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31. Seattle to Tacoma

September 4, 2011

“Settled” for Hayes always has a non-standard interpretation. In the current chapter, settled means attending school in Seattle at a Free Methodist Seminary , from which he is eventually expelled – for laughing at their enthusiasms. Followed by a summer breaking rocks at the quarry in Tacoma where he hears the hair-raising tale of the Edmund Creffield, Esther Mitchell and the Holy Rollers.

The map below won’t appear in an email. The current chapter appears as the very short pink path with stops at only Seattle and Tacoma. Though the distance is short, the time is long by Hayes’ standards – 9 months – with infrequent diary entries as is customary when he is “settled.” The previous green path shows him coming down from Alaska. Only the start of the next chapter is shown in blue; it stretches to London.

Click here to download chapters 1-31 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:
31.1 High School at the Free Methodist Seminary

November 10, 1905

From Seattle Hayes popped down to the twin towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam at Grey’s Harbor looking for work in the mills. All he found were, “Vast mud flats piled with drifting logs and stumps from on up the Chehalis River flowing into the bay, more logs in heaps about the shores, sawmills dolefully humming day after day and the bleak streets … full of water from the incessant rain.” A quick look in at Tacoma before a new idea assaults him: “I propose to enter the seminary of the Free Methodist Church at Fremont for a couple of years, then try to get into the University of Washington. It is rather late in life to seek such learning, but I can try.”

Seattle Seminary; now Seattle Pacific University

While admiring Hayes’ pursuit of knowledge, one also notes that this looks like a warm dry place to spend the winter.

November 23,1905

Hayes paid two years tuition and board joining with four other young men and eight girls under the tutelage of the school’s first headmaster Alexander Beers. All the students like Beers but Hayes identifies his wife as “a nagger who has favorites and sees that they get the plums.” Though very tame, the place compares favorably with unpaid sailor’s work, hiking across the Arizona desert, and starving around Los Angeles. “I can get the winter in here and see what turns up elsewhere later.”

December 4,1905

At 27 years old, Hayes entered the Seminary as a freshman in High School. Either he or the place is out of step – “Anyway, I’ve never seen a place like it.” Gentle girls dressed in “plain garments that are not intended to attract men,” and soft boys, “who could not take it if thrown on a square rigger rounding Cape Stiff.”

The strict Free Methodists wear no ties, play no instrumental music in church, but are given to “a deal of shouting and fervent prayer, and when the spiritual unction and ecstasy falls on the assembled throng they lose self control and run about the house, screaming at the top of their lungs.” While averring no criticism, Hayes remarks, “To be good and kind, to help one’s fellows who are unfortunate, to play the game as square as one wants it played toward himself would seem to be of more practical value than all this undue excitement and enthusiasm.”

Hayes appreciates Beers as a good man, “sincere and truthfully trying to live right before his charges.” His charges? They are young people just like all young people: following their biological urges, pilfering unlocked rooms, and generally succumbing to temptation as easily as do others. With the “constant revival meeting … in force,” these young Free Methodists “repent of their sins, then do it all over again.”

Deccember 21, 1905

Less than a month at school and Hayes has passed two years work now. “The only fly in the ointment serious to me is the sedentary life forced upon me in this place. It is a hot house, and I am a flower that has bloomed on the mountain tops, or at sea, as the case may be.”

Hayes believes the heads of school intend to marry the boys to the girls in this institution. “Seated at the table with me thrice daily are several girls in the full bloom of young womanhood. They are as full of appeal as any one could meet elsewhere, and I know I have been placed with them for the possibilities of the contact.” While not immune to these allures, Africa still holds the stronger appeal. The school has a missionary society, to which Hayes belongs, but he believes only members of the Free Methodist church have any real hope of placement as “ambassadors to the heathen.”

Hayes writes with pride of his academic accomplishments achieved by constant study night and day. “None in the school has passed as many grades as I have, and even the faculty have not gone as far in geography, in geology and in general knowledge of the world as I have.” All this excellence avails him little without membership in the church. “I must accept these super tame people and like it or else––.”

February 9, 1906

The school held a little 28th birthday celebration for Hayes and several others born on the same day. The party gives a pleasant interlude, but Hayes tires of this place and these people who are not his kind. “My life has been lived among rough and uncouth men. But their sins, glaring as they were, were on the surface.“ Compelled to follow the rules set for “all these children” at the school, Hayes longs for exercise, fresh air, and self-determination.

In contrast, the masters of the school long for conversion for every student in residence. “There is a deal of excitement shown by parents when their offspring forsake the world and turn to things spiritual, but it is a question whether they can hold fast when it comes to the long, hard dray down life’s pathway to the grave.“ Hayes invokes the Spanish inquisition to describe the pressure exerted on students to come to the True Faith. “I think every student but me has been to the mourners bench several times, and it might be well if I did. Instead it excites my perverted sense of humor.” The chapel where services are held slopes down toward the pulpit, so that when those seized by the spirit begin running around the house, “they run down this incline and soon their heads are moving faster than their feet.” All very funny – except that Hayes has paid two years tuition and board here: “I’ll never last it.”

March 16, 1906

Some of the students in their late teens slipped into town for “shows and stolen kisses.” Now everyone at the school suffers reinforced disciplines, even those like Hayes with no girl friend. And the heating system doesn’t work. “The steam heat comes up through the shafts as cold heat, and might easily be used for refrigeration purposes.” Through all the conditions Hayes reports keeping up on his studies.

April 10, 1906

“San Francisco has been destroyed by a great earthquake.”

San Francisco Earthquake April 1906

Hayes’ dates his entry incorrectly; the earthquake hit San Francisco on April 18th. Nevertheless, the reports filtering north to Seattle are correct: “Fire is wiping out the wrecked houses left standing as well as burning the wreckage of the quake.” Rumors put the death toll between one thousand and fifty thousand. (Wikipedia records it as about 3,000, the highest death toll from any natural disaster in California history.)

All his diligent school work at the Free Methodist school over the past five months has advanced Hayes to a junior in High School, but “My shortcuts to the problems given us do not agree with all the professors.” Worse yet: he refuses conversion to Free Methodism; has not fallen for any of the girls seated beside him at table; and is guilty of sacrilege. “Not willingly, but being naturally wicked and unregenerate, I laughed at some of the more enthusiastic zealots as they leaped about the room during worship. I hid my head, but it availed me nothing. I would have laughed regardless of penalties, it was funny.”

So, that’s the end of school at the Free Methodist Seminary. A shame to lose the two years tuition and board, but at least a spring rain now falls in Seattle. “Where, oh where? There seems no stable place in this world for me. I am doomed to wander.”

31.2 Tacoma Breaking Rocks Again

April 24, 1906

Passing an entire winter sitting reading with the “super tame” people, Hayes has gone soft. So he decides to return to hammering rocks at the quarry in Tacoma. “As I needed exercise, I chose this place above all others.” His boss, Buck Stanley, put him on a fourteen pound hammer, “and am I sore?” A few of the old crew are still here, Andy the Boob, and Old Jack, but the cook married the Mississippi kid and the couple moved on with their newly born child. The new cook is better, “but the fleas are here, and if anything the moral standard of the crew is somewhat lower than when I was here two years ago.”

A powerful hunch seizes Hayes that his road will soon lead to Africa. “There is no especial encouragement for this belief, but I have a most particular hunch. And at times during my life these hunches have come true.” Scotty, a “powder man” at the quarry, who fought in the Boer War, encourages Hayes but wonders why anyone would hope to reach the hot Sudan.

May 30, 1906

Now that the Japanese have won their war with Russia, the men have little to discuss at the quarry. According to Hayes’ race based ideology, the wrong side won, which will mean a step back for the world.

The rocks Hayes and the crew crush go to line a nearby roadbed for the rubber-wheeled cars that are beginning to appear requiring better roads.

Blomstrom Queen Automobile 1906

Unlike the other men at the quarry, Hayes saves his money toward his Africa stake. “For the other men it means booze and an occasional woman’s society in the purlieus of Seattle.”

June 12, 1906

Though of wiry build, “not a bullock in stature as most quarrymen are,” Hayes has the knack of breaking rocks by knowing where to strike, so can manage the punishing physical labor. Old Pete returned to a touching reception from the rest of the crew, which includes Long Andy, Short Andy, and Andy the Boob. Long Andy is a gentle giant when sober, a mad bull when drunk. Short Andy is a genial Scandinavian when sober, a tiger who will fight any man when drunk. Andy the Boob is a half-wit with regard to everything but working steel at which he is “a genius.” “Then we have a few socialists, red ones who wish to turn the world upside down. They reject everything but their own philosophy.”

Hayes observes among the workingmen of the United States, “a certain movement toward a change of government.” Just now, these men praise the assassin who killed the governor of Finland. Hayes fears this kind of unrest will grow toward bigger things that will not be for the better. “To me it seems if there is to be any change that will benefit mankind it must be by raising the standard of the individual, and that can only be done by the man himself.” According to Hayes, only the precepts laid down by Christ so long ago hold any promise of breaking the cycle of domination by whatever group rises to the top – for once on top, the revolutionaries become “cruel, domineering, [and] lustful for power,” until the next group topples them, “and it goes on endlessly.”

July 6, 1906

Then July Fourth comes and Hayes gets to see what men actually do with their hard won liberty. “Andy the Boob takes his booze in the seclusion of his hut by the blacksmith shop, so does not offend his fellows.” But the two other Andy’s went into town “bosom companions, and for some strange reason did not spend all their money there.” They came back to the bunkhouse at midnight on the Third arguing who was the better man. Hayes quotes them. First Short Andy: “You knows I vas a tam better mans dan you vas!” Then Long Andy: “Th’ hell you are! Come outside hyar, I’ll show yuh who’s th’ better man!”

Their argument did not come to blow on the night of the Third, and, since Short Andy had some money left, he stopped by “The Meadows” to play the ponies on the Fourth and “With a drunk man’s luck he picked winners constantly, [and] won several hundred dollars….” With his winnings he bought fireworks, carrying them back to set off inside the bunkhouse –where Long Andy had continued his drinking – nearly burning it to the ground. After sharing his fireworks with Hayes and Long Andy at the bunkhouse, Short Andy returned to the racetrack where some newly acquired “friends” tried to rob him. “His great strength surprised them, and they beat him frightfully before he was subdued.” When the police arrived, Short Andy, despite the beating, had one of the robbers in a clutch he would not release. “Andy is in the can at Seattle now, held as a material witness against this man, who is a notorious criminal.” At least Short Andy isn’t “groaning in his bunk” like Long Andy, or “paralyzed” like Andy the Boob. Hayes summarizes the whole debauched celebration:

“So much for one’s glorious personal liberty we hear so much about.”

July 19,1906

Quarry work returns to the normal grind without Short Andy. The police caught all three robbers and want to make sure to convict them on Short Andy’s testimony. All the other quarrymen but Hayes are saving for another binge. “When winter comes, all will be broke, working for their board at some Salvation Army woodpile or starving about the streets, begging from any man who has a dime to spare. Such is the American workingman.”

Hayes picked five gallons of blackberries for pies. “There are few more desirable berries than these western blackberries. No other variety has the tang they have, especially in a pie.”

August 12, 1906

Though the rest of the quarry men think he’s “bughouse,” (Hayes’ quote) Hayes will try for the Niger River in West Africa, but not quite yet, maybe in October. Scotty, the powderman, tells any who will listen, “He’ll die if he tries it” (Hayes’ quote.)

Paid $2.75 for nine hours breaking rocks (minus a dollar a day for the bunkhouse), and by avoiding the frightful binges of the three Andys, Hayes has gathered a small stake. This together with some savings from Alaska and a refund from the Free Methodist school will bankroll his adventure to the Niger.

September 5, 1906

Short Andy got back from Seattle pale, subdued, and bringing the tale of Ester Mitchell, “a pretty little thing” – who shot her own brother.


Esther Mitchell	George Mitchell	Edmund Creffield

Hayes recalls that he also has a slight connection to Esther Mitchell’s case, “I was in Seattle last spring, walking down First St., and a man shot another a couple of blocks distant.” The man shooting was Esther Mitchell’s brother, George. The man shot was Edmund Creffield, founder of the Bride of Christ Church – better known by the derogatory name Holy Rollers. (The reader can find extensive accounts of the Holy Rollers on line.) Hayes summarizes his understanding of the church as follows: “These people were given to stripping themselves of all their clothing, rolling about the floor in their ecstacies (sic) and at last devoting themselves to sexual orgies, in which Creffield led.”

In May of 1906, Hayes heard George Mitchell shoot Edmund Creffield in Seattle. Mitchell claimed Creffield had defiled his seventeen-year-old sister, Esther, a member of the Bride of Christ Church. The Seattle jury acquitted George Mitchell who was free only a few days before Esther(!) shot him. Short Andy brings with him all the lurid gossip about Esther Mitchell straight from the prison in Seattle where, “She is waiting for trial now.”

Scandalous gossip to pass a man’s September swinging a 14-pound hammer, but: “At the end of this month I intend to leave. Despite the unusually hard work I have spent a pleasant summer. Time slips by easily and pleasantly, and these men are as good companions as any other. Misfortune has placed most of them where they are, and the others are not fitted for any other sort of work. The hard work has been good discipline for me.”

Leave a Comment » | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Edmund Creffield, Esther Mitchell, Free Methodist Seminary, George Mitchell, Holy Rollers, San Francisco earthquake, stone quarry work | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

30. Bering Lake to Seattle

August 28, 2011

The 1905 US Geological Survey trip to Alaska inspired Hayes with natural beauty and disgusted him with human folly. By the end of the trip, the generally mild, hard working young man from Oregon finds himself pushed too far by a shirker named Small under the protection of the trip’s leaders Martin and Maddren. Hayes did not break his hand, and Small couldn’t see through swollen eyes to strike back with the axe he grabbed – but Hayes knows this will be his last USGS trip to Alaska.

