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Chenik, as I prefer to call it, is a sand-spit in the entrance to Golovin Bay, a large and shallow body of water with treacherous mud-flats, surrounded by great barren hills and the all-pervading tundra.
As a matter of fact, they were obliged to remain at Chenik for a considerable time on account of the quarantine which all ports had against Nome and vessels which had touched there. The Mush-on was the last of the string in tow, which consisted of a small barge or lighter, containing Wild Goose Company machinery, and the boats of several others, who were also going up the rivers.
We realized at last that frozen earth and ice beneath, a barrier to the seepage, made the trouble irremediable. Two large tents, one made to open into the other, were used, respectively, to sleep and to cook and eat in, and near the side of this oblong arrangement was erected the "office" tent. A bunk put together and a folding cot, picked up at Chenik, kept us off the ground at night.
White Mountain, a spot where the Wild Goose Company has a storehouse, a depot for its mining claims above, is about half the way from Chenik to Council, and is the head of navigation for the several small, light-draft stern-wheelers which occasionally make the trip in the interest of the larger mine-owners.
Before communication with the outside world closed with the freezing of the sea, about the 1st of November, C got out a letter which informed me of his safe arrival at Council and his settling down in the new quarters. It seems that not enough was found of the Mush-on at Chenik to make a toothpick.
Living at Chenik was not agreeable, and we were willing to tackle Council City anyhow. We four, together with the more valuable of the supplies, occupied a ten-by-twelve tent, and the water proposition was worse than that at Nome. It meant a long walk up a hill past the Indian graves and along the high cliff descending steep to the water's edge, to a crevice in it which held a bank of frozen snow.
This was brought back in buckets and melted, and, for drinking purposes, boiled and filtered. Then, too, the general epidemic of sickness which prevailed during the season of 1900 among the natives throughout northwestern Alaska was here manifest. They all coughed, and while we were at Chenik there were several deaths from a complication of measles and pneumonia.
In a straight line southwest, over the tundra and mountains, it is said to be eighty or a hundred miles to Nome. In the late autumn of 1897, a number of prospectors, on being told by a native that there was gold in this section, set out from Chenik.
It would have been asking too much of Alaskan weather to be allowed to journey on as far as Nome without some setback. This was soon apparent when a storm of wind and rain came up which held me at Chenik for three long and dismal days. It blew as it can blow only in Alaska.
Then, with the aid of a bit of canvas, the favorable wind, and our oars, we reached Chenik at six o'clock in the evening, having covered a distance in ten and a half hours which had required four days in the ascent. I believe that is the record time. Fortunately, it was not necessary to wait for means of transportation to Nome, as the Elmore, a miserable little tub, sailed from Chenik that night.
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