Historical Tales Volume I Part 25

It proves to be no pleasant refuge. The mire is too deep to walk in, while above it grow tangled briers and th.o.r.n.y shrubs, through which he is able to pa.s.s only as before, by lying on his back, and pus.h.i.+ng and pulling himself onward.

The hours of the night pa.s.sed. Day dawned. He had made some progress, and was now at a safe distance from the fort, but found himself still in the midst of peril. Near where he lay a party of soldiers were at work, engaged in planting obstructions in the river, lest the Union fleet should follow its daring pioneers to Plymouth, now that the Albemarle was sunk, and the chief naval defence of the place gone.

Just back from the river-bank, and not far from where he lay, a cornfield lifted its yellowed plumes into the air.

Cus.h.i.+ng managed to reach its friendly shelter un.o.bserved, and now, almost for the first time since his escape, stood upright, and behind the rustling rows made his way past the soldiers.

To his alarm, as he came near the opposite side of the field, he found himself face to face with a man who glared at him in surprise. Well he might, for the late trimly-dressed lieutenant was now a sorry sight, covered from head to foot with swamp mud, his clothes rent, and blood oozing from a hundred scratches in his skin.

He had no reason for alarm; the man was a negro; the dusky face showed sympathy under its surprise.

"I am a Union soldier," said Cus.h.i.+ng, feeling in his heart that no slave would betray him.

"One o' dem as was in de town last night?" asked the negro.

"Yes. Have you been there? Can you tell me anything?"

"No, ma.s.sa; on'y I's been tole dat dar's pow'ful bad work dar, an' de sojers is bilin' mad."

Further words pa.s.sed, in the end the negro agreeing to go to the town, see for himself what harm had been done, and bring back word. Cus.h.i.+ng would wait for him under shelter of the corn.

The old negro set out on his errand, glad of the opportunity to help one of "Ma.s.sa Link.u.m's sojers." The lieutenant secreted himself as well as he could, and waited.

An hour pa.s.sed. Then steps and the rustling of the dry leaves of the corn-stalks were heard. The fugitive peeped from his ambush. To his joy he saw before him the smiling face of his dusky messenger.

"What news?" he demanded, stepping joyfully forward.

"Mighty good news, ma.s.sa," said the negro, with a laugh.

"Dat big iron s.h.i.+p's got a hole in her bottom big 'nough to drive a wagon in. She's deep in de mud, 'longside de wharf, an' folks say she'll neber git up ag'in."

"Good! She's done for, then? My work is accomplished?--Now, old man, tell me how I must go to get back to the s.h.i.+ps."

The negro gave what directions he could, and the fugitive took to the swamp again, after a grateful good-by to his dusky friend and a warm "G.o.d-speed" from the latter. It was into a thicket of tangled shrubs that Lieutenant Cus.h.i.+ng now plunged, so dense that he could not see ten feet in advance.

But the sun was visible overhead and served him as a guide.

Hour by hour he dragged himself painfully onward. At two o'clock in the afternoon he found himself on the banks of a narrow creek, a small affluent of the Roanoke.

He crouched in the bushes on the creek-side, peering warily before him. Voices reached his ears. Across the stream he saw men. A minute's observation apprised him of the situation. The men he saw to be a group of soldiers, seven in number, who had just landed from a boat in the stream. As he watched, they tied their boat to the root of a tree, and then turned into a path that led upward. Reaching a point at some distance from the river, they stopped, sat down, and began to eat their dinner.

Here was an opportunity, a desperate one, but Cus.h.i.+ng had grown ready for desperate chances. He had had enough of wandering through mire and thorns. Without hesitation he lowered himself noiselessly into the water, swam across the stream, untied the boat, pushed it cautiously from the bank, and swam with it down the stream until far enough away to be out of sight of its recent occupants. Then he climbed into the boat and paddled away as fast as possible.

There was no sign of pursuit. The soldiers kept unsuspiciously at their mid-day meal. The swamp-lined creek-sides served well as a shelter from prying eyes. For hours Cus.h.i.+ng pursued his slow course. The sun sank; darkness gathered; night came on. At the same time the water widened around him; he was on the surface of the Roanoke.

