The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-05-21

| Indians carried the loads. while we
dragged the empty sleds and did the
swearing. The snow fell necessarily
for five days, and it lay along our route
from five to fifty feet deep. 1t was
day after day of wallowing and strug-
Cling through snow as we worked our
way gradually upward TO the s%amit
of the range; one cheerful little diver
sion occurred on the second day. The
| low-browed eX-cannibal who was chief
| packer, and seemed TO have charge of
the other Indians, threw his load into
the snow and announced that unless
their pay was materially increased he
and the other packers would get them
selves back to the village, and
leave us in a pretty pickle. My tenn
per had been at a white heat all day,
and without thinking what might be
the consequences of such a move, like
a fool. showed the muzZle of a cooked
Winchester into the face of the advis-
DRY committee of that strike. and the
/ way that the Most Serene Grand Mas
ter of the Amalgated Order of Chilcoot
Salmon Bitter reshouldered his sack of
beans and tugged along through the
broad expanse of the beautiful snow
shows that ii is sometimes a good
thing for every well-regulated family
to have a gun in the house"
He went down the Yukon TO the
mouth of the Porcupine river where
he left the miners and went up the
Porcupine to Rampant House, an
abandoned Hudson Bay company's
trading post situated far to the north
of the Arctic circle, where the Por-
cupine river crosses the eastern bound
airy of Alaska Here Funston and
missionary named Pratty spent the
winter.
Probably no other man on earth ever
4 y,,.Ii, H. r.1f
that Funston paid him: for on this
long journey up a thousand hills, over
the backbone of the continent, down
the lakes, and UP the river where Fun
ston dragged his boat up stream walk
ing along the bank, he carried in his
pack, where every ounce of weight be-
came a torture during the long days
journey, copies of the Barrack Room
Ballads, and the stories of Mulvaney
and his friends.
AS the night of winter deepened 1t
is probable that the good brother
Trotty got on Funston,.s nerves. and
when the Indians brought rumors that
a North american whaling fleet was
being crushed to pieces in the ice off
the Arctic ocean, some 200 miles to the
forthward, Funston beguiled an old In
dian into starting on the journey to
the ocean with him on snowshoes. 1t
was 200 miles as the crow flies, but
Funston and the Indian got lost and
went 400 miles out of their way. After
running out of food and starving for
two days, Funston and the Indian
picked the dog in the pack train that
would make the best pot pie. But in
the afternoon of that day they came
upon a band of Indian hunters carrying
fresh caribou TO the fleet. When Fun
ston came up to the ships with the In
dams he found the story of the de-
struction of the fleet a fiction. A great
crowd of the men from the fleet was
watching a ball game on the ice. and
when Funston in his Esquimo dress
dress spoke to a captain of one of the
whalers in English there was a whaling
captain who refused to believe his eyes
and his ears and Funston was obliged
to show his government commission.
Then that captain took Funston to his
cabin, and called another captain, and