of any sort had penetrated to the Koyukuk, and, save for one journey thither by Bishop Rowe, my annual visits have been the only opportunities for public worship since. It will suffice for the visit now describing as well as for all the others to say that the reception was most cordial and the opportunity much appreciated. We went from creek to creek and gathered the men and the few women in whatever cabin was most convenient, and no clergyman could wish for more attentive or interested congregations.
Upon our return to Coldfoot from the creek visits the thermometer stood at 52° below zero, although it had been no lower than 38° below when we left the last creek, some fifteen miles away. As a general rule, the temperature on these mountain creeks, which are at some considerable elevation above the river into which they flow, will read from 10° to 15° higher than on the river, and if one climbed to the top of the peaks around Coldfoot, the difference then would probably be 20° or 25°. At the summit road-house between Fairbanks and Cleary City in the Tanana country in cold weather the thermometer commonly reads 20° above the one place and 10° or 15° above the other.
LINGO
This interesting fact, which surprises a good many people, for we are used to think of elevated places as cold places, is due to the greater heaviness of cold air, which sinks to the lowest level it can reach; and the river bed is the lowest part of the country. It would be interesting to find out to what extent this rule holds good. The ridges and the hilltops are always the warmest places in cold weather; would this hold as regards mountain tops?—as regards high mountain tops? Probably it would hold in the sunshine, but the rapid radiation of heat in the rarefied atmosphere of mountain tops would swing the balance the other way after dark. There is no doubt, however, that the coldest place in cold weather in Alaska is the river surface, and it is on the river surface that most of our travelling is done. The night we returned to Coldfoot we put our toboggan up high on the roof of an outhouse to keep its skin sides from the teeth of some hungry native dogs, leaving some of the load that was not required within it, covered by the sled cloth. Later on I saw by the light of the moon Lingo's silhouetted figure sitting bolt upright on top of the sled, and he gave his short double bark as I drew near to make me notice that he was still doing his duty although under difficulties. The dog had climbed up a wood-pile and had jumped to the top of the outhouse and so to the sled. I thought of Kipling's Men That Fought at Minden:
"For fatigue it was their pride
And they would not be denied To clean the cook-house floor."
Here at Coldfoot we came first into contact with that interesting tribe of wandering inland Esquimaux known as the Kobuks, from their occupation of the river of that name. The Koyukuk has its own Indian people, but these enterprising Kobuks have pushed their way farther and farther from salt water into what used to be exclusive Indian territory. Representatives of both races were at Coldfoot, and as we lay weather-bound for a couple of days, I was enabled to renew last year's acquaintance with them, though without a good interpreter not much progress was made. The delight of these people at the road-house phonograph, the first they had ever heard, was some compensation for the incessant snarl and scream of the instrument itself. It was very funny to see them sitting on the floor, roaring with laughter at one particularly silly spoken record of the "Uncle Josh at the World's Fair" order. Over and over again they would ask for that record, and it never ceased to convulse them with laughter. "He's been enjoyin' poor health lately, but this mornin' I heard him complain that he felt a little better"—how sick and tired we got of this and similar jokes drawled out a dozen times running! The natives did not understand a word of it; it was the human voice with its pronounced, unusual inflections that aroused their merriment. The phonograph is becoming a powerful agency for disseminating a knowledge of English amongst the natives throughout Alaska, and one wishes that it were put to better use than the reproduction of silly and often vulgar monologue and dialogue and trashy ragtime music. As an index of the taste of those who purchase records, the selection brought to this country points low.
The third day the thermometer stood at −49° and we were free to leave without actually breaking the rule we had made after the escapade on the Yukon. Two other teams were going down the river, so we started with them on the sixty-five mile journey to Bettles. Twenty miles or so below Coldfoot the Koyukuk passes for several miles in a narrow channel between steep rock bluffs, with here and there great detached masses standing in the middle of the river. One has a grotesque resemblance to an aged bishop in his vestments and is known as the Bishop Rock; another a more remote likeness to an Indian woman, and this is known as the Squaw Rock. This part of the river, which is called the cañon of the Koyukuk, though it is not a true cañon, is very picturesque, and because of frequent overflow, offers glare ice and swift passage to the traveller when it does not embarrass him with running water. We were fortunate enough to pass it without getting our dogs' feet wet, and made the half-way road-house in a brilliant moon that rendered travelling at night pleasanter than during the day.
TRAVELLING AT "50 BELOW"
The next day we started again at near 50° below, but because there was a good trail and a road-house for noon, the travelling was rather pleasant than otherwise. If there be a warm house to break the day's march and eat in, where ice-incrusted scarfs and parkees and caps and mittens may be dried out, with a warm outhouse where the dogs may rest in comfort, travelling in such weather is not too risky or too severely trying. The continual condensation of the moisture from the breath upon everything about the head and face is a decided inconvenience, and when it condenses upon the eye-lashes, and the upper and the lower lashes freeze together, the ice must be removed or it is impossible to open the eyes. This requires the momentary application of the bare hand, and every time it goes back into the mitten it carries some moisture with it, so that after a while mittens are wet as well as head-gear; moreover, there is always a certain perspiration that condenses. One gets into the habit of turning the duffel lining of the moose-hide mitts inside out and hanging them up the moment one gets inside a cabin. Round every road-house stove there is a rack constructed for just that purpose.
There is no more striking phenomenon of the arctic trail than the behaviour of smoke in cold weather. As one approaches a road-house, and to greater degree a village or a town, it is seen enveloped in mist, although there be no open water to account for it, and the prospect in every other direction be brilliantly clear. It is not mist at all; it is merely the smoke from the stovepipes. And the explanation is simple, although not all at once arrived at. Smoke rises because it is warmer than the air into which it is discharged; for that and no other reason. Now, when smoke is discharged into air at a temperature of 50° below zero, it is deprived of its heat immediately and falls to the ground by its greater specific gravity. The smoke may be observed just issuing from the pipe, or rising but a few feet, and then curling downward to be diffused amidst the air near the ground.
It was to such a smoke-enveloped inn that we pulled up to warm and refresh ourselves and our team for the twenty miles that remained of the day's march. We had almost reached the limit of Koyukuk road-houses. Bettles being the head of navigation, and merchandise late in the season finding water too shallow for transport to the diggings, there is more or less freighting with dog teams and horses all the winter. This travel keeps open the road-houses on the route. From an "outside" point of view they may appear rough and the fare coarse. The night accommodation is a double row of bunks on each side of a long room with a great stove in the middle. Sometimes there is straw in the bunks, sometimes spruce boughs; in the better class even sometimes hay-stuffed mattresses. But to the weary traveller, who has battled with the storm or endured the intense cold for hours at a stretch, they are glad havens of refuge; they are often even life-saving stations.
METEOROLOGICAL
While