Onward he paddled; the night crept on till midnight was reached; for ten hours he had been at that exhausting toil.

But now before his eyes appeared a welcome sight, the dark hull of a Union gunboat.

"s.h.i.+p ahoy!" came a loud hail from the exhausted man.

"Who goes there?" answered the lookout on the gunboat.

"A friend. Take me up."

The gunboat was quickly in motion. This might be a Confederate ruse, possibly a torpedo might have been sent to blow them up; they were in dangerous waters. Boats were quickly lowered, and rowed towards the small object on the stream.

"Who are you?" came the cry, as they drew near.

"Lieutenant Cus.h.i.+ng, or what is left of me."

"Cus.h.i.+ng!" was the excited answer. "And the Albemarle?"

"Will never trouble a Union fleet again. She rests in her grave on the muddy bottom of the Roanoke."

Loud cheers followed this stirring announcement. The sailors bent to their oars, and quickly had the gallant lieutenant on board. Their cheers were heightened tenfold when the crew of the Valley City heard what had been done. In truth, the exploit of Lieutenant Cus.h.i.+ng was one that for coolness, daring, and success in the face of seemingly insuperable obstacles has rarely been equalled in history, and the destruction of the Albemarle ranks with the most notable events in the history of war.

ALASKA, A TREASURE HOUSE OF GOLD, FURS, AND FISHES

In 1867, when the far-seeing Secretary Seward purchased Alaska from the Russian government for $7,200,000, there was an outcry of disapproval equal to that made when Louisiana territory was purchased from France in 1803. Many of the people called the region "Seward's Folly" and said it would produce nothing but icebergs and polar bears, and General Benjamin F. Butler, representative from Ma.s.sachusetts, said in the House: "If we are to pay this amount for Russia's friends.h.i.+p during the war, then give her the $7,200,000 and tell her to keep Alaska." Representative Washburn, of Wisconsin, exclaimed: "I defy any man on the face of the earth to produce any evidence that an ounce of gold has ever been found in Alaska."

To-day Alaska is yielding in gold $10,000,000 per year; its fisheries are among the richest in the world, including more than half the salmon yield of the United States; its forests are of enormous value; its fur-seal harvest is without a rival; its territory is traversed by one of the greatest rivers of the world, two thousand miles long and with more than a thousand miles of navigable waters, and it promises to become an important farming and stock-raising region. As for extent, it is large enough to cover more than twenty of our States. In revenue it has repaid the United States the original outlay and several millions more; while, aside from its gold product, its fisheries have netted $100,000,000 and its furs $80,000,000 since its acquisition. Seward, then, was wise in looking upon this purchase as the greatest achievement of his life, though he truly said that it would take the country a generation to find out Alaska's value.

The most dramatic and interesting portion of the story of Alaska is its gold-mining enterprise, and it is of this, therefore, that we propose to speak. The discovery of placer gold deposits in British Columbia led naturally to the surmise that this precious metal might be found farther northward, and as early as 1880 wandering gold-hunters had made their way over the pa.s.ses from Ca.s.siar or inward from the coast and were trying the gravel bars of tributaries of the Yukon, finding the yellow metal at several places.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUIR GLACIER IN ALASKA.]

The first important find along the Yukon was made on Stewart River in 1885, about $100,000 being taken out in two summers. The next year a good find was made at Forty-Mile Creek, finds being made later on Sixty-Mile Creek, Birch Creek, and other streams. On Birch Creek arose Circle City, named from its proximity to the Arctic circle, and growing into a well-built and well-conducted little town.

Meanwhile a valuable find had been made on Douglas Island, one of the long chain of islands that bound the western coast line, and this has since developed into one of the richest mines in the world. It is not a placer mine, however, but a quartz mine, one needing capital for its development and with no charms for the ordinary gold-seeker.

The gold is found in a friable and easily worked rock, enabling low-grade ores to be handled at a profit, and to-day fifteen hundred stamps are busy and the mines are highly profitable.