The map below won’t appear in an email. The current chapter appears as the green path down from Alaska, preceded by the blue up to Alaska, and followed by the short (funny) pink path around Northern Washington State.

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Click here to download chapters 1-30 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:

30.1 Wolverines and Colonialists

August 12, 1905

To this far place in Alaska come newspapers from Seattle in which Brooks “somewhat drew a long bow.” Hayes reads with interest about Brooks and Martin exploring the ice fields, climbing mountains, and rowing in swift water and ocean breakers – why, he even describes shooting white water with Martin. “Strange, but I was not mentioned at all. But I do wish the reading public could have seen Messrs. Brooks and martin walking down the bank while I turned the nose of the boat upstream and shot the water all alone… Martin doesn’t mention this article to me.”

Hayes is up Canyon creek cooking for Hill and McDonald who are surveying around the nearby ranges. The rest of the survey team remains camped near Behring Lake. They’ve measured a 47 square mile coal area east of Copper River flats. If these rich fields are to be exploited, a deepwater port must be located; a coast and geodetic survey boat sounds Controller Bay while the survey team works.

Unloading on the immense flats along the coast can be quite dangerous. Once while lining a boat against the rip tide, quicksand sucked Martin in to his waist. Hayes and Hamilton got to him on oars and the false bottom of the boat, literally pulling him out of his boots. (Hopefully not the ones in the picture in segment 28.) “He was covered with mud and slime, and was badly frightened. Martin is always having marvelous adventures.”

In the hills, Hayes encounters a new animal, “a fairly formidable beast called a carcajou, or wolverine.”

Carcajou or Wolverine

Wolverines are the curse of trappers. “One will follow a trap line for miles destroying bait, springing traps, eating any fox or marten in a trap and will rob a cache, spraying a frightful scent over such goods as he may not eat.” A member of the skunk family, “the Indians say they can whip a bear.”

Hayes’ comments on colonialism are contradictory and always fascinating. On this date he writes a long rant beginning, “The Indians are better than white men. They never steal from us, are quiet, mind their own affairs, but are debauched by the renegade whites who have brought drink and disease that is rapidly wiping out the entire people.” Noting that still habitable native houses stand empty near the beaches, he continues, “So it is and always has been before the Anglo-Saxon. He decimates the people aboriginal to the countries he conquers by whiskey, by debauching their womenfolk and by crowding them all off into corners considered worthless, where they lose heart and soon perish.” Then he goes on about how the Spaniards enslaved the Mexicans and South Americans – inadvertently hardening them for survival – and the methods of the Catholic church: conversion followed by execution to prevent backsliding. He ends with, “The Anglo-Saxon is not so concerned about the native’s soul, but does get everything else he has.”

30.2 Naming Berg Lake

August 30,1905

Hayes together with some in the survey party “have crossed the range to Behring Glacier, where there is a log cabin beside the ice field and where we can see away into infinity across the ice. It is the most majestic scene I have ever witnessed.” On days of unusual clarity long comet tails of windblown snow can be seen howling off Mounts St. Elias and Logan more than one hundred miles distant but looking more like ten.


Mt. St. Elias	Mt. Logan

Martin is “chary” of christening the unnamed peaks nearby; he’s afraid “He might offend the powers that be in Washington if he did.” Already such luminaries as Foraker, Dall, and Tillman – all men in positions to give Martin his job – denominate peaks nearby.

Maddren, the fossil collector, not so chary as Martin, names a small lake half a mile below their cabin Berg Lake. “Martin received his subordinate’s decision with shrieks of silence, and it was felt by all assembled here.” Martin’s reaction aside, the name seems apt. Every night gigantic bergs break off the glacier thundering into the lake sometimes roaring for minutes on end when successive bergs break from the main mass of ice.

30.3 Winter Coming

September 6, 1905

Now Hayes and several others are camped, “high above the gorge of Canyon Creek and at the timberline.” In early September this high up, winter approaches. “Daily the snow line creeps down the big range to the north of us, and in a few days will be at the ice fields for the winter.” Returning up the hill from a hike to the main camp for supplies, Hayes saw that wolverine tracks covered his own downward footprints on the entire path.

September 10,1905

A foot of snow has fallen and the college boys “take it good naturedly.” Some of the prospectors are clearing out for the winter, carrying one hundred pound packs down the rugged mountains. Hayes’ main concern is keeping the large outfit fed. He must pack in food from base camp a thousand feet below, “and it keeps me humming to feed them and get food in. They don’t seem to realize it either.”

30.4 Back at Berg Lake

September 26, 1905

Hayes and company return the cabin above Berg Lake for the geologists to mop up work here. “Nightly now the bergs break off the glacier with tremendous roarings, and the grinding after, when the newly born berg grinds among its fellows, is awesome to hear.” New ice an inch thick forms on the lake at night only to be broken to bits every time a new chunk of ice breaks from the main sheet. Hayes speculates that, “It must be this lake that sometimes breaks out down Behring river and floods the entire country.”

Berg Lake breaking down the gorge in 1956

Hayes laughs at the engineers who all carry gold watches they love to show off to the impoverished miners. But when anyone wants to know the correct time, they all ask Hayes who owns a dollar Ingersoll whose timekeeping improved after falling to the floor where it was stepped on by some heavy Alaskan in hob-nailed boot.

30.5 “Too bad one has to have trouble.”

October 5, 1905

The reader will recall a member of the survey party named Small who was hired in the same cook/handyman capacity to the crew as Hayes. For the past several months Small, under the protection of the topographer Maddren, has been shirking his duties and bullying Hayes. Maddren has convinced Martin that Hayes is responsible for shortages of food – when Maddren himself took a good bit from Hayes’ allotment. “Other than these three, Martin, Maddren, and Small, I get on well with the rest of the crowd.”

These very three, Martin, Maddren, and Small, moved together with Hayes, “up river to another camp, where are some miners coming and going, together with their Indian packers.” Feeling covered by Martin and Maddren, Small began berating Hayes before some of the miners packing out. “We came to blows a couple of mornings since, and Small is in bed with both eyes shut, while I have a badly smashed left hand. Small lead with his nose, breaking my thumb, but it was worth it. Martin rushed to the rescue of his protégé, who got an axe, but could not see to use it.”

The “grizzled miners” readily size up the situation and the two men. One asks Small, “What’s the matter with your eye? Limb strike it?” (Hayes’ quote.) Small, in reply: “Yes, Struck me right hin the heye!” (Hayes’ quote.) Then the grim faced Alaskan glancing at his mates: “Gee! Must have give you a hell of a lick!” (Hayes’ quote.) But Martin cannot immediately judge the situation fairly, “He promises to see me out of the country, has already secured the services of a Chilean in case.”

After a couple of days with Hayes doing all the “slop-up jobs” and Small recovering his sight, Martin, Maddren, and the two combatants rejoined the main party at Behring Lake. When the rest of the crew “proclaimed their joy at Small’s take down,” Martin finally realized he’d “backed the wrong horse.” One of the company, Billy Hill went so far as to quote scripture “Behold, he that seeketh earnestly shall find!” (Hayes’ quote.) All but the two bosses had seen Small’s bullying and are glad Hayes evened the score.

30.6 An Apology of Sorts

October 10, 1905

With winter coming in earnest the entire crew waits at Wingham Island for the steamer Excelsior.

Steamer Excelsior

Martin has apologized for his attitude but Hayes sees only a feeble attempt to pick the strongest side: all in the party except Maddren back Hayes, and Martin wants to appear their leader. “Small tried to smirk and make up, but I turned from him.” Hamilton or maybe some of the rodmen from among the college students are all right, but as for the rest, “[I] never want to see any of them again.”

30.7 Sitka

October 14,1905

The survey party barely made the Excelsior, rowing out in a blinding gale. Once aboard Hayes found a cache of apples and pears under the pillow in his four-man cabin. “The steward had swiped these off the ship to sell to passengers, and we scoffed the lot free.”

At a stopover at Yakutat, one of the young survey members, Bill McDonald, “got a crush on an Indian maid named Judith Johnson.” Judith returned his affection and only the ship’s departure cut short a budding romance.

“Sitka is as picturesque as ever.” As when he had been here before, Hayes is favorably impressed with the Indian school. The students from Ketchikan to Nome and Behring Strait, “seem an earnest lot, and surely some good will come out of this school.” Technical training and book work for the boys, domestic science for the girls.

30.8 Adrift in Seattle

October 24, 1905

At Seattle, Hayes parts from the survey crew. “Martin … has been trying to square things. But it is the end, I know that. I would be afraid to go with him again.”

Immediately following his first survey trip to Alaska in 1903, Hayes: turned down a place at Stanford; learned of his father’s death; sailed fruitlessly to Liverpool and back to Galveston; walked across the Southwestern United States desert; broke rocks in Tacoma, and hopped logs for a winter in Eureka. He calls all that “My last disaster after leaving Alaska.” Fearing a repeat, he’s determined to save what he earned this past summer in Alaska.

He knows what he doesn’t want to do – but, “what to do, what to do, is always the question for a wanderer, and I am one at heart, even if I am not so good at it. I’m 27 now, and have not made much of a splash in the world. Perhaps I never will.”

Leave a Comment » | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Alaska, Berg Lake, carcajou, Sitka Indian School, Steamer Excelsior, US Geological Survey | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

29. Seymour Narrows to Behring Lake

August 20, 2011

After missing the 1904 trip, Hayes catches on with Martin for the 1906 survey trip to Alaska. Hayes serves as boatman, cook, and general camp roustabout for a much larger party in 1906.

The map below won’t appear in an email. The current chapter appears as the blue path up the Alaska coast, preceded by the pink from California, and followed by the green south back down the Alaska coast.

Click here to download chapters 1-29 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:

29.1 Mapping Wingham Island

May 26, 1905

After the long trip north from Seymor Narrows, Hayes and the party land at Wingham Island to do some mapping. “We have instead of the light and handy skiff I induced Martin to bring last trip, a heavy dory that requires all one’s strength to row even in still water. Against these tide rips and river currents it is going to be impossible to handle.”

Big Fishing Dory

Hayes is to cook for the party, assist the topologists and geologists in their daily work, and must “look after the boats, packing, wood getting and so on.” The other assistant, Small, should have the same assignment but has the favor of Maddren so, “It is the usual thing. If one has influence as this man has, work is left to another.”

29.2 Fossils at Behring River

June 2, 1905

Martin says he and Hayes will press on to Manatuska, “But I wonder, for these college boys are helpless to do anything but eat and complain.”

The fossils in the nearby hills indicate a tropical climate reigned here at one time: Hayes found some magnolia leaves and Martin found palm fronds that will be sent back to Washington.

And one more note about Small, Maddren’s man. “I don’t like to complain unduly of my companions, but it is apparent I am to do two men’s work on this job from now on. If I can I will, but it is discouraging.”

29.3 With Brooks at Katallah

June 10,1905

Alfred H. Brooks, head of the Alaska Survey, “the big shot,” has joined Martin’s group and is pressing to explore the Katalla region as quickly as possible.

Alfred H. Brooks Alaska 1899

So Brooks and Martin set off down river with Hayes to “cook and camp hand while they prospect about the country.”

29.4 Coal at Shepard Creek

June 17, 1905

At Shepard Creek, near the Martin River Glacier, “good grade bituminous and semi anthracite” coal show immense seams wherever the ice recedes. Four companies have claimed it all and their owners “are now towing to Brooks and Martin like these men were demigods.”

“There are some wonderfully pretty lakes in this region.” Hayes claims that one is “as neat a square as a body of water could be naturally”; Lake Kushtacah has its own demon according to the natives; Lake Charlotte is as green as an emerald and discharges into Shepard Creek as “clear and as transparent as water ever is.”

Lake Kushtaka

In all the water, millions of salmon and millions of mosquitoes spawn. The party has too few nets to protect from the latter, “so I have invented one to hang to the flap of my sleeping bad, and Brooks has done me the signal honor to discard his net and make one like mine for him.”

29.5 Stillwater Creek

June 17, 1905

At Katallah, Hayes pitched the party’s tent on “an old Indian shack … and we had a splendid floor made of hewn planks.” He remarks that he, Martin and Brooks “line well together”: Hayes and Martin tow the boat and Brooks steers. “There can be no deadheads in Alaska unless it be near the coast. Every tub must stand in a measure on its own bottom here.” According to Hayes, “Brooks has seen a good deal of the wilderness, but no man can understand very much about it unless he is constantly in it.” Hayes seems to include himself in this assessment as he says, “Therefore we have made a few blunders since wandering about the country.” At Stillwater Creek, which is only still where it enters the Behring River, a horse some coal company men hobbled to shoe, broke its rope, backed into the rushing river, and drown. Brooks, Martin and Hayes came upon its corpse while lining up the Behring.

29.6 Beneath Behring Glacier

June 25, 1905

(Perhaps a reader can help me with the Geography here. It seems likely to me that the glacial geography of Alaska has changed since 1905. I’m locating Hayes where I think he says he was and in the order he says it, but I’m not at all sure I’ve got him correctly placed.)

Brooks, Martin and Hayes, seem to have formed a functioning trio. Hayes says the three of them went to the face of the Behring Glacier for a few days. “I stayed with the goods on the flats near the ice fields while Brooks and Martin Looked over the coal prospects about Canyon Creek, which roars–yes, literally roars down a gorge and spreads over its boulder strewn bed into the Behring.” Hayes is twitchy the whole four days he’s camped on the flat; an old timer told him of tremendous floods that roar down the gorge when an ice dam bursts from lakes that form on the ice fields.

The late June heat melts snow and raises the river levels until Hayes thinks he will have to abandon camp and climb a tree. Fortunately no ice dams give way. During Hayes’ tense four days, Martin and Brooks ate mountain goat shot by miners living on the edge of the ice flow. “The goat rolled down hundreds of feet to the talus slope, and must have been fairly tender after this fall.”

