Travels in Alaska | Page 8

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.
Neither the great white heart of the fire nor the quivering enthusiastic
flames shooting aloft like auroral lances could be seen from the village
on account of the trees in front of it and