never seen in any other part of the world. Nunivac, the largest of the Aleutian islands, guards the chief pass into Bering Sea. Near it is Unalaska upon which is Dutch Harbor one of the safe ports of the territory. The harbor is on a bay backed by hills sloping gently up from the water until they are lost in high mountains behind. Captain Cook just two years after we declared our independence of England. The Aleutians had been discovered by Vitus Bering in 1741 but Cook was the first one to tell the English much about them. He found the natives gentle and inoffensive and said that they might serve as a pattern to the most civilized nation on earth. He described them as short, plump and well formed. The women wore garments of seal skin and some of the men had clothes skins with the feathers next to their flesh. The men had holes in their lips in which they wore buttons of bone. Their houses were holes in the earth covered with a framework of driftwood and held up by whale bone. They entered through a dark tunnel going down a ladder. The principal room was from 10 to 20 feet in diameter. They used lamps for heating and their household utensils consisted of bowls, spoons and buckets. The ladder made the straw closely woven. When the Russians took possession there were about 30,000 of these Aleuts on the islands. They were hunters and fishers and were skilled in catching the sea otter then about the most valuable fur known. The Russians exploited the Aleuts to such an extent that they were almost exterminated. They have continued to decrease since we bought Alaska and it is doubtful whether there are a thousand of them living today. At Dutch Harbor and on some of the other islands the people are now living in buildings erected by the whales but on many of the Islets they have homes half underground living much as they did when Captain Cook came. They are very poor and now that the government has made a bird and game reservation of the Aleutians their condition is worse than ever. According to the present law one has to have a permit from the government before he can hunt them in these islands. Dr. Lester Jones who as a representative of the Department of Commerce traveled among them a few years ago said that some of the Islanders live 800 miles from a post office and that getting a hunting permit might mean 3400 miles of canoe travel back and forth to the mail. It would probably take several months to get such a permit and there could be no surety as to just when the reply would arrive. I am surprised at the climate of the Aleutians. Their summers are cooler than Sitka while their winter weather is milder than that of either Tennessee or Kentucky. At Unalaska the average January temperature is 30 degrees above zero. All of the islands are damp and foggy. The rainfall is about 10 inches a month and Unalaska is said to have 250 rainy days in the year. On the island of Akuton is one of the two whaling stations now operated in Alaska. The other is at Port Armstrong on the southern end of Baranov Island about 1000 miles north of Seattle. Conditions have greatly changed in the whaling industry since some of our Yankee forefathers made fortunes in the business. In place of their little sailing ships large steamers painted sea green are used. The harpoon is now fired from a 3 inch gun and attached to a cable operated by a steam winch which pulls in the whale after it's been speared. The whaling vessels have air compressors for inflating the bodies of the whales after they have been killed so that they can be more easily towed through the water. The best whalers today are Norwegians who are found in all the seas where whales are hunted. The largest catches are in the world southernmost waters, the number taken in oceans of Europe and North America being hardly one fourth of the whole. Whale beef is said to be both palatable and nutritious and has occasionally been sold in American markets. A single whale will furnish as much meat as 100 of the largest short horn cattle. The flesh is ordinarily used only for fertilizer along with the bones and sells for very little money while the oil brings only a fraction of the former price and the once enormous sales bone have shrunk to almost nothing. It has been suggested that the fish canneries might put up whale meat during the several months each year that they now stand idle. Whale fishing in Alaskan waters is very dangerous or if the vessels stay north too long they run the risk of being caught in the ice. Once 300 whalers from a fleet of eight vessels were forced to winter at Point Barrow and would have starved to death if the United States government had not sent a relief expedition with a herd of reindeer for food. It is questionable whether the allusions will ever support any considerable population. So far they have no whites except a few fox farmers who are trying to raise blue foxes. There has been some talk of using the islands for daring but there is a difference of opinion as to whether it would pay. The climate is so damp that grain will not last as of all kinds grow in abundance and on the low lands there is more or less grass throughout the year. The soil is a vegetable mold mixed with volcanic ash. The country is very rugged and there are no places where farms of any size could be made. There