The trio returned to the main camp shooting a river running full with blocks of ice. “The two geologists walked down the bank while I shot the rapids, the boat being too heavily laden to carry the lot of us safely when there are so many rocks sticking up in the bed of the stream.” Martin and Hayes rejoined the rest of the survey team near Behring Lake while Brooks returned to Washington glad to be free of the mosquitoes. A full paragraph describing the number, tenacity, and means of battling “these voracious insects” ensues.

29.7 Pie at Behring Lake

July 12, 1905

Some new hands have joined the survey including Valdemar Georgesen, the son of the head of the agricultural department of Alaska. Valdemar is seventeen, soft and carries a big appetite. Martin starts west for Matanuska alone, deciding that Hayes better stay with the camp of new men under the direction of Hamilton the topographer. Hamilton splits the crew into two groups: his larger crew to boat around charting the lake on day excursions from a comfortable cabin, and a smaller group, for which Hayes cooks, to “do the scouting duty where access to the country is difficult.” All the canned fruit went with Hamilton, so Hayes picks gallons of wild berries for pies. With fresh berry pie, a light peterboro canoe, and competent companions, “Our gang get on well, and are glad to be away from the main bunch under Hamilton.”

29.8 Kayak Island

July 18, 1905

Most of the green hands are catching on to the work, “though the college students, who enlisted as camp hands, are so much dead wood.” A group of five including Hayes, Billy Hill, and Bill McDonald did a survey of Kayak Island. Hayes reports doing double duty: all the rowing and all the cooking. “It almost killed me.” All this work would be fine if equally shared as at the mining camps nearby, but “These government parties are made up chiefly of men whose lives are spent in offices, at desks where they wear white collars and do their adventure vicariously.” Somebody with a little practical experience has to do the work – and to Hayes that somebody usually seems to be Hayes – the “human camel.”

29.9 Wild Alaska

July 25, 1905

Martin came back from Matanuska and the “first thing he did was to roust Hamilton out of the soft spot he had dug into and shoved him off to the Copper River Flats.” Maddren is hardened to the work having been in Alaska previously, but he only does fossils. Martin is an expert geologist, honest and hard working but not yet capable of making good leadership decisions; “His money has already run out, and he is at wits end to know what to do to keep us going until the end of the work season.” So Hayes keeps picking berries – raspberries, salmon berries, blue berries, huckleberries, and strawberries – five gallons at a time. “These, with condensed milk and sugar make a wonderful dessert and laxative.”

“We get little news here in the wilderness. … The wildlife interests me more than the people.” The glaciers shut out deer, moose and caribou from this region, but the area is thick with bears: brown bears, similar to the giants on Kodiak Island; black bears smaller than the browns; and occasionally, out on the ice, a blue bear, said to be more savage than all the rest. Porcupines eat the tender bark of spruce trees and are eaten by hungry miners but “they are rather gamey to an unaccustomed tongue.” Marmots, resembling large prairie dogs, whistle sharply when surprised. And Martin reports seeing sea otters off Cape Elias on the southern tip of Kayak Island.

Gulls, cormorants, puffins, murres, sandpipers, snipes, plovers curlews, oyster catchers, eagles, ducks, geese, ptarmigan, mergansers … “but for the interest of the wildlife, I would find it difficult to stick this place.”

And the mountains: “The magnificent ranges covered with snow, extending from far west of the Copper River to St. Elias on the east. This is called the Chugach Range, and it is always covered with snow.”

Chugach Mountains

While none of this austere natural beauty quite adds up to happiness or contentment for Hayes, he certainly expresses awe.

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28. Seattle to the Seymour Narrows

August 14, 2011

Entries in Hayes’ diary become sparse when he is “settled.” In this chapter Hayes spent a year in two places: breaking rocks at a quarry in Tacoma Washington, and running logs at a mill pond in Eureka California. Hayes writes in his diary only about once a month as he finds the settled life “dull, dull DULL.” To this reader who grew up in Oregon and has seen those great rafts of logs bobbing in the sloughs, skipping logs in the dark would seem anything but dull.

Jean, Hayes mentions a cousin Edith Carlson in Marshfield Oregon.

The map below won’t appear in an email. The current chapter appears as the pink path, preceded by the yellow from California, and followed by the blue north back to Alaska.

Click here to download chapters 1-28 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:

28.1 Breaking Rocks on the Duamish

May 17, 1904

For want of a razor, Hayes missed re-connecting with Martin for the 1904 summer survey of Alaska. He checked around Seattle and was told Martin would be through almost at once. Back at the quarry on the Duamish, “some bewhiskered gentleman who needed [my razor] more than I do took it… When Payday came and I was able to buy one, Martin had gone.”

At least Hayes’ young back is welcome at the quarry. The boss cleaned house by calling out the names of those he wanted on the job. Hayes did not hear his name called and because he had laid off the previous day when, “my leg was half broken by a flying scale of rock,” he gathered his possessions together and lined up to be paid off with those dismissed. To which the boss said “Wotta yuh doin’ here? You’re workin’. Git back to your bunk, I’ll tell yuh when I want yuh to go!” (Hayes’ quote)

May 26, 1904

In fact, Hayes’ writes that his name had not been called because he was hiding out hoping to be overlooked – it’s a job, and he needs the money – but swinging a 14-pound hammer all day qualifies as poor second to exploring Alaska and just barely above tramping down the road to see what else might turn up. But he’s “getting hardened now and can take it with the rest.” Among the steady workers kept on after the house cleaning are Tiddley, an Englishman 42 years old, who cracks rocks “to earn enough to satisfy his longing for booze,” and “Pete, an ancient Swede, 52 years old, [who] keeps up the lick and breaks immense stones better than the younger men.” Pete doesn’t drink, prefers an 18-pound hammer, “and is rumored to have saved his money for the evening of life.”

According to their chatter, some of these men “have been seated among the mighty but have fallen.” Old Jack who runs the crusher claims to have owned most of Mercer Island but lost it speculating. Irish Donnelly says he held title on the site of the Dexter-Horton Bank before coming to the Duamish to break rocks. Not all the men were once wealthy, but all are interesting: Chris, a seaman; Scotty, a British soldier who served in South Africa; Nels, a Swede with the Boer army sent to St. Helena as a prisoner of war. “Not an uninteresting lot of men if one can take it with them.”

July 4, 1904

Price, the genial superintendent of the quarry who visits frequently from his home in the city, worries that the men “will be disorganized and weak from dissipation for a week or so after today [the national holiday], and it is an even bet many of them will be in the can tonight at Seattle.”

Only Hayes, Old Jack “who has had his day,” and Pete the big Swede, “too cautious and too penurious to spend,” remain at the quarry looking out across the valley to the countryside, “charming in its summer beauty.” It’s good to have a rest day from the heavy work. Hayes figures he’ll stay on another month then head back to Eureka.

Riverton Bridge, Duwamish River.
built in 1903

July 23, 1904

As Price predicted, “Some of the men never returned from their celebration of the nation’s birthday.” But Tiddley came back – and suddenly he’s stopped complaining about the cook, “a sturdy Finnish widow, who always boils the eggs hard and makes the coffee strong.” Romance is in the air – so accordingly the men are sending Tiddley “quotations on baby carriages, bedroom sets and such.” But Tiddley has a rival, a twenty year old lad from Mississippi, “who learned to admire the widow.” The younger man comes in for chafing about being adopted by the widow “who is not an hour less than forty.” Hayes reports it all rather distractedly, laughing at the cook’s two nightly auxiliary dishwashers. We never find out who prevailed.

28.2 To San Francisco: Sea Sick as always

August 4, 1904

After July payday, Hayes left the quarry bound for San Francisco on the Umatilla, “an ancient wooden vessel long since antiquated, but will run until she sinks if her owners can make profit from her.” The little money he’s earned won’t go even for second class; he travels “steerage” the cheapest ticket and worst accommodations possible. “The smells emanating from the steerage quarters turned my stomach before we left the dock,” then the old boat started rolling brining on four days of his old friend “mal-de-mer.”

He toured the park at San Fransicso “and to Cliff House to see the sights of the city.”

Cliff House circa 1900

The sightseeing tour may have been to settle his stomach in preparation for another 216 nautical miles north to Eureka. At the time, a ship was the only way to get from San Francisco to Eureka, “and I will be seasick again, for the northwest winds are constant now, lashing the sea into a fury.”

28.3 Winter in Eureka

August 16, 1904

Back in Eureka, Hayes’ old boss George Glynn “is now the big shot of the company.” Glynn hires Hayes on to a clannish Italian gang working “on a roadway spur where the road runs through a tunnel.” This is heavy work, loading scrapers, and Hayes weighs just enough to “bring down the beam.” Glynn gives Hayes this punishing work and an admonition: “He tells me he wants me to deep the lick, and to stay on the job this time instead of running off across the world, then coming back broke.” The new position has changed Glynn who used to be congenial overseer into an authoritative company man: “Sorry, but George is a good boss gone wrong.”

September 24, 1904

After a month under the sharp tongue of the “straw boss on the railway job,” Glynn transferred Hayes back onto the pond working logs but not before giving him another hectoring, “I want you to stay on the job, not be leaving when everything is going smooth.”

Returning right back to the job he held two years ago, without a penny to show for his wondering, prompts a brief self-examination: “I am now 26 years of age, and should be getting something together if ever.” The standard plan for a man his age would be to raise a little money, marry, rear a family and live happily. But that path his not for Hayes – not that he couldn’t if he wanted to – “As always, I have a lot of pretty girl-friends, but none of them serious” – it’s just that “I have a deal of trouble caring for myself.”

Self-assessment over – back to work. Running logs on the pond requires a great deal of skill and Hayes is good at it.

Logs on a Mill Pond

Saltwater surges back and forth into the bay daily, floating the logs higher than in fresh water. Hayes picks up where he left off two years ago: pushing logs back into the sloughs for sawing in the winter when the logging camp cannot run. The men on the pond use the high tides at full moon to push the logs upstream. This means they must go skipping out onto the floating logs in the dark. “Logs seem all the same level in the moonlight, and we have some sharp falls by making a wrong estimate of their heights in the dim light of the moon.” But all the men are skilled at the work and seldom fall in. “Unless [a] man’s head goes under, it is not counted against him. He must be wholly under to count.”

October 7, 1904

A shingle mill under construction nearby causes extra work storing light logs, so Glynn sends down “green” men from the mill who don’t know how to run the logs. They constantly fall into the bay and when hauled out by the experienced men find the “head clear” scoring system not particularly funny. When the green men quit, “George Glynn, cusses us for our ill-timed humor.”

Steady work but it’s “dull, dull, DULL!” To church on Sundays and some evenings where the food is excellent, “but there is a larger crowd now and it takes the edge off it all.”

The local duck hunters are in a squabble because a number of wealthy “sportsmen” (Hayes’ quote) have incorporated the common ground into a private reserve, excluding “all the men who have hunted these grounds ever since they were able to carry a gun.” But Hayes has no gun, no desire to shoot ducks, and is tired after a day running logs anyway, so he stays out of the quarrel.

November 23, 1904

When Hayes is working steadily the diary entries become sparse. “Time slips by but there is little of interest to chronicle here.” He’d leave but, “There is little of interest in the world now other than the Russo-Japanese war.”

Depiction of Japanese Warships besieging Port Arthur

Hayes believes that most citizens in the United States sympathize with the Japanese because the Russians “bullying of their own subjects has alienated the other white against them.” But he won’t travel to Port Arthur; “War doesn’t interest me. I want Africa, though I know not what it means. One of these days I am going to see it if I live.”

December 20, 1904

Another month slips by with nothing to write about but the work. The redwood trees sent by the cutting outfit are magnificent. “We had one tree 27 (twenty-seven) feet in diameter formerly. It was hollow and had been burned out until a waterboy mounted on a pony rode his mount in eighty feet, then turned and came back out again.” By the time it was blasted to pieces, 35 logs were sawn from that single tree.

The cutters up in the woods ship logs to the millpond by rail. Before a load is tipped into the water, Hayes and the other men on the pond amuse themselves predicting which on the load will be “sinkers,” butts of the tree so impregnated with water they won’t float. Then to work: “We match every log with another of like diameter and hang them off with topes. We bore holes on either side, drive the ropes in and set pegs on top of the ropes, forming batteries and placing them in rafts.” All this –all day – in the rain.

Incredibly, some of the men doing work on the logs with Hayes cannot swim. One such, a “genial Pole” named Jack Zientara. fell into the rushing flood and would have perished but for the “nimble feet” and pike of Ed Johnson.

January 17, 1905

For the first time in six months Hayes himself fell into the pond. A good deal of razzing ensued but “the boys sympathized saying my head never went under, and that saved the day, even if it was cold.” With all the cold January rain, a man on the logs is about as wet whether he falls in or not. All the good-natured levity cannot disguise the real peril of the logs: “The great danger is, to get a piece of bark speared on one’s calks and not know it. Then a man will slip and fall heavily, perhaps strike his head on a log. Once under the milling logs in a swift current, there is little chance of life.”

Calk Boots

At the holiday, Hayes took in a Christmas tree “because there was no alibi to keep it out.” He’s still attending the mission church where John Walker, an old man Hayes quite admires, preaches nightly at the street meetings then later at the hall. “He is wealthy, but a sincere Christian.” Hayes, on the other hand, is still broke because he’s still sending out all his earnings to pay past debts. “This is what takes everything I make, for I am slowly settling all, even the railway fare I beat the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe and other roads out of when a boy.”

February 10,1905

A little more self-reflection at his 27th birthday: “My relatives all say I am a failure, and this hurts, for they get every extra cent I make.” His mother says he should have gone to Stanford when offered the chance, but what’s done is done. Hayes will try again for Alaska with Martin this summer – though George Glynn will be mad.

