THE ANVIL

The first two great gold camps of the Northwest were very different, although largely composed of the same material. In physical features they were most unlike. The Klondike was in the great, beautiful, mountainous, forested Interior; Nome was on the bleak, treeless, low, exposed coast of Bering Sea. To reach the Klondike you steamed from Seattle through twelve hundred miles of the wonderful "Inside Passage," broke through the chain of snowy mountains by the Chilcoot Pass, and, in your rough rowboat, shot down the six hundred miles of the untamed and untameable Yukon. Or else you sailed twenty-three hundred miles over the heaving Pacific and the choppy Bering Sea to St. Michael, and then steamed laboriously against the stiff current of the same Father Yukon eighteen hundred miles up to Dawson. To reach Nome you simply steamed the twenty-three hundred miles of Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea; or, if you were up the Yukon, came down it to St. Michael and across Norton Sound a hundred and fifty miles to Nome.

Though on the same parallel of north latitude, the climates of the two camps are very unlike. In the Klondike you have the light, dry, hot air of summer; the light, dry, cold air of winter. There are long periods when the sky is cloudless. In the summer of unbroken day the land drowses, bathed in warm sunshine and humming with insect life, no breath of air shaking the aspens; in the winter of almost unbroken but luminous night, the Spirit of the North broods like James Whitcomb Riley's Lugubrious Whing-whang,

There are no wind-storms in the Klondike, and a blanket of fine, dry snow covers the land in unvarying depth of only a foot or two.

On Seward Peninsula, the Spirit of Winter breathes hard, and hurls his snow-laden blasts with fearful velocity over the icy wastes. The snow falls to great depth, and never lies still in one place. It drifts, and will cover your house completely under in one night, and pack so hard that the Eskimo can drive his reindeer team over your roof in the morning. The air becomes so full of the flying particles that you cannot see the lead-dog of your team. Men have lost their way in the streets of Nome and wandered out on the tundra to their death. There is considerable sunshine in the summer, and some comparatively still days, but there is much rain, and mossy swamps are everywhere.

The men at Nome in the fall of '99 included many who had been at Dawson in '97, but conditions were very different. The Klondike Stampede was composed of tenderfeet, not one in twenty of whom had ever mined for anything before—men of the city and village and workshop and farm, new to wilderness life, unused to roughing it. Those who reached Nome in '99 were mostly victims of hard luck. Many were Klondikers who had spent two winters rushing wildly from creek to creek on fake reports, possessing themselves of a multitude of worthless claims, eating up the outfits they had brought in with them, and then working for wages in mines of the lucky ones to buy a passage to the new diggings. Many had come down the Yukon in their own rowboats.

But the Klondike Stampede was the cause of other smaller but more fruitless stampedes. These were started by steamboat companies, or by trading companies, and often by "wildcat" mining companies, and were generally cruel hoaxes. Scores of small steamboats, hastily built for the purpose, went up the Yukon to the Koyakuk and other tributaries in the summer of '98. Other scores of power-schooners and small sailing vessels sailed through Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and through Kotzebue Sound to the Kobuk and Sewalik Rivers. Almost without exception these eager gold-seekers of '98 found only disappointment, endured the savage winter as best they could, and, out of money and food, were making their way back to the States, when news of the marvelous "beach diggings" at Nome met them and they flocked thither in hopes of at least making back their "grub-stake."

As these vessels approached the new camp, the most prominent landmark which met their eyes was a lone rock in the shape of an anvil, which crowned the summit of the highest of the hills near the coast. At the base of this hill rich gold diggings were found in a creek. The town which sprung up was first called Anvil City; but the Government postal authorities, looking at the map, found Cape Nome in the vicinity, and the post-office was named after the Cape.

Anvil Rock. Overlooking Nome

For the name "Nome" two explanations are given. It is said that the American and Canadian surveyors who were laying out the projected Western Union Telegraph Line across the American and Asiatic Continents, failed to find a name for this cape and wrote it down "No name," which was afterwards shortened to Nome. The more probable explanation is that the surveyors asked an Eskimo the name of the cape. Now the Eskimo negative is "No-me," and the man not understanding, or not knowing its name said "No-me." This was written down and put on the map as the name.

But I like Anvil, and spoke and voted for that name at the first town meeting, held soon after I landed at the new camp. For the camp has been a place of hard knocks from the first. Rugged men have come there to meet severe conditions and have been hammered and broken by the blows of adversity. Others have been shaped and moulded by fiery trial and "the bludgeonings of chance." When I see that stone anvil I think of Tennyson's inspired lines:

I was battered as hard as any one on this anvil of the Northwest; but to-day I feel nothing but gratitude for the severe experience.