is no doubt that cattle can be raised on the island of Kodiak but Kodiak is not one of the allusions. It lies far to the eastward being only about 200 miles west of Seward. It is south of the Alaskan peninsula and separated from it by the Shelikov Strait. Kodiak is the largest of the Alaskan islands. Its area is almost as great as the state of Connecticut and it raises some of the finest grass that waves under the American flag. The island is for the most part treeless and the hills are covered with green. The Russians raised cattle there and Americans had farms under cultivation as far back as 80. The government stock farm is at the eastern end about 15 miles from the harbor and town of Kodiak. The town has several hundred people nearly all of whom have gardens in which they raise cabbages, potatoes and turnips. Some of them keep cattle and put up some hay to be used during the snowstorm. The experiment station has barns and silos and all the equipment of a modern cattle farm. The fields are fenced with barbed wire and the stables are of modern construction. There is a dairy building equipped with separators and other butter making machinery and experiments in breeding cattle suited to the climate are carried on. So far the best animals have been found to be Galloways as they have long coats of hair which afford protection from the rainy weather. They are good rustlers and feed out of doors a great part of the winter. The hardy cattle the Galloways are poor milkers and it is now proposed to cross them with the Tibetan or Mongolian yak. The director of the Russian experiment station at Irkutsk, Siberia states that the yak crossbreeds readily with domestic cattle. The hybrids are more or less sterile but some of them are breeders and if a strain could be established it would be a great advantage to Alaska. The Siberian yak are good for milk and beef also as draft animals and burden bearers. The Canadian government has given the Fairbanks station a male and a female yak bred in the Dominion National Park at Banff so that crossing them with the Galloways can now be tried. The hills of Kodiak Island are still covered with the ashes of the Katmai Volcano which fell there in 1912. The Volcano is only 90 miles northwest of Kodiak and the ashes were carried over the island which blew for two days during the eruption. For 48 hours ashes fell like snow until they had covered the whole island to a depth of 18 inches. There were numerous slides of ashes down the hills and mountain sides and where they drifted they swept away fences and almost buried some of the experiment station buildings. Some of the sheep and calves were suffocated and the livestock outside the barns were without feed during two whole days. When the eruption stopped the vegetation was covered with this volcanic dust and almost all the pasture was destroyed. When the rains came the ashes flowed into the creeks and formed dangerous quicksands. The sheep would lie down at night in what seemed perfectly dry places and by morning find themselves so mired that they could not get out. To make matters worse the bear of Kodiak unable to get pastridge on the hills and the fish from the streams came down from the mountains to prey upon the stock. All the springs were choked up and it was necessary to dig a well to water the cattle. At last hay was shipped in for feed and later some of the stock was taken away to be kept over winter. Though it was feared the eruption had ruined the island for agricultural purposes grain was planted the next year and it was found that the ashes have acted upon the soil like a thick coat of fertilizer. The grass has come up through it and is growing better than ever. The crops are thriving and the present condition of the island is better than it was before. The great shower of ashes from Mount Katmai led to the discovery a few years later of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes which was added to the wonders of the world by the tremendous eruption. While making a study of Mount Katmai for the National Geographic Society Professor Robert F. Griggs of Ohio State University found adjacent to the volcano a valley from which arose tens of thousands of clouds and pillars of steam and other hot gases. Subsequent expeditions sent to Alaska by the society and headed by Professor Griggs made complete explorations not only of the Valley of the Smokes but of the surrounding area. Professor Griggs found that the eruption of Katmai with the force many times greater than that of any other volcanic upheaval blew off the entire top of the mountain. It formed a crater three miles wide at the bottom of which is now a vitriol green lake of unknown depth. The explosion also opened a great fissure in the earth underlying the Valley of the Ten Thousand Smokes and extending many miles beyond. Explorations showed that the Valley with its numerous branches has a total length of 72 miles and an area of 72 square miles. Instead of ten thousand smokes there are believed to be millions of vents craters and fissures through which clouds of vapor are bursting forth from the bowels of the earth. The region is a veritable modern inferno. One member of Professor Griggs party likened it to the devil's private corner of hell. In some places the hot gases rush out with