The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-07-06
|. L. SAWYER IN NOME.
FORMER MERfDEN MAN WRITES
 OF LITE IN ALASKA
WICe is TheFo With Him-Enrdshtps
 They Have Endured In Thnt Coun-

They Have Enoureu in hh"t touh
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 L. l.. Sawyer, formerly of Mer!dcn, ard who has quite number of old New Haven friends, is at Nome. Alaska, so letter from him to his old friend, w. W. Wheeler under date of March 10 shows. Mir. Sawyer has been at Nome about a year. reaching there in May, 1000 go- ing there from Seattle where he had been for short time. He left the east late in 1898 and went to San Fran cisco where his wife's sister died. From there he went to Seattle.
 Many friends will no doubt be glad to hear from the genial colonel and the Meriden Journal has obtained per mission from MT. Wheeler to publish the impersonai portion of the letter. Among other things Colonel Sawyer writes after describing the difficulty Of getting mail out of Nome in winter sledge carriers getting $l letter ana never mailing the letter:
 q am engaged just now in 'musling, that is the Indian name for hauling or drawing with a dog cart, the only means of getting around in this cold and frozen country It is surprising what these dogs will do and the dis tance they will cover with fairly lev el travelling Six or eight dogs can be used or more. They will, with l,o0o pound load, cover thirty miles a day and go further with light loads. We usually drive them in a single line the head dog being the brainiest. We drive through him; the other follow and pull. We 'haw' and gee the same as with oxen and the dogs obey with the intelligence of a human being. We feed them once a day when i'll camp and at night and previous to starting out we feed them often and as much as they can eat. At night we unload the sled and make our bed, two men usually in the sled with furs. and blankets along the side of the sled for the dogs: then we cover all with a canvas. If caught in blizzard we hunt up a snow drift and get under the ice side of it and make our beds the best we can aud have the dogs sleep along on each side of us to keep us warm. The native dogs are of the fox blood and instead of barking ana bowling like Meriden dogs, they cry in almost perfect imitation of child.
 "The dogs are worth from $150 to S200 a piece We feed them on horse salmon and fish, which are frozen and we cook for them when we can the hide of beef. We feed them now and then. In town we have a house for them the reindeer is good for long dis tances, being speedier than the dogs and can cover sixty miles a day and one is not required to carry any food for the reindeer as he finds his food through the snow There are horses here used summer and winter in town, they are better than the mule because their feet are larger.
 Nome is a mere roadstead-no har- bor-ships anchor out there and in calm weather they discharge on barges and when a storm comes up they put out to sea and then return again and so on. Port Clarence, north of us some eighty miles, has good harbor and likely will become quite a place. The town started there is called Talies. Back of it to the northwest for hun dred miles good strikes have been made and looks here as being good gold belt country.
 ''The weather from August to Mo- yember 1 is bad-bad-eold rains and wind and the approaching fall and win ter chill the air from the Arctic circle and 1t goes right through one. When it freezes in November it does it so quickly and so solidly the ice comes to stay all winter with no let up during that time. When winter starts in there Is never a thaw till it breaks LID. The rivers creeks and even Beh- ring sea freeze up and all is frozen. Then the snow falls from time to time; with blizzards thrown in along in January, February and March and perhaps longer. The freezing is so in tense. the snow mixes like the ice and all is solid.
 About three feet of snow has fallen on a level but with much heavy drift ing covering the cabins and some places so that one has to tunnel in to get to them. The cold you must see, then. Is so steady that it becomes uonstrous and we long for some change. How we would like to see a thaw for a change and when the bIizzards come we rather enjoy it, if we are we'll fixed, as to keeping warm but not so for the poor devil who Is caught out in them The country is worse than the Klondike in one respect. It is damper here than there and with the mercury lowering around zero, the chiliness can well ba imagined. The mercury has been forty-six below zero and twenty miles from Nome is has been down to sixty eight below.
 "How have we stood it? There is no use talking, the weather up here is TO nicnic. There is no use baking eX- cuses as some do when shiverlng and half frozen. The fact is the weather is d----n had and those that are not comfortably housed suffer greatly rieht here in Nome. One thing helps us-when it is coldest, way down to thirty or forty below, it is calm. 1T the wind blew at these times many more would of frozen to death At +his time the face which is exposed, suarts tingles and hurts at first, but one gets used to it, as the danger or fraezinr passes. You have to be very careful or you will get your nose and face badly frozen without realizing it ,,nti, too late There is no danger Of tbe other parts of the body freezing, o,, account of the good protection from clothing.
 Mrs. Sawyer and I went out one