:24 
FORESt AND STREAM. 
he made. Later we came on a gray fox erouching dose 
to the ground at the extremity of the chahi. The fox was 
a beautiful creature, with a wealth of deep, soft, fluffy 
fur of the finest quality. 
I felt sorry for the poor anunal. It looked moje like 
a pet than the wild creature it was, for it did not show 
its teeth or snap at us, and the expression of its eyes 
was mild rather than cunning. 
After a time the trail swung further inland, and we left 
it and lowered our sleds to the ice of the river. Here our 
real difficulties began. As far as the eye could reach 
there was not a bit of level surface, and the scene resem- 
bled as much as anything the masses of fallen rock one 
sees at the foot of a slide when covered with a light fall 
of snow. Moreover, the component ice cakes were brist- 
ling witli knobs and jagged projections, as a result of their 
method of freezing while carried along hy the rapid cur- 
rent, and even in detail there were no smooth places. 
Our feet had not been toughened for this kind of walk- 
ing, and were soon covered with bruises. If wc could 
have worn boots or shoes it would not have been so bad; 
but the weather was too cold for anything but moccasins. 
Our home-made sled, soon developed signs of weak- 
ness, and before we had covered half the distance to the 
island one of the runners gave way, and the sled was a 
wreck. We made up a pack of between 75 and loolbs. of 
its load, and leaving the remainder where it was. con- 
tinued our journey. It was after dark when we at last 
reached the island, and we realized more fully than ever 
the uselessness of attempting to get our supplies through 
to Dawson. Though only 185 miles away by the short- 
est route, the windings af a feasible trail made the 
actual distance to Dawson very much greater. Going 
and returning, we figured we should have to travel 1,600 
miles to get the outfit through, and the condition of the 
ice ade traveling so slow that we should be all winter 
at the job. With no better protection against the rigors 
of an arctic climate than a tent, it would go bad with us in 
case of sickness. Then, too, we were worn out physically 
and mentally as a result of our previous sleepless strug- 
gle against time, and it was a question whether our health 
would stand such a severe additional tax. Mac and I 
-had gone stale, to use the term applied to athletes who 
have overtrained. Instead of going at things with snap 
and vigor, we plodded along listlessly, doing our duty 
as we saw it, but without a particle of pleasure or satis- 
faction in the task. We were as stupid and stolid as 
the worn-out horses back on the Skagway trail. 
That night in camp we talked the matter over again, 
and came to the conclusion that it wasn't any use buck- 
ing up against the stone wall of destiny any more. The 
time required to make the trip was a hopeles.sly conclu- 
sive argument against the sledding proposition. The 
hardships alone would not have deterred us. 
An Inventory of Supplies. 
Later we took an inventory of out supplies, weigh- 
ing each separate article on a spring balance. The 
weights were afterward confirmed by the platform scales 
at Fort Selkirk. The result was 'jnother knock-down 
blow, for we found that we had considerably less than 
half the food we had purchased a little more than three 
months previously. The sup'^lies given the Colorado 
miners had made a serious inroad in our scanty stock, 
but even including these more than half out supplies 
had vanished. 
We had lost nothing on our trip down the Yukon, and 
the shortage had its origin back on the Skagway trail. 
A part of the shrinka : could be accounted for by the 
fact that on the last half of the trail our personal supplies 
had been drawn upon for the requirements of the five 
men who then formed the party; but despite all the allow- 
ances we could make for this, and allowing for what we 
had eaten en route, there was a shortage of fully 20 per 
cent, from the estimate furnished by the men who made 
the division. 
I am satisfied that Mac and I got all we were entitled 
to in the division at Summit Lake. The shortage was 
no doubt largely due to supplies lost or stolen from 
caches on the horse trail, or at the time of disembarka- 
tion from the steamer. 
We had been given a wrong estimate, however, made 
partly by guesswork, and it was a cruel blow to find the 
food did not exist. 
Reducing the situation to its simplest terms, we found 
our supplies would not last the winter out. When spring 
came we would have no food and should be unable to 
accomplish anything. Here was another of the disas- 
trous climaxes that the haste and precipitation of the trail 
had brought us to. 
It would be a tedious waste of space to recount all the 
plans discussed or the various expedients adopted in the 
month that followed, It would also be superfluous to 
describe events of a business nature which influenced 
our final decision. In the end we sold out our remain- 
ing supplies and left for the coast. Mac is back in the 
Yukon, and I came within an ace of being there too, 
but that's another story. 
