Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 121, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 May 1913 — IS NO LAND FOR WEAKLINGS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IS NO LAND FOR WEAKLINGS

7 <?. * —3 AR up on the northwest. P-J coast of America, in the ZgEtaN. Land of the Midnight Sun, OMgLI is a country which still VjMf / defies the hardiest traveler; a land where huge •1’ mountains risq sheer out I from the water's edge on I an icebound, storm-swept coast; the home of vast glaciers, unknown lakes and rivers, silent valleys and unpeopled wastes. Ponder a moment on these lines from the able pen of one who has lived the

life and tramped the trails across the great unknown: No! Theresa the land. (Have you seen it?) It's the cussedest land that I know, From the big, dtzzy mountains that screen It. ! :... ; —i To the deep, deathlike valleys below. Some say God was tired when He made It; Some say It’s a fine land to shun; Maybe: but there’s some as would trade it Fbr no land on earth—and I’m one. ‘So, indeed, does the wanderer feel, once he has fought Nature in her sternest moods, or reveled in the short but glorious summers of Alaska. The rapid changes of climatic conditions tn the arctic are constant sources of wonderment to the man who has never previously experienced them. Today he may roam over countless miles of

desolate, barren wastes, where snow and frost still hold the earth beneath their iron grip. If perchance he passes there again within a few weeks’ time, when once the sun’s warm rays have played their part, the face of Nature seems to have entirely changed. Here, in this valley, where a short time since nothing but snow lay deep, far as the eye could reacii, what sight is it that meets the gaze? Luxuriant grasses waving in the wind and countless flowers all bursting into bloom. The tender green of spring shows forth On every bush, while Birds, and even butterflies, besport themselves where formerly no living thing was seen? Down through the smiling valley runs a babbling stream, and in its crystal waters numerous trout are busy feeding. What marvel, too, has brought to life myriads of mosquitoes

and other insect life from beneath those great stretches of snow and ice which lay for months upon the ground? No man can tell nor any pen describe these manifold mysteries of the frozen north. Here, in these brief, sweet summer months, the nomad may linger, gazing by day or night on a never-setting sun, breathing an air the purest and most invigorating that ever was wafted on the breeze, coming from snow-tipped peaks. and down their slopes which are densely clad with hardy mountain pines. But let the wanderer in quest of sunshine beware lest he overstaps his welcome, since once that great magician, King Frost, asserts his sway, this is no land for the weaklings: Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones. Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons. For this is the stern law of Alaska, and woe betide him who scoffs at it Even among the chosen ones and hardy pioneers of today terrible indeed are signs written on many of their bodies. Scarred and rugged veterans show, with a smiling face, places where once fingers or toes adorned their hands or feet, but which have now gone forever, a token of man’s struggle against Nature’s cruelty. Let those who sit in a comfortable chair by the fireside at home, in 20 degrees of frost, think what life is like in a tent with the thermometer ready 50 degrees or 60 degree below zero. Only those whb have been and felt it can realize what this means. Probably no country on earth has lured so many people to ruin and destruction, in proportion to the numbers visiting it, as Alaska has done in many of the great gold rushes which have taken place in recent years. The writer, during three seasons spent in that country, and in trips extending from its southernmost portions to the arctic shores, has per* sonally been an eye-witness of many pitiful scenes there. The time has already arrived when fast steamers make pleasure trips during summer, and convey tourists in comfort along the southern coasts of Alaska, through some of the finest fjords and scenery on earth. But probably none of these luxurious travelers has any idea of the privations suffered by many of the old-time pioneers who followed this route op their way to the new Eldorado. Nor can they hope to realize what a winter is like within the arctic circle. Mr. R. W. Service has more accurately described this than any other writer in the following splendid lines: The winter! the brightness that blinds you. The white land locked tight as a drum. The cold fear that follows and finds you. The silence that bludgeons you dumb, The snows that are older than history. The woods where the weird shadows slant. The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery. I’ve bade 'em good-bye—but I can’t. No mofe awe-inspiring scene can be witnessed than that of the ice breaking up on some big river, such as the Yukon, or many others in Alaska, when the pent-up waters burst their way in spring through many miles of icy fetters, with an accompaniment of appalling noises which bewilder the on looker. Or again, let the traveler gaze a while at some spot where one of the huge glaciers ends abruptly in the sea, towering aloft above the waters. Here vast masses of ice constantly fall off, drift aimlessly about, and form a continual source of menace to unwary mariners.