The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1913-04-13
The Surveying Is Regarded as the Greatest Ever Ac-
compEshed- Throughout It Was Of Most
Hazardous Natwe-Tragedy and Comedy
Were Enacted In the Arctic.

read that the occupants left in June and
would be back In September. Later, a
broken raft on a log jam, piece of torn
tent, and a rusted rifle told the story
of the men who never came back. Two
or the American surveyors started home
only to die from the hardshrps endured
and injuries received in line Of duty
A cry and a dark shape hurting down
through a thousand feet to a glacier be-
low, and an efficient Canadian party chief
found an icy grave. And most pitiful
of all, two were bereft Of reason as they
labored for their country.
But the men who surveyed the Hist
meridian did not have all grim and dark
in their lives. When they reached RAM
part House with a steamboat carrying
horses, the Indians could not believe their
ewes. Could there be a hundred white
men in the world? Was the smoke and
steam-spouting monster riding up through
the rapids a creature from a neither
world? When the horses were turned
out into the open to stretch their legs
and roll on the turf. all the dogs OF the
village turned tail and fed to the hills.
there to remain for days. The Indians
took to their huts and barred the doors.
and for two days whispered about the
strange hornless caribou.
Epidemic of Smallpox.
Once the engineers encountered an cpl
demic of smallpox among the Indians
Their possessions had to be burned. amid
heartburnings and protests. Each Indian
had to be washed with antiseptics and
vaccine had to be brought into play.
The situation demanded action Of the
most rugged kind, and IT was forthcom-
ing, with the result that what might
have been an epidemic. reaching to the
uttermost ends Of inhabited Alaska. was
nipped in the bud. The surveyors be-
came a law unto themselves, and within
a radius of a hundred miles a system
Of rigid inspection and vaccination was
enforced
On account Of the great distance COW
cred and the number of monuments car
ried along. the engineers had to take
train of 200 Canadian and American
horses Everything had to be packed
from the base of supplies. During 1912
the base Of supplies was located on Old
Crow River, which crosses the boun-
dairy about sixty miles north Of RAM
part House. They were taken to this
point in specially designed power boats
fifty feet long and eight feet wide. They
were stern wheelers. very similar to the
old craft that used to ply the Missis-
sippi in the old days, and carry ten tons
of merchandise on twelve inches OF
water Where the launches could not
be used polling boats were brought into
play, which carried two tons of mer-
chandise on seven inches OF water
And so the boundary was established.
With every man a hero. living every day
more stories than Kipling and Zogbaum
could invent. perhaps not one of them
could entertain an audience as we'll as
a third-rate lecturer, for they were men
of action, rather than Of speech. When
the story of Alaska is written there will
be many pages devoted to the self-sac-
rihce and devotion of those who en-
dured hardships and faced dangers as
great as those of the most sanguinary
battle.