The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-04-07
BEACH AND THE STORY
OF sLOO77NG ALASKA"
IEt y - -
CONDITIONS AT NOME WHEN THE WRITER WAS
THERE OTHER VIEWS OF THE SITUATION BY
AN EYE WITNESS.

The following communication from
New York will possibly be of interest
to those who have enjoyed" the ar
ttcles referred to. It should be.
New York.
Editor Wahpeton Globe:
Rex e. Beach, who writes so enter
tainingly In "Everybody's" about the
Spoilers" and 80 misleadingly about
the "Looting of Alaska" in Apple
tons Booklovers' Magazine, once made
an overland trip from Nome to the
Candle Creek district ON the Seward
peninsula. with dog team. in the mid
die of the winter. It was u hard trip
how hard, only those who know
something about that great country,
can understand and appreciate.
have made a few hundred miles on
snowshoes and in dogsleds myself
and If men do get back with their
minds disarranged-I can figure out
the reason why. If the toe strap of
your snowshoe cuts through the moe
ASSN and through the German
socks" and through the flesh into the
bone, and If you have to get down
under the lee of your overturned sled
at camping time and have to labori-
Ously melt little snow in tin cup
over matches or kerosene-oil soaked
rags-carried in baking powder can
as your fuel supply-to use that pre-
cious little water to wash out your
wounds-when you have made your
dinner" off dried dog-salmon, have
crawled in under your frozen blankets,
have just gone off into fitful slum-
Der, only to waken with realization
hof u,
again adjust your walrus-hide straps
to your stiffened limbs-and plough on
and on and on-and when you have
done that for days and weeks-is it a
wonder that your senses get little
mixed, your mind wanders-that you
reel along, talking, yes, singing, to
yourself-and that even for some days
after you reach a harbor of .safety-if
you are lucky and plucky enough to
make it-you find yourself uncon-
sciously living over the incidents of
your cruel journey, of your fight with
the elements, with your own frailty
and weakness and with your obstrep-
erous malemut dogs.
l met Rex Beach when he returned
to Nome from his TRIP to the Kotzebue
Sound region. He had been to the
Kobuk creek There had been some
rumors, enlarging by REPETITION into
wild talks about the richness of Can
die Creek and the Inmachuck Creek
district during the fall. Rex had
been taken by the stampede fever and
had sailed away over the frozen SHOWS
to Candle Creek and beyond to the
Kobuk. No one had ever heard of
the Kobuk befOre-but when Rex came
back, and almost before he had had
time to feed his dogs and himself
and know to certainty before he
had taken the time to get shave and
a bath-he confided to me, under the
seal of strictest secrecy-in back
room, way of from where other pros
pectors might perchance overhear even
a fragment of the conversation that
he had struck it rich. His eyes
cleaned, his voice was hoarse with
ill-concealed excitement-he talked
millions, he breathed millions, he
actually believed in millions, millions,
millions!!!
But-and there are thousand
''buts" and Ifs" in Alaska-the Ko-
bulk is frozen solid for 10 months in
the year, provisions and tools have to
be packed in on your individual shoul-
ders, and besides there isn't any gold
to amount to much in the Kobuk any
way. At least the millions which
Rex was spending-in his mind-didn't
realize-they never do.
And it is a good deal the same way
about the "Cheechakoes'' first i'm
pressions of ALL Of Alaska the tender
foot landing at Nome in the earlier
days when Judge Noyes was still
holding court-would and could hear
nothing but the widest talk and ru-
mors and so-called facts" about the
great conspiracy Matched by Alexander
McKenzie-in hotels, restaurants, sa
looms, gambling houses, dancehalls--
in the court room and out of tin the
camps and on the trail men would
meet and stop and gossip about the
fight which, of course, interested
everybody for everybody at least
Thought" he had million or two at
stake in his particular Claim" no
matter where located, and the Claim
jumpers" were rampant in the land.
You never heard the other side.
The wild Goose Mining and Trading
interests, Tightening facilities, small
railroads.&c. only one-Chas. D. Lane
"a grand old man-was powerful
and fascinating character and fac
tor--the individual miners-many. of
them of the same nationality with
those who had their particular scrap
ion with McKenzie-were with what
was considered to be the under dog"
the saloons. their club rooms, and
the saloon keepers their sympathiZers
naturally. Judge Moves could not
proclaim his interest, or disclaim
rather, any interest, aside from his
judicial interest-McKenzie, big
mastiff, paid little attention to the
snarling, yelping ours around his heels
the newspapers-as elsewhere-an-
xious to shoot of extras" at two bits
a copy, headlined new "outrages"
every other day, SO that it became abb
solutely impossible to have correct
view and q correct judgment of the
conditions about which everyone was
talking, but about which but very few
\ people knew anything definite. There
were those who took advantage of
that situation on bot hsides, and then
there were lawyers"
l thought then and have often
thought since, that IL Alexander Nc
KenZie had been less Of natural-born
fighter-with the bump of cumulative
4 ness over-developed. and more of a
diplomat, If he hadn't been so cock
sure of himself-he could have owned
the whole country legitimately and
every miner his friend. But the law
yers, who live from fighting cases In
court, took this fighter and advised
{ him and reinforced his fighting In.
/ stincts, and patted him on the back
& owl NuicLod him OY, - and a lot of the