The preacher John Walker died. Hayes went to hear him preach in the street then the two talked on about earthly versus heavenly riches until about 10:00. Walker was stricken with an aneurism around midnight and died peacefully the next evening with Hayes standing over him. It is hard to lose “the one sincere friend I had in Eureka.

March 5, 1905

Only constant hard work keeps Hayes warm on the millpond in the sleet driving hard off the hills. Out on the cold bay, he dreams of Africa: “To me getting ahead is to get established in some way in Africa.” By now he reckons he’s made full restitution to anyone he ever cheated “and will be able to save a few dollars for Africa.”

And a letter has come from Martin: “He is to head a considerable party that will fully map the region round Controller Bay, and that he expects to take a trip to the Matanuska region near the head of Cook’s Inlet to investigate the coal beds there.” Martin wants Hayes along and will pay several hundred dollars!

April 2, 1905

With Alaska waiting, time drags on the millpond for Hayes. The local duck hunters refused to allow their traditional hunting ground to be restricted: “Despite the warden resident on the reserve, hunters invaded it from every side. When the warden chased men out on one side, others came over the farther boundary, shooting at every duck, far or near.” Hayes thinks: Bully for them; Alaska has plenty of ducks.

28.4 Finally, north to Seatle

May 6, 1905

With no remark about what George Glynn said about Hayes leaving the mill in Eureka, Hayes strikes out north for Seattle by way of Marshfield where he saw an old shipmate apparently hiding out and dropped a note to his cousin Edith Carlson, then to Portland where the World’s Fair will open shortly. Seattle still booms on trade to miners heading to the Klondike. A few friends amuse Hayes in Seattle and Martin will be here in two weeks.

25.5 Seymour Narrows

May 16, 1905

Six members of Martin’s 1905 survey crew, “Martin, Hamilton, a topographer, three university students and me,” sail north crowded together with miners headed to the Yukon. “We will be joined later by Maddren, who is to collect fossils, and a chap named Small, who will be as I am. I don’t like the setup much, but one must take it and like it as it is.”

The photo below is from the 1904 expedition, the trip Hayes missed for want of a razor. GC Martin wears the tall boots on the left.

G.C. Martin, Stanton, L. Martin, Brown, and Keyes

“Martin is slightly swelled up over his bigger party,” and will no longer listen to Hayes about provisioning. Hayes says he saved the party $1500 on the 1903 trip, but now that Martin considers himself fully qualified to lead, “he is slinging away money on useless equipment, and will go short unless he considers matters more carefully.”

Running the narrows a bit late on the slack tide was exciting. “But all is well, and we are out in the gulf beyond.”

(to get to the Martin photo: go to the USGS photographic library and search Alaska Martin, it is photo number 87 on p. 4.)

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27. Los Angeles to Seattle

August 7, 2011

Sailing North to Seattle in ragged clothing and dubbed the ship’s “Jonah,” Hayes learns of the death of his childhood hero, Henry M. Stanley. Perhaps some of the flaws he reads concerning Stanley’s ethical conduct at the Battle of Shiloh, very near where Hayes father William Morrison grew up, allow Hayes to find some more mature assessments, of both Henry M. Stanley and William M. Perkins.

The map below won’t appear in an email. His trip north following the green desert walk shows as the yellow path.

Click here to download chapters 1-27 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:

27.1 No Work In Los Angeles

March 29, 1904

By his own reckoning, Hayes walked 925 miles between El Paso and Los Angeles starting on February 26 and arriving on March 29 of 1904. He counts only two “rest periods” (Hayes’ quote), the five days work at Douglas for $1.40 and the road construction job he quit over mistreatment of the horses. He says even the missionaries he knows in Los Angeles, “look at me askance because of my tattered clothing and weather beaten appearance. … My shoes are almost gone. My feet are so swollen they little resemble feet, and my clothes are in keeping with the rest of my appearance.”

It is interesting to compare this 1904 hike across the desert with his trai-hopping trip across a similar path in June of 1900 (segment 13.8). In 1904, after his conversion experience at Victor, he chose to walk because he had resolved to stop stealing from the railroad companies.

Given his ragged appearance, no one will consider Hayes for a job. He got a haircut, but the shearing didn’t help, and the barber cheated him. Near desperation, he writes, “Today I saw a large gang of men working on the street. It looked worth a try, but on approaching near to them I saw they wore a sort of uniform, and that each was shackled with a chain with a ball attached.” It was a gang of hoboes rounded up for vagrancy. With his appearance, a closer approach might have landed Hayes a job and a ball and chain of his own.

One bit of luck: “Phillip Lang, an old time acquaintance from San Francisco, pressed a dollar on me. I’ll never forget it, though I wonder how I will ever return it.” One wonders how Phillip had a dollar to spare for Hayes who writes of him, “He has been badly broken in the whalers chasing bow-heads in the Arctic, and will never recover from the hardships and brutal beatings there.”

27.2 No Work in San Pedro

March 31, 1904

With no prospects in Los Angeles, Hayes hikes down to the wharves at San Pedro. Had he arrived a day earlier a “big square rigger” was looking for sailors to Puget Sound paying $25 for the trip. But he missed her and spends two futile days beating around the port looking for a ship. At night he sleeps in an abandoned building already occupied by several Japanese abalone fishermen who are none too cordial toward their guest. “What to do, what to do?”

27.3 Finally a ship North

April 5, 1904

Now completely broke, Hayes writes, “I had no food the last day in San Pedro, but was fortuned to find a few half rotten oranges in a dump outside the town.” In 1904 Los Angeles wasn’t its current sprawl so he “hiked the thirteen miles across the sun burned hills to Redondo, and found myself at the end of things.” Meaning, I suppose, no money and no food.

After a day in Redondo without food, he hiked back into the hills above the city and found a ranch where he hoped to trade his purse for a meal. When a young girl answered the door, Hayes was “too starved to explain myself, but I heard her call to her mother – “Oh Mama, come and look at this poor man!” (Hayes’ quote.).”

The girl’s mother offered Hayes a pitcher of buttermilk – which he drank to the bottom hitting his stomach “as if I had swallowed a cannonball.” Renewed by a hearty meal following the cannonball, Hayes took up a hoe to clean the weeds from half an acre of potatoes. The man of the house paid Hayes 75¢ for hoeing the potatoes and some vegetables, then cleaning all the mustard out of his grain.

Back in Redondo the four-masted schooner John A. Campbell lay at the wharf. Fortunately, he signed on to sail for Puget Sound before the skipper asked him to run into town for a bottle of whiskey – because, of course, Hayes refused to buy whiskey. Explaining the moral grounds for his refusal, Hayes says of the captain, “He looked at me hard and long, but in the end said it was right.” It’s a rough crew and the work is heavy but at least Hayes is at sea again and “Maybe I will be in time to make the geological survey party [back to Alaska] after all.”

27.4 Some Friendly Advice

April 12, 1904

A bitter wind blowing from the Northwest makes the John A. Campbell tack morning and evening in order to sail upwind. Dressed only in the rags left him by the desert, with no oilskins to keep off the weather, Hayes jumps up into the rigging happy for the warmth of vigorous work. At least it isn’t raining.

When not hauling sails, Hayes works below deck as assistant to the black cook who delivers some advice about religiosity, whiskey, and the captain: “Say, kid, yuh wants to be sorta cahful ‘bout dis ‘ligious business. W’en I’m ashoah, I takes duh sacrament, prays, and all dem tings. I’se ‘ligoius dah, but heah I forgits all ‘bout it. Dese sailah men doan’ wan’ ay ob dat stuff.”

Hayes reports being duly impressed by the advice and very happy with his assignment as cook’s assistant where he’s out of the wind and has plenty to eat.

27.5 Ship’s Jonah

April 22, 1904

As the wind continues to blow against the ship, Hayes “heard the skipper say he was sorry he let the Salvation Army man come on board.” Worse yet, disregarding the cook’s advice, Hayes walked out on the men in the forecastle when they were telling “salacious stories.” So now the men have named Hayes Jonah of the ship – his cursed presence on board explains for the ceaseless headwind blowing continually stronger as the ship beats its way north.

Only the cook, who can neither read nor write, remains friendly toward Hayes the Jonah because he’s also Hayes the secretary. The cook instructs Hayes to write “Deah li’l Pet,” (Hayes’ quote) which gets transcribed, ““My darling Maud” (Hayes’ quote) in one of the cooks “letters to various sweet young things he has loved and left behind in various places in the world. He has a wife too but why devote all one’s affections to one woman?” The cook is “frankly suspicious” about the fidelity of transcription but he cannot consult any other on this “profligate crew” so he reluctantly seals Hayes’ free rendition of “everything else as I think a girl should know from a love sick swain.”

27.6 Cape Flattery

April 29, 1904

Finally the winds calm as the ship pulls even with Cape Flattery. “And about us we see strange things.” Enormous sharks cruise by the ship, every one with its mouth wide open “to catch whatever these great fish eat for sustenance.” The skipper and the cook take turns firing revolvers “point blank” at the sharks who writhe for a moment, dive and then resurface seeming “no worse for the bullets in their bodies.”

Fuca Pillar at Cape Flattery, Washington

27.7 A Dollar for the Jonah

May 2, 1904

No man leaves a ship faster than its Jonah: “The schooner, the John A. Campbell, anchored at Port Townsend, and I was set on shore like I was a plague.” American law commands every sailor receive at least a dollar for service, so that’s exactly the pay handed Hayes. This will pay passage to Seattle, 90 miles distant, leaving him 15¢ in pocket and considerably downcast: “I have done all possible to get any sort of job, to earn my way, to keep decent. But it is futile. … There are times when a fellow don’t care what happens, and this is one of them, at least in my case.”

27.8 Death of a Childhood Hero

May 5, 1904

Hayes first went to the employment offices in Seattle, but these charge a fee for placement “and I had none of that.” So he went up to Ballard to some sawmills where “I might as well have tried to break into a bank as get a job there.” A Swedish clan operates the mills, passing the jobs only to sons at the death of their fathers. After sleeping a night in the woods, most of Hayes’ last 15¢ went for bread and bologna. “The other five cents, not being of special worth went for a paper.” This extravagant expense can only have been prompted by the paper’s headline – an announcement of the death of Hayes’ childhood hero, the Welsh adventurer in Africa, Henry M. Stanley.

Henry M Stanley 1872

On reading the news, Hayes writes a long wistful paragraph mixing three dark thoughts – his musings on Stanley’s death: “As a child in Oregon he was my ideal, and somehow has always seemed to be more than a man.” – with his thoughts about the death of his own father who was born in the same year as Stanley, “As my father died last autumn, they made the same life span, tho under such totally different conditions.” – and finally his bleak assessments of his own achievements, “The Africa that I have loved seems beyond me. Surely no man can reach a lower rung on the ladder, for everything I have tried has failed.”

Hayes’ father, William Morrison Perkins grew up in Southern Tennessee. “The Battle of Shiloh [1862], one of the engagements of the Civil War, was fought hard by my father’s home. So often he has told me of the crash of cannon, of the many wounded, the heaps of severed limbs of men and the screams of those under the knife with no other anesthetic than a shot of whiskey.”

The Battle of Shiloh 1862

From the paper Hayes learns that his hero Stanley fought at the Battle of Shiloh – in a manner that tarnishes some of Stanley’s luster: “Serving under Beauregard of the southern army, he was captured there. But politics meant nothing to Stanley. Later he joined the northern forces and served until the end of the war. It would seem that a man must have no scruples if he is to win in life’s battles.” Hayes draws this lesson from Stanley – while steadfastly refusing its application to his own life.

Setting aside the ghosts of his father and his childhood hero Stanley, Hayes must turn to the business at hand; he’s still broke and without work. Hiking south out of Seattle toward Tacoma, he was “sitting on the bridge across the Duamish River trying to tie some of my rags together when men came running round a bend shouting “fire!” These were warning shouts from a rock quarry nearby. After the blasts, Hayes found his way to the quarry boss at the cookhouse and wouldn’t take no for an answer to his job request/demand, “a man is insistent when his belly is touching his backbone.”

The work is hard: “We are not driven, … but no slacking can be done.” Hayes and the 15 other men working in the quarry blast rock from a basalt outcropping then crush it by hand swinging massive hammers. “I am sore all the way thru, but the life I have led has hardened me until I can stand it.” A flea-ridden bunkhouse where, “We sleep the sleep of exhaustion,” a woodstove with plenty of wood for warmth, and good food in large quantities at the cookhouse make the place tolerable enough for a wandering man – at least until he can raise a stake.

2 Comments | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Battle of Shiloh, Cape Flattery, desert walk, Fuca Pillar, Henry M Stanley, Schooner John A. Campbell, Ship's Jonah | Permalink
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26 El Paso to Los Angeles – on Foot

July 31, 2011

When I first read Hayes’ diaries in the 1970’s, the following walk made on me perhaps the deepest impression of any in his 35 year journal. Imagine walking from El Paso Texas, to Los Angeles California, with no money, a quart jar for water, and only the clothes on your back. The sheer physical feat, through blistering days and freezing nights, was unimaginable to me even at when I was 20. Further impressing me as a young man: he made that walk entirely based on ethical resolve – freight trains, easily hopped, rolled by regularly. But Hayes walked – except for one short stretch when he was invited aboard.

The map below won’t appear in an email. His desert walk is the green section.

Click here to download chapters 1-26 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:
26.1 150 Mile Walk to Rodeo

February 26, 1904

Straight across the desert from El Paso, Texas to Rodeo, New Mexico is 150 miles. Hayes walked it in 5 days – and nights. Some nights he tried to sleep on the frozen earth, but usually he just kept walking to keep warm.

How does a lone traveler walking across the high desert find water? “At long intervals there has been a station, a section house where I could get a drink of water. Once or twice a ranch on the horizon, and one night I slept in a recently abandoned ranch house where a spring burst from the mesa near the track.” Food? With his cash almost gone, “At the few ‘towns’ (Hayes’ quote) – Hachita, Hermosa, Columbus – it has been possible to buy some raw meat and a loaf of bread. Raw beef is not so bad when one is famished and there is nothing else.”

