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Updated: September 18, 2025
He had started out from Tanana two months before with two pack-horses to make his way across to the Koyukuk diggings, had lost his way and wandered aimlessly in that vast wilderness; one horse had been drowned, the other he had killed for meat.
A steamboat he had signalled as she entered the mouth of the Koyukuk had passed him by unheeded, and he had been left to make his way six hundred miles up to the diggings, with his winter's outfit in a poling boat.
With the thermometer at sixty degrees below zero as it is we will freeze to death on the trail." "Much loss it would be," growled Dunbar. "Then if we went back to the Koyukuk," continued Gibbs, "we would be sure to run into the arms of some of our numerous mining partners from Midas, which we are in no hurry to do.
Some of them had money-belts weighted low with gold washed from the bars at Forty Mile, and there were others who had wandered in from the Koyukuk with the first frosts, foot-sore and dragging, the legs of their skin boots eaten to the ankle, and the taste of dog meat still in their mouths.
The supplies had been carefully calculated for the journey, the toboggans were already loaded, and we waited but a break in the cold weather to start. Our course from Bettles would lead us sixty-five miles farther down the Koyukuk to the mouth of the Alatna.
After the voyage down the Yukon, and up and down the Tanana, it was purposed to take the boat up the Koyukuk to the new mission at the Allakaket, where dogs and gear had been left, and put her in winter quarters there.
"What is it?" moodily asked Gibbs. "Let the boys go on to Nome and tell as many big yarns as they like about this rich old creek. When we get there we'll go them one better and make the eyes of the Nomites stand out in wonderment. We will then collect money from as many persons as we can successfully hoodwink into believing our stories and then skip back to the Koyukuk.
We were present on Sunday at the services. There was hearty singing of "Pentecostal" hymns with catchy refrains, but we were compelled to notice again what we had noticed amongst the little bands of these people on the Koyukuk when we set them to singing, that the English was unintelligible; and since it conveyed no meaning to us could have had little for them.
Our original start was a week later than had been planned and we had made no time, but rather lost it, on this first division of the journey. If we were to reach Bettles on the Koyukuk River for Christmas, there was no more time to lose, and I was anxious to spend the next Sunday at Fort Yukon, three days' journey away.
At such stations the improvement of the Indian is manifest and the population increases. By reason of their remoteness they are very expensive to equip and maintain, but they are well worth while. One such has been described on the Koyukuk; another, at this writing, is establishing with equal promise at the Tanana Crossing, one of the most difficult points to reach in all interior Alaska.
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