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The hours spent in it were very enjoyable, and one wished one might have had opportunity for further acquaintance with some of the bright-faced, interesting children, both full-bloods and half-breeds. Unalaklík is a thriving Esquimau community, noted for its native schooner building and its successful seal hunters and fishermen.
The next day was Sunday, but I was anxious to spend my day of rest at Unalaklík and most indisposed to spend it here, so we got away with a very early start long before daylight. Six or seven miles of tundra and lagoon travel and the trail crossed abruptly a tongue of land and struck out over the salt-water ice for a cape fifteen miles away. The going was splendid.
Q., a Swedish missionary, and his native preacher called Rock, have arrived from Unalaklik, with the two visiting preachers at the Home, and they held an evening service in the schoolhouse, which was fairly well attended. There were seven white men, the three women in this house and myself, besides many natives of both sexes.
The "eighty-mile portage" we had heard of at Nome became ninety miles at Unalaklík, and added another five to itself here, so that although we had travelled forty-two miles that day we were told that there were yet fifty-three ahead before we reached the Yukon.
But if the snow on the portage were indeed rapidly going, that was all the more reason for getting across before it had altogether gone; so we pulled out in the warm, muggy weather, and even as we pulled out it began to rain! Up the little Unalaklík River, water over the ice everywhere, we went for a few miles and then took to the tundra.
These natives were familiar with little English, but as the captain had made himself acquainted with their language they had no difficulty in making each other understood. Early in the evening of that day they reached the Mission station of Unalaklik, on the mainland, about fifty miles northeast of the island, where they spent the night.
Kurilla gravely verified these facts. "And me, Dall's chief guide. Me with Dall when he make portage from Unalaklik to Kaltag. He see the Yukon first time. He run down to be first on the ice. Dall and the coast natives stare, like so" Kurilla made a wild-eyed, ludicrous face "and they say: 'It is not a river it is another sea!" "No wonder.
At last we turned a point and drew in to the shore, and, not seeing the little town till we were almost upon it, arrived at Unalaklík early in the afternoon. We had made the two hundred and forty miles, as it is called, from Nome, in six days.
But the mission is off the trail, and we did not come to an acquaintance with the missionaries of this body until we reached Unalaklík.
The Mission is crowded to its utmost, but I believe the hearts of the good missionaries are made of elastic. When we reached the house after service this evening we heard that a mail was expected, and would leave for Dawson tomorrow, so we set to work to write letters, and then found it all a mistake, for it is only going to Nome from Unalaklik, and we were all disappointed.
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