The Cordova daily times., 1916-12-04
HARD SHIPS ARE H|S BREAD
 OF LIFE

The Congress of Bishops met in St Louis, Mo, some weeks since, and Bishop Rowe was there To report. CT of the Post-Dispatch he told one of the best stories of the north we ever saw in print, and we give it. No mat. ter what you think about it, you will have to confess that it is a good story
 The hardest man in the house of bishops of the Episcopal convention in session here is the Rt. Rev. Peter T. Rowe, bishop of Alaska. He is 59 years old, and for q years has braved the elements of Arctic winters in GOV ering the 600,000 square miles of his diocese, the whole of Alaska, once every three years, on snowshoes and by canoe ministering to whites, In- dians and Eskimos. He is known from Sitka to the shores of the Arc tic ocean as the ministering brother of the lonely prospector.
 ITO be bishop of Alaska, Bishop Rowe says, one must have cast iron digestive organs. The bishop of Alas ka frequently finds it necessary to sit down in a blizzard to a morsel of raw whale for luncheon, or, if hard pressed, raw dog, in order to sustain life. He must make forced marches over icy wastes, with the mercury 50 to 80 de grees below zero.
 Bishop Rowe related to a Post-Dis- patch reporter that a year ago last winter he stumbled upon members of Stefansson's Arctic expedition, near Point Barrow, Alaska, groping their way back to civilization. The men had been separated from the main ex- petition and were in a pitiable plight,
 Bishop Rowe is stockily and power fully built, and has scant iron gray hair and steel blue eyes. Tears came to his eyes as he spoke of his first wife, who, he said, died of loneliness and anxiety for him, but his present NIIC lCpidCo HI CCdlbtGs
 Never Got Gold Fever"
 Bishop Rowe was a clergyman at Sault Ste Marie, Mich, when he was cOnsecrated bishop of Alaska, in 1895. He reached Alaska two years before the rush of prOspectOrs to the KlOn- dike and was one of the first Ameri- cans to go over Chilkoot pass, where a snowslide killed 78 men. He was one of the rescuing party that helped dig the bodies out of the snow. In all his years in Alaska he never got the gold fever
 "'The results of that memorable craze made other work for me- he said, and never had time to get the fever. I was at Skagway at the time There was an epidemic of meningitis, and many who did not die of that dis ease succumbed to shooting affrays During a period of two months l con ducted almost daily the funeral of some murdered prospector or gam bier
 At that time a gambler called 'Soapy' Smith headed a gang that tn- fested the Klondike and mulcted pros pectors The activities of the band grew to be such q menace that Bishop Rowe and others organized vigilance committee. which was sent after the gang Smith was killed and others were driven out of the country.
 Bishop Rowe said his winter trips take him 2,OOO miles into the interior On snowshoes, in company with an In dian guide, he follows a dog sled, across the country, where there are no trails, guided only by a compass, through the river valleys and over snow-clad mountains to the remote camps of Indians and the lonely pros pector
 Tells of Narrowest Escape.
 His narrOwest escape occurred win ter before last, when he was caught in a blizzard on the banks of the Yu- kon river, with the temperature at 90 degrees below zero.
 i've succeeded in making the shel- ter of a mountain side, the bishop said, else I would not be here to tell of it. I unleashed the dogs and they bur rowed into the snow. The Eskimo dog knows instinctively what to do under such circumstances, and we did like wise. For three days we lay buried