Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled | Page 6

time previous a lone highwayman had robbed solitary miners on their
way to Fairbanks with gold-dust, and now a posse was organised that
went the rounds of the creeks and gathered up the dust and bore it on
mule-back to the bank, escorted by half a dozen armed and mounted
men. Sawed-off shotguns were the favourite weapons, and one judged
them deadly enough at short range. The heavy "pokes" galled the
animals' backs, however they might be slung, and the little procession
wound slowly along, a man ahead, a man behind, and four clustered
round the treasure.
These raw, temporary mining towns are much alike the world over, one
supposes, though perhaps a little worse up here in the far north. It was
late at night when we reached the place, but saloon and dance-hall were
ablaze with light and loud with the raucity of phonographs and the
stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even
the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and
dancing go on all night long. Drunken men reel out upon the snow;
painted faces leer over muslin curtains as one passes by. Without any
government, without any pretence of municipal organisation, there is
no co-operation for public enterprise. There are no streets, there are no
sidewalks save such as a man may choose to lay in front of his own
premises, and the simplest sanitary precautions are entirely neglected.
Nothing but the cold climate of the north prevents epidemic disease
from sweeping through these places. They rise in a few days wherever
gold is found in quantities, they flourish as the production increases,
decline with its decline, and are left gaunt, dark, and abandoned so soon
as the diggings are exhausted.
The next day we were on the Chatanika River, to which Cleary Creek is
tributary, and were immediately confronted with one of the main

troubles and difficulties of winter travel in this and, as may be
supposed, in any arctic or subarctic country--overflow water.
[Sidenote: OVERFLOW WATER AND ICE]
In the lesser rivers, where deep pools alternate with swift shallows, the
stream freezes solid to the bottom upon the shoals and riffles. Since the
subterranean fountains that supply the river do not cease to discharge
their waters in the winter, however cold it may be, there comes
presently an increasing pressure under the ice above such a barrier. The
pent-up water is strong enough to heave the ice into mounds and at last
to break forth, spreading itself far along the frozen surface of the river.
At times it may be seen gushing out like an artesian well, rising three or
four feet above the surface of the ice, until the pressure is relieved.
Sometimes for many miles at a stretch the whole river will be covered
with a succession of such overflows, from two or three inches deep to
eight or ten, or even twelve; some just bursting forth, some partially
frozen, some resolved into solid "glare" ice. Thus the surface of the
river is continually renewed the whole winter through, and a section of
the ice crust in the spring would show a series of laminations; here ice
upon ice, there ice upon half-incorporated snow, that mark the
successive inundations.
This explanation has been given at length because of the large part that
the phenomenon plays in the difficulty and danger of winter travel, and
because it seems hard to make those who are not familiar with it
understand it. At first sight it would seem that after a week or ten days
of fifty-below-zero weather, for instance, all water everywhere would
be frozen into quiescence for the rest of the winter. Throw a bucket of
water into the air, and it is frozen solid as soon as it reaches the ground.
There would be no more trouble, one would think, with water. Yet
some of the worst trouble the traveller has with overflow water is
during very cold weather, and it is then, of course, that there is the
greatest danger of frost-bite in getting one's feet wet. Water-proof
footwear, therefore, becomes one of the "musher's" great concerns and
difficulties. The best water-proof footwear is the Esquimau mukluk, not
easily obtainable in the interior of Alaska, but the mukluk is an

inconvenient footwear to put snow-shoes on. Rubber boots or shoes of
any kind are most uncomfortable things to travel in. Nothing equals the
moccasin on the trail, nothing is so good to snow-shoe in. The
well-equipped traveller has moccasins for dry trails and mukluks for
wet trails--and even then may sometimes get his feet wet. Nor are his
own feet his only consideration; his dogs' feet are, collectively, as
important as his own. When the dog comes out of water into snow
again the snow collects and