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22 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
These letters were not written for publication originally. They were written for the home circle and the few friends who might care to read them. They are the brief narrative of daily journeyings and experiences during a very delightful two months of travel into the far north and along the Pacific slope of our continent. Some of the letters were afterwards published in the daily press. They are now put into this little book and a few of the Kodak snapshots taken are given in half-tone prints. We
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FIRST LETTER. THE GREAT LAKES, CLEVELAND TO DETROIT.
FIRST LETTER. THE GREAT LAKES, CLEVELAND TO DETROIT.
Steamer Northwest, on Lake Superior , August 11, 1903. } We reached Cleveland just in time to catch the big liner, which cast off her cables almost as soon as we were aboard. A vessel of 5,000 tons, a regular sea ship. The boat was packed with well-dressed people, out for a vacation trip, most of them. By and by we began to pass islands, and about 2 P. M. turned into a broad channel between sedgy banks—the Detroit River. Many craft we passed and more overtook, for we were the fastest thing on th
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SECOND LETTER. ST. PAUL, WINNIPEG AND BANFF; THE WHEAT LANDS OF THE FAR NORTHWEST.
SECOND LETTER. ST. PAUL, WINNIPEG AND BANFF; THE WHEAT LANDS OF THE FAR NORTHWEST.
St. Paul , Minnesota, August 13, 1903. We have spent two delightful days in St. Paul, great city of the Northwest that it is. We came over from West Superior by the “Great Northern” route, very comfortably in a new and fresh-kept sleeper—a night’s ride. I was early awake and sat for an hour watching the wide flat farming country of Minnesota. Not much timber, never a cornfield, much wheat and oats and hay land. A black, rich soil. Still a good deal of roll to the landscape, and, at the same time
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THIRD LETTER. BANFF TO VANCOUVER ACROSS THE ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS.
THIRD LETTER. BANFF TO VANCOUVER ACROSS THE ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS.
Hotel Vancouver, Vancouver, B. C. , August 19, 1903. } Our day crossing the Rockies was delightful. We left Banff about 2 P. M. , following up the valley of the Silver Bow River to its very head. A deep valley, shut in on either hand by gigantic granite mountains, rising to 10,000 and 12,000 feet, their lower slopes covered with small fir, aspen, birch, then a sparse grass, and lichens, and then rising up into the clouds and eternal snows. Snow fields everywhere, and many glaciers quite unexplor
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FOURTH LETTER. VANCOUVER AND SKAGWAY; FJORDS AND FORESTS.
FOURTH LETTER. VANCOUVER AND SKAGWAY; FJORDS AND FORESTS.
First and Second Day Out , August 23, 1903. } We arrived in Vancouver by the steamer “Charmer” from Victoria about ten o’clock A. M. —two hours late—a small boat, packed with passengers. We could not get a state-room to ourselves, so were glad of berths, while many people lay on mattresses in the cabin and many sat up. Tourist travel surprises the slow-going Canadian, and he does not catch up with it. We went to the Hotel Vancouver, where we had been staying, and there breakfasted. Our boat, “Ci
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FIFTH LETTER. SKAGWAY, CARIBOU CROSSING[A] AND ATLIN.
FIFTH LETTER. SKAGWAY, CARIBOU CROSSING[A] AND ATLIN.
Atlin, British Columbia , August 29, 1903. Here we are at the mining camp of Atlin, on Atlin Lake. We left Skagway the same morning we arrived. Our boat, the “City of Seattle,” came in early Wednesday morning, and long before we got up we heard them discharging cargo, all hands at work. The day was cloudy, cold, and icy winds swept down from the glaciers. It seemed November. The little town is built on a low sand tongue of detritus carried down from the glaciers by the snow rivers, the river Ska
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SIXTH LETTER. THE GREAT LLEWELLYN OR TAKU GLACIER.
SIXTH LETTER. THE GREAT LLEWELLYN OR TAKU GLACIER.
Caribou Crossing , September 4, 1903. We have just come in on the steamboat from Atlin, and are waiting for the train which will take us to White Horse this afternoon, where we will take a river boat to Dawson. Day before yesterday we took the little steamboat that plies across Atlin Lake, having chartered it with Sutton, and having asked a Mr. Knight, of Philadelphia, and Captain Irving, of Victoria, making a party of five, and went to the head of the lake—forty-five miles. A lovely sail. Up th
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SEVENTH LETTER. VOYAGING DOWN THE MIGHTY YUKON.