This high flat land supports a few half-wild cows – Hayes describes being chased up a tree by a bull that eventually lost interest and wondered away. The night before entering Rodeo, walking through heavy snow, “a troop of coyotes followed me for miles, howling dismally all the way. For a while I was alarmed at their boldness, but they made no hostile move.” The coyotes feed in a large valley completely taken up by a prairie dog colony.

The only human beings around are railroad workers. The boss is always an American, the workers Mexican. The latter live in huts made of railroad ties and adobe and receive $1.25 a day to be worked continually at full speed. “They are often kind hearted and genial, better than my own countrymen, who look on me as a tramp, which I truly am.”

26.2 A Little Work in Douglas

February 28, 1904

On the last day before entering Douglas some Mormon woodcutters living back in the Chiricahua Mountains stopped on the road to share their meal with Hayes. “They refused my last miserable pennies, and I appreciate it from my heart. … These rangy, bearded men were friends in need. I will always feel kindlier to Mormons after this.”

Douglas rises from the desert around a smelter for the copper mined at Bisbee thirty miles distant. Douglas is booming with nearly 5,000 residents inhabiting new additions sprawling all across the Mesa. Hayes catches on at the Phelps-Dodge Company.

March 3, 1904

Hayes was hired as a rigger setting up machinery in an ore sampler; work he probably could have managed but when the rigging work went flat, “I worked with the bull gang hefting heavy steel rails, timbers and other weight lifting contests until I broke down. There was nothing else to do but hop it.” This means he quit.

“The odd part about it all, I am in debt to the company.” Working two days in February and three days in March leaves a man behind: he owes two months hospital fees, at a dollar a month, plus road tax and poll tax, “this last for the great privilege of voting in elections.” Had the office staff collected full taxes, Hayes would have owed Phelps-Dodge $1.60 for the five days he worked for them. “In the end they were charitable and magnanimously gave me $1.40 of my own money, saying they could not collect a fraction of the tax.”

This tax racket is quite profitable for the “white collar staff in connivance with the elected administrators of Cochise County.” The deputized clerks keep one dollar for every five collected. With the punishing work, as many as 600 Mexican laborers pass in and out of the jobs each month. The hospital fee, poll and road tax amounts to six dollars per man or $3,600 monthly – and there are no roads in the area! “I am sore right through. My luck is out, no use talking.”

26.3 Church at Bisbee

March 5, 1904

After walking thirty miles across the desert to the mining town of Bisbee, Hayes finds no work and no place to stay so he crawls into a culvert in the dry bed of an arroyo where he finds many of the Mexicans employed at the mine already camped out.

The next day, with nothing else to do, Hayes and another wanderer attend the “Negro church” in town. “If one had been at the court of St. James he could not have seen more display of pomp and pageantry than among these simple people, whose love of ceremony and solemn punctilio is beyond understanding.” All are dressed to the nines and speak and pray in grand terms. Hayes is amazed at one prayer: “Oh T’ou Lawd Gawd ob Heaben an’ earth, T’ou who makest de sun to rise and set fah out beyon’ de weste’n hemispheah! We beseech T’ee, oh Lawd Gawd, to heah us!” (Hayes quote.) After the meeting, Hayes went to shake the speaker’s hand “in something akin to awe” at what he assumes must be an educated Negro. Later in the day, both men were “amazed and embarrassed” to meet again at the speaker’s boot black stand just outside the post office.

26.4 Walking

March 7, 1904

Somehow Hayes has heard of a job in Red Rock, 150 miles west, so he departs Bisbee with 85¢ in his pocket walking fast: sixty miles, from Bisbee to Benson, in twenty-four hours! Apparently on these long solitary walks, he usually follows the railroads because on this date he describes, “taking a short cut across the desert to the Santa Cruz River, missing a lot of extra miles by leaving the railway.” His shortcut was twenty-two miles – without water. Oddly, in the middle of the desert, half way to the Santa Cruz River, he found himself on the corner of Magnolia Boulevard and Seventh Avenue. A “grizzled rancher” told him he stood at an intersection in the “embryo city of San Luis,” with lots marked out and sold at high prices to Eastern investors. “There seems to be no law against such robbery.”

Benson “is one of these little Arizona cow towns, where are a few stores, a restaurant or two, saloons to fit the population, gambling and perhaps a Mexican lady of the evening.” The Mexican laborers working the railroad section for a dollar a day live with their familes in traditional “Jacals” made of sticks and adobe.

Jacal, Texas circa 1900

The dollar a day wage buys “beans and chili pepper, perhaps a little flour for tortillas, no more.” The section boss “drives the docile peons at top speed, for every man knows there are others ready to slip into their shoes if they slack in the least.” Speaking to the workers in their broken English and his poor Spanish he reports learning that, “They resent it too.”

With his money almost gone, Hayes must hurry on. At Benson he is able to buy a little food: a loaf of bread for 10¢, and “fortunately meat is cheap. A string of bologna will serve until I reach Tucson,” another 50 miles distant.

Broke, hungry, alone, and exhausted in this fallen-down little town, he nevertheless writes with a little pride of the previous days walk: “Sixty miles in one day is the best walk I have ever made.

26.5 A Job at Red Rock

March 10, 1904

Between Benson and Tucson Hayes’ walking pace slowed a little: only forty-nine miles in one day and night. He thought he might sleep in a boxcar part way along but was rousted by a “surly Mexican watchman,” so kept on walking until reaching Tucson where, “everything was high priced, and I saved every cent I could.” His last 15¢ buys “soggy biscuits” at a section house somewhere west of Tucson. “I ate them all before reaching Red Rock, coming in here hungry.

But, miraculously, the job information back in Bisbee was good; he’s on with a railroad construction crew outside Red Rock. “Almost all the crew are Mexicans or Yaqui Indians, the latter quiet chaps, hard workers, doing their best to get a gunstake to shoot Mexican soldiers in Sonora.” A Mexican boss assigns Hayes to digging sagebrush. His feet are so swollen and sore from the 150 mile, five day walk that he has to kneel to dig. “Later the boss put me to driving a span of mules, and did so well I was promoted to dressing down the dump, a superior position in this camp.” In March in the Arizona desert the days are hot with dust a foot thick, but, “During the night the ice freezes two inches thick on the mule trough, we have to break this with our boot heels.” A couple of stolen grain bags stuffed with straw helps keep off much of the chill of the starlit night. “At least I have enough to eat at last, and this means more than I can say.”

He’d like to be able to stick with this job long enough to earn train fare to Los Angeles. Howwever, can’t stand the mistreatment of the horses here. With the daytime heat and dust, unless a driver bathes a horses’ shoulders noon and evening sores form as the animals are continually flogged to pull hard against their collars. Just when Hayes has a horse nearly healed with humane treatment, the cruel bosses re-assign his horse to another driver who seems to delight in punishing a horse until lame. For fifty cents more the company could get skilled teamsters, but these “would ask for a bed, or at least a blanket.… [so] to hell with the mules”

March 15, 1904

After only seven days on the job, rumor has it that the tax assessor is coming, “so a general exodus took place. Even many of the Mexicans left with we eight Yanks, for none of us cared to further enlarge the exchequer of these hounds who live by robbing men who work thru the medium of “taxation” (Hayes’ quote).” Fortunately a decent station agent cashed Hayes’ time check raking off only 10%. The $8 in his pocket feel like a fortune but it’s not enough for train fare to Los Angeles. The other tax dodgers with whom Hayes left the railroad job look to hop a freight at Red Rock, but Hayes won’t do it. “I quit that when I attempted to straighten my life at Victor, [at the mission in Colorado] and will endeavor to keep on as I am now.” So he’ll walk the remaining 450 miles across the desert to LA.

26.6 Walking

March 17, 1904

Walking along the rail track, Hayes steps out of the way for a passing train and “some of the more friendly Mexicans ensconced on top of box cars waved recognition as I stepped clear.” At Casa Grande, chickens thrive on a few alfalfa patches, so “I bought for 25 cents 18 eggs and devoured them all at one time. Raw, of course, and they heartened me much.” Other than the eggs, he subsists on bread and sausage. At Maricopa several Indians offer Hayes 50¢ to buy them a bottle, “they being forbidden drink.” He refuses, for, “Then I would be in bad with Uncle Sam, and they don’t need the booze anyway.”

26.7 Walking

March 20, 1904

On all this long walk, Hayes has carried a “small quart glass jar” for water. After blistering hot days, the desert nights are so cold, the water in his jar almost always freezes at night. Along the rail track he frequently comes across stacks of abandoned tires. “…so each night [I] take some of these and stack them like the letter H. In the central fleet I place others to lean like a roof, and build a fire before the small cave thus made. The heat is thus reflected on me from every side and in this way I am escaping the bitter cold.” His glass jar froze so hard one night it broke and had to be replaced in Gila Bend.

26.8 Walking

March 22, 1904

“Have had one awful hike so far, but am well and game to keep on. Sore feet, chapped lips, an empty belly most of the time and money slipping away.” At Mohawk a Negro bummed money from Hayes, “and I was weak enough to give him a few cents.” A dog bit him passing the railroad station house where a fire had recently burned a railcar carrying canned oysters. Hayes bought five of the salvaged tins from the station agent for 5¢ each, “Ate the lot during the day and could do with a bit more.” One glance at “the soiled looking village” of Yuma with its penitentiary on the bluff overlooking the town convinces Hayes that “I will sleep on the desert tonight.”

26.9 Walking

March 24,1904

At Imperial Junction Hayes begins: “The last two days have been hard ones,” quite a statement following his entries for the last month. He estimates he’s 60 to 70 miles out from Yuma walking through “barren sandhills” along the railroad line. His only food came from a passing construction train: “A sly Chinaman stealthily sold me some food, this when I thought he had a right to. And a friendly teamster slipped me a few biscuits.” In country he describes as “absolute desert,” water is only available at the far-flung railroad station houses; his quart jar quickly runs dry and “it is a thirsty hike between stations.” With no place to make a bed, Hayes walked on through the night. Fortunately the rattlesnake coiled beside the rails in the dark gave him ample warning to make a wide detour and is now miles behind.

Though Imperial Junction has “sage and mesquite, a welcome interlude after the constant sand,” the Salton Sink looming ominously ahead lies so far below sea level it looks like a lake from where Hayes rests before what will surely be another long difficult push.

26.10 Finally a Ride

March 27, 1904

Hayes writes of his walk across the Salton Sink without mention of the Salton Sea that appears on maps today; perhaps it was dry in 1904. At one place before reaching the town of Salton, “I heard in the darkness water running over the ripples in the sand. First it seemed I must be light headed, but it was there. One great gulp went down and it was saltier than the sea … there to tantalize the wanderer.” Finally at the salt works in Salton “at the very nadir of this waste, I got fresh water.”

Continuing on, his knee gave out forcing an hour’s rest at Mecca before pressing gingerly forward to Coachella and then to Indio where fresh water flows freely from artesian wells. At Coachella, as had happened once before, a chef cleaning the pantry on a Pullman train gave him a gift out the train window: “three loaves of bread, each a different sort, pie, steak and other viands almost struck me. I filled up on these, gave a fellow wanderer one loaf and kept on.”

Then after Indio, a trainman did him another real favor: As a cold night-wind blew gravel in his face on a long steep uphill trudge, “A train crawled up the long hill, and the trainmen almost stopped. When I failed to get on they did stop entirely, picked me up and continued on to Beaumont, where I slept for the first time in days.” Hayes’ incredible walk, hundreds of miles through the desert, alongside the track frequented by passing trains, attests to his determined ethic to forego stealing rides. However, a ride offered by a friendly trainman going out of his way to stop the train to invite one on board cannot be considered stealing.

Leaving Beaumont bound for Los Angeles on foot again, but at least rested, Hayes has a loaf of bread remaining from the Pullman and a bucket of oranges a passing wagon sold him for a nickel, “so it is a feast.”

4 Comments | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Benson, Bisbee, desert walk, Douglas, El Paso, Jacal, Negro church, Red Rock, Salton sink | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

25. Galveston to El Paso

July 24, 2011

Chapters 25 and 26 recount an incredible walk – most of the way from Houston Texas to Los Angeles California.

Click here to download chapters 1-25 on Google Earth.

Here and There Synopsis:

25.1 Houston Will be a Great City

January 17,1904

Before coming to Houston, Hayes used money borrowed from his sister Jennie to pay fare over to Orange on the Louisiana border to see about work in the saw or paper mills there. Nothing doing in either and “Sad enough a big hole is made in this money Jennie loaned me, and I don’t know when I can ever pay it back. It seems humiliating to borrow money, this is my first occasion to do so, and I hope my last.”

The land is poor at Houston but the location is splendid for commerce. Cotton, grain, cattle and many other agricultural products of Texas and Oklahoma flow down Buffalo Bayou and through the roads crossing here. The town is still a little sleepy from the Old South days but “virile business men from the north are waking these Southerners up.” Oh, and the oil fields too.

With no job and dwindling resources in Houston Texas, what is a fellow to do? Well, walk to Los Angeles of course: “Now there is nothing to do but to make my way westward toward the Coast.”

25.2 State Farm at Richmond

January 21, 1904

Hayes walked the 32 miles from Houston to Richmond passing a “state work farm where were many convicts.” To Hayes the guards on horseback armed with rifles ready to shoot any prisoner who lifted a hand from his plow look more criminal than the men wearing stripes. “It is not a pretty sight to see men treated thus, but it is not compulsory for men to commit crime. There must be some deterrent, else the country would go into anarchy.”

With no job prospect in sleepy little Richmond and feet sore from walking this far, Hayes spends a little more of Jennie’s money on the train west to San Antonio.

25.3 At the Alamo

January 21, 1904

Hayes has never had much faith in employment offices but he’s far enough down to try even that.