I had to wait until Saturday before the little steamer on which I came from St. Michael returned from the shelter of Sledge Island and put my goods ashore. In the meantime I had obtained permission to spread my blankets on the floor of the Alaska Exploration Company's store. During that first week we had constant storms. Five or six vessels were driven ashore and broken up by the violence of the waves.

But I was getting my congregation together, and so was happy. A goodly proportion of Christian men and women are always found in these gold camps, and they are very willing workers. Before Sunday came I had found an old acquaintance, Minor Bruce, whom I had known fifteen years before when he was a trader in Southeastern Alaska. He offered me the use of the loft over his fur store. Mr. Fickus, the man from San Francisco, to whom I have made reference in a former chapter, fixed up some seats. I got my organ carried up the ladder and found singers. "Judge" McNulty, a lawyer friend who was handy with crayons, made fancy posters out of some pasteboard boxes I had got from the store.

The floor of Bruce's store was cluttered with Eskimo mucklucks, bales of hair-seal skins, and other unsavory articles; and an old Eskimo woman, who had her lower lip and chin tattooed downwards in streaks after the fashion of these people, sat among the skins, chewing walrus hides and shaping them into soles for mucklucks, while the congregation was gathering. One usher received the people at the store door, steered them carefully between the bales and skins, and headed them to another who helped them up the steep stairway, while a third seated them. We had a good congregation and a rousing meeting. Our choir was one of the best I ever heard. Our organist and leader was Dr. Humphrey, a dentist, who had been director of a large chorus and choir; Mr. Beebe, our chief baritone, had sung in the choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Oakland, Cal.; and there were other professionals. I give these details as a typical beginning in a frontier camp. There is always fine talent of all sorts in a new gold town.

Let me give right here two or three instances of the bread of kindness "cast upon the waters" and "found after many days." Nowhere is this Bible saying oftener realized than in the friendly wilderness.

One of the first men I met at Nome was an old Colorado miner, whom I had known at Dawson. I had done him some kindness at the Klondike camp during the illness and after the death of his nephew. When he found me at Nome he greeted me warmly. "You're just the man I've been looking for. I know you don't do any mining, but I'm going to do some for you. I expect to go 'outside' in a few days. You come out on the tundra with me to-morrow, and I'll stake some ground for you; then I'll take your papers out with me and try to sell the claims."

I went with him and he marked off three claims for me, which he had already selected. The next spring, when my long illness had plunged me deeply into debt and I was wondering how I could pay my obligations, my old friend returned with a thousand dollars, from the sale of one of my claims. I paid my doctor's bills and the other debts, and rejoiced. It was as money thrown down to me from heaven, in my time of dire need.

At Dawson, in the summer of '98, I helped an old G. A. R. man from Missouri. He had been sick with the scurvy and was drowned out by the spring freshets and driven to the roof of his cabin, where I found him helpless and half-devoured by mosquitoes. I raised money for his need and sent him out home by one of the first steamboats down the Yukon. Before he left he pressed upon me the only gift he could offer—a fine Parker shotgun. I took this gun with me when I went to stake my claims and bagged a lot of ptarmigan; and a number of times afterwards I shot others of these delicious wild chickens with it. And when I was taken ill and my money all spent, I was able to sell the gun for a goodly sum.

One more link in this chain of kindness: When my goods came ashore and I was able to set up my tent, I found two men, one a Norwegian, the other a Michigander, both of whom had just arrived, without a shelter. I took them into my tent. They helped me to move my goods, made me a cot and fixed up tables, box-chairs and shelves for me. The Norwegian was a very fine cook and baked my "shickens" for me most deliciously. I kept the men in my tent until they could build a cabin. When I became ill they would come to see me, bringing ptarmigan broth and other delicacies; and when I was convalescing and ravenous the Norwegian came again and again to my cabin, bringing "shickens for Mr. Zhung," and roasted them for me, serving them with his famous nut-butter gravy. In the language of the Northwest, "I didn't do a thing to those chickens." Of all places in the world, I think Alaska is most fruitful in return for little acts of kindness.

Men such as I have just described were pure metal, and the heavy blows they received on the anvil only made their characters more beautiful and efficient.

It was in the metal of the men themselves—what this hard life would do for them. Some it made—some it ruined. Among the "Lucky Swedes," who leaped in a few months from poverty to wealth by the discovery of gold in Anvil Creek, three form a typical illustration.

