Vashon Island news-record. [volume] (Vashon, Wash.) 1919-1954, 1930-02-20
SANDY" Smith

The news that Capt. Alex M. Smith
of Alaska vii! lecture for the benefit
Of the Boy Scouts troops upon date
to be announced next week, makes
further "reminiscences of his career of
interest.
Quoting from an article In the New
York Herald-1ribune, which appeared
some time ago, 1t is told how when
former Governor Scott G. Bone Of
Alaska was making an address before
the Campfire Club Of New York City
on some phases of life in the far
north, he termed on two or three
OCCASIONS toward modest. gray -haired
little man who sat nearby and asked
CONSIDERATION: II believe that's COR
rect Sandy?" or Am right sandy?"
People in the audience began to ask
one another who is this Sandy per-
son?" So that following the address
they were interested to be informed
by Governor Bone that they had been
entertaining unawares the greatest
trail breaker that the far north has
ever knuwn.
Few people outside of Alaska and
Northwestern Canada know Capt.
Alex. Malcolm Smith; but everyone
within a thousand miles of the Yukon
or the Mackenzie and Great Slave
Lake knows Sandy, or as he is also
popularity known as yukon Smith.
They ought to know him by this
time, for he has been treading the
tundras, the snow and ice of those
lonely regions for fifty years. At a
few minutes past midnight on last
New Years day, Sandy was seventy
one years Of age, yet he looks younger
and is younger at past three score and
ten, than many another man at fifty.
One finds in Sandy some contradic-
lions to popular ideas. He never
touches liquor or tobacco in any form,
nor does he find meat absolutely
necessary to life in the Attic regions
"Of course he replied to an inquiry,
there have been times when I was
obliged to live entirely on meat, but
I don't eat much of it as a rule. I
don't care for vegetables. If things
are scarce just give me flour, and tea
and sugar and can get along. make
the flour into bread or doughnuts, pre-
ferably doughnuts. they are favorites
up there. Another thing I like, to go
bare-headed in winter, If the weather
is fine, let my hair grow, but insist
on a clean shave every morning If. I
can manage It,"
Mems lives in the Far North are
still so much Of an open book to each
other that a man like Capt. Smith,
modest and unassuming though he be,
cannot be lost in the crowd, he is too
forceful for that. A mans worth is
better understood in Alaska than in
more highly developed communities.
Achievements are what count, one
hears little boasting. but sees more
doing, and this being SO, 1t is easy to
understand Sandy Smiths fellow
citizens when they tell you that he is a
man fashioned out of real metal. one
of the great men of the North.
He has so little the knack of ex-
pressing himself upon the outside
world, where the loudest gong-beater
often gets the fame, others have gotten
credit for discovering things familiar
to Capt. Smith years before.
He saw the so-called blonde Exkimos
around Coronation Gulf, for example,
thirty-three years ago, and he does not
claim to have been their discoverer, but
points out that white whalers probably
saw them fifty years ago.
He walked trough the Valley Of Ten
Thousand Snakes with pack on his
back several years before its wonders
were officially proclaimed to the world
and he was the discoverer of the
Alaska oil fields, an honor vociferously
claimed by others, and likewise found
the wonderful bituminous coal fields
which adjoin the oil deposits. When
he would mention such things in his
modest, casual, soft-voiced way to some
one from the states, he was usually
given little credence, 1t was rule by
some better advertiser that it was
trumpeted forth to the world.
1--WE got new glacier up there now"
he says mildly. "On Anaktuvuk River