The Savannah morning news., 1901-06-08
WHEN YUKON FREEZES.
AN IMPORTANT EVENT IN THE
NORTHERN YEAR.

OoOu-Where the River IL Helu In
VeneratIon-A silence That he
gets Fear-Change That Means
Death for SOme-Stars in Morning.
From New York Commercial-Advertiser
The freezing of the Yukon is one event
of the Northern year. The other is the
breakup in May. The day OF the ice
sets for good is chalked carefully on
cabin doors up on the creeks, with lesser
fortuities, like the first day of slucing,
when King Salmon or cariboo start to
run, when the cleanup began. The ice
in a northern river forms at its head.
but the river closes from its mouth. In
the torrents up Pelly river, under the
Rockies, up White river under the St.
Elias Alps, in the tiny meadow creeks
feeding Forty-Mile and SixtyMie, the
| September frosts make a little rim-ice,
! tumble it out into the larger tributaries
and churn it to slush In the Father of
Northern Waters 1t is lost. More is
| formed and more and more. The little
creeks are playing Liliputians to the
river CULVER. Early in October a chunk
| of slush no bigger than a hand, and
| like soaked cottonwaste, steals down in
mid-stream past the big camp. Some one
sees it, and it is noted in the Daily Mug
! get or the Dawson News. Bets are made
| when the river will set
Day by day the slush thickens; lifts it
self from the water; the tops whiten like
chunks of snow. After these cold nights
the river is full of 1t. The next day a
| raft can't cross, the next boat has to
twist through lanes of mushy ice, with
some one in the stern, posed as Washing
| tons pilot on the Delaware. By the mid
die of October the river is full of slush-
ice The Yukon is a moving roadway,
rough and very white. The soft cakes ell
bow each other and give out swish-like
the rustlng of a million silken skirts.
The last seow leaves for Forty-Mie, and
! timid old-timers shake their heads and
say the men are taking their lives in
their hands, which they are. and can new
er make landing at Fort Cudshy. The
march of the ice is impressive; oilers
stand on the bank, thinking, watching it
for hours. The swishing sound gets hard
and gritty; the thin lanes of water close;
the cakes nudge and Jolt each other;
down by Circle City or the Ramparts, the
| ice blocks where the channel Is narrow,
at bend. among the bars OF the great
| fats. That is only for a night 1t Jams
now here, now there, along the whole
! two thousand miles of river. and breaks
only a little slower and a little noiser.
! For week the river is so full you don't
| see how it runs at all. More bets are
| made, with the recklessness of near set
Element The men have landed at Forty
nine and are thinking of going down to
| Eagle. The smooth ice, which has been
| eating out gradually a rod or so from
| shore will bear a man, and some one
starts for Indian river, old-timers again
rfr,ar to f1raf1 90 hNT lnnRaT
men live by a northern river the more
they feel toward 1T a veneration and
nameless fear. In lands like these where
no other deity gets any show, is 1t won
! derful that river gods are born?
Then one morning away down by Ia
| mana or Milato the processions van halts
| for good. At Dawson they do not know
it, and won't for days. The jam does not
| eat steadily upstream, but by leaps and
| bounds. In a night there are blocks al
| Minion Creek at Charley river. Forty
| mile and between them the water clears
| to a lake, and is smooth, black Ice the
next day. On the next watcher of the
| big camp where the bets Were made sees
the crowded cakes lift over the rim-ife,
| float ashore and strand In the sloughs.
| The water starts up the banks, and who
| ever lives on lowlands gets. ready to fly,
| for when the water backs up thus June
! freshets are remembered. Out in the
moving lane the big cakes saunter-and
| twist along-then stop, one by one, one
| pressing on the other. The watcher sees
a berg turn on end, big as a house, an
! other is lifted clear out of water high
| and dry on the rim-ice, another cavoris
and vanishes. Meanwhile there Is a cav
! ernous gulping splaShing. a creak and
strain like shivering timber, and the roar
ends like the noise of a Bleaching wave.
For If the day is not very cold the halt
ing cakes not becoming at once homo
geneous, are put to enormous pressure.
But if "n" is below 40 degrees, man
will rush out from Front street and
across the river ten minutes after the
cakes have stopped. The Nugget and the
News bring out extras; the bets are paid;
Dawson celebrates as only Dawson can.
But in the north nature cannot change
the face of things without killing some
one Rumor comes dow on the shore-ice
that three men vanished through the ice
at White river; a man shedding at Stew
art was frozen in and eaten by his dogs;
that four mail dog teams, the last leaving
White House. early In October, are hung
up along the river, and King, half-breed
and veteran dog-driVer for the Queen, Is
dying of pneumonia.
All this, because the mall teams are
breaking trail and the river Is HOOD
ing over the settling shore ice. AK in
| H.
high ridges of ice thrown up when the
cakes damned. Travel is a matter OF one
mile two miles an hour on the stretch
Of four hundred. The Alaskan sled Is
long and narrow, built lightly, high above
the ground with basket sides and han
dies extended backward from their top.
help by the hind driver. In guiding 1t, he
is jerked buffetted, thrown on his face.
kept forever on the run over the toughest
sort of ice to which he cannot even turn
his eyes in balancing the sled. No harder
work is known to man.
All along the river loaded nat scows
have been stranded In low water and
frozen in. They left White Horse too late.
overreaching themselves to get In the
freshet hslfbut, candles and Christmas
cards for the holiday trade, and to break
the corner in hay and oats. Their owners
have drifted down on RATS to Dawson
through the ice and have started break
ing trail uD-river to their scows before
white and Indian vandals get into them.
In month the trail is hard. Horse
sleighs, bicycles, dog teams and common
"mushers" on foot stream out along the
boulevard of ice, four hundred miles long.
their faces all fur, and their bodies scar
let and blue in the night-gown parka,
made of bed-ticking. From post to post
the fat sergeant Of mounted police is driv-
en- by the English younger son, with a
bottle of Seagrims under his robe. A
murder or two Is done when he doesn't