Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

Produced by Peter Vachuska, Constanze Hofmann and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

BY

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD

_Third Edition_


ST. LOUIS, MO., 1914

Published by B. HERDER
17 South Broadway

FREIBURG (BADEN)
Germany

LONDON, W. C.
68 Great Russell Str.




Copyright, 1899, by Joseph Gummersbach.


--BECKTOLD--
PRINTING AND BOOK MFG. CO.
ST. LOUIS, MO.




                       To
               KENNETH O'CONNOR,
     First-District-of-Columbia Volunteers,
Gen'l Shafter's Fifth Army Corps, Santiago de Cuba:
   IN MEMORY OF OUR HOME-LIFE IN THE BUNGALOW.




NOTE.


The Author returns thanks to the Editor of the _Ave Maria_ for the
privilege of republishing these notes of travel and adventure.




CONTENTS.

  Chapter.                                        Page.
        I. Due West to Denver                         7
       II. In Denver Town                            18
      III. The Garden of the Gods                    29
       IV. A Whirl across the Rockies                40
        V. Off for Alaska                            47
       VI. In the Inland Sea                         56
      VII. Alaskan Village Life                      66
     VIII. Juneau                                    74
       IX. By Solitary Shores                        86
        X. In Search of the Totem-Pole               98
       XI. In the Sea of Ice                        111
      XII. Alaska's Capital                         124
     XIII. Katalan's Rock                           136
      XIV. From the Far North                       148
       XV. Out of the Arctic                        159




CHAPTER I.

Due West to Denver.


Commencement week at Notre Dame ended in a blaze of glory. Multitudes of
guests who had been camping for a night or two in the recitation
rooms--our temporary dormitories--gave themselves up to the boyish
delights of school-life, and set numerous examples which the students
were only too glad to follow. The boat race on the lake was a picture;
the champion baseball match, a companion piece; but the highly decorated
prize scholars, glittering with gold and silver medals, and badges of
satin and bullion; the bevies of beautiful girls who for once--once only
in the year--were given the liberty of the lawns, the campus, and the
winding forest ways, that make of Notre Dame an elysium in summer; the
frequent and inspiring blasts of the University Band, and the general
joy that filled every heart to overflowing, rendered the last day of the
scholastic year romantic to a degree and memorable forever.

There was no sleep during the closing night--not one solitary wink; all
laws were dead-letters--alas that they should so soon arise again from
the dead!--and when the wreath of stars that crowns the golden statue of
Our Lady on the high dome, two hundred feet in air, and the
wide-sweeping crescent under her shining feet, burst suddenly into
flame, and shed a lustre that was welcomed for miles and miles over the
plains of Indiana--then, I assure you, we were all so deeply touched
that we knew not whether to laugh or to weep, and I shall not tell you
which we did. The moon was very full that night, and I didn't blame it!

But the picnic really began at the foot of the great stairway in front
of the dear old University next morning. Five hundred possible
presidents were to be distributed broadcast over the continent; five
hundred sons and heirs to be returned with thanks to the yearning bosoms
of their respective families. The floodgates of the trunk-rooms were
thrown open, and a stream of Saratogas went thundering to the station at
South Bend, two miles away. Hour after hour, and indeed for several
days, huge trucks and express wagons plied to and fro, groaning under
the burden of well-checked luggage. It is astonishing to behold how big
a trunk a mere boy may claim for his very own; but it must be remembered
that your schoolboy lives for several years within the brass-bound
confines of a Saratoga. It is his bureau, his wardrobe, his private
library, his museum and toy shop, the receptacle of all that is near and
dear to him; it is, in brief, his _sanctum sanctorum_, the one inviolate
spot in his whole scholastic career of which he, and he alone, holds the
key.

We came down with the tide in the rear of the trunk freshet. The way
being more or less clear, navigation was declared open. The next moment
saw a procession of chariots, semi-circus wagons and barouches filled
with homeward-bound schoolboys and their escorts, dashing at a brisk
trot toward the railroad station. Banners were flying, shouts rent the
air; familiar forms in cassock and biretta waved benedictions from all
points of the compass; while the gladness and the sadness of the hour
were perpetuated by the aid of instantaneous photography.