Notes from our Diary. 
While figuring the thing out we decided to build a 
cabin. There was no mineral in the neighborhood, and 
we needed some occupation. Winter is no time for pros- 
pecting. It is a good time for staking wildcat claims to 
take out and sell credulous investors, but no self-respect- 
ing man soils his fingers with that kind of thing. After 
selecting a site on the mainland, we began sledding our 
outfit to it. We had a day or two of very mild weather, 
and on Nov. 24 the thermometer rose to zero. When we 
awoke on the following day, however, it had fallen to 
minus 45. The snow was then about i8in. deeps on a 
level, and very light and powdery. On the 26th it was 
49 below zero. We had moved our tent to the main- 
land and pitched it in a very thick growth of small 
spruces, with boughs reaching all the wa.y down to the 
ground. The tent had no fly, but we covered the roof 
with extra pieces of canvas, taken from the boats, and 
banked up the snow on the sides and part way up the 
roof. Inside there was a cours of logs around the bot- 
tom, and the roof was supported by a series of poles rest- 
ing on crotched sticks. 
Nov. 27 the thermometer registered 50 below zero. 
Owing to the absence of sunlight, the middle of the 
day was not much warmer than morning and evening. 
This makes the cold more absolute than in places fur- 
ther south, where it warms up in the middle of the d^y. 
We were on an east and west stretch of the river and 
never saw the sun. Instead we had sun-dogs and north- 
ern lights and the aurora borealis. If it had been mid- 
summer, we should have had twenty-two hours of sun- 
light, and light enough to sight a rifle at any hour of 
the twenty-four. Some of the miners paint the roofs of 
their tents black, so that they can sleep during the time of 
the midnight sun. 
As Mac was tying up the flaps of the tent the evening 
of tl,Te 27th, he called to me: "If you're too hot in there, 
old fellow, you'd better come out here. There's a de- 
licious breeze blowing on the front porch," 
Sunday, Nov. 28, the thermometer registered 50 below 
zero at 12 noon by our time. We had our watches set 
so that daylight came at about 10 o'clock and dark at 
four. For the first time in three months we observed the 
day and did no work. We had some strychnine out for 
wolves and foxes, but no animals had been near it in the 
night. I made a snowshoe trip of a few miles inland, 
but saw no tracks except those of carnivora. My note- 
book mentions the fact that the snow had almost entirely 
disappeared from the ground inside the tent, and that 
we were very comfortable; in fact, too warm when the 
stove was under good headway. 
Monday, Nov. 29. the thermometer stood 54 below. 
This day was remarkable for two events. We laid the 
foundation of our cabin and met the first dog team out 
from Dawson. There were .six dogs, attending strictly 
to business and looking neither to right or left, and 
three men. The me nwere clad in fur porkies, and the 
frost from their breaths had made a rim of ice around the 
openings of their fur hoods that nearly hid their faces. 
They mentioned the fact that the thermometer in their 
possession had registered 65 below zero the night before, 
and said there would be a big exodus from Dawson 
as soon as a little snow fell to fill up some of the cracks 
in the' ice. Food, they added, couldn't be had for love 
or money, and there was bound to be a lot of stravation 
and suffering before the winter was over. An interesting 
fact we noted was that these men followed the trail of 
Lingard and Dartois with all its windings. With judg- 
ment they might have shortened the distance 20 per 
cent. 
No snow fell from Nov. 23 to Dec. 2, and trails made 
several weeks before the 23d had not filled up. The aver- 
age snowfall was very light, and in the early part of the 
winter there was no wind. Before the river closed it 
steamed like a boiling caldron for days. A dense cloud 
of vapor hung over the river valley and the blue sky 
was blotted out. This vapor at times made it very diffi- 
cult to locate ■ rapids, the sound of which was plainly 
audible. It collected on the trees till the somber spruce 
forests were white and hoary. It was not until Dec. 31, 
1897, when a warm chinook wind came along and blew 
them free, that the trees resumed their normal dark 
color. The contrast was striking after nearly two months 
of glistening frost. We seemed transported to a new 
country. 
Our water hole had been cut in a place where none 
of the jammed ice had collected. This new ice, which 
had formed in eleven da3's, was now iSin. thick .Water 
taken from the hole and thrown upon the surrounding 
ice crackled and snapped like a brisk fire, only louder. 
