Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1911 — CRUISING IN THE POLAR SEAS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CRUISING IN THE POLAR SEAS

IT there is one branch of the United States naval service in which men and officers alike undergo wild adventures, see strange sights and suffer great hardships it is the Alaskan revenue cutter service. Pursuing criminals In a country wilder even than the bailiwick of the Canadian mounted police, sailing unoharted arctlo seas, capturing Japanese fial smugglers, studying ethnological and geographical conditions among unnamed races and unmapped countries, their lives are filled with the romance and the privations, the mystery and the revelations of the true pioneer. Lieut Leßoy Reinburg, who la in charge of the revenue cutter Patrol at Chicago, saw service in the polar seas In a three years’ cruise aboard the cutter Thetis, which ended in October, 1909. His trips took him thousands of miles, from Cape Attu, the most westerly point of Uncle Sam’s dominions, and one of a tiny ißland group tucked away almost within the sweep of the Asiatic coast, to 81 degrees north latitude, up beyond Cape Hope and Cape Barrow, on the northern coast of Alaska. Some day Lieutenant Reinburg la going to publish the account of those three years, in which the Thetis and her crew represented the United States and.the sovereign law in places where both are but shadowy jtales. He will tell of ice packs miles and miles In extent, in one of which the powerful cutter lay helpless for two weeks, and of a whaler, which, less'fortunate and less stanch, crushed like an egg and went down with all hands. He will tell of cold and hunger—of men found dead on ice packs and starving natives herding together by the hundreds; of adventures comic and tragic and marvelous. To a reporter he recounted some of his wanderings. Saw Whaler Go Down. “We started out of Frisco,” he said, “to be gone three years. “We went up along the coast and struck ice in about 65 degrees north latitude. There was a fleet of whalers there at the time and we stood by to help them if we could. One of them did crush and go down without a moment’s warning and the religiously lncjined said 1t wtus a Judgment of God because the vessel’s captain had kicked in the head of one of the crew a few days before. We ourselves were caught in the ice later, but after two weekß the ice cracked during a fog and when the air cleared we saw a channel opening from us to clear water. “Thera is no police or anything of that sort up in northern Alaska, you know, and part of our duty was to serve all of the warrants that had been issued by the federal authorities. We had a couple of marshals along, and we would send out firing parties along the coast whenever we would get trace of our man. The story of these tripe would fill volumes. We also looked out for Japanese seal poachers, charted the seas we traversed, studied the Eskimo races we ran across, and did a thousand and one things In a land where there were mighty few other people to do them. Our captain, Capt. A. J. Henderson, was s mighty man, with a rule more absolute than that of many kings. We had a federal commissioner along, and could give the men we arrested a preliminary hearing right on the vessel. Then we would take them back to Nome or some other port for trlaL ‘‘Sealing laws are very strictly enforced now, as the government has prohibited the killing of seals entirely for ten years, and the observance of them is rigid. I really believe that it would be easier to kill a man here in Chicago and get away with it than to kill a seal away up in the qorth. a thousand miles from civilization, and escape punishment The government will spend anything necessary to track down the culprit.

“The Japanese are the worst offenders, and eight revenue cutters are kept busy in those waters all the time, keeping watch on them. They are arrested by the scores and the uniform sentence is 16 months’ imprisonment, fines and confiscation of the vessels and all of their equipment, along with whatever hides may be on board. The vessels and the gear are sold by the government, but the odd part about the proceeding is that under the Ikw the skins must be destroyed. Why, I know of one vessel which was taken with 1,600 pelts aboard, and under the law these should be destroyed, although they are worth S4O each. The court is holding them, however, in the hope that some other arrangement can be made about them. The fights that the cutters used to have with the Japanese smugglers and poachers are now almost entirely a thing of the past, although whenever a suspected vessel is sighted it always takes a shot across her bows to stop her. Resistance is rare, however. “During our travels we saw many sights that would rival any of the natural attractions of the world. There, is a waterfall up there whielr is higher: than Niagara, though of course not; nearly bo large, and a natural bridge: that is much finer than the one inj Kentucky. It is 175 feet high within! the arch and fully 600 outside. Up around Bogoslov there 1b an area< about 60 miles in each direction which] is virtually in the making.’ It Is ini a state of volcanic evolution. Look' at these two pictures. They show the: same scene, and one was taken two: weeks alter the other. See the rocks! are twice as high in the second as' they were in the first It’s the same way with the channels along the coast 1 —here one day and there another. There are no charts, no lights, noth- 1 lng of the sort anywhere along the! coast, and navigation is dangerous ini the extreme.” Lieut Reinburg had hundreds of views of sights all over the polar seas. One is the photograph of an Eskimo child, its face ravaged by cancer of the nose. The Infant was operated on and its life saved by the ship’s doctor, A. D. Foster, at 70 degrees north latitude. "Give any disease up there in that climate half a chance, and it will cure Jtaelf,” declared Lieut. Relnburg. Another picture showed the whitened bones and grinning skulls, mounted upon a platform (burial is unknown in the frozen north), of an expedition, which, according to Eskimo tradition, embarked on a search for the north pole 50 years ago on a vessel known as the Genie. Whence It started, or who formed Ifr, none knows, but Its end is known to all. King and Quean of 74 Peopls. “Cape Attu, the westernmost point of Uncle Sam's dominions, contains just 74 people," Lieut. Reinburg went on, “but it has king and queen, just the same. King Philaretta and Queen Maude, that was the best we oould make of their names. I bought one of the finest hand-woven baskets I ever aaw for four dollars from Queen Maude, in her regal hut We tried to determine to what race the Attuans belong, in an effort to get evidence to support the theory that the Mogoliana and Indian racee merge insensibly, through the Eskimo, as one proceeds east from China. We were unable to make any decision, though, as to how the Attuans might be called, and Russian scientists are going out with the next cutter to have a look at them. We send out a cutter there every year and It brings the only ma*' that reaches there. “It would take a dosen volumes to tell of all of the experiences we went through ans of the strange sights we saw. It certainly la a novel quartar of the globe and well worth three years of any one's life.” -

A TOILER ON A WHALER