T

HE maiden voyage of the Pelican had lasted rather more than a month when, on September 19th, we left the Yukon, and began the ascent of the Koyukuk. In that month we had journeyed from White Horse at the headwaters of the Yukon, about 1,500 miles east, stopping at all the missions on our way down the mighty river.. At Tanana we had turned aside for the

200-mile trip up the swift-flowing Tanana River to Fairbanks, where a few days had been spent with old friends and fellow-workers and in making necessary repairs. Our passage from the Yukon to the Koyukuk meant that we were on the last and most difficult stage of our long trip to St. John'sin-the-Wilderness.

Within eight days I hoped to be at the mission, 450 miles away. It was later in the season-two weeks later -than I had intended, but I thought we still had plenty of time. But we hadn't. In any ordinary season we would have had, but this proved to be an extraordinary season. No one can ever count upon anything absolutely with regard to this climate. The Koyukuk River has been well known to white men for about ten years. But that is not long enough to include all the possible vagaries of any climate. It is true that ice had never been known to run at Bettles since there has been any Bettles before October 1st. This year we encountered running ice more than 200 miles below Bettles on September 23d. Diligent enquiry amongst the older natives finds an equally early freeze-up some twenty years ago.

On the night of September 23d we were about 325 miles up the Koyukuk River. At this point a lone white man had a camp and was building a cabin,

having poled himself and his winter outfit up from the mouth. On that night the thermometer went down to zero, and in the morning we were surrounded by a thin sheet of ice and the ice was running freely in the river. We started the engines and resumed our course up the river, taking the floating ice as we came to it, but a few minutes of such progress showed our bows and sides so scarred from the encounter that it was evident we should be cut to pieces if we went on. So we put back to our last night's berth and plated the planking of the boat with such packing case lumber and tin can metal as we could rummage on deck. By the advice of the white man to whom I have referred, we decided to wait for a change in the weather. He had never known any river in Alaska to close with the first run of ice. He looked for a mild spell and an open river for a week or two yet.

So we waited; and for five successive nights the thermometer went to zero. By that time the river was frozen completely across in our neighborhood and there was no shadow of doubt that the navigation of the Koyukuk was over for 1908. There was nothing to do but to get the boat out of the water, and make her snug for the winter; then pack our grub, tent, stove, bedding, etc., upon this white man's sled and pull it 125 miles over the ice to the mission. How glibly the boat-builders talked about the ease with which we could berth that boat on the bank! If anyone talks to me again about the ease with which a four-ton boat (the Pelican weighed nearer five tons with her tanks full of gasoline) can be berthed on a bank with nothing but wilderness equipment, I make a mental reservation about his information-or his veracity.

There

were great thirty-foot timbers to be cut and squared, and dragged down to the beach. There were many nine-foot

not my

rollers to be cut and carried. Each one meant felling a tree. There was the Spanish windlass to construct. There was frozen gravel to be dug level with a pick that the timbers of the "way" might lie snug. Oh! we did it; of course we did it with our friendly white man's aid-but it was notion of an easy job. The actual hauling out with the Spanish windlass was hard enough, but the preparation was harder. We were not going to take any chances of casting that boat away; we were not going to leave her where the ice would rip her up in the spring. She cost too much money and too much effort-but all the same it was not any easy job.

Nor was that 125 mile mush over the "first ice" any pleasure jaunt. This was my first experience of travelling without dogs in the winter. I hope I may never have to do it again. I have had the rope over my shoulders before, to help the dogs along a bad trail, but that is very different from doing all the pulling yourself. Dr. Burke did not make a bad dog-until he hurt his knee. I should think that, if they could be trained to live on dry fish, a team of young doctors would do very well. The exasperating part of it was that I had planned to have three dogs along, had

bargained for them and agreed upon a price, and the night before we left Tanana had gone to receive them, but the man's wife made such a fearful rumpus at parting with them that he backed out and I had no time to hunt others.

