THE BEAUTIFUL ALASKAN SUMMERTHE LAND OFTOMORROW
BY
WILLIAM B. STEPHENSON, JR.
FORMERLY UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER IN ALASKA
ILLUSTRATED
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO MY MOTHER
ALICE HERSHEY STEPHENSON
WITH GREATEST DEVOTION
[vii]FOREWORD
THAT the Voice of the North calls insistentlyto him who once has dwelt amidst its snowsis neither myth nor legend. It is history. Likethe Song of the Lorelei, having heard it once itrings in his ears forever. True, it is a strenuousgame which Man plays against Nature in Alaska.There, as nowhere else on earth, he pays theprice for what he gets. Yet if you ask one whohas loved and left her, one who has lived amongher mountains, experiencing alike the bitter winterand the wondrous Alaskan summer, everyday of which is perfect beyond the power ofwords to describe, even though he may deny thecall it is not difficult to detect the hidden longingunderlying his reply. For it is a fact not to begainsaid that after such an experience, no matterhow much a man may have looked forward toa life of ease after his return, he seldom finds itsatisfying. Usually when he goes back home itis to find his old friends scattered or dead. Theold pleasures turn to gall and wormwood in hismouth. In time the jar and turbulence of citiesget on his nerves. He begins to hear the Voice!The old residents of Alaska, they who have lived[viii]there so long that they seem a part of the landitself, always smile grimly when they hear a manbegin to curse the land where he has made hiswealth and swear that he never wants to see itagain. To them it is an old story. They haveseen many return to the regions whence theycame. And they have seen most of them comeback! They alone know the truth of the linefrom the old Norse legend:
"Dark and true and tender is the North!"
Following the opening up of the gold fieldsmuch was written of Alaska, but it was confinedlargely to the territory of the Yukon and the unsettled,chaotic conditions of the hour. The fortunatefew who, through the medium of poem,song or story, have revealed the glories and thetragedies of this part of the country have donetheir work well. The record of that now-historicstampede to the Klondike gold field