the roar in others they grumbling sound while in still others they only whisper. Temperatures high enough to melt zinc have been recorded. All the ground is hot and the explorers regularly cook their meals over the smaller vents. Much of the surface is burned red while the evil smelling gases have left brilliantly colored incrustations at the edges of craters and fumaroles. The region contains a lake of warm water in which float miniature icebergs and the valley is filled according to the few who have ever seen it with such startling phenomena as to give a weird uncanny impression of being in another world. As a result of the reports of the Katmai expeditions President Wilson set aside the Mount Katmai region as a national reservation like Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon. Thousands will in future years visit the spectacle of the tremendous volcanic forces of the earth in operation. Mount Katmai is only 25 miles from the coast which lies near one of the main steamer routes to Alaska. If a motor road were built the tourist might leave his steamer after breakfast ride through the volcanic region and be back in time for dinner on board ship. The scientists who have studied the valley of the 10,000 smokes believe that it will remain in its present state for a long time and that it represents on a vastly greater scale what was the condition in the geyser area of Yellowstone Park countless ages ago. End of Chapter 30 Chapter 31 of Carpenters World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland This recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B Chapter 31 The City of Seward Southern Terminus of Alaska's new railroad and so the Sewardites say the country's chief ocean port of the future. Its citizens are already comparing it with Stockholm which has almost 400,000 inhabitants and they claim that it will be the gateway to resources equal to those of the four Scandinavian countries. They point out that Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark which are in the same latitude and have much the same climate have a population of over 14 millions and say that Alaska will someday have 20 millions or more. Seward is situated on the great Gulf of Alaska and about the middle of the southern coast of the territory. It is on Resurrection Bay a magnificent inlet at the lower end of the Kenai Peninsula so surrounded by mountains and guarded by islands that within its harbor ships are as safe as alongside the docks in Hamburg or Liverpool. The city is as far from Ketchikan where the Seattle steamers make their first stop as the distance from New York to Cleveland. It is only five or six days from Seattle although without stops the voyage could be easily made in less than three days. By the new railway line it is within 500 miles of fare banks from which a great part of interior Alaska can be reached by the river steamers. But come with me climb the wall of the great mountain that rises straight up on one side of Resurrection Bay and get a bird's eye view of the town. Leaving the wharves and passing through the business and residential sections we shall make our way through the moss and after pulling ourselves from one tree root to another shall finally stand high over the harbor. The mountain wall rises sheer above Seward to a height of several thousand feet losing itself in the great range that bounds this side of the harbor and fading away into the snow-capped peaks behind. The first hundred feet is covered with green trees some of which are two feet in diameter. They cling to the rocks and grow straight up forming palisades as it were. Among them are bushes making a jungle that reminds me of the lower slopes of the Himalayas. There are giant ferns under alder trees and salmon berry bushes the hole growing out of a deep depth of moss into which our feet sink as though into feathers. At the left looking out through the dark spruce we can see the white glacial waters of Lowell Creek roaring as they rush foaming over the rocks down into Resurrection Bay. They cut their way through the upper part of the town and pass under the railway embankment which circles the harbor. Turning about we can see Resurrection River which comes in at the end of the bay and across the inlet another mountain wall rises before us. Its peaks are a black volcanic rock and in its hollows nestle glaciers of pale green ice that the sun turns into emeralds. High up on the mountain sides are patches of snow gleaming like silver against the black cliffs and below rising a thousand or more feet from the water is the great blanket of forest green that covers southern Alaska. This forest clad wall extends to the end of the harbor where it drops into the sea. Beyond it are the mountainous islands that guard the bay and make it almost landlocked. At first sight the land seems continuous but there is a narrow passage between Fox Island and the Kenai Peninsula so that the shipping of the world can sail in and out. The bay itself is about 16 miles long and is protected on all sides from the gales. Its waters are from 600 to 1200 feet deep so deep that the only anchorage outside the wharves is at Sunny Cove off Fox Island where for an area of about 320 acres the water is shallow enough for ships anchors to reach bottom. I have visited