Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1895 — Over Weird Snow Wastes. [ARTICLE]

Over Weird Snow Wastes.

Frederick Funston, nephew of Congressman Funston of Kansas and Special Agent of the Agricultural Department, Washington, D. C., is in the city, after an absence of a year and a half on the Yukon and its tributaries in Alaska. He was collecting plants and skins while out, and now has an exhibit at the Occidental that is of unusual interest. His headquarters last winter were at Old Rampart House, on the Upper Porcupine, an abandoned post of the Hudson Buy Company. "The most unique experience I had,” said Mr. Funston, “was in crossing from this point to the mouth of the Mackenzie a distance of BIX) miles. An Indian and I did it on snowshoes. We made the round trip of 600 miles, besides staying a week to talk to some ice-bound whalers, !n twenty-two days. The thermometer was once as low as fifty-seven degrees below zero, and it was always forty, at least. I was the first white man to make this trip. “We used web shoes most of the tune, but when we struck a downhill place for a few miles we put on the Norwegian runners, and then we went like lightning. The desolation of those snowy wastes cannot be described. The cold was also so intense that we had to keep going. We got short of provisions and for two days subsisted on nothing but tea. As hot tea is the very best thing to keep out cold, and we drank plenty of it, we got along very well.” Mr. Funston floated down the Yukon in a canoe, entirely alone, for a distance of 1,800 miles, collecting plants and zoological specimens as he proceeded.—[San Francisco Examiner.