“In the meantime I have been seeing the Alamo, which is sacrosanct in the eyes of all Texans.” The story of the famous battle as Hayes tells it has 183 rough men given the opportunity to desert the fort in the face of 4,000 Mexican troops; “only one took advantage of this last chance for life.” Those remaining fought the Mexican army for days until their ammunition was exhausted – then fought on with “gun butts, knives, and their bare hands.” At last, seven wounded men were captured and killed by Sanata Ana’s men, their bodies thrown on the pile and burned with all the rest. These martyrs to freedom later inspired the men under Houston’s command to defeat the Mexican Army “and freed Texas from the thrall of ignorance and the Catholic Church, which has always dominated the Latin countries to their detriment.”

“But is the tomb of these men held sacred?” Only if you think that plastering an advertisement for a local railway over the bullet-scarred walls and blood-soaked ground is a fitting monument. “The desire for money does not afford sanctity to even a place like this that should be a shrine.”

The rest of San Antonio is, “the prettiest town I have seen in Texas,” with gardens, old adobe walls, and bronzed cowboys “wide hatted and high booted.” A nice town, but Hayes has no time to tarry; all energy must go toward finding a job.

25.4 Overlooking Devil’s River

January 24, 1904

The employment office in San Antonio offered a job but when Hayes showed up at the site there was no work – and sorry, no refund. There goes a dollar. He’s heard of work on an irrigation canal out toward Del Rio so he spends a little more of his nearly empty purse on train fare out that way – “but in vain.” At a canal site in Del Rio he sees Mexicans working for 85¢ a day and offers to join the crew, even paying for his own board. “But they will not permit an American to work with the peons.”

January 26, 1904

On this date Hayes begins the entry with an extended paragraph describing the natural beauty where he’s seated “on the bluff looking over Devil’s River, a sparkling stream far west of Del Rio.” Here, spreading oaks relieve the sage, mesquite, prickly pear and thorn bush of the unirrigated lands surrounding Del Rio. Fish swim in the river and across the nearby Rio Grande in Mexico he sees a deer come from the chaparral to drink from its clear waters. (I believe this place where Hayes took inspiration is now submerged by Amistad Reservoir built in 1969 where Devil’s River meets the Rio Grande.)

Refreshed by the untouched beauty at this wild place where the Rio Grande flows between “two rugged hills on either shore that extend up and down the river as far as eye can see,” Hayes finds a reserve of strength to meet the challenges of the human world. “I am hiking west, hoping against hope to find something to do along the line. There is not much chance now, but there may be something.” He’s sleeping in the bush and has “some charqui (dried meat) and a loaf of bread, a that has kept me thus far.”

24.5 Manna in the Desert

January 28, 1904

Walking hard by day on “a rocky track” and sleeping out by night in the bitterly cold winter desert of West Texas, Hayes has no food – yesterday nothing at all. “I was reconciled to starve, when a pullman train passed me and the cook must have cleared out the pantry. For steaks, bread, even pie came from the window of the dining car, and the gravel where it fell was easily brushed off.” One wonders if a kindly cook saw a lonely wayfarer in need of help or if this was just an impossible coincidence.

By the time he walked into the small village of Comstock, he’d eaten the largesse from the train and hunger returned. “As there was no restaurant, I entered a meat shop and purchased some raw beef. This was very acceptable as good meat as I have ever eaten.” Fortified, he continued on, walking toward Langtry.

25.6 Langtry

January 28, 1904

Hayes walked the sixty-five miles from Del Rio to Langtry in two and a half days. To cross the chasm at the Pecos River he mounted a viaduct 300 feet above the trickle of water below, leaning forward into a cold sandy wind with all his strength. At Langtry he found “a water tank, a railway eating house and a small round house.” When he asked at the eating house to work in return for food, the “genial proprietor” offered him a job for as long as he liked. At this new place he writes, “At least I am gorged to repletion.” He looks forward to getting strong again after spending most of his time in Texas half starved.

February 2, 1904

The “genial proprietor” initially offered to pay Hayes $5 a month, but now that’s been raised to $10. Most of the custom at this place comes from trains passing through – freight train workers get a fair price, which is promptly doubled for passenger trains. Many of the trains coming through Langtry must have passed Hayes walking alone through the desert. “Now the trainmen know me, and marvel because I do not beat my way. But when I reformed at Victor, I barred hoboing, and will to the end, I hope. This has given me considerable prestige among them.”

All the railway men say that Hayes reminds them of “Fitzsimmons, the prizefighter, who was one of the participants in a scrap here a few years ago.” That fight took place in 1896 and Fitzsimmons knocked out the reigning heavyweight champion, Peter Maher in one round in a bare-knuckle fight held on an island in the dry bed of the Rio Grande River (prize fighting was illegal in both Texas and Mexico) half a mile from Langtry .


Robert Fitzsimmons	Alex Maher

The fight promoter had to build a road down to the dry riverbed. He didn’t make much money because spectators on the American side could sit on cliffs on the riverside for a good view of the fight; almost no one paid for ringside seats. The promoter died in March of the previous year, so Hayes just missed meeting Roy Bean.

25.7 Judge Roy Bean

February 2, 1904

Some tall tales have been told about Roy Bean including the ones by Walter Brennan and Paul Newman in two separate movies, by Edgar Buchanan in a television series, and by Larry McMurtry in a Western novel. Hayes tells a couple of tales too, stories he picked up “reading the correspondence of this strange man,” in his hometown, in the year after he died.

Judge Roy Bean

Bean “set himself up as justice of the peace in this out-of-way spot, and dispensed justice according to his own idea of right, or rather that of the Southern Pacific Railway, which is the source of Langtry’s prosperity.” Judge Bean decided any case between a crippled train worker and the Southern Pacific in favor of the company; in return he rode Southern Pacific trains anywhere in the country on a free pass.

“He married and divorced people, settled the rows among the cattlemen and cowboys, fined any who had money heavily, and if they would not pay imprisoned them in a cellar under his hall of justice, as the sign above it says.” Bean’s saloon/hall of justice was the Jersey Lilly. Keeping the peace west of the Pecos included issuing and enforcing injunctions against any other drinking establishment that tried to set up in Langtry. It also included all manner of petty shakedowns. One time a man fell off a bridge over the Pecos and was killed with $100 and a gun in his pocket. “He said no sober man would have fallen off the viaduct, so fined the corpse $50 for being drunk and $50 for carrying a concealed weapon.” On another occasion, two Mexican couples came to be divorced, then both couples re-married, swapping mates. Bean charged them all he thought they had but on the way out one of the women dropped a purse containing $12.50. “Bean called them back again. He had forgotten something. He charged each couple $6.25 witness fees, thus getting hold of every peso they had.” Hayes says he could tell dozens of other stories about this “rascal” who sounds more like a small time grafter than the wild west hanging judge of the books and movies.

25.8 Roy’s Son Sam Bean

February 10, 1904

Broke in Langtry on his 26th Birthday, Hayes receives a pay increase to $15 a month, and a letter from “my people” in Hico, “They bawl me out, of course, for no one loves a man who is unfortunate.”

February 16, 1904

Hayes still works at the eatery but the constant quarreling between the husband and wife ownership team makes it uncomfortable. Sam Bean, the son of Roy Bean came through on one of his trips across the border. “Sought by the authorities of both countries, he skips to the U.S.A. when Mexico gets too hot for him, then returns when the southern Republic seeks a closer acquaintance.” The younger Bean makes his living smuggling and stealing cattle and horses, driving stolen herds across the shallow Rio Grande to whichever country he’s not in. Hayes describes him as “a genial soul.”

Some of the local Mexican citizenry still come to Langtry seeking justice, as in the denial of paternity dispute before them just now. Hayes gives no report on how they decided the paternity, but remarks that the wife “is a remarkably beautiful girl.”

A cowboy stopping in for lunch had a fox tied to his saddle horn; he says he shot it while mounted with his “six-gun.” These men shoot so accurately they can snip small lizards from the limbs of trees. “But there is none of the fighting so well advertised elsewhere in the world.”

25.9 El Paso by Train

February 21,1904

Even at the increased wage of $15 per month Hayes couldn’t have made more than about $10 staying at Langtry less than a month. Nevertheless, he’s back on the road, paying train fare as far as El Paso where the only work not done by Mexicans calls for “a highly specialized mechanic to work in the smelters or for the railways.” Since Hayes has neither skill, he’ll have to look elsewhere, “God alone knows where, I don’t.”

Leave a Comment » | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Alamo, Alex Maher, Houston, Judge Roy Bean, Langtry, Robert Fitzsimmons | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

24. Hico to Galveston to Galveston

July 17, 2011

Sorry to miss a week. We had a lovely holiday in Oregon during which the farm went crazy.

Following the death of his father, Hayes says he’s affected no more than by the death of a casual acquaintance. Nevertheless, the particularly fruitless and brutally harsh wandering of the following two years might suggest otherwise.

On the map, the light pink is his trip down from Alaska. The blue with popups is the current chapter. The darker pink is the beginning of an amazing desert odyssey.

(If the map doesn’t appear in the email, click the title to go to the blog.)

Click here to download chapters 1-24 on Google Earth. (If a reader has time to click and download, I’d like to know if it’s coming through and if it’s impressive.)

Here and There Synopsis:

24.1 Irish Shipmates on the Norseman

November 12, 1903

Hayes writes only three sentences concerning his family after traveling with his mother and sister to Galveston then parting from them less than two weeks after learning of his father’s death: “Galveston. Mother came down with me, came on to this city with Jennie and I. They have returned, and I am signed on the steamer Norseman, a big Dominion liner carrying cotton to Liverpool.”

That’s enough of the family – on with the adventure of traveling the world: The crew in the forecastle of the Norseman are mostly wild Irishmen from Liverpool with strong accents, “and whose tongues are constantly active, as well as their fists, for fighting is the best loved sport among these men.”

Hayes claims inability to understand the point of view of these devoutly religious men who nevertheless, “blaspheme, steal, fight, seek the companionship of the lowly sisterhood of the streets in every port, and quarrel with their officers when at sea.” Each man wears a “Joseph’s Cord” hung with St. Benedict’s Medal purchased from a priest in the previous port which “is supposed to shrieve (sic) them from all sin during their absence, and being already forgiven they throw the throttle wide open in every foreign port.” (you can still get one) While some of his misunderstanding is genuine awe at the “childlike innocence” of his mates, most of it has to be read as a barb aimed at the Catholic church: “When they return to home port, another medal is purchased, the first having lost its power. Not so bad a game for the priest, if he only has enough credulous believers to buy his charms.”

These sailors welcome Hayes, for “Every Irishman loves a Yank,” and before long they’re spinning him tales of sailing the world. Jerry O’Connor recently survived shipwreck and attack by the natives off the north coast of Moroco: “They gotta board too, but th’ ould man dug arrms from somewhere and give us rifles to beat thim off. Then we got clear av th’ rocks agin, every man av thim screamin’ bloody best becase he couldn’t eat us!” (Hayes’ quote.) Another mate, Mike Murphy, had nearly starved to death on his last voyage to Montreal on a freighter: “Ivery day th’ bloomin’ spud barber who passed hisself off for cook slung some mystery at us, what I canna tell. Nayther potaties nor nayther wather, we packed aft to th’ ould man.” (Hayes’ quote.) After telling all their stories to their new shipmate the yank, conversation settles to one of the two inexhaustible topics of every ship’s forecastle: women and booze.

November 15, 1903

Very much as when the Santa Ana hung up on a rock leaving Resurrection Bay, Alaska with Hayes aboard just one month previously, the Norseman dragged her hull on the Galveston bar at high tide. With the Santa Ana’s heavy load, including 27,000 bales of cotton and thousands of tons of grain, if the big ship failed to float free before the tide ebbed she’d “break her back.” The tides at Galveston are nowhere near the 30 feet at Resurrection Bay, but fortunately at Galveston a strong tug drags the Santa Ana free and the crew batten down the hatches headed for Newport News.

The sailors of the forecastle have settled down now – to fighting. “These fights are intense while they last, but are easily forgotten.” Just the sport of men at sea – “Not a bad lot of shipmates, all considered.”

24.2 Cold in Newport News

November 22,1903

Bitter cold grips Newport News where the Norseman anchors to take on a load of cattle once the gang of carpenters on board finish building cattle pens. None of the regular crew gets shore leave because “it is too much trouble to search the jails for errant seamen.” Stuck on board with the carpenters, the hammering night and day drives all the sailors to distraction.

Unconsciously symbolizing the end of an era, the Thomas W. Lawson, “the largest sailing ship ever built, so tis said,” lies just across the dock at Newport News. Because “she is geared with every convenience for handling sails with little effort,” her crew is as small as that for a much smaller ship. On the coal-powered Norseman, cutting and feeding coal is a sailors principle duty – no more climbing to the to’ gan’ sails and reefing canvas. One reads in Hayes’ diary not a hint of wistfulness for the work of hauling sails.

Thomas W. Lawson
Seven Masted Schooner

He would however like to leave Newport News for the relative warmth of the open sea; all the sailors are poorly fed and ill clad on a ship covered with ice. Shivering on the cold Virginia coast in late November, with hammer strokes making him crazy, Hayes dreams of finally making it to the “dark continent.” But for now, it’s only back to Liverpool.

24.3 Another Hungry British Ship

November 30, 1903

Leaving port didn’t immediately help with the cold. The Captain started on a northern route past Newfoundland where the weather became so bitter, “the old man shaped a new course southward into the confines of the Gulf Stream.” This helped warm the crew but didn’t fill their bellies: “She is, like every British ship, hungry.”

As partial remedy for the scant food, “A son of the emerald Isle whose arms are like those of a gibbon ape,” reached again and again through an open port in the galley wall filling his shirt with cakes while another sailor kept watch. This booty was shared with all on the forecastle as is customary. Had the thief been caught, a small fine might have been imposed but “If he gets away clean, nothing is said for so small a breach of discipline.”