SEVENTH LETTER. VOYAGING DOWN THE MIGHTY YUKON.
Dawson , September 5, 1903. This letter is headed Dawson, for I shall mail it there, but I begin it at White Horse, a thriving town of over 2,000 people, on the west bank of the Fifty Mile River, just below the famous rapids. The streets are wide, of hard gravel, many large buildings. We are in the “Windsor” Hotel, a three-storied wooden structure, iron bedsteads, wire mattresses, modern American oak furniture—very comfortable, but as all the partitions are of paper—no plaster—you can hear in on
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EIGHTH LETTER. DAWSON AND THE GOLDEN KLONDIKE.
EIGHTH LETTER. DAWSON AND THE GOLDEN KLONDIKE.
Dawson, Yukon Territory , Thursday, September 10, 1903. } We came in on Tuesday afternoon, the steamer “White Horse” having had an unusually good run. As we descended the river the stream grew larger, wider, with more water, and when we passed the White River the blue water there changed to a muddy white, discolored by the turgid, whitish tide of that stream. It must flow somewhere through beds of the white volcanic ash, that for so many miles marks the banks of the Yukon with its threadlike whi
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NINTH LETTER. MEN OF THE KLONDIKE.
NINTH LETTER. MEN OF THE KLONDIKE.
Yukon Territory, Canada , September 18, 1903. We lingered in Dawson a week waiting for the steamers “Sarah” or “Louise” or “Cudahy” to come up from the lower river, and though always “coming,” they never came. Meantime the days had begun to visibly shorten, the frosts left thicker rime on roof and road each morning. “Three weeks till the freeze-up,” men said, and we concluded that so late was now the season that we had best not chance a winter on a sand-bar in the wide and shallow lower Yukon, a
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TENTH LETTER. DOG LORE OF THE NORTH.
TENTH LETTER. DOG LORE OF THE NORTH.
White Horse , Sunday, September 20, 1903. We arrived about nine o’clock this morning. The voyage up the Yukon from Dawson has taken us since Wednesday at 2:30, when we cast off and stemmed the swift waters—twenty-four hours longer than going down. During the week of our stay at Dawson the days grew perceptibly shorter and the nights colder. There is no autumn in this land. Two weeks ago the foliage had just begun to turn; a week ago the aspens and birches were showing a golden yellow, but the wi
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ELEVENTH LETTER. HOW THE GOVERNMENT SEARCHES FOR GOLD.
ELEVENTH LETTER. HOW THE GOVERNMENT SEARCHES FOR GOLD.
Steamer Dolphin , September 22, 1903. We left White Horse by the little narrow-gauge railway, White Pass & Yukon Railway, at 9:30—two passenger cars, one smoker, mail and express and baggage hung on behind a dozen freight cars. Our steamer brought up about one hundred passengers from Dawson and down-river points, and together with what got on board at White Horse, the train was packed. Many red-coated Northwest Mounted Police also boarded the train, and just as it pulled out, a strapping
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TWELFTH LETTER. SEATTLE, THE FUTURE MISTRESS OF THE TRADE AND COMMERCE OF THE NORTH.
TWELFTH LETTER. SEATTLE, THE FUTURE MISTRESS OF THE TRADE AND COMMERCE OF THE NORTH.
The Portland Hotel , Portland, Oregon, October 3, 1903. } Just one week ago to-day the steamer “Dolphin” landed us safely at the pier at Seattle. The sail on Puget Sound, a body of deep water open for one hundred miles to the ocean, was delightful. We passed many vessels, one a great four-masted barque nearing its port after six or eight months’ voyage round the Horn from Liverpool. Seattle lies upon a semi-circle of steep hills, curving round the deep waters of the Sound like a new moon. An ide
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THIRTEENTH LETTER. THE VALLEY OF THE WILLAMETTE.
THIRTEENTH LETTER. THE VALLEY OF THE WILLAMETTE.
State of Oregon, the Valley of the Willamette , October 3, 1903. } From Portland to San Francisco. Written while moving thirty miles an hour on the Southern Pacific Railway. Here we are flying due south from Portland, crossing the entire State of Oregon. We have left Portland on the 8:30 morning train—“The Southern Limited”—and shall be in “Frisco” at eight o’clock to-morrow night. We are now ascending the beautiful valley of the Willamette, “Will-am-ett;” with a fierce accent on the am . Flat a
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FOURTEENTH LETTER. SAN FRANCISCO.
