Douglas Island news., 1903-08-19
HUNTING THE HORSES.
A. M. Powell Tells of Life On
 the Trail.

influence whatever, when he goes on a
 trip through Alaska. Geologists, mili-
 tary captains, postal inspectors, mine
 inspectors, aud capitalists, have found
 that they all had their share of labor
 and that they could not depend on oth-
 CTS who had all they could do to care
 for themselves. The question is pro-
 pounded (which do you prefer to do,
 cook, make camp or hunt for horses?"
 If you are one who can't get lost, you
 are the one to hunt horses. You travel
 until tired, then listen for the forty
 second time for that horse bell, then
 sit on a moss covered log, kill mosqui-
 toes and continue to listen. A raven
 flies over and croaks at you as he pass
 es on up the river. You cock up your
 left ear and listen some more, then
 take out your knife and while whit
 ting, wonder why you came to Alaska,
 anyway.
 A little bird, about the size of a robin, which the prospector calls the
 Camp Robber, alights on the ground
 nearby and casts one eye up at you, not asking you your business, but try ing to discover something he can steal. He will follow you to camp and steal everything he can find there except the pack saddles. A little squirrel will come down a tree near you, chatter klinkit and run back a few feet. He comes nearer next time and you ad- mire his red colored coat, his bushy grayish tail and round beady eyes. He may climb away out on limb and warble few notes of music. was in Alaska three years before discovered that those melodious notes were pro- duced by squirrel. l had supposed that klinkit was the whole of their vocabulary.
 You kill large mosquito that has been tapping vein on the back of your hand, and that makes just one thousand you have killed while sitting there. A large humble bee comes bug zing around cluster of lupines, and.a big green headed horse-fy alights on a fern. There are not many such flies and you notice it. You turn over a chunk of old rotten wood and uncover a nest of very large black ants.
 Then you move from there and go about hundred yards and listen for the horse bell and start to go on again when a spruce hen flies out of a tree within few feet of your head. She alights on another nearby, and cranes her long neck at you, turns her little head from one side to the other and exhibits her speckled breasted dress to advantage. She is about the size of common leghorn chicken, 0rownish on back, with black specks on a grayish front bosom. Rather stylish and in- clined to put on airs.
 You meander quarter of a mile and i among some large trees you find wild | red entrants, on bushes about three feet high. You eat a double handful of them, make wry face and decide that they are about as sour as whiz You conclude that they left sort ofan agreeable whang to their taste, your mouth waters for more, and you eat an other hand full of them and make more wry faces. You eat some black entrants, with musky flavor, and eat some moss berries to take their taste out of your mouth, and then eat blue berries to take that taste away.
 You hear the horse bell, travel a quarter of mile and hear it again, but not so loud, travel another quarter of mile and you can't hear it at all. You decide that you took the wrong direction and travel for an hour over moss covered country and come out on the river bank You find large bear track and don't feel tired, but very much refreshed, and immediately go to camp to impart the news that the horses have taken the back track, and find the horses all there and saddled. They had been lying down not one hundred yards from camp.
 Capt. S. F. Cottle, of the steam wha- Ter William Bayless, has the distinction of having driven his ship the furthest north into the Arctic, through Boring straits, than any record made before. The feat was accomplished after the Bayless left Nome last summer, and, favored by southerly winds and open