Title: In pursuit of Alaska : an anthology of travelers' tales, 1879-1909 /
Authors: Meaux, Jean Morgan.
Year: 2013
Subjects: Travelers' writings.; Frontier and pioneer life Alaska Anecdotes.; Alaska Description and travel Anecdotes.; Alaska History Anecdotes.
Abstract: "This collection of Alaskan adventures begins with a newspaper article written by John Muir during his first visit to Alaska in 1879, when the sole U.S. government representative in all the territory's 586,412 square miles was a lone customs official in Sitka. It closes with accounts of the gold rush and the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. Jean Meaux has gathered a superb collection of articles and stories that captivated American readers when they were first published and that will continue to entertain us today. The authors range from Charles Hallock (the founder of Forest and Stream, a precursor of Field and Stream) to New York society woman Mary Hitchcock, who traveled with china, silver, and a 2,800 square foot tent. After explorer Henry Allen wore out his boots, he marched barefoot as he continued mapping the Tanana River, and Episcopal Archdeacon Hudson Stuck mushed by dog sled in Arctic winters across a territory encompassing 250,000 miles of the northern interior." -- from publisher's website.
Contents: Preface: Jumping Off the End of the Earth -- Note on Original Sources -- Part I. Romantic Voyage : A Tour of Southeastern Alaska -- Fort Wrangel, Alaska, August 8, 1879 / John Muir -- A Great Day in Sitka / Charles Hallock -- The Patriarch and His Little Detective / C.C. Hine -- The Alaska Barnum's Dancers / Septima M. Collis -- Riding the Rails through White Pass Canyon / Charles M. Taylor, Jr. -- Part II. Untamed Alaska : Into the Vast Unknown -- Chilcat Mission, Haines, Alaska / Caroline Willard -- Living Upon the Country / Lieutenant Henry T. Allen -- Escape from Icy Bay / H.W. Seton Karr -- Living Off the Enemy / John Bremner -- Whaling with the Fleet of 1887 / Herbert L. Aldrich -- Perilous Crawl Up the Chilkoot / Harry de Windt -- One Night on Valdez Glacier / Captain William Abercrombie -- From Nowhere to Nowhere / Robert Dunn -- Invitation to a Card Game / Agnes Herbert -- Mistakes at Sixty Below / Hudson Stuck -- Part III. Inexhaustible Optimism : The Mad Rush for Gold -- Outfit for an Argonaut / Ernest Ingersoll -- Heartbreak on the White Pass / Robert C. Kirk -- Ho for the Land of Gold! / Mary E. Hitchcock -- The Mosquitoes' Bugle on the Koyukuk / J.D. Winchester -- A Bureaucrat Comes to Call / Josiah Edward Spurr -- Pluck on the Kowak / Joseph Grinnell -- No Time for Sonatas / May Kellogg Sullivan -- Playing for Stakes / M. Clark -- The Great White Silence / Edward J. Devine -- The Alien God of Gold / Addison M. Powell -- On the Other Side of Disenchantment Bay / Arthur Arnold Dietz -- Twenty-One Days from Rampart City / John F. Stacey -- Epilogue: A Cabin on the Edge of the Forest -- Chronology of Alaska History through 1910.