Allĭestitute of timber of any description – nothing but a few bunches of low, water-soaked, red willows, that are the onlyįuel obtainable. High spurs of hills break in every direction, with sugar loaves cut out here and there by little valleys and draws. To get up there one must take a slow sailing craft from Nome and go down the coast to Golovin bay then up the Neukluk river to Council City and then “mush” over the big range of hills – a short cut of sixteen miles – to the camps on Crooked creek, the richest diggings on the peninsula. I am speaking of the Ophir country in the interior Nome waste. The description that always accompanies the story of how thoughts flash through the brains of a drowning man is a mild comparison to the ever present feeling that one has up in this God-forsaken country, that is as utterly apart from anything human as can be imagined. I had just come from down the Ophir river a few miles, where I had cut some frozen willows to bake out for firewood. The night was the very worst that had come upon us in the winter of 1900. The wind was howling like the mill tails of hell it was dark with the desolate darkness of an Alaskan night, and not a soundĬould be heard but the whistling gale, with an occasional yelp of a Siwash or MacKensie river huskie, as they cried for admittance into some miner’s tent or dugout.
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