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The bells were taken off before the sleds left the blockhouse, and the traces and the harness examined and tightened with the caution of men who were apprehensive of danger and who would take no chances. In winter time the foes most feared by the settlers were the timber wolves.
In a letter to a member of Congress from Michigan, Secretary Baker refers to the alleged mutiny as follows: "A cablegram, dated March 31, 1919, received from the American Military Attache at Archangel, read in part as follows: "'Yesterday morning, March 30th, a company of infantry, having received orders to the railroad front, was ordered out of the barracks for the purpose of packing sleds for the trip across the river to the railroad station.
In another place were girls on small sleighs or sleds, capable of holding two or three, whirled along by half-a-dozen skaters with great rapidity; while, holding on to handkerchiefs, were others drawn upon their feet at less hazardous speed.
Often Annie, the girl who had taken Mattie's place in the household, would bring down their supper, hot and hot, and they would eat it quickly up in the little gallery where they kept the sleds, and doll buggies, and drums. The icy wind cut their foreheads like a knife, and made the temples ache. The snow, hard and resilient, squeaked beneath their heels.
The sleds were provisioned from the stores of the natives, and we also took some of their food in the car, not only to eke out our own but because we had come to like it. Edmund had already chosen the fellows who were to accompany us, and among them were two of the smiths besides Juba. In all they were eight.
Then he rang the bell. "All aboard!" he shouted. "First train for Poquette." A nervous little laugh went round at his quiet jest, and twoscore men boarded the sleds. For the first time in his roaring, reckless and quarrelsome life Colonel Gideon Ward found himself in the presence of a man who defied him scornfully and facing an obstacle that promised ridiculous defeat.
It was certainly a pity that, two days before the party, an original idea on the subject of snowmen struck one of the children who used to play together, with their sleds and snow shoes, in the back streets. This delightful novelty was to be accomplished by covering one of the boys of the party with snow till he looked as like a real snowman as circumstances would admit.
On December 17 he wrote from Lake George that he had got the cannon as far as that point, and with forty-two "exceedingly strong sleds" and eighty yoke of oxen expected to make the journey to Springfield, whence fresh cattle would bring him to Cambridge. The artillery, in this humble manner, at last arrived, howitzers, mortars, and cannon, fifty-five pieces of iron or brass.
The smelting process continues four months of each year, and during this time about twelve hundred poods of gold are melted and cast into bars. This work, for 1866, was finished a few days before my arrival, and the furnaces were utterly devoid of heat. In the yard at the zavod, I saw a dozen or more sleds, and on each of them there was an iron-bound box filled with bars of gold.
Lieutenant Schwatka decided that he and I would take Toolooah's sled, with Joe to assist, and go by the way of Smith and Grant Points, and through the big inlet spoken of by the natives as putting in from Wilmot Bay, and meet the other sleds which, in charge of Henry, would go by the way of Richardson Point and Back's River, meeting at the bend of the river above the Dangerous Rapids, where we would find the Ooqueesiksillik natives and take on board a supply of fish to last us until we reached the reindeer country once more.
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