?30 
[May 13, 1911. 
serted cabin we came to and made ourselves at 
home for twenty-four hours. We chopped wood 
and made a fire to dry our clothes, melted snow 
and made tea, and there being no one this time 
to object to the open door, we made up with 
interest for lack of sleep the night before. 
We reached the Nugget roadhouse about six 
in the evening to find it nailed up for the sum¬ 
mer, and a notice on the back door to the effect 
that if anything was wanted to come down to 
the tents on Salmon Lake, seven miles distant. 
Something was wanted—there was no doubt as 
to that—principally supper, but we had had all 
the mushing we cared for coming over the divide 
that day, and felt able to dispense with another 
seven miles. So we felt called upon to break 
in, and gained an entrance through a second 
story window, reached from an ell at one end. 
The burglar tools used were a piece of iron 
pipe, a rock and an old spade. We soon had 
a good fire and were ready to cook our dinner, 
but what was our disappointment upon breaking 
open the pantry door to find nothing we could 
use except breakfast food. There was some 
dried dog salmon hanging in the shed, so these 
two articles made our evening meal. A miner 
to whom we afterward related this sad story 
thoughtfully had it published in the Nome 
papers, so on our return the first question put 
to us was: “How do you like living on dog 
'salmon and mush?” 
We had a good breakfast the morning after 
this, however, for when we came downstairs we 
found that the owner of the roadhouse had ar¬ 
rived with provisions. He had heard over the 
telephone that we were on the way, and knew 
he would probably find us at his place. Evi¬ 
dently there was not much other news passing 
over the wires, and the people along the line 
were not too busy to keep track of “the two 
girls who were mushing through.” Consequently 
when we walked into a roadhouse we found that 
we were expected, and that the folks there 
knew all about our journey as far as it had pro¬ 
gressed. 
The last day before arriving at the Hot Springs 
we gave our feet a rest and journeyed twenty 
miles “a la dogamote.” The dogamote is the 
usual sled and dog team plus a little railroad 
truck. As long as the rails are free of snow 
ihe dogs pull the car bearing the sled and pas¬ 
sengers, and when the track is covered, the car 
is turned over on top of the sled. The freez¬ 
ing and thawing of the ground has a pronounced 
effect on the track, which is therefore quite an 
up-and-down affair, as well as being slanted 
sidewise. In many places the rails had spread 
so that the little car would suddenly crash off 
on to the ties and the passengers have to dis¬ 
mount till it was replaced. 
The distance from the railroad to the springs 
over the tundra is six miles, but what miles! 
The clumps of moss were the smallest we had 
encountered, and they were not strong enough 
to hold us up, but turned to one side as soon 
as we set foot upon them. If we tried walk¬ 
ing between them we found ourselves sinking 
deep in the water and soft mud. We had 
traversed possibly one mile in the course of 
an hour and a half, when the proprietor from 
the springs came to meet us in his wagon, and 
we were not sorry to have a lift, even though 
we could scarcely stay in the wagon for the 
jolting. The Government has been petitioned to 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
build a road across this six mile stretch, and it 
is to be hoped that Uncle Sam gets to work be¬ 
fore the tourists discover that the Sawtooth 
Mountains and Kruzgamepa Springs are on the 
map and travel sets in from the States. 
We crossed the Pilgrim River in a Peterbor¬ 
ough canoe and found we could ride almost to 
the door of the log cabin hotel by following 
a wagon road that was flooded a foot deep with 
water. The building was a new and substantial 
one, and accommodations were a little more pre¬ 
tentious than at the roadhouses along the trail. 
Being the only guests, we had things our own 
way. 
A good-sized bath house has been built over 
the springs. The temperature of the water is 
not far from boiling, and cold water from a 
creek is brought in to make it right for bath¬ 
ing. The ground around the bath house, and 
for some distance along the creek below, is ap¬ 
preciably warm. A cottonwood grove surrounds 
the springs, and it seemed nice to us to see a 
tree once more, as well as the green things that 
were growing all around. The men were putting 
out garden, and the greenhouse furnished let¬ 
tuce, onions, radishes and mushrooms, to which, 
after our winter’s diet of canned goods, we did 
full justice at meal times. We climbed the moun¬ 
tains, hunted ducks on the many lakes around, 
went rowing on the river, played the piano and 
read, and took three baths a day. 
Leaving the springs we crossed over Golden 
Gate Pass and camped three days at a miner’s 
cabin to which we had been directed. We rum¬ 
maged out provisions and feasted gloriously- on 
mush, syrup, fish, rice, coffee and hot biscuit. 
