The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-02-06


First White Man to Penetrate
German PHILOSOPHERS.
LOS ANGELES. Cal. Jan. %
| Among the men who have been eXplor-
ing Alaska in the last few years, none,
probably, has travelled further in the
lce-bound territory than the Rev. Will
liam E. Sterritt. George A Wilson,
who was United States commissioner
at Sitka for nine years, says there is
| no record of any Americans having
| travelled in the region north of the
Porcupine river to the Arctic ocean,
where Mr.. Sterritt has journeyed in
the last two years, and the eX-commis-
sioner believes that no white man. ever
went over the route from Nulato,
northward 600 miles, to Norton sound
! previous to Mr.. Sterritt's journey in
April, 1894.
Mr.. Sterritt has come down the coast
for years vacation after five years
! OF labor, hardships, privations and
some physical suffering in Alaska. He
is missionary in the service OF the
American Evangelical union. He is
| about forty years of age, a native of
Hartford His work has been to es-
tablish non-sectarian Christian mis-
| sions in Alaska. A very wealthy Bap-
| fist in New York (whose name is not
| disclosed, but who Is thought to be
John D. RockefelleD has furnished
most of the money. Since September,
1892, the missionary has been living OH
| the extreme frontier of civilization.
For months at time he has not look
| ed upon any American, and sometimes
Tor weeks he has seen no white mans
face. He knew all about the extra
ordinary Klondike gold finds two
! weeks after the first gold was dug
| there, in the fall of 1896 and he saw
| hundreds in bi,ocr TO
! the new gold fields and knew that the
| first ones on the ground would surely
be richly paid. But he never ceased
his missionary efforts and went still
further away from the Klondike region
to minister to the native savages
| MS missionary field, starting at Cape
| Prince of Wales and revisiting the
mission schools he has established
| When he was in Los Angeles the
| other day he was urged to relate his
adventures and experiences in his
travels in Alaska.
The most venturesome trip I ever
took in the frozen North" said he,
was in the summer of 1895. The jour
ney was from old Fort Yukon across
! the country, northeast to the Arctic
ocean. The trip was the more hazard
Gus because of the lateness of the sea-
son, for before we got back to Fort
L, mercury
ranged from 80 to 40 degrees below
zero and we had to travel 300 miles
! through a trackless waste of snow
guided only by a compass. For four
weeks we saw no signs of human exist
! ence
II had learned from a crew Of whal-
ers at st. Michaels in 1892 about the set
tlement of Agilkuk. on the extreme
northern edge Of Alaska. The whalers
said that among all the Eskimos they
had seen those at Agilkuk were the
cleanest, most moral. and highest
minded, and also that they had no re-
ligion whatever. The population of
Agilkuk and two neighboring hamlets
was about 1900 On July 20, 1895, I
started for Agilkuk. There were three
of US In the party-two excellent and
steadfast Yukon river Indians and my
self. We had with US two sleds and
two teams of eight trained dogs each.
We had guns, ammunition, fur gar
ments, robes, Walrus skin shoes,
chest of simple medicines and full
supply of durable, if not palatable, pro-
visions.
1--WE started due north by the COM
! pass. At the Nowikokoti foothills we
turned to the west. and, when we
reached the Davidson range of noun
tains-practically the only geographical
marks we found In all our long jour
! ocean-we turned sharply westward,
going close about the western slope of
the Davidson range. when we struck off
100 miles northWard to the ocean, where
we came upon a trail to the little Es-
kimo village of Agilkuk. 1t was the
sole indication of human life we saw
, in the long journey, as far as from New
York to Cleveland. In my five years IN
| the interior Of Alaska I never felt quite
so completely out Of the world as on
those Journeys to and from the ocean
That is saying a good deal, too. Let
any live Yankee live in an Indian viii
lage in the heart of Alaska amid snow
and ice with a temperature ranging
from 20 to so degrees below zero, where
in a whole village of stolid, dirty say
ages he will not know one aspiration
or thought in common with his, where
there is not the least communication
with the outside world for six or more
months at a time, where the nights
are from fifteen to twenty hours long.
and I am sure he will have a fairly
accurate idea of what it means to live
apart from all that is good and blessed
in this beautiful world of ours Well,
the trip across the country, $50 miles,
with not a human being anywhere on
the journey except my two Indian COM
panions was even more fOrlorn.
No one can put in words the sense
Oh personal SIldiIilSSS WillSH OllS LSSlS
so far beyond the bounds of the world
as we know it. There is absolutely
nothing by which one can measure
himself For twenty-seven days we
saw no human being but those in our
party, and for four months L saw no
one who could speak English. The first
seventy or eighty miles northward
were fairly we'll timbered with fir trees,
similar to those that abound IN the
Klondike region. We had a hard time
dragging our sleds slowly over the
earth until we came to snow. Then
we went faster but as one of US al
ways walked and often all walked, we
averaged less than twenty miles
day. We saw plenty of game in the
first 200 miles of our journey, and we
hunted enough to supply our needs.
We got all we wished of peculiar
little brown Arctic hare for the first
ten days of our journey northward,
besides scores of the species of grouse
known in these ATTITUDES as ptarnigan.
Several times we saw among the
sparsely timbered regions about fifty
miles north Of the Yukon river herd
Of moose. They were fully six miles
away and the Indians said there were
800 moose in the herd.
II 'When we were about $50 miles
north Of the Yukon the country be-
came a trackless snowy waste. The
loneliness of the great plains Of the
United States is not comparable with
the crushing loneliness of Northern
Alaska The silence of the scene
pounded in on my ears. There was not
n liui-p thing In the air or on land