The Cordova daily times., 1920-05-28
AN ARCTIC SUNRISE REWARDS
 WATCHER FOR LONG NIGHTS
 OF DARKNESS IN NORTHLANp
Aurora and First Glimpse of Pale Golden Ball
 am Unparalleled Nature Picture Teacher in Alaska School Service Must Also Be Able to Render Medical Aid and Perform Other Duties

Fifty-two years ago, when the Unit ed States took over the inhabitants of Alaska, the former Russian posses sion which was spitefully called by some Stewards Ice Box" the na- tives of Alaska were savages, or may be more properly an unenlightened people. They were not savage in the sense that they met the whites with tomahawk and scalping knife for their food and climate were not con- ducive to warfare. The Alaskan aborigines were a quiet, gentle peo- pie, a non-resisting people, glad of the brotherhood of every passing stranger, for strangers were few and did not come to rob them of their home and haunts.
 When the Russian priests offered their religion it was accepted as a welcome addition to the emptiness of a dull cold life. When the white trappers came for furs they were not opposed, for there were plenty for all Then when white men went crazy over the gold hidden in the sands of frozen rivers and creeks it was nOth- ing to the Indian and the Eskimo.
 But when the conquering white men took the young women of the North to be their mates and settled down among their people, the aborig- ines awoke. Their scant language soon expanded to give names to the belongings of the whites, to include their rude CollOquiaIisms and give glimpse of the great somewhere whence the new settlers came. Grad ually the need for schools in this vast area of half a million squares miles, 25,OOO natives, impressed itself upon the government and the Alaska school service began the task of fitting the descendants of the abor, iginal tribes, both minors and adults, for territorial citizenship.
 Had the prospected pupils been gathered into a group the task would not have been light, but when i1= is remembered that schools are in some places separated by 4,000 miles of snowy white silence and that others are far beyond the limits of trans portation and mail service, the diff faculties come within the limits of imagination
 On the Yukon, about midway be- tween Dawson and North Boring sea, and only sixty miles below the Arctic circle, is Rampant. There many trap pers and hunters make headquarters It has climate ranging from 90 de- grees above zero in summer to 65 degrees below zero in winter. There Isabel Ambler Gilman was long sta toned as a teacher in the Alaska school service. Let her tell a few brief stories of her life in the Frozen North:
 "One morning in January, while the school children were quietly study ing, three-year-old boy appeared at the door, a stick of wood in his bea- ver-mitted hands. You let me stay, teacher, I pack wood for you, he announced good-naturedly. The school thermometer outside registered. 58 below zero and the teacher lost no time in closing the door, with the boy inside. He won't stay home, teacher explained an older sister from her corner behind a red-hot stove, and papa says it'll be 50 below tonight Sixty below! The teacher had never experienced that The child serenely tucked himself into a