We moved our bed out of doors on to the 
ground and found this location more agreeable 
than in the tent, even during a rain, as there 
was a tarpaulin to cover us. We worked strenu¬ 
ously panning for nuggets in the creek that 
rushed alongside the camp and were kept busy 
much of the time at chopping wood. 
When we went on to Salmon Lake we found 
no way of crossing it or the Pilgrim flowing 
cut of it, but by kindling a fire we attracted 
the attention of the people at the tents who 
came to set Us across. An old boat was pried 
out of the ice where it had lain all winter, and 
with one of us in it and the other bringing up 
the rear of the stately procession on a raft, we 
reached the other side to find a good dinner of 
fish, swan and rabbit waiting for us. 
There was a great variety of birds at every 
turn—ducks, geese, loons, swans, snipe and 
ptarmigan—and we very frequently came upon 
nests of eggs from which the mother bird would 
try to lead us away. One day we watched a 
family of ptarmigan for a long time, the tiny 
little ones crouched on the tundra as quiet as 
could be, while the parent birds worried and 
fussed, giving them instructions as to how to 
behave. At one of our camps we confiscated 
a nest of eggs, salving our consciences with the 
plea that hunger made it necessary, and then 
after all our arguing about them found they 
were very nearly ready to hatch. 
At the cabin where we spent one day we 
could scarcely sleep at first for the noise of 
the squirrels that were racing through the room. 
Finally we set a trap in the form of an oil can 
laid on the floor with the bait at the further 
end. After a squirrel got inside there was a 
most cautious approach upon him, the can was 
suddenly jerked upright and a board clapped 
over the top before he could make his escape. 
Tremendous jumping and thumping on the part 
of the prisoner. Preparations were immediately 
begun for his execution. A pocket knife was 
sharpened preparatory to cutting his throat, and 
gloves were donned for the dangerous work of 
laying hold upon him. Of course he managed 
to slip through our fingers when we reached 
in for him, but if we mourned over not having 
fricaseed squirrel for breakfast, at least we re¬ 
joiced that our slumbers were no longer dis¬ 
turbed. Our captive evidently mentioned his ex¬ 
perience to the rest of the family, for none of 
them visited us again. 
The nearest we came to big game was seeing 
a dog on our way to the springs that we did not 
see on the return trip because he had been 
killed by a bear in the interval. One of the 
roadhouse men guaranteed he could find bear 
for us if we really were in earnest in our de¬ 
sire to kill the beasts, but this was on the last 
day but one of our journey, and we were sorry 
to be obliged to tell him that lack of time would 
prevent any more side trips. 
It would not be easy to describe the natural 
beauties of the country we traversed. During 
the sixteen days we were away from Nome our 
conversation seemed to be largely a matter of 
“Oh’s” and “Ah’s” with variations of the ex¬ 
clamation, “Oh, look!” as one scene after an¬ 
other called forth our admiration and delight. 
On our second day out, when from King Moun¬ 
tain we caught our first glimpse of the Saw¬ 
tooth, so jagged and so dazzling white in the 
far distance, with a wonderful expanse of val¬ 
leys and hills close at hand, Bering Sea stretch¬ 
ing back of us with Sledge Island not yet un¬ 
locked from the ice, our feeling had been one 
of pity for all the people who had stayed in 
Nome, and thankfulness that we were able to 
see for ourselves the loveliness of Alaska in 
the spring time. 
We brought home mental pictures, as well as 
photographic pictures that will be a delight for 
years to come, of the sharp snowy peaks, of the 
glaciers, of the lakes just beginning to break up, 
of the wonderfully clear reflections of the moun¬ 
tains in the water, of beautiful skies and sun¬ 
sets, of the birds, of the profusion of wild 
flowers of every color that we had gathered, 
and of the amazing effects produced in the 
thawing of an immense amount of snow. 
We experienced many kinds of weather. One 
day we would be tramping along in rain, the 
next in snowstorms and wind, while again the 
sun would beat down fiercely, tanning our faces, 
raising blisters on our ears and making our 
eyes ache painfully with the blinding brightness 
of the snow from which even our goggles could 
not save them. We were fortunate enough to 
meet with no acidents whatever, and in fact 
everything seemed to happen exactly as we 
would have chosen. We learned what travel at 
this season is really like, and understood many 
things about Alaska that we could never have 
learned in any other way. 
We were enthusiastic over the hospitality and 
courteousness with which, without exception, we 
met. At a ditch camp where we stopped for 
lunch we found one of the Nome high school 
boys who was as much surprised to see us as 
we were to meet him. He went a mile or more 
with us when we started on to show us a trail 
