The Cordova daily times., 1916-07-29
WHERE LIE THE BURIED pgApf

A<ht8sA0a VI eAR@aA~~~ - read columns of strange stories told of Alaska and conditions here. of alleged performances and achievements and hardships which stultify the Alas ka they know. and which are told in the public prints by writers who may be never saw Alaska or who at least have had but a coastglance at the ter ritory. Some times they are said to be told by Sourdough friends visiting outside, but the Sourdoughs always deny telling such stories. At times we must marvel at the strange man. ner of the country they are making of ours in the outside press, and at times we also marvel that the tellers of such stories can believe and re- peat such stories.
 After twenty years in the north, during which years we have traversed every trail to here except the Dalton trail --- the Teslir, White Pass, Chil- koot, Valdez and Chitina. and negoti ated every foot of water between Tes- link lake, wrangeil and Glenora, the summit of the Chiikoot. to the mouth of the Panama river in scows, small boats and steamboats, at times with some pain but mostly with much plea sure - we are forever hearing stories of those old trails in the days when we knew them intimately, and the stories are nothing like the trails as we knew them by actual experience. | We are able to make allowances for credulity and faith and guilelessness on the part of the writers who tell a good story of the north at the ex- pense of the truth, for the truth spoils many a good. story, but we must ask for further particulars. and one of | those times is when some new Alaskan brings the stories to our home town and tells them to our own home peo- pie as living truths.
 In featuring last Friday night upon the past, present and future of Alaska, | Mrs. Hatcher confessed to only a seven years experience with Alaska, and then told story of Alaska of at least seventeen years ago, and pro bably no less than eighteen years ago. She stated that when Alaska was | prohibition, the officers of the gov ernment used to search the packs of the mushers who were wearing their vitality out fin the attempt to climb the Chilkoot. and used to take from those packs the flasks of liquor they found therein, as they considered the use of liquor on the Chilkoot danger ous to life and limb.
 It Is probably unnecessary so far IS the oidtimers are concerned, for us to comment upon this story. Com ment might spoil 1t. Still, the living, breathing days of the ChilkOot in it's glory of difficulty is so vivid in our memory that we cannot get away from the picture painted for us now of the | Chilkoot as it was then. We see again in living memory the long line of human beings in endless procession slipping and panting and falling and sweating and swearing and toiling their way over the almost inaccessible Chilkoot, just as we met them on the trail and saw them on the down grade while they were coming up-saw them l far above; from box sliding down the aerial tramway towards Dyea. We met them on the summit, where wood was five cents a pound, and there was no fire to dry their wet clothes; met them in the dining room at Sheep Camp. and in the tents along the way. 1 We studied them and knew them as they were; knew their point of view of things that were and understood and appreciated their feeling in the matter. We saw from the Canadian side of the Chilkoot the long line of pack mules loaded each with two kegs of whiskey which had come over the Chilkoot on the tram, the train start ing off along the slippery shelves which formed the sides of the little rivers and lakes on the way to Daw- son and the American Yukon. We did not drink and did not want liquor, but at no tent we stopped at was there an absence of liquor, nor was climb CT denied a drink if he wanted it or needed it and there was no drum kenness while climbing the Chilkoot.
 Again, we stood with hat off and gazed upon the mounds where were buried the dead men who were caught