Great American Adventure Stories

by Tom McCarthy

  Failure to find the house and to have his frozen clothing dried would have cost the lieutenant his life.

  On arriving at Teller station, he had a new problem to solve—to win over the agent. He had high hopes, for although this representative of a missionary society was living on the outer edge of the world, yet he had become familiar with the vicissitudes of the frontier and, from vocation and through his associations, was readily moved to acts of humanity. Jarvis set forth the situation to Mr. W. T. Lopp, the superintendent, adding that he considered Lopp’s personal services to be indispensable, as he knew the country, was familiar with the customs and characteristics of the natives, and was expert in handling deer. Lopp replied that “the reindeer had been builded on by his people as their wealth and support and to lose them would make a break in the work that could not be repaired. Still, in the interests of humanity, he would give them all, explain the case to the Eskimos, and induce them to give their deer also [aggregating about three hundred].” Lopp also gave his own knowledge, influence, and personal service, his wife, with a noble disregard for her own comfort and safety at being left alone with the natives, “urging him to go, believing it to be his duty.”

  It is needless to recite in detail the trials and troubles that daily arose in driving across trackless tundras (the swampy, moss-covered plains), in the darkness of midwinter, this great herd of more than four hundred timid, intractable reindeer. Throughout the eight hundred miles of travel, the reindeer drivers had to carefully avoid the immediate neighborhood of Eskimo villages for fear of the ravenous, attacking dogs, who, however, on one occasion succeeded in stampeding the whole herd. For days at a time, the herders were at their wits’ ends to guard the deer against gaunt packs of ravenous wolves, who kept on their trail and, despite their utmost vigilance, succeeded in killing and maiming several deer. A triumphal but venturesome feat of Lopp’s was the driving of the herd across the sea floes of the broad expanse of Kotzebue Sound, thus saving 150 miles of land travel and two weeks of valuable time.

  While there were eight skilled herders, Lapps and Eskimos, the most effective work was that done by a little Lapp deer dog, who circled around the herd when on the march to prevent the deer from straying. If a deer started from the main herd, the dog was at once on his trail, snapping at his heels and turning him toward the others. Very few deer strayed or were lost, and 362 were brought to Barrow in good condition.

  Traveling in advance, following the shoreline by dog sledge, Jarvis and McCall were welcomed with warm generosity, even by the most forlorn and wretched Eskimos, who asked them into their huts, cared for their dogs, dried their clothes, and did all possible for their safety and comfort. The relief party, however, suffered much from the begging demands of almost-starving natives, from the loss of straying dogs and the desertion of several unreliable native employees. They were quite at the end of their food when they reached, at Cape Krusenstern, their depot. This had been brought up across country from Unalaklik through the great energy and indomitable courage of Bertholf, whose journey and sufferings were no less striking than those of his comrades.

  Inexpressible was the joy of the party when, fifty miles south of Point Barrow, the masts of the Belvedere, a whaleship fast in the ice, were sighted. Four days later they were at the point, their marvelous journey of 1,800 miles ended and their coming welcomed as a providential relief.

  They found conditions frightful as regards the shelter, health, and sanitation of the shipwrecked whalers. Three ships had been lost, and another was ice-beset beyond power of saving. The captains of the wrecked ships had abandoned the care and control of their men as to quarters, clothing, food, and general welfare. Provisions were very short, and the seamen were depending on their safety through successful hunting among the caribou herds in the neighborhood of Point Barrow, which were rapidly disappearing.

  Jarvis at once took charge of the situation. Dr. McCall found the seamen’s quarters in a most horrible condition, its single window giving but a feeble glimmer of light at midday and its ventilation confined to the few air draughts through cracks in the walls. Eighty seamen occupied for sleeping, shelter, and cooking a single room twenty by fifty feet in size, wherein they were so badly crowded that there was scarcely room for all to stand when out of their bunks together. Moisture was continually dropping from the inner ceiling and walls, which were covered with frost. Their bedding was never dry, sooty grease was coated over all things, and no place was free from great accumulations of filth and its accompaniments. The whalers were “scarcely recognizable as white men,” and large numbers of them would without doubt have perished of disease but for the opportune arrival of the relief party.

  Order, cleanliness, decency, and discipline were instituted; the men were distributed in light, airy rooms; their clothing was washed and renovated and intercourse with the natives prohibited. By inspection, precept, and command, the general health greatly improved. At every opportunity individual men were sent south by occasional sledge parties. Hunting was systematized, but it failed to produce enough food for the suffering whalers. Recourse was then had to the herds driven north by Lopp and Artisarlook, and with the slaughter of nearly two hundred reindeer, suitable quantities of fresh meat were issued. Out of 275 whalers, only 1 died of disease. Captain Tuttle by daring seamanship reached Icy Cape July 22, 1898, and took onboard the Bear about a hundred men whose ships were lost.

  With generous feeling Jarvis gives credit in his report to the whaling agent, A. C. Brower, and to “the goodness and help of the natives [Eskimos], who denied themselves to save the white people,” subordinating with true heroic modesty his work to all others.

