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PENELOPE CAMP, Kowak River, Aug. 28.—Here we are, one hundred and seventy miles from the mouth of the Kowak River and hard at work on our winter cabin. The "Helen" is almost a failure, else we should have been much farther up the river. The river is swift and has many rapids which we could not stem. The boat is slow. Her wheel is too small. She will be remodeled this winter. It took five days to come this far, and, as there are two more loads to bring up, we thought it best to halt. We have been here a week and the walls of the cabin are nearly done, so that we are on the eve of owning a winter residence on the Kowak. We are expecting the "Helen" back soon with her second load.

The Kowak River, though scarcely indicated on good-sized maps, is as large as the Missouri. At our camp it is nearly a mile across, and very deep on this side, with sand bars in the middle. Other folks are having a harder time than we. Only three out of the dozen or more river steamers are a success. One is fast on a sand bar, and it looks as if she would stay there.

Some of our crowd think we had a hard time, but when we compare our lot with that of others we see it differently. Hundreds are toiling up in the rain, towing their loaded skiffs mile after mile along muddy banks. We have not had an accident worth mentioning unless it be the loss of a water pail. We took the wrong channel once coming up and steamed twenty-four hours up a branch river. It was the Squirrel River, and although but a tributary to the Kowak, is as large as the Sacramento and San Joaquin combined. It was so very crooked that at one point where we stopped to wood up. I climbed a hill and could see its route for several miles. Our course went around the compass once and half way again. When we got back to the Kowak we made good time until we reached the first rapids, where our trouble began. The "Helen" would swing around and lose all she had made every few minutes when the current struck her broadside. Finally a squad of us took to the river bank with a long tow-rope, and foot by foot she was towed past the critical points. There were six of these rapids. When the wind blew there was fresh trouble; it would catch on the side of the "house" and blow the boat around in spite of us. She almost got away from us once, and we were in danger of being dragged off the bank, in spite of the fact that we dug our heels into the ground and braced with might and main. It was a tug of war. And such is gold hunting in the Far North!

Many others had a still harder time. We passed thirty of these parties in one day towing their provisions, while many lost their boats. There must inevitably be great suffering here this winter. Men have not realized what a long winter it will be and are poorly provisioned.

A Morning Hunt.

Our crowd is becoming a trifle disappointed as to the gold proposition, and of course the general discontent is infectious. Hundreds are going back down the river every day, spreading defeat and failure in their path, and yet they have done no actual prospecting. This is a large country and a year is none too long to hunt; but with many parties the result is that after panning out a little sand the job is thrown up.

Birds are all right here, if there isn't any gold. I have been into the woods only twice so far, but secured another rare specimen of Hennicott's Willow Warbler. There is a bear in the woods back of camp. I have "laid" for him three times, but he is very shy.

Sept. 1.—The "Helen" came with her last load yesterday, and our whole crowd is together again excepting the three men with the "Penelope."

After a big pow-wow it has been decided to divide for the winter. Ten men are to take the "Helen." with supplies, and push up the river as far as possible. They think they can do some mining during the winter. We who are destined to live together here for eight mouths are Dr. Coffin, C. C. Reynolds. Harry Reynolds, Clyde Baldwin, Cox. Brown. Rivers, Wyse and myself. Time will prove if this is a congenial combination. We shall resemble California canned goods in our narrow limits, and the winter will show our "keeping qualities." Andy and Albert, our Swede sailors, leave us to-day. They were hired and do not belong to the company, and will return to Kotzebue, where they hope to ship for St. Michaels.

Our Winter Cabin.

Camp Penelope, Kowak River, Sept. 13.—Our cabin is done. It measures 25 × 30 feet. We moved in on the 7th. The river rose very high and threatened to inundate our tents. The place where they were is now under water. Our cabin roof was not a success. It was too flat. On the night we moved in it rained heavily, and about 2 a. m. we were roused by the water pouring in on our beds and our precious supplies. We got to work without delay. The roof could not be repaired without rebuilding it, so we spread it all over with flies and tent cloth, which froze stiff for the winter, and now we are dry. When the cabin was started it was intended for our whole party, but there is no room to spare even now with only nine occupants. The foundation was leveled on the side of the knoll, so that the top of the hill is nearly as high as the roof and the earth is banked the rest of the way over the wall. That leaves no point for the north wind to strike the house. We made a lean-to on the west and the door from the cabin opens into it. We have two windows, which we brought with us, fitted on the south. The interior of the cabin is a single room seven feet high. It has a gable a foot or two higher, which gives "ample breathing space." as I told the boys, but which I have my eye on as a storeroom for my collection. The roof above this structure is fearfully and wonderfully made. If it had a trifle more pitch to it, to make it shed water, it would be better. A heavy ridge-pole and stringers run lengthwise, and over these are closely laid poles, the butts at the eaves along the sides, and the slender tops bent over and clinched on the opposite side of the roof. Above the poles is packed a thick layer of moss. Above the moss is a layer of heavy sod with the dirt side up. Above all is a layer of spruce boughs like shingles. These boughs grow thick and flat, with needles pointing the same way, so they make good roofing.

The logs of the walls are chinked tightly with the moss. The floor is the natural sand. We did not cut the timber from near the house on account of the protection it gives us from the north winds. Trees large and long enough for building purposes are not very numerous, and we had to carry them a good ways. A few are as large as twenty inches at the butt, but mostly they are from ten to fifteen inches. It is all that eight of us can do to struggle along with one of these logs, they are so heavy, and we put them on rollers sometimes. Four of the men can easily carry one of the twenty-four foot logs, but a green spruce log of any size is always heavier than it looks.

Start for the Hunt River, Towing our Boat.