The placer miners, however, have no use for gold that rests in quartz veins and has to be obtained by the aid of costly stamping mills. The gold they seek is that on which nature has done the work of stamping, by breaking up the original veins into sands and gravels, with which the freed gold is mixed in condition to be obtained by a simple process of was.h.i.+ng. The wandering miners thus prospected Alaska, following the long course of the Yukon and trying its tributary streams, many of them making a living, a few of them acquiring wealth, but none of their finds attracting the attention of the world, which scarcely knew that gold-seekers were at work in this remote and almost unknown region.

Thus it went on until 1897, when on July 16 a party of miners arrived in San Francisco from the upper Yukon with a large quant.i.ty of gold in nuggets and dust and a story to tell that deeply stirred that old land of gold. On the 17th another steamer put into Seattle with more miners and $800,000 in gold dust, nearly all of it the outcome of a winter's work on a small stream known as the Klondike, entering the Yukon about fifty miles above Forty-Mile Creek.

The discovery of this rich placer region was made in the autumn of 1896 by an Illinois man named George McCormick, who, in the intervals of salmon fis.h.i.+ng, tried his hand at prospecting, and on Bonanzo Creek, a tributary of the Klondike, was surprised and overjoyed to find gold in a profusion never before dreamed of in the Alaskan region. The news of the find spread rapidly through Alaska and before winter set in the old diggings were largely deserted, a swarm of eager miners poured into the Klondike region, and the frozen earth was torn and rent in their eagerness to reach its yellow treasures.

The news of the discovery spread as far and fast as the telegraph could carry it. The richness of the find surpa.s.sed anything ever before found and the whole country was agog.

The stories of wonderful fortunes made by miners were testified to by a display of nuggets and sacks of s.h.i.+ning gold in stores and hotels, the find of one man being shown in a San Francisco shop window in the shape of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars worth of gold.

The old gold-fever broke out again as an epidemic. Such a stampede as took place had never before been seen. The stream of picturesque humanity that poured through Seattle and on to the golden north surpa.s.sed the palmy days of '49 when California opened its caves of Aladdin. Every steamer that could be made use of was booked to its full capacity, while many ardent gold-seekers were turned away. Every pa.s.senger and every pound of cargo that could be taken on these steamers was loaded and the hegira was almost instantly in full blast.

As it proved, the new find was in Canadian territory, a few miles east of the Alaskan boundary, but the flood of men that set in was mainly American. Many threw up good positions or mortgaged their homes for funds to join the mad migration, oblivious in most cases of the fact that they were setting out to encounter hards.h.i.+ps and arctic extremes of temperature for which their home life had utterly unfitted them. Warnings were published that those who joined the pioneer flood faced starvation or death by freezing or hards.h.i.+p, but the tide was on and could not be turned, and before the autumn had far advanced thousands had landed at the mushroom settlements of Skagway and Dyea, laden with the effects they had brought with them and proposing to fight their way against nature's obstacles over the difficult mountain pa.s.ses and along the little less difficult lakes and streams to the promised land of gold. A village of log houses and tents, known as Dawson, had sprung up at the mouth of the Klondike, and this was the mecca towards which the great pilgrimage set.

The struggle inland of the first comers was a frightful one.

No roads or pack-trails existed over the rough and lofty pa.s.ses of the coast range of mountains, and it was killing work to transport the many tons of equipments and provisions over the nearly impa.s.sable Chilkoot and White Pa.s.ses. For those who came too late in the season it was quite impa.s.sable, the trails and rivers were stopped by snow and ice, and numbers had to endure a long and miserable winter in the primitive coast settlements or straggle back to civilization.

The terrors of that first year's battle with the unbroken pa.s.ses are indescribable. Thousands of dead pack-horses marked the way. And the mountains once crossed and the waters reached new troubles arose. Boats had to be built for the long reach of navigation down the chain of lakes and the Yukon--many having brought the necessary boat timbers with them. Six hundred miles of waterways were to be traversed.

On some of the short streams connecting the lakes there were dangerous rapids to be run, in which many lost their goods and some their lives. The early winter added ice to the difficulties of the way and the Yukon section of the trip was made by the later comers through miles of drift ice, grinding and ploughing its way to the peril of the boats, or water travel was checked by the final closing of the stream for the winter, leaving no resource but a long sledging journey over the snow.