most of the great harbors of the world including the golden horn at Constantinople, the landlocked channel of Sydney, Australia and the wonderful bay of Rio de Janeiro. The harbor of Seward is as beautiful as any of these and as wonder said the others know not. Its surroundings of green mixed with glaciers and snow are like those of no other harbor on the face of the earth. The whole is a mighty amphitheater of green lowland and blue waters of snow capped mountains and glacier clad hills roofed by the clear sky. It is in the arena of this amphitheater that Seward has so recently come into existence. On the north side of the bay and running back to the mouth of Resurrection River is a plain giving enough space for a large city that is yet having houses only on a spit of land that juts out into the sea. There the ships lie at the wharves built upon piles. The business section of the city is back of the wharves where for perhaps one third of a mile the ground rises giving excellent drainage. Here the streets climb the hills and then go over a slope that rolls gently on until it reaches the mountain wall in the rear. The better houses are pretty bungalows and artistic cottages. Nearly all have smooth green lawns with flowers and plants. The houses though small are comfortable and well furnished. They have electric lights and all the modern conveniences. Board sidewalks have been built and a bridge of planks crosses the ravine through which flows Lowell Creek. The homes of Seward are beyond these bungalows. There the West Bank of Resurrection River has been laid out in town lots and real estate signs are scattered among the tents and shacks. There are many tents with walls and floors of boards. The average board shack which may form the home of a family of from two to a dozen is not more than 10 by 12 feet in area. The business section of Seward already fills two or three streets close to the wharves. Main street has been macadamized and concrete sidewalks have been laid. The business buildings are one and two stories. Some of them are a frame, others are galvanized iron. Midway in one block I saw a shed consisting only of an iron roof upheld by poles. It had chairs under it and was labeled the Royal Boot Black Parlor. Seward has a number of restaurants in several hotels. I am living in a hotel facing the harbor with a half dozen small glaciers in sight over the way. I have two connecting rooms lighted by electricity and heated by stoves. The charge for which is two dollars and a half per day. On the same floor is a porcelain bathtub which I can use for 50 cents extra and have hot water there with if the order is given beforehand. As is common in Alaska the hotel has no eating accommodations but I get excellent meals on the main street two blocks away where I can dine fairly well for 75 cents. The port of Seward is ice free the year round. Deep draft vessels can come in on any day of the year. The winter climate of this coastal region is not much colder than that of Seattle or Portland and it is warmer than either Norfolk or Baltimore. The temperature ranges from 50 to 85 degrees above zero in summer and from 30 to 50 degrees above zero in winter. Once the thermometer fell to 7 below zero but that is the coldest on record. The rainfall is about the same as that of Ohio and Virginia the total precipitation being 42 inches per year. It seems strange to think of going barefooted in Alaska but the children of Seward do that all summer long. They go bathing in the waters of Resurrection Bay and swimming parties to Lake Kenai some distance back in the country are among the features of their picnic excursions. When the government took over the Alaskan northern company's railroad there was a big jump in land values. Business property trebled and quadrupled in price and the same was true of the suburbs. The prices of land are high but it will be long before the city will come up to the expectations of its owners. The present additions to the town site are at the head of Resurrection Bay where tents have been erected frame buildings put up and families located. For 10 miles up the valley of Resurrection River men have taken up homesteads and farms the size of garden patches are being cultivated here and there. Some of the homesteads were applied for 10 years ago but owing to government red tape as to titles the applicants have not been able to complete their ownership. Resurrection Bay was named by the Russians who discovered the harbor on an Easter Sunday. There was a white settlement here when the first public buildings of Washington began to go up on the banks of the Potomac. The first residents were Russians who had a colony on Kodiak Island about 200 miles distant. They came here to build ships choosing the place on account of the harbor and the timber nearby. The first ships built on the western shores of North America were constructed here and one of them was launched when George Washington was still serving his first term as president. Later when the seat of the Russian administration was transferred from Kodiak to Sitka the shipyards were given up. After the Russians left Resurrection Bay was frequented by the Indians who came here to hunt and fish and then perhaps a hundred years later a white man named Frank Lowell a sailor from Maine