Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled | Page 2

word of its limitations. It is confined to
the interior of Alaska; confined in the main to the great valley of the
Yukon and its tributaries; being a record of sled journeys, it is confined
to the winter.

There is no man living who knows the whole of Alaska or who has any
right to speak about the whole of Alaska. Bishop Rowe knows more
about Alaska, in all probability, than any other living man, and there
are large areas of the country in which he has never set foot. There is
probably no man living, save Bishop Rowe, who has visited even the
localities of all the missions of the Episcopal Church in Alaska. If one
were to travel continuously for a whole year, using the most
expeditious means at his command, and not wasting a day anywhere, it
is doubtful whether, summer and winter, by sea and land, squeezing the
last mile out of the seasons, travelling on the "last ice" and the "first
water," he could even touch at all the mission stations. So, when a man
from Nome speaks of Alaska he means his part of Alaska, the Seward
Peninsula. When a man from Valdez or Cordova speaks of Alaska he
means the Prince William Sound country. When a man from Juneau
speaks of Alaska he means the southeastern coast. Alaska is not one
country but many, with different climates, different resources, different
problems, different populations, different interests; and what is true of
one part of it is often grotesquely untrue of other parts. This is the
reason why so many contradictory things have been written about the
country. Not only do these various parts of Alaska differ radically from
one another, but they are separated from one another by almost
insuperable natural obstacles, so that they are in reality different
countries.
When Alaska is spoken of in this book the interior is meant, in which
the writer has travelled almost continuously for the past eight years.
The Seward Peninsula is the only other part of the country that the
book touches. And as regards summer travel and the summer aspect of
the country, there is material for another book should the reception of
this one warrant its preparation.
* * * * *
The problems of the civil government of the country will be found
touched upon somewhat freely as they rise from time to time in the
course of these journeys, and some faint hope is entertained that
drawing attention to evils may hasten a remedy.

Alaska is not now, and never has been, a lawless country in the old,
Wild Western sense of unpunished homicides and crimes of violence. It
has been, on the whole, singularly free from bloodshed--a record due in
no small part to the fact that it is not the custom of the country to carry
pistols, for which again there is climatic and geographic reason; due
also in part to the very peaceable and even timid character of its native
people.
But as regards the stringent laws enacted by Congress for the protection
of these native people, and especially in the essential particular of
protecting them from the fatal effects of intoxicating liquor, the country
is not law-abiding, for these laws are virtually a dead letter.
Justices of the peace who must live wholly upon fees in regions where
fees will not furnish a living, and United States deputy marshals
appointed for political reasons, constitute a very feeble staff against
law-breakers. When it is remembered that on the whole fifteen hundred
miles of the American Yukon there are but six of these deputy marshals,
and that these six men, with another five or six on the tributary rivers,
form all the police of the country, it will be seen that Congress must do
something more than pass stringent laws if those laws are to be of any
effect.
A body of stipendiary magistrates, a police force wholly removed from
politics and modelled somewhat upon the Canadian Northwest
Mounted Police--these are two of the great needs of the country if the
liquor laws are to be enforced and the native people are to survive.
That the danger of the extermination of the natives is a real one all vital
statistics kept at Yukon River points in the last five years show, and
that there are powerful influences in the country opposed to the
execution of the liquor laws some recent trials at Fairbanks would leave
no room for doubt if there had been any room before. Indeed, at this
writing, when the pages of this book are closed and there remains no
place save the preface where the matter can be referred to, an impudent
attempt is on foot, with large commercial backing, to secure the
removal of a zealous and fearless