One was a missionary to the Eskimos, on a small salary. At first his gold gave him much perplexity and trouble while he was being shaped to fit new conditions; but he rose finely to the occasion, gave a large part of his wealth to his church board for building missions and schools among the natives, and pursued his Christian way, honored and beloved, to broader paths of greater usefulness.

A second Swede was also a missionary, teaching the little Eskimos on a salary of six hundred dollars a year. His gold completely turned his head. He fell an easy prey to designing men and women. He became dissipated and broken in body and character. He tried to keep for his own use the gold taken from the claim he had staked in the name of his Mission. His Board sued him for their rights. Long litigation, in which he figured as dishonest, selfish and grasping, followed, his church getting only a small part of its dues. The last I heard of him he was a mere wreck of a man, disgraced, despised and shunned by his former friends. The anvil battering, the trial by fire, the hard blows, proved him base metal.

The third man was a Swedish sailor and longshoreman, ignorant and low, living a hand-to-mouth, sordid life, with no prospects of honor or wealth. His gold at first plunged him into a wild orgy of gambling and dissipation. He took the typhoid fever and was taken "outside." Everybody prophesied that he would simply "go the pace" to complete destruction.

But there was true steel in his composition. His moral fiber stiffened. He began to think and study. He broke away from his drunken associates. He sought the companionship of the cultured. A good woman married and educated him. He has become one of Alaska's wealthiest and most influential citizens, and his charities abound. The stern anvil shaped him to world-usefulness. It is all in the man!

Here at Nome I first made the acquaintance of that strange race in which I afterwards became so much interested—the Eskimo. At first they were a source of considerable annoyance. I always felt like laughing aloud when the queer, fat, dish-faced, pudgy folk came in sight. As we had to depend upon driftwood for our fuel, they would come several times a day, bringing huge basketfuls of the soggy sticks for sale at fifty cents a basket.

They soon learned that I was a missionary, and then they would come rolling along, forty or fifty of them at a time, and "bunch up" in front of my tent. If I were cooking dinner they were sure to gather in full force, and would lift up the flap of my tent, grinning at me and eyeing every mouthful I ate. I did not know enough of their language even to tell them to go away. Their rank native odors were overpowering in the hot tent. You could detect the presence of one of those fellows half a mile away if the wind were blowing from him to you. The combined smells of a company of natives, not one of whom had ever taken a bath in his or her life, and who lived upon ancient fish and "ripe" seal blubber—well, I'll stop right here!

One evening at a social in our warehouse-church we played the "limerick" game, which was then a popular craze. We would take a word and each one would write a verse on it. One of the words was Esquimaux. A number of the "limericks" were published in the Nome Nugget. With a man's usual egotism I can only remember my own, which I saw at intervals for several years in Eastern periodicals:

One day I was getting dinner in my tent and the usual company of natives watching the performance, when there came along a couple of men who had just landed and who, evidently, had never seen an Eskimo before. I overheard their conversation.

"Say, Jim," said one, "just look there. Did you ever see the like?" (A pause.) "Say, do you think them things has souls?"

"We-e-ll," drawled Jim, "I reckon they must have. They're human bein's. But I'll tell you this: If they do, they've all got to go to heaven, sure; for the devil'd never have them around."

Now let me tell you a sequel: Two years afterwards I was a Commissioner from the newly organized Presbytery of Yukon to the General Assembly, which met at Philadelphia. My fellow Commissioner from the Presbytery—the elder who sat by my side—was Peter Koonooya, an Eskimo elder from Ukeavik Church, Point Barrow. Ten years earlier, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, then Superintendent of Education for Alaska, had visited that northernmost point of the Continent and had started a school and mission. Peter Koonooya was one of the fruits. He was a native of extraordinary intelligence, a man of property, owning a fleet of whaling oomiaks. He could read, write and talk English, was a constant student of the Bible, and was considered by the Presbytery of sufficient intelligence and piety to represent us in the supreme Council of the Church.

I am quite certain that Peter always voted exactly right on all questions which were up before that Assembly; because he watched me very closely and voted as I did.

I was able, then, and in after years, to do these gentle, good-natured natives some good, and other Christian teachers have done much more for them. So it comes about that the condition of the Alaska Eskimo, under the influence of the various Christian missions and schools among them, as compared with that of their brothers and sisters of the same race across Bering Strait in Asia, for whom nothing in a Christian way has been done, is as day to night. They are pliable metal, and the Anvil of the Northwest is shaping them into vessels and implements of usefulness and honor.

The Odoriferous but Interesting Eskimo

Two of Dr. Young's Parishioners

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