24.4 Liverpool is Still Drab

November 29, 1903 (as sequenced in the diary)

Finally arriving at their home port at Liverpool, “The men are frantic to get clear of the ship.” But first the cattle dung must be carefully saved for resale. A crew of men and boys works energetically while continually cursed by the English bosses. “There is yet a lot of the old cruelty from former times practiced even if these men are called free.” Watching the bosses extract the last ounces of energy from the workers, Hayes appreciates his own nationality: “I am glad not to be an Englishman, or any other sort of European, for there is really no personal freedom, unless it be one does not wear chains.”

Liverpool on the brink of December gets a hard description: “The city is remarkably drab, and seems worse every time I see Liverpool. Smoke begrimed houses, all of red brick, and the wet, slippery docks where an almost constant drizzle falls on the hurrying throngs of ragged men and more tattered women. The latter all seem to have bad teeth, are sloven in dress, and soon lose whatever girlish bloom they may have had in their teens. Shawls over their heads, shapeless dresses and poor, ill fitting shoes make them worse than they really are.” One almost reads a preference for a red light district where the women for whom Hayes always expresses great concern are instead painted and costumed.

December 4, 1903

“I have been a boob to leave Eureka, which is now 6,000 miles away. I am sitting in the bleak sailors home in Canning Place, listening to a grouchy steward talking left handed to me.” The steward bawls that any man without money will be put on the street straight away; Hayes listens to the shouting fingering less than two pounds in his pocket.

If he’s broke in the sailor’s home, he has plenty of company; every man in the home has been “walking these docks from Honsby to Herculaneum on the Liverpool front, crossing to Birkenhead, offering to go as workaways or any thing in this world, just so long as we can get away from Liverpool.”

Liverpool Dockers at Dawn
Victor Francois Tardieu

As a backup plan, Hayes can sign back on with the Noresman but that will mean sailing straight back to Galveston in a big fruitless circle.

A possibility: “I can get a place on the Elder-Dempster boats to West Africa, but these carry booze, and I am thumbs down on that.” So, his morality about alcohol prevents signing on to Africa – the one place he most wants to go.

December 5, 1903

And then another possibility: “Have a chance to go to Batoum. A fellow American has just returned from that trip, and says he can get me on.” If Africa is impossible, Russia might do. But sailing the Black Sea in winter when too broke to purchase proper gear? “It is a toss up between the Norseman and this Tanker to Russia.” One of these will have to do; an adventurer about to be evicted from the sailors home out onto the street “cannot be choosers at such a time, it is one of these or starve.”

24.5 Mid Ocean Again

December 10, 1903

With no further mention of Bartoum, Hayes signs back on with the Norseman – as a workaway. This means he’ll work most of a month back to Galveston for no pay other than the passage. The ship’s mate scorns the lowly status of a workaway, “but the chief engineer, the captain and most of the other officers are sympathetic. Very likely they have been in a jam in their younger days, and know what it means.”

For the return trip to Galveston, the forecastle holds an entirely different crew of Irishmen together with a few Englishmen. One of the latter tells Hayes tales of sailing up the Amazon as far as Iquitos. Thrilling stories, but Hayes is set on Africa – if he can manage a way out of Galveston with those two thin pounds still so light in his pocket.

December 20, 1903

Because the Norseman runs to the States without cargo, she rides high and rolls miserably “and to keep from rolling out of my bunk and to get a bit of sleep, I have wedged myself in with life preservers.” On the plus side: “We are in the Gulf Stream, and it is warmer.” On the minus side: “The ship is hungrier than ever.”

Hayes cuts hair for the men forward and gives an occasional shave. He doesn’t say if this is the share and share alike of the forecastle or a way to supplement his two pound bank account.

“The skipper says we are going to New Orleans.” This suits Hayes fine; he knows of timber mills around Louisiana where he might find work and “It will be a new scene too.”

24.6 New Orleans – Almost

December 31,1903

Mud flooding down the mouth of the Mississippi discolors the gulf waters far out to sea even where the crew on the Norseman can barely see the low coastline. Tomorrow “we will haul up close to the light at South Pass and get our orders, for it may be Galveston and it may be here.”

South Pass Lighthouse

January 1, 1903

The orders say Galveston. Steaming along on glassy seas “we have been slung over the side on stages painting the rust spots.” Hayes writes no mention of any celebration for either Christmas or the New Year.

24.7 8,000 miles and Nothing to Show For It.

January 5, 1904

With a frigid wind blasting from the north out Galveston Bay, Hayes must stay on board among the foreign sailors until the ship docks. Previously, entry for an American citizen had been immediate, but “they seem to be tightening up on immigration.”

The delay on board gives Hayes time to recount an anecdote about a foul-mouthed fellow crewman who was lowered over the side on a stage with a sailor from the Amazon to paint rust spots. Part way down the ship’s side, one end-rope slipped dropping the two about six inches.

“Oh Gawd! Hold that rope! Hi’m not ready to die yet.”

“Time you was bloody well gittin’ ready then, myte” rejoined his companion.

“I know it! I know it! Hi’m just talkin’ this wye Hi do to keep from bein’ conscious of my wrong.” (Hayes’ quote.)

Now safely back on deck this man is strangely quiet. Where another observer might have seen a silent man in shock from his fright, Hayes’ stubborn optimism reads the event as possibly redemptive: “He has knowledge that his filthy tongue is unacceptable to both God and man, and tries to hide in fighting against that which is best.”

January 12, 1904

On shore at Galveston, Hayes’ purse now holds six dollars – maybe augmented by cutting hair – “and sister Jennie says she will loan me $25 which should take me to where I can find a place.” He’s going toward Orange, Texas on the Louisiana line in search of mill work, all the while kicking himself for leaving secure work in California: “I ought to have stayed at Eureka instead of this wild goose chase across half the world.”

2 Comments | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Elder-Dempster, Galveston, Liverpool, Norseman, Santa Ana, seven masted schooner, south pass lighthouse, Thomas W. Lawson, workaway | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

23. Resurrection Bay AK to Hico TX

July 1, 2011

Down from Alaska for the winter, Hayes declines an offer to study at Stanford returning coincidentally to Hico to see his mother and sisters just as word of his father’s death arrives from Colorado.

On the map, chapter 22 is the yellow path. The current chapter is pink with popups. Chapter 24 is the blue circular path.

(If the map doesn’t appear in the email, click the title to go to the blog.)

Click here for links to maps and downloads of more maps.

Here and There Synopsis:
23.1 A “four flusher” and Hundreds of Sea Lions

September 14, 1903

Before Hayes and Martin changed ships from the Newport to the Santa Ana at Resurrection Bay, they got an illustration the danger of the extreme tides in these long narrow Alaskan Bays. The Newport dragged anchor and came to rest against a rock at high tide; as the tide ebbed, the fore part of the ship pointed high in the air threatening to snap the hull. Fortunately, it held, and when the tides reversed, the ship floated serenely off. “Now all is well again, and the priests, the whores, the prospectors and various scientists who make up the list are celebrating with wine and song.”

On the Santa Ana Hayes bunks with an interesting mate, Jack Carroll, who with another sourdough and three college students looking for adventure, accompanied Doctor Frederick Cook on an expedition to climb Mt. McKinley.

Dr. Frederick Cook

Ignorant of even the rudiments of Alaskan life, Cook scoffed at Carroll’s insistence on a mosquito-proof tent. The first night Carroll and Jones, the other sourdough, slept comfortably inside the tent while the other five roughed it outside. “Next night, and each ensuing night thereafter, seven men were crowded into this 7×10 tent.”

Carroll took ill with pleurisy and had to leave Cook’s party at the foot of Mt. McKinley, but not before forming a poor opinion of the expedition’s leader: “Carroll says Cook is a fourflusher.” (The word comes from bluffing with a weak hand when playing poker. It now roughly means one not true to his word.) Carroll’s principle evidence for the charge is Cook’s inability to listen to men more experienced in the wilds of Alaska. (Wikipedia cites other evidence supporting Carroll’s assessment of Cook’s character, including a famous faked photograph of a first ascent of Mt. McKinley from a 1906 attempt.)

On a great rock off shore from the mouth of Resurrection Bay, hundreds of sea lions line one wall, some several hundred feet above the sea. “The Santa Ana ran near the rock, then gave a loud blast on her whistle. The lions tumbled down any way they might, rolling, somersaulting, leaping to the water, then surrounded the ship and barking their indignation.”

23.2 The Beauty of Southern Alaska

September 16, 1903

Snow creeping toward the edge of town brings “the lonely men who have spent the short summer on distant creeks in search of the elusive gold,” down into Valdez where the fortunate “are given smiles, and if necessary further favors by the ladies of the evening,” who haunt the dance halls, saloons and other sporting houses. The nights are lengthening and, “In a few weeks all will be covered with snow for the winter.”

“Words fail to tell of the marvelous scenery of Southern Alaska. The highest mountains on the North American continent front on the sea here, and snow is always present on these above 3,000 feet, even in mid summer. There is forest below the snow, and rivers tumble down the steeps into the sea, and glaciers may be seen at every turn. Islands separated by winding blue channels give passage to the heart of these mountains… It is an empty land, these fine harbors wasted on a wilderness where they are of no use to man.”

23.3 Yakutat

September 20, 1959 (sic)

(The misdating of this entry probably reflects when the diaries were typed.)

At Yakutat native women “sit in front of the trading post and sell beaded moccasins, ladies hand bags and all sorts of trinkets they have made during the long winters,” for whatever price they can get. The young people native to the area “are becoming Americanized,” at a school in Sitka where they are taken when quite young. The US government offers men who live with Indian women two choices: “marry her and keep her as wife, or else jail.”

At Valdez most of the passengers left the ship to be replaced by a new list. Now Hayes bunks with “one Cloudesley Rutter,” a biologist at Stanford University, who offers Hayes a job for the next summer assisting Rutter’s study of the Alaska salmon industry. In the meantime, Rutter asks why doesn’t Hayes come down and enroll at Stanford? “It sounds good, but I wonder.” Maybe the quick bond between Hayes and Rutter forms because, “We have one thing in common, both dislike Martin’s pretensions.”

Perhaps the long nights with the coming of winter send Hayes back to his darkest assessments of humanity. A prostitute on board has lost the malamute pup she loved, tangled in some rigging and killed; maybe that set him off – or the end of the Alaska adventure with no plan for tomorrow? At any rate, he writes: “Men are the most degraded animals this world holds. They prostitute their own kind, exploit each other and slay each other without mercy if it profits to do so. The most fortuned die in infancy, or are never born at all.” And so on at some length.

23.4 Summing up Alaska 1903

Septermber 23, 1903

After some geological speculation about how glaciers carved the bay leading to Juneau and all the waterways south to Puget Sound, Hayes comments on the viability of the future state capital: “Mining keeps Juneau from dying, there being no industry or farming hereabout to make a town.” Juneau will be a business center of the region until the rich mines at Treadwell across the bay are worked dry – but then what will support a town?

A comment Hayes makes on passing again through Sitka encapsulates his impression of Alaska and its cultural history formed while traipsing about the region in the summer of 1903: “Sitka remains the same sleepy village is has always been. The Indian schools, the territorial staff who govern the country and the old Russian mission makes a living for 1,500 people”

He goes on to say that 50 years of Russian occupation stripped Alaska of its furs and broke the spirit of the native population: “The 36 years of American rule has been insufficient to uplift them from their lowly estate, but it can be done.” He sees the Indian schools as the great hope for future civilization of the area because the native children will be taught practical skills and, “kept free from the gamblers, the licentious miners, and others who corrupt them utterly.” In Hayes’ view, these young natives will surely inherit Alaska. When the minerals are stripped and the fisheries regulated, there are too many mosquitoes in summer and too much cold in winter “to make it a white man’s country.” He’s hopeful that the educated children of Alaska “will rebuild what has been lost within a hundred years.”

As for Hayes? He’ll be in Seattle within the week.

23.5 Where to next?

September 30, 1903

Slow boats like the Santa Ana poke down the coast “for they creep into all sorts of outlandish places and load and unload cargo for small mines, fisheries, trading stations and such.” But the pleasant sightseeing trip will end tomorrow in Seattle.

Hayes’ will be glad to part ways with Martin whose “head has been turned by the publicity he has received.” Early in the summer he was reasonably companionable but now, “he seeks the society of scientists, politicians, or rich mining people who can help him up on his way to the top, wherever that is.” While softening the critique about Martin’s turned head with,“I suppose we are all like that,” Hayes makes clear by his own choice of working class companions that he understands “the top” differently than Martin.

So, that’s Alaska – what next? Uncle Epam in Washington who wrangled the trip for Hayes wants him to visit another uncle, Epam’s brother, out in Oregon. To Hayes this seems an odious though necessary part of the job. Nevertheless, “I think I’ll funk it this time, go back to Eureka and stay the winter.”

23.6 Same Old Eureka

October 10, 1903

After a brief stop in Victoria BC – “a dull town with an English atmosphere” – and the usual violent seasickness coming down the coast in a small boat, Hayes arrives in Eureka where George Glynn, his old boss at the mill, has a job waiting for him. But “I don’t like it. I want to wander.”

In this frame of mind, of course Eureka receives a tawdry description: “There is little to recommend Eureka to a vagrant.” With five large sawmills, a shingle mill, and some dairies and farms, “It is one of those towns that is built, has no further need for expansion.” No need for any new houses, and “the business section has a run-down appearance.”

Uncle Epam still presses Hayes to visit the family up in Oregon, George Glynn wants him to stay on –“but I wonder.”

23.7 Galveston? Stanford?

October 22, 1903

To wander the world one must have either cash or sailor’s work. Lacking the former, Hayes tries in San Francisco for a ship to China or to the South Seas. “Nothing doing, no chance ever.” So, it’ll have to be Galveston and wherever ships are going from there.