I had never travelled over the "first ice" before either. My winter journeys. have always waited until the trails were established, or, if there were no trails, until the ice was thick and the snow had fallen. If I had known just what was ahead of us I should have waited a little longer, I think, anxious on every score as I was to get to the mission. Some bends of the river were frozen completely across; some bends, where the current was swifter, were wide open, with just a narrow shelf of shore-ice to travel upon. In some places the floating ice had jammed and frozen into a confused jumble of upstanding edges and fragments as though a thousand mad bulls had been turned loose in a plate-glass warehouse. The sled had to be yanked through it all. Worse yet, in places the current set so swiftly against steep banks that no ice had formed at all, and a trail had to be cut anywhere from a quarter to half a mile through the brush and the forest to get to ice again. Worst of all, there were places where the sled with its 250 pounds of load had to be dragged for hundreds of yards over naked gravel

beds, where the united strength of the three of us-the doctor, Arthur Wright and myself-could only move it forward a few feet at a time.

I could tell about shell-ice, formed layer under layer, as the water dropped a little each night, and each night a fresh cake formed, through which men and sled would crash down-sometimes to the water below. I could tell about sheets of ice that swayed and bent and gave water all around as we rushed the load across, with the deep channel underneath. I could tell how one night when the thermometer fell to 30 degrees below zero and we thought that our ice troubles were ended, in reality there was trouble of the worst kind all next day, because the cold had closed the river in places that had been open and the new ice had acted as a dam and had made the water overflow the frozen bends. Always it was necessary for one of us to go ahead with an axe sounding the ice. If one blow brought water it was very risky; if two blows brought water it was utterly unsafe; if three blows brought no water we felt our anxiety lessened and made what speed

we could. But we travelled over many miles where water followed two blows, and again and again we were on new ice that yielded water with every chop. It was either that, or unload the sled and pack the contents by repeated journeys over a mountain. Many times we were wet all day; many times we were on the point of losing everything. But, thank God, we won through and reached the mission with no serious loss or serious injury.

Half way from the boat to the mission we met an Indian and a dog. He was a mission Indian and I pressed him and his dog into service. It was a fortunate encounter. Dr. Burke had fallen on a jagged point of ice and had injured his knee so that he was in constant pain and of little use, and Arthur was troubled with rheumatism in his legs. I was the only sound member of the party, and my shoulders were raw with the rope and my feet miserably tender with these wretched crampons (or ice-creepers, as they are called here), without which it is not possible to do much hauling on ice. The one dog was a great help. It is astonishing what

even

one of these eager, willing little creatures can do in the way of pulling. And the Indian-"One-eyed William" -was good and faithful.

It was ten days after we left the boat when we reached the mission. It is quite unnecessary for me to dilate upon our joy in getting there, or upon the warmth of the welcome that greeted our unexpected arrival. For Miss Carter and Miss Heintz had quite given us up and supposed that we had decided to "freeze in" at Tanana and come across country behind the mail-man on his first trip.

I am stronger than ever in my belief that this isolated mission on the Koyukuk is one of the most hopeful, as it is decidedly one of the most interesting, of all our enterprises in Alaska. I find a fine feeling amongst the natives, and, what is unusual, nothing but kind words from such white men as have visited the place.

This is the only mission in Alaska that serves two distinct races the Indian and the Eskimo-and while it must be evident at once that this adds greatly to the difficulties, by presenting two strange tongues to the workers, and complicating every attempt at joint wor

ship, yet it adds greatly to the interest also, by presenting two sets of native customs and the idiosyncrasies of two diverse peoples. The Koyukuks, who are the aborigines, are of the same great family as all the Indians of the interior of Alaska: the Kobuks, who are intruders, are Eskimos from the Arctic coast and the Arctic coast rivers, particularly the Kobuk River, on which they lived before crossing the divide and coming down the Alatna to the more attractive country of the Koyukuk. Before the coming of the white manfor all the ages that vague tradition deals with there had been undying hostility between these races. Each had lived in fear of the other, wherever their remote boundaries reached. Since the white man's advent, and the cessation of all native warfare, the Kobuks have come over in numbers, and this mission of St. John's-in-the-Wilderness is situated at the mouth of the Alatna, which is the highway to Kotzebue Sound and the Arctic. Since the building of the mission there has sprung up quite a Kobuk village about a mile below the mission, on the other side of the river; while the Koyukuk village is building on the mission side, a little above.