On The Other Hand, These Natural Difficulties Made The Grand
Wild Country All The More Attractive, And I Determined To Get Into
The Heart Of It Somehow Or Other With A Bag Of Hardtack, Trusting To
My Usual Good Luck.
My present difficulty was in finding a first base
camp.
My only hope was on the hill. When I was strolling past the old
fort I happened to meet one of the missionaries, who kindly asked me
where I was going to take up my quarters.
"I don't know," I replied. "I have not been able to find quarters of
any sort. The top of that little hill over there seems the only
possible place."
He then explained that every room in the mission house was full,
but he thought I might obtain leave to spread my blanket in a
carpenter-shop belonging to the mission. Thanking him, I ran down to
the sloppy wharf for my little bundle of baggage, laid it on the shop
floor, and felt glad and snug among the dry, sweet-smelling shavings.
The carpenter was at work on a new Presbyterian mission building, and
when he came in I explained that Dr. Jackson [Dr. Sheldon Jackson,
1834-1909, became Superintendent of Presbyterian Missions in Alaska
in 1877, and United States General Agent of Education in 1885. [W. F.
B.]] had suggested that I might be allowed to sleep on the floor, and
after I assured him that I would not touch his tools or be in his
way, he goodnaturedly gave me the freedom of the shop and also of his
small private side room where I would find a wash-basin.
I was here only one night, however, for Mr. Vanderbilt, a merchant,
who with his family occupied the best house in the fort, hearing that
one of the late arrivals, whose business none seemed to know, was
compelled to sleep in the carpenter-shop, paid me a good-Samaritan
visit and after a few explanatory words on my glacier and forest
studies, with fine hospitality offered me a room and a place at his
table. Here I found a real home, with freedom to go on all sorts of
excursions as opportunity offered. Annie Vanderbilt, a little doctor
of divinity two years old, ruled the household with love sermons and
kept it warm.
Mr. Vanderbilt introduced me to prospectors and traders and some of
the most influential of the Indians. I visited the mission school and
the home for Indian girls kept by Mrs. MacFarland, and made short
excursions to the nearby forests and streams, and studied the rate of
growth of the different species of trees and their age, counting the
annual rings on stumps in the large clearings made by the military
when the fort was occupied, causing wondering speculation among the
Wrangell folk, as was reported by Mr. Vanderbilt.
"What can the fellow be up to?" they inquired. "He seems to spend
most of his time among stumps and weeds. I saw him the other day on
his knees, looking at a stump as if he expected to find gold in it.
He seems to have no serious object whatever."
One night when a heavy rainstorm was blowing I unwittingly caused
a lot of wondering excitement among the whites as well as the
superstitious Indians. Being anxious to see how the Alaska trees
behave in storms and hear the songs they sing, I stole quietly away
through the gray drenching blast to the hill back of the town,
without being observed. Night was falling when I set out and it was
pitch dark when I reached the top. The glad, rejoicing storm in
glorious voice was singing through the woods, noble compensation for
mere body discomfort. But I wanted a fire, a big one, to see as well
as hear how the storm and trees were behaving. After long, patient
groping I found a little dry punk in a hollow trunk and carefully
stored it beside my matchbox and an inch or two of candle in an
inside pocket that the rain had not yet reached; then, wiping some
dead twigs and whittling them into thin shavings, stored them with
the punk. I then made a little conical bark hut about a foot high,
and, carefully leaning over it and sheltering it as much as possible
from the driving rain, I wiped and stored a lot of dead twigs,
lighted the candle, and set it in the hut, carefully added pinches of
punk and shavings, and at length got a little blaze, by the light of
which I gradually added larger shavings, then twigs all set on end
astride the inner flame, making the little hut higher and wider. Soon
I had light enough to enable me to select the best dead branches and
large sections of bark, which were set on end, gradually increasing
the height and corresponding light of the hut fire. A considerable
area was thus well lighted, from which I gathered abundance of wood,
and kept adding to the fire until it had a strong, hot heart and sent
up a pillar of flame thirty or forty feet high, illuminating a wide
circle in spite of the rain, and casting a red glare into the flying
clouds. Of all the thousands of camp-fires I have elsewhere built
none was just like this one, rejoicing in triumphant strength and
beauty in the heart of the rain-laden gale. It was wonderful, - the
illumined rain and clouds mingled together and the trees glowing
against the jet background, the colors of the mossy, lichened trunks
with sparkling streams pouring down the furrows of the bark, and the
gray-bearded old patriarchs bowing low and chanting in passionate
worship!
My fire was in all its glory about midnight, and, having made a bark
shed to shelter me from the rain and partially dry my clothing, I had
nothing to do but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns
and prayers.
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