Alaska Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ...of a lofty mountain. This was Orca where there is a large salmon cannery and a postoffice. Here we anchored for the night. In the long twilight some of our party climbed to the top of the mountain, 2,500 feet in height, and brought back a native heather, or bryanthus, in bloom. Others of us wandered upon the beach and engaged in conversation with some gold seekers just out from Copper River. They were encamped here waiting for a steamer to take them away, and for funds from friends at home to enable them to get away. It was a story of hardships and disappointment that they had to tell us--yes, and of scurvy and death. Over 3,000 men had gone into the Copper River region a year or more before on the wildest, vaguest rumor of gold. They had gone in hurriedly and slyly, as it were, so as to be ahead of the crowd. Each man had taken supplies to last him a year at least. Now they were coming out destitute and without one cent's worth of gold; many of them had died. Scurvy had broken out among them, had swept away scores of them and had lamed and disabled others. Their toils and privations had been terrible; snow, glaciers, mountains, swollen rivers had blocked their way. Most of them had abandoned their unconsumed supplies and extra blankets, content to get out with their lives. They were from the East and from the West, lumbermen from Maine and Pennsylvania and old miners from California and Colorado. They were a sturdy, sober 66 JOHN BURROUGHS looking set of men that we saw, no nonsense about them. Such hardships and disappointments seem to sweep away everything put on and meretricious in a man, and uncover and bring out the bedrock of character, if there is any in him. In this crowd two large powerful men, father and son, were especially...