On a visit to Stanford University, Cloudesley Rutter, the biologist Hayes met on the Santa Ana out of Valdez, offers another alternative: an expedition to the Galapagos Islands departing some months hence. In the meantime, Rutter wants Hayes to enroll in a special geology course. Never mind the tuition money, Rutter can set him up with a job as a club secretary.

October 24, 1903

“Was out at the Twin Peaks yesterday, thinking it over.” It’ll have to be Galveston: “I won’t handle booze, and to be a club secretary means I must do just that.” The decision made, he’s on a train for Texas that very night.

23.8 William Morrison Perkins 1841-1903

October 30, 1903

At 25, Hayes has been traveling the world for 10 years since leaving Hico at the end of a horsewhip. Returning to a place he says he never cares to see again, he gives the following terse account of his sisters: “May is married, lives in Oklahoma. Jennie is in Houston. I will see her on my way south. Annie is teaching at Iredell, a small village next station to Hico. Memrie is in the post office here, and Pearl and Vance still attend school.” He reports being happy to see them.

November 3, 1903

Remarkable that Hayes should be in Hico with the family when “Word has come that father was killed by an unruly horse at Walsenburg Colorado.” He lived three days after the horse crushed his head against a fence rail.

“Our reactions were different when the tidings came.” He reports that his mother went pale, “But there was little sorrow for his passing. He had been too cruel for that.” Hayes is glad to have written to his faterh before he died, but “To be truthful, it means no more than any other person whom I have met casually. Whatever affection there may have been, it has been wholly eradicated by his brutality when I was in his power. Somehow I am glad it has been no worse, for I might have slain him had I stayed home.”

Hayes and his mother will leave for Houston tomorrow to visit sister Jennie on his way to find a ship at Galveston.

Leave a Comment » | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Alaska, Eureka, Frederick Cook, GC Martin, Houston, William Morrison Perkins | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

22. Katalla River to Resurrection Bay

June 26, 2011

More Tramping around Alaska with G. C. Martin.

On the map, chapter 21 is the red path. The current chapter is yellow with popups. Chapter 23 is the pink path.

(If the map doesn’t appear in the email, click the title to go to the blog.)

Click here for links to maps and downloads of more maps.

Here and There Synopsis:

22.1 Valdez

July 26, 1903

Valdez has, “one business street … lined with a few stores, many groggeries and gambling halls, [and] the inevitable redlight district.” Perhaps a thousand people live here at this stop-off on the way to Eagle on the Yukon. It rains all summer and 63 feet of snow reportedly fell last winter. “Fort Liscum is immediately across the bay from Valdez, where there is a company of soldiers watching all the rapscallions who prey on honest miners.”

Fort Liscum, Alaska 1913

The same Colonel Greene and his party, whom Hayes met on the Bertha out of Sitka, passed through Valdez just before Hayes arrived. Breathtaking reports in the Seattle newspapers tell of their fights with bears and daring exploits on the ice fields. According to Hayes, every column inch is hogwash: “The fact is they never left the Bertha making the round trip in all comfort. Lies are what go over about this northland; no one wants to hear the truth.”

Boarding the Bertha again for Inerskin (sic) Bay, Hayes and Martin hear the skipper laughing at the tales of Colonel Green and his party. Hayes speaks with a prospector now on board the Bertha who staked a rich claim near Dawson. “He sold it for $32,000. Lost half of it in one night at faro, and in three weeks was broke.” Now he’s on his way up the Chitina River to a new strike. “Everybody is insane with gold fever. I’m content with my pay and hope to stay on. Most of the men we meet are broke, but all are hopeful of striking it soon. Many do, but more find graves in this wilderness.”

22.2 Bear Meat at Inerskin Bay

July 30, 1903

Hayes uses the name Inerskin Bay, but from the description of the surrounding land features, it must be the bay now called Iniskin. Martin, who is busily renaming everything in sight, says that this bay was named in honor of a Russian named Enochskin. Somehow the name has settled to Iniskin.

The two won’t stay long here. As Martin examines the sedimentary rock with igneous intrusions and evidence of volcanic action, Hayes speaks with Guzmer, chief of the small local tribe. Guzmer speaks enough English to give a report of a volcanic eruption in 1883: “Big fire! Night all same day! Plenty noise! Fire he come shore here.” (Hayes’ quote.)

Miskar, another man native to the place, shows Hayes the skin covered bidarkies by which the tribe supports itself fishing.

Bidarkie
Edward S Curtis collection

When two other men arrived with the haunches of a bear, “larger than the largest bullock in size,” in their boat, Martin wanted to try a bit. So Hayes traded oats for bear. After parboiling it three times, and cooking for a total of five hours, the meat was at least tender, “But I noticed Martin ate but little. The Indians made short work of the lot, however, and all was well.”

22.3 Abundance at Brown’s Creek

August 3, 1903

The two-man, Perkins and Martin, expedition moves slightly north to “another nameless bay.” Hayes never catches Martin’s christening of the bay, “But the large creek that flows into it is to be called Brown’s Creek, this after the head of an oil drilling company whose cabins are here.”

“The numbers of salmon running into this creek are beyond computation.” When Hayes tries to row a skiff across the thirty-foot wide stream, the oars cannot find water, only salmon. The stream is about three-feet deep but no one dares enter to cross for fear of being pressed down by the numbers of salmon and drowned. “The whole of Alaska holds no more luscious fish than these. We eat them day after day and do not become satiated. If we should, there are trout in equal numbers with the salmon.” Hayes gave Guzmer’s wife some fishhooks and now she is catching salmon four times as fast as Hayes.

At Brown’s oil drilling camp, the men have chained a “pet” brown bear that arrived in a coat sleeve but has grown so fast only the strongest man can hold its leash. Suspicious of the men, the bear has great affection for a young malamute dog with coloring similar to the bear’s. The poor pup is nearly crushed with affection whenever the bear catches it in a great hug. Because the bear likes his food cooked better than raw, Hayes boils this giant “pet” a bucket of fine trout.

Hayes hunts with a setter dog so smart that the hunter needs no gun. The dog leaps onto his duck at the slightest quiver of grass. Remarking again on the abundance of the salmon: “Seals lay in the mouth of the creek and play with the salmon running into the stream. They toss them playfully, take one bite and release them for another.” Wildlife abounds up here, but even this vast land has its limits: “There are a few caribou, so say the natives, and an occasional moose. These animals are hunted so sharply the have fled to better and safer pastures.”

22.4 Exploring Chinitna Bay

August 10,1903

In this region tides rise more than 30’ and the currents run faster than any boat can counter, so Hayes must navigate the entrance to Chinitna Bay carefully. Once ashore, he and Martin marvel at a petrified forest standing out from a solid sedimentary rock base; follow bear paths two feet deep in the moss where one hind footprint measures 11”x16”; and reassess the map’s 11,000 foot estimate for Mt Illamna (sic) as closer to 8,500 feet.

Mt Iliamna

“From Illamna emits steam white as snow. Three vast columns rise heavenward for thousands of feet when the air is clear and calm. These join at a great height, making one of the most spectacular pictures I have ever seen.” Chinaboro, another active volcano forty miles from Iliamna, belches smoke that droops around its edges like a mushroom. Mt. Redoubt, farther north, stands quiet for now.

Martin foolishly expects the sea to obey his wishes. He planned to explore a sea cliff base at low tide and when Hayes demurred fearing the tidal bore, Martin sneered, “If you are afraid, you had better go back to the tent!” (Hayes’ quote.) Martin survived his folly but only by two feet. Trapped by the incoming tide, he scrambled up the cliff face as far as he could climb. The 30’ tidal surge rose to his waist – two more feet and he would have drowned. “He seems to think he has achieved a heroic stunt. I think he is a fool.”

Hayes isn’t alone in thinking Martin a fool. When Martin ordered Hayes to auction their small skiff, Hayes turned up a sourdough willing to pay $12. But according to government regulations an auction must be held. So after receiving the $12 offer, Martin called out “What am I bid for this boat?” (Hayes’ quote.) Being the only one present, the $12 man lowered his bid to $10 and Martin sold for that. “The old sourdough turned and looked at me for a long time. Like myself, he considered Martin cuckoo in some ways, and he is.”

22.5 Back at Brown’s Creek

August 10,1903

Everywhere Hayes turns, mountain peaks soar into the blue air. In addition to the volcanoes Chinaboro, Iliamna, and Redoubt, the great snow peaks of Cape Douglas and Afognak can bee seen from Brown’s Creek. From the mouth of the inlet, even Mt. McKinley is visible far to the north.

Martin didn’t affix the name Mt. McKinley; that had already been accomplished by Alfred Hulse Brooks who also named mountains for Vice-President Roosevelt, and senators Foraker and Tillman who controlled appropriations for geological surveys. “They reciprocated by giving Brooks full charge of all Alaska. He is a good geologist, but is more interested in Brooks than in his country’s welfare.”

Alfred Hulse Brooks

While waiting for a ship out of Brown’s creek, “there are endless new rocks to investigate.” And not only rocks – between Iliamna and Chinaboro volcanoes, oil seeps directly onto the ground. Unscrupulous promoters sell stock on oil puddles to, “easy money hunters in the States,” knowing full well that no great oil reserve likely lies between these two fiery peaks.

22.6 Big Bears in Kodiak

August 21, 1903

On the short trip back from Brown’s creek to Iniskin Bay in a small boat overloaded with Martin, Hayes, and Brown’s men, three great huskies also on board almost did them all in. The dogs began rushing from side to side in panic, nearly upsetting the frail craft before the men could restrain them.

From Iniskin Bay, Hayes and Martin were finally able to catch a ship on the way out to Kodiak Island. “At the village of Kodiak a bartender in a low-brow groggery there has a bear skin that squares 12 ½ feet each way.” The town of Kodiak retains a strong feel of the Russian culture established by the fur trappers who built it. The sea otters the Russians hunted are so rare now that only natives are allowed to take any more. “Its wonderful fur doomed it to destruction, just as the fur seal is going now. Man is the most wasteful, destructive animal this earth contains.”

22.7 Cold Bay

August 27, 1903

After Kodiak, the ship made a short stop at a salmon cannery at Uyak on the west side of Kodiak Island. “One of the greatest salmon runs known comes in here to spawn every year, and once 3,000,000 of the fish were taken at one time.” Without capacity to process so many fish, much of the catch was simply destroyed. Hayes laments that the lust for short-sighted profit will soon send the salmon the way of the sea otter.

Hayes wonders: How did the bears cross from the mainland to Kodiak Island? “Shelikoff Strait is one of the roughest bits of water about the Alaskan coast … Perhaps land lay all the way across in some distant geological epoch, for surely no bear could swim that distance in such rough water.” In any case, huge bears roam the island now.

Current maps show Cold Bay farther south from the spot Hayes says they explore next; Martin has gone across from this Cold Bay eight miles to Lake Bencharof. Bad weather forces the two to share the shelter of a fetid old Russian barabara with some of the locals.

The Rosenburg Barabara, Unimak Island,
Urilia Bay, Alaska, circa 1910

Near Lake Bencharof, oil workers drill at a spot where, “over square miles of country oil has at one time flowed and mingled with the soil until all is similar to asphalt.” Initially, coal was shipped from the south to power the drilling rig, until “some genius, waiting for the coal, at last tried out the asphalt. It burns better than the coal, and is here in millions of tons.” So the coal remains heaped on the beach unused.

22.8 Kodiak Again on the Way South

September 10,1903

As the year turns to autumn, it is time for the expedition to return south. “Martin explored much of the coast, and has a badly swelled head. His expedition has received considerable publicity, and he has been flattered by the heads of the mining and oil drilling companies until he believes he is an important man.” Hayes believes Martin’s accounts of the area are being used by speculators to inflate the value of their “barren claims” for sale to gullible investors in the states. “Any remark he makes is at once used to bolster up their stock selling industry, and they even ask for my opinion at times.”

The small steamer Newport that will run as far as Valdez, brings them again to Kodiak Island. A sheep farmer has set up here – providing “a luscious tidbit” for the bears. The many fine furs of red fox, silver-greys, and black foxes they’ve seen about the area convince Hayes that fox farming on the small isolated islands hereabout would be a viable industry.

22.9. Resurrection Bay

September 12, 1903

On board the Newport, “Martin has doubled up with a Belgian scientist, has a bad case of the swell head because of the constant flattery these embryo oil barons have heaped upon him.” Hayes rooms with some gamblers. His other choice would have been bunking with several priests from various missions about Alaska. Also aboard are, “Some of the hard-eyed sisterhood who gold-dig the miners out of every cent.” With ever the wry sense of humor, Hayes notes the “unregenerate steward sandwiched [the priests] between the girls of the row.”

A storm rages all the way from Kodiak Island, but here in the deep bay all is calm. Hayes believes a town will soon be built on this site – the railroad terminal will call it into existence. Right now, “The Santa Ana is here from the south with a cargo of timber, iron and miscellaneous goods for a railway that is to be built towards Fairbanks, a new camp on the Tanana River, a tributary of the Yukon.” The railway promoters who join the company of the Newport, “are in a fever of ecstasy at their prospect of easily gained riches, selling stock to gullible people also anxious to make money without work.”

2 Comments | Diary, geo-biography, Google Maps, History, Travel | Tagged: Alaska, Alfred Hulse Brooks, Chinitna Bay, Kodiak, Mt Iliamna, USGS, Valdez | Permalink
Posted by johnmmartin

Hayes Here and There

31. Seattle to Tacoma

30. Bering Lake to Seattle

29. Seymour Narrows to Behring Lake

28. Seattle to the Seymour Narrows

27. Los Angeles to Seattle

26 El Paso to Los Angeles – on Foot

25. Galveston to El Paso

24. Hico to Galveston to Galveston

23. Resurrection Bay AK to Hico TX

22. Katalla River to Resurrection Bay

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