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Updated: May 1, 2025
His face was gray and haggard, a face grown suddenly old, and he traveled slowly, for the desire to reach his people was dying within him. He could not laugh with Keok and Nawadlook, or give the old tundra call to Amuk Toolik and his people, who would be riotous in their happiness at his return. They loved him. He knew that.
"You have done my bidding well, and I am pleased with you," she said; "but you must not overdo it. Hereafter you must injure no one unless he tries to hurt or injure you." When she had finished talking, she led him to the door and sent him away over the tundra. Before she made him there had never been any of his kind, but since then there have always been red bears.
This is but one instance of the many kind and generous acts of which such men are capable; and it was the beginning of a neighborly association with this hearty old miner, who contributed in many ways toward our agreeable sojourn at Council City. After singling out the least humpy spot, the tundra was torn and hacked off it until a layer of damp clay earth was reached.
Father said he would try it a year, and then see about staying longer, and here we are still in Nome after four years without once going 'outside'. "And you like it here?" they asked. "Very much indeed, because our ground is turning out finely, and Leroy is so good to us. "About that tundra claim, however, nothing was ever done.
The passage made, the Alaskan mainland was reached once more, the Seward Peninsula left behind us, and our way lay across desolate, low-lying tundra strewn with driftwood and hollowed out here and there into little lagoons. Evidently the waves sweep clean across it in stormy weather when the sound is open; a salt marsh.
Not far away, at a point which was to be its terminal, men were landing as best they could the machinery, rails, and ties for the railroad of the Wild Goose Company, which was to extend for several miles back over the tundra to the rich placer-mines on the creeks. Hundreds were living in tents upon the beach, thanks to the clemency of the weather.
At times during the day it was very warm, the sun blazed down hot, but toward six o'clock in the evening it became chilly, and at night it was positively and uncomfortably cold; for, be it remembered, all through that section of the country, a few feet from the surface, and this, too, in the case of the tundra, perennial layers of ice and frozen ground are met.
The nuggets found in the craw of the ptarmigan, though not large, were of pure gold, and once clean of filth looked good to the eyes of the patient prospectors. They had certainly come from the bars of some stream, which, in an exposed place, had been wind-swept, furnishing the grouse a late feeding ground when tundra berries were covered with snow.
"Your ancestors, son of my son," he would say, "conquered the tundra and lived upon it for thousands of years without the need of such womanish things. Are there no men anymore? Are there none who can face nature alone and unafraid without the aid of artifices that bring softness?"
Two million dollars, it was said, had already been extracted from the beach at Nome, and no estimate could be made on what was still there. The pay streak ran to the water's edge, and even farther, but just how far, no one knew. Back of this beach spread the tundra, an expanse of marsh, ice and water, which extends some four miles inland.
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