settled where Seward now stands. He had a wife of mixed Indian and Russian blood and was one of the class popularly known as Squaw Men. After he had lived here for 10 or 12 years along about 1890 Lowell deserted his wife and his five children and emigrated to Kodiak. Mrs. Lowell remained and was on the ground and claimed ownership at the time that the Alaskan Northern Railway Company selected Resurrection Bay as the southern terminus of its line. She received $4,000 in cash and 37 townlots from the company for her claim. End of Chapter 31 Chapter 32 of Carpenter's World Travels Alaska Our Northern Wonderland by Frank Carpenter This recording is in the public domain Recording by Betty B Chapter 32 Across Kenai on Horseback Imagine a wild virgin region larger than Massachusetts with almost three-fourths as much good land as the Bay State with warmer winters and cooler summers and with rainfall sufficient to raise hardy crops. It is a country of surpassing beauty. A region of rivers and lakes and beautiful valleys with mountains equal to the Alps in their grandeur and with glaciers surpassing any known to the continent of Europe. Let the country be one of big game, moose, bear and deer wildfowl of all kinds and fish without number. With this picture in your mind you will have a glimpse of the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska one of the richest districts tapped by the new railroad. I can tell you something of Kenai as I have just crossed the peninsula leaving Seward I went as far as mile 29 on the Alaska Northern Line which Uncle Sam took over and then went on horseback over the mountains through moose pass to the little rain camp of sunrise not far from the eastern end of the turnigane arm. I saw scarcely a dozen people while on the way. The country has hardly been prospected and there are parts of the interior that have never been trodden by the foot of white man. The railroad trip from Seward to Kenai Lake is one of the wonder rides of the world. You go up the valley which ends in resurrection bay amid the most magnificent of mountains. It is as though Switzerland came down to the ocean and you could ride under its glaciers and snows through valleys and hillsides of vivid green. There are rushing streams and winding lakes. There are great canyons and forest clad cliffs. There are open parks made by nature carpeted with ferns and wild flowers and grass growing waist high. Lungs and nostrils are filled with the sweet air from the spruces on the mountain sites. Six miles from Seward Lake set in the midst of a natural park surrounded by snow-capped mountains on the sides of which hang glaciers of sapphire and forests of emerald. The region is called Woodrow Park after President Wilson. There is a roadhouse on the edge of it near a clear rushing trout stream. The place is a picnic and summer resort and the bungalows scattered about under the trees remind one of a Chautauqua or a camp meeting ground. Going on to the north we pass tiny homesteads cut out of the woods. At mile 12 I saw an abandoned log cabin which had been occupied last summer by some city chaps who had come there to hunt. They had expected to stay a week or ten days but had remained more than two months. Nevertheless their actual cash outlay for food during that time was less than ten dollars. They spent five dollars for flour, potatoes and coffee and the rest of their food was the fish game and berries they found in the woods. Beginning at mile 19 Kenai Lake winds about through the mountains for 27 miles. It is only a mile or so wide and no one knows how deep. Soundings have been made to 1,350 feet below the surface but the bottom was not reached. The mountains are snow-capped and high up on the sides of the green. Below the snow line you can see the trails made by the mountain sheep. The surroundings are mirrored in the crystal clear waters of the lake. At mile 29 where I left the railroad and took horses to go across country to sunrise is the road house of Oscar Christensen a wily swede who has a half dozen horses which he rents out for all that the traffic will bear. He charged me 16 dollars a day for two horses and a guide and told me that I could pick up the guide on the way. Before leaving the road house on moose meat or Alaska beef cooked over the coals by a six foot pioneer his kitchen stove was arranged made at Hamilton Ohio and in the living room a joining were chairs and tables and a rosewood Victrola with several dozen records on top. There were flowers in the windows. Around the wall were spring beds. The stove of the living room was a section of hydraulic pipe as big around as a flower barrel with legs of gas pipe. It was long enough to take in a whole stick of cored wood. After leaving the road house I spent the better part of two days riding through the forest to sunrise. The horses were fairly good but the saddles were excruciating. I am accustomed to riding and cover about 1500 miles every winter in the parks about Washington. But this ride across Kenai was another story. Our horses were brought back percherons and the saddles were a high pommeled variety so made that they threw one far to the front. It was like sitting on a sawbuck with ill-fitting stirrups. It brought an entire new set of muscles into play and gave me the sensations