I have initiated "Brownie" into the secret mysteries of the cook stove, and am one of the regular laborers now, working hard ten hours a day. But yet it is fun; for we are working for ourselves, with but the clean woods all about us, and there is a fascination in chopping up the spruces, their delightful fragrance permeating everywhere.

Sept. 19.—Six of us have just returned from a trip up the Hunt River—Harry Reynolds, Wyse, Cox, Rivers, Clyde and myself. I was culinary officer as usual. We had the eighteen-foot sealing boat, and It was loaded pretty heavily. The whole of us had to work for it, one in the stern of the boat to steer, one wading at the tow-line as near the boat as possible, to lift it over snags, and the other four tugging at the tow-line. We wore hip boots and outside of them oil-skin trousers tied around the ankles. Even with this outfit we were constantly getting into the water all over. Rivers got a soaking the first day. He shot a duck and jumped out of the boat in pursuit. The bottom is so plain through the water that it is deceptive, and he went in up to his waist, but he grabbed the side of the boat to keep from going under. He got his duck—and a ducking thrown in. We had to pull him in and to the shore, where we got him out of his wet clothes. In the afternoon Wyse also got a ducking by falling into a pool as he was scrambling up a steep bank. We found good camping-places. We had two tents, which we put up facing each other, with a flap left up on the side of one of them for a door. The two were heated by the sheet-iron camp-stove. At noon we did not put up the tents, but got dinner in the open—flapjacks, coffee and bacon. I shot two geese the first day out, which gave us a couple of meals. They were young and so fat I could not save their skins. But I made a drawing of one of them so that I could be positive of their identity. Looking them up when I got home where my books are, I found them to be the Hutchins goose. The doctor and I shot two white-fronted geese on the banks of the Kowak. We see a good many, but they also see us and we have to do a good deal of sneaking through the bushes to get any.

We had some narrow escapes, especially Cox, who fell into a whirlpool. He was dragged off his feet by the rushing water, but we pulled him into the boat after a frightful struggle.

On the fourth day out Clyde and I thought we would explore a little canon. Harry Reynolds had washed out several pans of sand from different bars on the way up, but had not found a trace of gold. Clyde and I hoped to have better luck, and started out in high spirits with spade and pick and gold-pan to do our first prospecting.

We found a brook in the cañon where we panned some without success. Finally we found a place where the stream ran over bed-rock. The rock had cracks and fissures running crosswise with the stream, so we reasoned that if there was gold above, particles would have been caught in these cracks. We dammed the brook and turned the stream to one side, exposing the fissures in the rock. We then gathered several pans of sand from the niches, examining it with wistful eyes, but no trace of gold did we find. So we gave it up on that stream. We found nothing save Fool's Gold. We kept on up the cañon and, as it was yet early, decided to climb the mountain peak. As we went up the spruces grew smaller and finally disappeared. The sides were barren save for a thin covering of moss and lichens and patches of stunted huckleberry bushes. These bushes, not more than three or four inches high, bore hordes of luscious ripe huckleberries, and nearly every hundred feet in our climb we would drop on our knees on the soft moss and till ourselves, so often could we find room for more. Another little black spicy berry growing in crannies was good. Just as we were toiling up the last slope a flock of twenty white ptarmigan flew up in front of us, and circled down to another ridge. They, too, had been feeding on the huckleberries.

As we rested ourselves, sheltered in a niche of the summit crag safe from the chilling wind, a little red-backed mouse ran from a crevice and scampered through the moss straight to a huckleberry patch, his own winter garden. Clouds began to gather on the highest peaks, and we started down, leaving them behind.

The moss was slippery and we found that we could slide down the steep pitches easier than we could walk or jump. I remembered seeing the little Sioux slide down the hills of Dakota in government skillets, and immediately sat down on my shovel, steering with the handle just as I had seen the Indian boys do, and made terrific progress. I was soon able to pick myself up, feigning to examine a ledge of quartz while I rubbed my posterior, and looked back for Clyde.

He tried sitting in the gold-pan and started all right, but soon found that he couldn't steer. He went at a frightful rate, tearing down the steep slide backwards, until he, too, found himself examining the geological strata while giving some attention to his anatomy. And then we had to hunt for the gold-pan which, from the musical sounds which grew fainter and fainter and finally died away altogether, must have got switched off into the bottomless abyss. Will it be found some day generations hence and borne off in triumph as proof of a prehistoric race? It was a race. Such is gold-hunting in far-away Alaska.

At camp that evening we were joined by a native, "Charley." who told us by signs and by what few words he could speak, that he had come part way up the Hunt River behind us, but had left his birch-bark canoe several miles below, roaming off to hunt in the neighboring hills.

He told us that he had shot a bear the day before and had cached it down the river, his boat being too small to take it. He wanted us to go and get it. Sure enough, a few miles down, we found the bear as Charley had said. It was all cut up, the skin being stretched on poles and fastened in a tree. The carcass was also divided and hidden in a pole-box raised high on a slender scaffold. Charley had expected to come on his sled later on and take it home. After loading on this prize we continued down the river, the Indian accompanying us in his canoe. The rapids were furious and many, and we shot them as if we had been behind a locomotive. It took a cool head to steer a boat under these conditions, and Cox did it. At one place the stream had washed under a bank above and trees had fallen over, making a complete set of rafters. The current rushed the boat under a series of these, like city roofs, and it kept us busy to duck our heads.

We Receive Visitors.

We arrived home yesterday, making in seven hours a distance that had taken us three days to go up. Charley gave us bear meat to last a month. It tastes fishy, as the bears live mostly on salmon in summer, but it is a welcome addition to our larder. During the trip I obtained two hawk owls and an Alaskan three-toed wood-pecker, both species being new to my collection.