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THIS volume deals with a series of journeys taken with a dog team over the winter trails in the
interior of Alaska. The title might have claimed fourteen or fifteen thousand miles instead of ten,
for the book was projected and the title adopted some years ago, and the journeys have
continued. But ten thousand is a good round titular number, and is none the worse for being well
within the mark.
So far as mere distance is concerned, anyway, there is nothing noteworthy in this record.
There are many men in Alaska who have done much more. A mail-carrier on one of the longer
dog routes will cover four thousand miles in a winter, while the writer s average is less than two
thousand. But his sled has gone far off the beaten track, across the arctic wilderness, into many
remote corners; wherever, indeed, white men or natives were to be found in all the great interior.
These journeys were connected primarily with the administration of the extensive work of the
Episcopal Church in the interior of Alaska, under the bishop of the diocese; but that feature of
them has been fully set forth from time to time in the church publications, and finds only
incidental reference here.
It is a great, wild country, little known save along[viii] accustomed routes of travel; a country
with a beauty and a fascination all its own; mere arctic wilderness, indeed, and nine tenths of it
probably destined always to remain such, yet full of interest and charm.
Common opinion "outside" about Alaska seems to be veering from the view that it is a land
of perpetual snow and ice to the other extreme of holding it to be a "world s treasure-house" of
mineral wealth and agricultural possibility. The world s treasure is deposited in many houses,
and Alaska has its share; its mineral wealth is very great, and "hidden doors of opulence" may
open at any time, but its agricultural possibilities, in the ordinary sense in which the phrase is
used, are confined to very small areas in proportion to the enormous whole, and in very limited
degree.
It is no new thing for those who would build railways to write in high-flown style about the
regions they would penetrate, and, indeed, to speak of "millions of acres waiting for the plough"
is not necessarily a misrepresentation; they are waiting. Nor is it altogether unnatural that
professional agricultural experimenters at the stations established by the government should
make the most of their experiments. When Dean Stanley spoke disdainfully of dogma, Lord
Beaconsfield replied; "Ah! but you must always remember, no dogmas, no deans."
Besides the physical attractions of this country, it has a gentle aboriginal population that
arouses in many ways the respect and the sympathy of all kindly people; and it has some of the
hardiest and most adventurous white[ix] men in the world. The reader will come into contact with
both in these pages.
So much for the book s scope; a word of its limitations. It is confined to the interior of
Alaska; confined in the main to the great valley of the Yukon and its tributaries; being a record
of sled journeys, it is confined to the winter.
There is no man living who knows the whole of Alaska or who has any right to speak about
the whole of Alaska. Bishop Rowe knows more about Alaska, in all probability, than any other
living man, and there are large areas of the country in which he has never set foot. There is
probably no man living, save Bishop Rowe, who has visited even the localities of all the
missions of the Episcopal Church in Alaska. If one were to travel continuously for a whole year,
using the most expeditious means at his command, and not wasting a day anywhere, it is
doubtful whether, summer and winter, by sea and land, squeezing the last mile out of the
seasons, travelling on the "last ice" and the "first water," he could even touch at all the mission
stations. So, when a man from Nome speaks of Alaska he means his part of Alaska, the Seward
Peninsula. When a man from Valdez or Cordova speaks of Alaska he means the Prince William
Sound country. When a man from Juneau speaks of Alaska he means the southeastern coast.
Alaska is not one country but many, with different climates, different resources, different
problems, different populations, different interests; and what is true of one part of it is often
grotesquely untrue of other parts.[x] This is the reason why so many contradictory things have
been written about the country. Not only do these various parts of Alaska differ radically from
one another, but they are separated from one another by almost insuperable natural obstacles, so
that they are in reality different countries.
When Alaska is spoken of in this book the interior is meant, in which the writer has travelled
almost continuously for the past eight years. The Seward Peninsula is the only other part of the
country that the book touches.