  Gold and commerce have peopled the barren Alaskan wastes, which were the scenes of this adventurous journey, with its unique equipment and its cosmopolitan personnel of Eskimo, Lapp, and American.

  While these men worked not for fame but for the lives of brother men, yet in Alaskan annals should stand forever recorded the heroic deeds and unselfish acts of Jarvis and McCall, of Bertholf and Lopp, and of that man among men—Eskimo Artisarlook.

  15

  Horror in Galveston

  By John Coulter

  The damage and destruction of the hurricane that virtually erased the growing and prosperous young city of Galveston from the map brought the attention of the entire country to the Texas coast. What happened next kept it there.

  The frightful West Indian hurricane which descended upon the beautiful, prosperous, and progressive but ill-fated city of Galveston on Saturday, September 8, 1900, causing the loss of many thousands of lives and the destruction of millions of dollars’ worth of property, and then ravaged central and western Texas, killing several hundred people and inflicting damage which cost millions to repair, has had no parallel in history.

  When the gale approached the island upon which Galveston is situated, it lashed the waves of the Gulf of Mexico into a tremendous fury, causing them to rise to all but mountain height, and then it was that, combining their forces, the wind and water pounced upon their prey.

  In the short space of four hours, the entire site of the city was covered by angry waters, while the gale blew at the rate of one hundred miles an hour; business houses, public buildings, churches, residences, charitable institutions, and all other structures gave way before the pressure of the wind and the fierce onslaught of the raging flood, and those which did not crumble altogether were so injured, in the majority of cases, that they were torn down.

  Such a night of horror as the unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to pass has fallen to the lot of few since the records of history were first opened. In the early evening, when the water first began to invade Galveston Island, the people residing along the beach and near it fled in fear from their homes and sought the highest points in the city as places of refuge, taking nothing but the smaller articles in their houses with them. On and on crawled the flood, until darkness had set in and then, as
though possessed of a fiendish vindictiveness, hastened its speed and poured over the surface of the town, completely submerging it—covering the most elevated ground to a depth of five feet and the lower portions ten and twelve feet.

  The hurricane was equally malignant, if not more fiendish and cruel, and tore great buildings and beautiful homes to pieces with evident delight, scattering the debris far and wide; telegraph and telephone lines were thrown down; railway tracks and bridges—the latter connecting the island and city with the mainland—torn up; and the mighty, tangled mass of wires, bricks, sections of roofs, sidewalks, fences, and other things hurled into the main thoroughfares and cross streets, rendering it impossible for pedestrians to make their way along for many days after the waters and gale had subsided.

  Forty thousand people—men, women, and children—cowered in terror for eight long hours, the intense blackness of the night; the swishing and lapping of the waves; the demoniac howling and shrieking of the wind; and the indescribable and awful crashing, tearing, and rending, as the houses, hundreds at a time, were wrecked and shattered, ever sounding in their ears. Often, too, the friendly shelter where families had taken refuge would be swept away, plunging scores and scores of helpless ones into the mad current which flowed through every street of the town, and fathers and mothers were compelled to undergo the agony of seeing their children drown, with no possibility of rescue; husbands lost their wives and wives their husbands, and the elements were only merciful when they destroyed an entire family at once.

  All during that fearful night of Saturday until the gray and gloomy dawn of Sunday broke upon the sorrow-stricken city, the entire population of Galveston stood face to face with grim death in its most horrible shapes; they could not hope for anything more than the vengeance of the hurricane, and as they realized that with every passing moment souls were being hurried into eternity, is it at all wonderful that, after the strain was over and all danger gone, reason should finally be unseated and men and women break into the unmeaning gaiety of the maniac?

  Not one inhabitant of Galveston old enough to realize the situation had any idea other than that death was to be the fate of all before another day appeared, and when this long and weary suspense, to which was added the chill of the night and the growing pangs of hunger, was at last broken by the first gleams of the light of the Sabbath morn, the latter was not entirely welcome, for the face of the sun was hidden by morose and ugly clouds, from which dripped, at dreary intervals, cold and gusty showers.

  Thousands were swallowed up during the darkness and their bodies either mangled and mutilated by the wreckage which had been tossed everywhere, left to decompose in the slimy ooze deposited by the flood, or forced to follow the waves in their sullen retirement to the waters of the gulf.

  Dejection and despondency succeeded fright; the majority of the businessmen of the city had suffered such losses that they were overcome by apathy; nearly all the homes of the people were in ruins; the streets were impassable, and the dead lay thickly on every side; all telegraph and telephone wires were down, and as miles and miles of railroad track had disappeared and the bridges carried away, there was absolutely no means of communication with the outer world, except by boat. The strange spectacle was then presented of the richest city of its size in the richest country in the world lying prostrate, helpless and hopeless, a prey to ghouls, vultures, harpies, thieves, thugs, and outlaws of every sort; its people starving, and the putrid bodies of its dead breeding pestilence.

