Alaska -- Description and travel; Frontier and pioneer life -- Alaska
"You may if you like. I will take it," said he; and I thanked him very
cordially, and hastened to the Commissioner to have the paper drawn up.
It did not take long, and the man has taken it, and gone. Being an old
mail carrier and stampeder of experience in this country, he ought to
know how to travel, and, being a Norwegian, he is well used to the snow
and the cold. He says he always travels alone, though I told him he
might sometime get lost in a storm and freeze to death, at which he only
laughed, and said he was not at all afraid. Two years afterwards he was
frozen to death on the trail near Teller City, northwest of Nome. He was
an expert on snowshoes or ski, both of which he learned to use when a
boy in Norway.
February tenth: The two young men, B. and L., have returned from the
Koyuk trip, having been able to travel only three days of the eleven
since they left here on account of blizzards, but they will not give it
up in this way.
Mollie and Jennie are better, the doctor having been here two days. For
the little invalid there is nothing of such interest as Apuk's baby, and
as the child is well wrapped and brought in often to see her, she is
highly delighted. She holds the baby in her arms, and hushes it to sleep
as any old woman might, lifting a warning finger if one enters the room
with noise, for fear of waking it. Little Charlie cries with whooping
cough a great deal and is taken to Ageetuk's house when he gets
troublesome, as he worries both Mollie and Jennie. Under no
consideration is Charlie to come near enough to Jennie to give her the
whooping-cough, for she coughs badly already. She and I make paper dolls
by the dozen, and cloth dresses for her real dolls, which, so late in
the season, are getting quite dilapidated and look as though they had
been in the wars.
Many natives are now bringing beautiful furs into camp for sale, and
among others one man brought a cross fox which was black, tipped with
yellow, another which was a lovely brown, and a black fox valued at two
hundred dollars which the owner refused to sell for less, though offered
one hundred for it. I have never seen more lovely furs anywhere, and I
longed to possess them.
It seems almost like having a hospital here now, for we have another
patient added to our sick list. Joe, the cook, is ill, and thinks he
will die, though the doctor smiles quizzically as she doses him,
thinking as she does so that a few days in bed and away from the saloons
will be as beneficial as her prescriptions.
Today the hills surrounding the bay were lovely in the warm sunshine
both morning and evening, pink tinted in the sunrise and purple as
night approached.
Mail came in by dog-team from Nome, going to Dawson and the outside, so
I mailed several letters. I wonder if they will be carried two thousand
miles by dogs--the whole length of the Yukon, and finally reach Skagway
and Seattle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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