and pains of the man who takes a long ride for the first time. I found it impossible to go out of a walk and when we came to a mining camp after 15 hours in the saddle I was so stiff that I had to be lifted from the horse. The next day I walked part of the way and had to be lifted off and on whenever I rode. During my journey we thought we were lost. The guide failed to turn up as expected and when he did so it was already dark. He took us along the sides of cliffs over a trail where the forest fires had made it exceedingly dangerous and where he had to jump the logs in the darkness with no telling what might be on the opposite side. I slept the clock round after reaching sunrise. We spare of making you see the beauties of this trip. I rode through one little valley after another with the grandest of mountains everywhere in sight. I wound along streams where great red salmon, the color of raw beef steak flashed through the water. I skirted beautiful lakes wherein were mirrored towering mountains with their wonderful vegetation and curious outlines. The color effects made me think of paintings in which the pigment is laid on in great patches to get striking effects of light and shade. I passed through acres and acres burned over by forest fires where the grass had grown shoulder high and the flaming fire weeds stood six feet tall. In places the woods were carpeted with stunted tree ferns. Sometimes the forests of spruce were green, sometimes frosted silver, sometimes pure white. The silver and white trees were dead or dying from forest fires and their lace-like branches of ivory looked like the most exquisite carvings. And then the live things we saw in the journey. I have already spoken of the salmon. We could see the trout in the streams and I am told that all are full of grayling and other fine fish. I met one man on the way who had stopped for an hour at the head of Trail Lake and caught 27 trout, pulling them out as fast as he could throw in the line. I could easily have caught salmon and trout with my hands in the smaller streams. Now and then during the journey I started up cubbies of grouse some as big as chickens. They ran along in front of my horse for hundreds of feet, like turkeys and did not seem to be much afraid. At a cabin where I stopped for dinner a miner cooked some tarmigan he had just killed. Later on I saw the tracks of brown bear here and there on the trail and once or twice scared up porcupines which scuttled away through the grass. The guy told me to be careful not to ride over a porcupine for my horse would surely be blamed by its quills. Here at sunrise I've had plenty of fresh game to eat. We've had roast and broiled moose and caribou steak with wild cranberries on the side. Wild fowl is plentiful and there are excellent fish from Six Mile River and Turnegan Arm. Now and then bear meat is brought out of the canine peninsula it tastes like tough beef. The mountain sheep is the most delicious of all the game found in Alaska. Most of the food here comes from the wilds and can be had for the taking which makes the cost of living cheap. As for the future of this Alaskan frontier region it would seem to lie mostly in its farms. The agricultural department experts who went over this region a few years ago have estimated the Matanuska and Susitna valleys something like 4 million acres of fairly good land. Some of it is covered with swamp and muskeg which will need draining but at least one third of it will require clearing only to be made ready for crops. There is enough land of this kind to make more than 8,000 farms of a quarter of a section each or 4,000 farms of 320 acres which is the amount of land now allowed from stead in Alaska. There is good forage almost everywhere in this part of Alaska and according to the farming experts much of this region will be used for stock raising. The pioneer farmer on Kenai Peninsula cannot succeed without a struggle however. The greater part of the land is covered with moss which in places is a foot or so deep. The soil is wet and so sour that it needs lime. It seldom produces good crops but needs to be broken up and exposed to the air to sweeten it. There are vast quantities of muskeg a sort of marsh consisting of peat so saturated with water that it is boggy during the summer. It is no good whatever except when well drained. Most of the peninsula is well wooded. The best trees are in the lowlands and on the lower slopes of the mountains the timber stopping at about 2,000 feet. The woods are in groves of spruce hemlock and poplar with patches of bushes and open meadows between. The trees are usually small. A few of the spruces are more than 2 feet in diameter but many are no bigger around than telegraph poles. The poplars grow in dense forests. They are tall straight and beautiful. There are cotton woods in the lowlands that reach a thickness of 2 or 3 feet. So far much of the timber is protected by the government reservations and in sewer they pay high for lumber which has been brought from Puget Sound notwithstanding the fact that there is fairly good timber 10 or 12 miles away. Indeed most people in Alaska think the country is over conserved and that Uncle Sam's fears for posterity hang like Sinbad's old man of the sea around the neck of the territory. End of chapter 32