  The city of Galveston is situated on the extreme east end of the island of Galveston. It is six square miles in area, its present limits being the limits of the original corporation and the boundaries of the land purchased from the republic of Texas by Colonel Menard in 1838 for the sum of $50,000. Colonel Menard associated with himself several others, who formed a town site company with a capital of $1,000,000. The city of Galveston was platted on April 20, 1838, and seven days later the lots were put on the market. The streets of Galveston are numbered from one to fifty-seven across the island from north to south, and the avenues are known by the letters of the alphabet, extending east and west lengthwise of the island.

  The founders of the city donated to the public every tenth block through the center of the city from east to west for public parks. They also gave three sites for public markets and set aside one entire block for a college, three blocks for a girls’ seminary, and gave to every Christian denomination a valuable site for a church.

  The growth of the city in population was slow until after the war of the rebellion. It is a remarkable fact that for the population Galveston does double the amount of business of any city in America. The population in 1890 was 30,000, showing an increase of over 400 percent in thirty years. At the time of the disaster, the population was estimated at 40,000.

  Galveston has over two miles of completed wharfs along the bay front and others under construction, all of which are equipped with modern appliances. The Galveston Wharf Company, which owns practically all the wharfage, has expended millions during the last five years for improvements in the way of elevators and facilities for handling grain and cotton. During the cotton season, September 1 to March 31 inclusive, large oceangoing craft line the wharves, often thirty or more steamers and as many large sailing vessels being accommodated at one time, besides the numerous smaller vessels and sailing craft doing a coastwise trade.

  Manufacturing is one of the chief supports of the city. In this branch of industry, Galveston leads any city in the state of Texas by 50 percent in number and more than 100 percent in capital employed and product turned out. Of factories the city has 306, employing a capital aggregating $10,886,900, with an output of $12,000,000 a year.

  The jetty construction forms one of the chief features of its commercial advantages. The construction began in 1885, progressing slowly for five years, when the desire of the citizens for a first-class harbor led to the formation of a permanent committee, which succeeded in getting a bill through Congress authorizing an expenditure of $6,200,000 on the harbor. The bill provided that there should be two parallel stone jetties extending nearly six miles out into the gulf, one from the east point of Galveston Island, the other from the west point of Bolivar Peninsula. The jetties are fifty feet wide at the bottom and slope gradually to five feet above mean low tide and are thirty-five feet wide at the top, with a railroad track running their entire length, which railroad is the property of the federal government. The immediate effect of early construction of the jetties was to remove the inner bar, which formerly had thirteen feet of water over it, and which now has over twenty-one feet of water.

  The principal business street of Galveston is the Strand, which is of made land 150 feet from the water of the bay, in the extreme northern end of the city. Besides being the principal port of Texas, Galveston is the financial center of the state, and some of the largest business houses in Texas have their offices in the Strand.

  Concisely put and with no waste of words, the following facts comprise the history of the unfortunate city:

  It is the richest city of its size in the United States.

  Is the largest and most extensively commercial city of Texas.

  Is the gateway of an enormous trade, situated as it is between the great west granaries and Europe.

  Lies two miles from the northeast corner of the island of Galveston.

  Is a port of entry and the principal seaport of the state.

  Its harbor is the best, not only on the coastline of Texas but also on the entire gulf coast from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Rio Grande.

  Is the nearest and most accessible first-class seaport for the states of Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado; the Indian Territory and the territory of Arizona; and parts of the states and territories adjoining those just mentioned.

  Is today the gulf terminus of most of the great railway systems entering Texas.

  Ranks thir
d among the cotton ports of the United States.

  Its port charges are as low as or lower than any other port in the United States.

  Is the only seaport on the gulf coast west of the Mississippi into which a vessel drawing more than ten feet of water can enter.

  Has steamship lines to Liverpool, New York, New Orleans, and the ports of Texas as far as the Mexican boundary.

  Has harbor area of 24 feet depth and over 1,300 acres; of 30 feet depth and over 463 acres (the next-largest harbor on the Texas coast has only 100 acres of 24 feet depth of water).

  Has the lowest maximum temperature of any city in Texas.

  Has the finest beach in America and is a famous summer and winter resort.

  Has public free school system unexcelled in the United States.

  Has never been visited by any epidemic disease since the yellow fever scourge of 1867.

  Has forty miles of street railways in operation.

  Has electric lights throughout the city (plant owned by city).

  It has millions invested in docks, warehouses, grain elevators, flouring mills, marine ways, manufactories, and mercantile houses.

  “Galveston was the most promising town in the South, so far as shipping is concerned,” said Thomas B. Bryan, the founder of North Galveston, the day after the disaster occurred.

  There has been persistent opposition to it on the part of a railroad that wished the transportation of cotton and other produce farther east, but finally the geographical position of Galveston triumphed. Even Collis P. Huntington, the railroad magnate, succumbed, and later he inaugurated improvements in Galveston on the most colossal scale, involving an expenditure of many millions of dollars. One of the last announcements Mr. Huntington made before his death was that Galveston would become the greatest shipping port in America if money could accomplish it. At the time I was in Galveston, a few weeks ago, there was an army of workmen employed by the Southern Pacific Railroad, constructing great docks and wharves, which were to eclipse any on the globe.