Strangely enough, the trees did not make the pistol-shot 
reports characteristic of cold days in our Eastern forests. 
The frost in them caused them to snap to a certain ex- 
tent, it is true, but the noise was more subdued and less , 
frequent than in Maine. For one thing, the trees are 
smaller, though there are some i6in. spruces on the 
islands. The real reason for the difference, however, I 
think lies in the fact that in the Yukon the frost is prac- 
tically continuous during the winter, and there is not 
the alternate thawing and freezing process that takes 
place in milder climates. The trees were frozen hard 
as rocks, and one had to be very careful in cutting green 
wood, or he would lose a good part of the bit of the axe. 
Nov, 30 our thermometer recorded 55 below zero. We 
had compared this thermometer with a very tine instru- 
ment, from which Mr. Pitts took official readings, and 
found that it tallied very closely. We saw a magpie and 
several ravens. An ordinary hairy woodpecker had been 
noted a few days before. hTe other day an agricul- 
tural paper stated that severe winters have the effect of 
killing off the woodpeckers. This may be true, but as 
far as my observation goes there are few hardier birds. 
Weather ■ Conditions. 
Dec. I was the coldest day of the winter of 1897-98 on 
the Yukon. Our thermometer registered 57 below zero. 
Mr. Pitts' registered minus 55, though I believe his 
reading was taken several hours later in the morning 
than ours. Other thermometers registered 10 or 12 de- 
grees colder. The winter was unusually mild, though 
anything below So is considered very cold, even for the 
Yukon. The lowest temperature recorded by Mr. Pitts 
in foirr years was 92 below, and that onl}^ lasted for a few 
hours. Sixty-three below had been the coldest the pre- 
vious winter. 
From 20 to .30 below is abotit the average winter cold. 
Once in a while the thermometer touches zero, but this 
is unusual. Sometimes, in years of exceptional mild- 
ness, the thermometer goes above the freezing point, as 
the result of' a long-continued south wind. The last day 
of December, 1897, and first daj^ of January following 
such a chinook wind raised the temperature to about 36 
above zero, and the present writer has seen an even more 
remarkable warm spell. 
Mr. Pitts stated that summer may properly be said to 
begin June i. 
Cabbages and such vegetables are then set out. Winter 
sets in on Sept. 25. It is then blustery and cold and 
a marked sharp change has taken place. The ther- 
mometer is apt to fall below zero within a week of that 
date. Frost is likely to form any nighty during the sum- 
mer. July 26 and 27, '96, the ground froze hard, badly 
frosting potatoes Avhich did not happen to be covered. Mr. 
Pitts blankets his potatoes cold nights as a rule. He has 
sheets of drilling all ready to be run out on a pole 
framework over the beds. Turnips are much more 
hardy and are a sure crop without this care. All vege- 
tables have to be irrigated at Selkirk. 
About the first of December a severe cold snap is gen- 
erally counted upon. Fortunately, however, the early 
winter is not apt to be very windy. In January and Feb- 
[Feb. i8i iSgg. 
ruary occur periodical wind storms which make traveling 
disagreeable and dangerous. Naturally more deaths by 
freezing are recorded in such weather than at other 
times. The worst thing about the Yukon is not the cold, 
but the darkness. The cold is healthful and invigor- 
ating and can be easily endured by men who . know how 
to take care of themselves. The short, dull, sunless days 
are, however, very depressing. 
Building the Cabin. 
Several persons we had talked with had told us we 
would have a hard time building our cabin in midwinter. 
They were united in saying that our chief difficulties 
would be to procure moss for chinking the walls and 
earth for coyermg the roof. The Colorado miners gave 
us a good point, suggesting the use of dry logs only in the 
construction. Dead logs are much warmer than green be-t 
cause they contain less frost. 
We had selected a site for the cabin at no great dis- 
tance from a place where there were a number of dead 
spruce trees uprooted by spring freshets of the Yukon. 
Many of these trees were supported clear of the ground 
and were dry and seasoned instead of rotten and soggy, as 
they would have been if they had been on the ground.. 
They were of fair size, averaging 8 or loin. at the butt.. 
Some of them would make a couple of logs, though all- 
were knotty and the grain often had a spiral twi.st similar 
to white cedar. It was next to impossible to get a nice: 
clear piece, and Mac was several days finding a 5ft. sec- 
tion he could split into plank for our door. 
