LIFE SKETCHES OF A JAYHAWKER 57 



thousand miles, just like traveling on the river. There were places we 

 passed that one might throw a stone from the deck and hit the shore on 

 either side of the boat. We passed Wrunfel and some Indian villages on the 

 way up, but did not stop until we reached Juneau, where we laid for about 

 twenty-four hours. While there I had a chance to go and visit the Tread- 

 ville Mine on Douglas Island. It is only about twenty minutes' run from 

 Juneau. There I saw the largest stamp mill I ever saw in my life, there 

 being eight hundred stamps dropping. You may imagine the noise. They 

 didn't seem to be working any particular ledge, but taking down a whole 

 mountain and running everything through the mill. It was all low grade 

 ore, but they had already taken millions out from this point. From Juneau, 

 the Klondike passengers went via Loyn Canal to Skagway, to the Yukon. 

 Here we parted company with some of our passengers, but the most of them 

 were on their way to Cooks Inlet. We called at some salmon fisheries on 

 the way up and finally reached Copper River landing, or Valdez, where a 

 few more left the boat. At this point right in front and but a few miles 

 away, there is a large glacier, and the trail from this point leads right over 

 the glacier, but I believe now they have built a road around it, between 

 there and Resurrection Bay, our point of destination. We ran into the 

 worst storm I ever witnessed either on sea or land. The purser said he had 

 been running up the coast for the past sixteen years and he said he never 

 had witnessed anything like it. It was accompanied with snow that never 

 seemed to light, but flew by in a horizontal shape, and to make things more 

 terrifying we came very near running on to a rock, we just missed it and 

 that was all. I went on deck and was holding on the best I could and the 

 first thing I knew, I was going feet foremost like a catapult into the scup- 

 pers. I had on a new heavy overcoat and it tore it up the back, up to the 

 collar. I was mighty glad to get into the cabin again and stay there. There 

 were seams in our boat that one could almost put their hand in, that reached 

 from stem to stern, and just above the water line; had it been below we 

 would soon have gone to the bottom; as it was it let in lots of water. Our 

 stateroom was all a flood, more than an inch deep on the floor. As night 

 came on the storm subsided and the next day, we landed at Resurrection 

 Bay, the first steamer that had ever been there. We built a temporary 

 wharf of poles to land our goods, but the horses we had to hoist and let 

 them into the water, where they had to swim ashore. We landed on the 

 twelfth day of March, and it was still pretty cold in that northern country. 

 There was plenty of snow and that was what we went through to get out 

 to the mine a distance of sixty miles. It was on the 5th of May before we 

 arrived at the mine. We had about eighteen tons of freight to haul along 

 on hand sleds, with one range of mountains to cross, where the snow was 

 ten feet deep, but on the level it was only two or three feet deep. Sleeping 

 on the snow is easy enough if you know how. When we would go in camp 

 in the evening, the first thing would be to set our tents on the snow, then 

 pull some pine or spruce trees and cut the pine boughs and spread on the 

 snow about a foot deep, lay our tarpaulin down with the blankets on top, 

 and we had as comfortable a bed as anyone needs. Of course, we would 

 have to shovel the snow away before we could build a campfire. 



Our mode of making trail was in this manner: first three or four men 

 would go over the route with snow shoes, following them with all the help 