FOURTEENTH LETTER. SAN FRANCISCO.
Los Angeles , October 12, 1903. We slept in the old, famous, and yet well-patronized Palace Hotel, and on which the Fair estate has just renewed a mortgage for another term of years. In the morning we essayed to have a look at the city, and so took a long, wide electric car devoted to that purpose. A ride of thirty miles, and all for the price of only “two bits”! We circled around the city, we traversed its streets and avenues, climbed and descended its multitude of hills, went everywhere that a
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FIFTEENTH LETTER. LOS ANGELES.
FIFTEENTH LETTER. LOS ANGELES.
Los Angeles , October 13, 1903. We slept in Los Angeles with our windows wide open and felt no chill in the dry, balmy air, although a gentle breeze from seaward sifted through the lace curtains all night long. The sun was streaming in when at last we awoke to the sound of New England church bells. We breakfasted on plates piled high with big, red, sweet strawberries, dead ripe, evenly ripe, but not one whit over ripe. A ripeness and sweetness we have never before tasted, even in Oxford. In Seat
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SIXTEENTH LETTER. SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY.
SIXTEENTH LETTER. SAN FRANCISCO AND SALT LAKE CITY.
Salt Lake City, Utah , October 14, 1903. We left San Francisco on the “Overland Limited” train, taking the ten o’clock boat across the bay to Oakland and there entering our car. It was a lovely morning; the sky, blue, without a cloud; the sun, brilliant, and not so hot as at Los Angeles. The city, as we receded from it, lay spread before us, stretching several miles along the water and quite covering the range of hills upon which it is built. Many great ships were at the quays, many were anchore
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SEVENTEENTH LETTER. A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH.
SEVENTEENTH LETTER. A BRONCHO-BUSTING MATCH.
Glenwood Springs , October 16, 1903. We left Salt Lake City by the express last night over the Denver & Rio Grande Railway, starting three hours late. When we awoke, we were coming up the canyon of the Green River, one of the head streams of the Colorado, and had passed through the barren volcanic lava wastes of the Colorado Desert during the night. The Green River flows between sheer, naked volcanic rock masses, not very high, but jagged, no green thing growing upon them. But the scanty
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EIGHTEENTH LETTER. COLORADO AND DENVER.
EIGHTEENTH LETTER. COLORADO AND DENVER.
Denver , October 19th. After leaving Glenwood Springs we wound up the gorge of the Grand River, the castellated, crenelated, serrated, scarped and wind-worn cliffs towering many thousand feet into the blue sky. The valley narrowed sensibly and the sheer heights imposed themselves more and more upon us as we approached the tunnel at the height of land 10,200 feet above the sea, and where part the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from those of the Pacific. On the Canadian Pacific Railway, the interoce
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NINETEENTH LETTER. ACROSS NEBRASKA.
NINETEENTH LETTER. ACROSS NEBRASKA.
On Burlington Route Express , October 20, 1903. } We left Denver upon the night express over the Burlington Railway system, and all day to-day are flying eastward across flat, flat Nebraska. At dawn the country looked parched and treeless; expanses of buffalo grass and herds of cattle. Here and there the course of a dried-up stream marked by straggling cottonwood trees and alders, their leaves now turned a dull yellow brown. A drear land, but yet less heart-sickening than the stretches of bleak
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TWENTIETH LETTER. ALONG IOWA AND INTO MISSOURI TO ST. LOUIS.
TWENTIETH LETTER. ALONG IOWA AND INTO MISSOURI TO ST. LOUIS.
Charleston, W. Va. , October 23, 1903. Our journey from Omaha to St. Louis was down the valley of the Missouri, a night’s ride. We crossed the mighty river over an enormously high bridge and then followed the crest of an equally lofty embankment across several miles of wide, rich bottoms to Council Bluffs, in the State of Iowa. “Nobody dares fool with the Missouri,” a man said to me in Omaha, as he pointed out where the voracious river was boldly eating up a wide, black-soiled meadow in spite of
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Notes
Notes
Transcriber’s Note Small inconsistencies in punctuation in the Index and captions of photographs have been resolved. Two ‘N’ entries in the Index (“Narrow-gauge railway” and “Northwest Mounted Police”), were misplaced, and have been moved to their correct positions. There were several other indexing errors: “Portland was corrected to refer to p. 219. “Cincinati” was corrected to refer to p. 324. The following obvious printer’s errors are noted, and where unambiguous, have been corrected....
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