Mac secured the logs and I built the cabin. The logs, 
were from 13 to i6ft. in length, and the cabin was about 
1 1 by 13ft. on the inside. It took us two weeks to build! 
the cabin and furnish it. It was a day's job for Mac to 
secure five qr six logs and sled them. In all we used 
nearly sixty logs. 
We began by clearing away the snow and leveling off 
the ground as well as we cbuld with pick, shovel and axe. 
Next two large logs were laid front and back, and for 
the sides logs 3 or 4in. smaller in diameter were selected. 
These latter were cut so that the ends would rest 
snugly against the front and back logs. This completed 
the first course of the cabin, which was not notched or 
fastened in any way. In the second course round 
notches were cut at each end of the front and back logs 
directly over the side logs of a depth that woidd bring 
the bottom of the notch flush with the top of the side log.. 
The side logs of the new course were then rolled into, 
these notches -and back hewed so that they lay snugly 
against the idwer side logs. When a good fit had been 
secured the logs were rolled back out of the way and a 
layer of moss- laid the entire length of the side. After 
which they were rolled back into the position they were 
to occupy permanently and their ends round notched to 
receive new front and back logs. The principle of this 
method of construction lies in furnishing a bed for each 
log as it is required, and it saves any notching of the new 
log before it is in place. One can also do a better and 
quicker job laying the moss this way than chinking after- 
wards. 
Greatly to our relief we met with no serious difficulty 
in securing the moss.. The Colorado miners had told us 
that in Dawson they had to build fires to thaw it out. 
This may have been due to the swampy location of the 
Klondike metropolis, for in our locality the moss was not 
frozen except in the immediate neighborhood of trees or 
roots which came close to the surface and which at- 
tracted moisture from the ground below. I dug enough 
moss from the space inside our cabin to chink the walls 
a height of 5ft., and a few sled loads more secured near 
by satisfied our requirements. The loose snow was 
shaken from the moss and the harder portions were 
pounded flat with a hatchet. 
The Problem of the Roof. 
The problem of the roof was by no means so easy- of 
solution. To make a good warm roof earth seemed an 
absolute necessity. No one ever thinks of any other kind 
of roof in that country. As in the West, the rainfall in 
summer is very light, and roofs with enough earth on 
them rarely wet through. Further up the river there is a 
deposit of volcanic ash that shows in the faces of cut 
, banks as a white band. In the neighborhood of Five 
Finger Rapids this ash deposit is at least a foot thick. 
It is so dry that it does not freeze in winter, and, being 
very close to the surface, it is easily excavated. We knew 
that this had been used for covering the roofs of houses 
and for filling in the space between double walls of small 
logs. We were not able, however, to locate the strata in 
our neighborhood. We could, of course, have thawed out 
earth by burning after the manner of working deep 
claims, but the process seemed too slow and laborious. > 
Finally we hit upon the plan of carrying the same con- 
struction used for the walls up into the roof. The cabin 
was intended for winter use only, and it made little 
difference whether the roof was waterproof or not. The 
main thing was to have it tight and warm. At a height 
of about 5ft. I began building in toward the center, au'i 
as soon as there was good head room inside I laid 
the logs nearly on a level. The result was a roof shaped 
like an inverted U, something on the principle of a rail- 
way coach. It was tightly chinked and proved thoroughly 
satisfactory except for the fact that the snow melted and 
leaked through a little in the immediate neighborhood of 
the stovepipe. 
The roof had a consideral)le slant to the back, and if 
necessary we could have thrown a tent over it to keep 
out the water. 
Furnishing the Cabin with Axe and Auger^ 
The chief article of our furniture was a bed. This was 
made after a receipt taken from Forest and Stream, 
and a very good bed it proved. 
Four logs were notched and jointed at the corners, the 
two end ones projecting several inches higher than the 
sides. The resultant framework measured about 5 by 7ft. 
in size. 
A canvas bag 5 by 7ft. was made and loosely filled with 
the soft ends of the spruce boughs. Two^ ij^in, 
poles were run through the bag lengthwise at the sides. 
The poles were then attached to the framework of the 
bed by cleats which held them as far apart as the canvas 
would permit and kept the canvas tightly stretched. A 
third pole down the center was required to keep the tw(?- 
I 
