PROSPECTING IN ALASKA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7982, 9 March 1906, Page 3

PROSPECTING IN ALASKA.

A PARTY DECIMATED.

COLD, DISEASE/AND STARVATIOK.

A tale of terrible suffering and privation comes from Sitka, Alaska. On December 3Qth, three miners—survivors of a party of .35—arrived at that port by a coastal steamer, which bad picked them up at the mouth of Gopper River, in the Gulf of Alaska. They were in a dug-out canoe without water or food, with scarcely any clothes, on their emaciated bodies, and, incapacitated by cold, were hardly able to speak above a whisper. Wheu sufficiently revived they gave their names as William Jensen, from Michigan; Oar! Oberlin, of the same place; and William Blodgett, of Massachusetts. The latter is the most intelligent of the three, who are the only survivors of the party which left Sitka last summer to prospect for gold in the vicinity of Mount fcjauford, a rugged peak north-west of Mount Wrangle. Blodgett says that the other 30 members of the party DIED BEFORE REACHING THE COPPER RIVER on the journey to the Gulf of Alaska. He says:—"For the first few uoonthß after our arrival at the foot of the mountains we had a pleasant time, signs of gold cropping out now and then. Food was plentiful and game abundant, and -as the party . was well supplied, with everything necessary for a year's stay, there •was iio fear for the future. On November 2nd last A CLOUD BURST ON THE STREAM where we were encamped, and washed away or destroyed most of our provisions. About a week later snow began falling and completely covered ' the land to* depth of a dozen feet, * with the w,ind blowing a blizzard for days at a time. "Fuel was hard to get, and all began to suffer from the cold. Food became scarce and the men wore l 'finally reduced to the necessity of quarter rations. The scurvy made its appearance and twelve men died in the coarse of a few days. Several others lay down in tne snow to give . up the ghost OR DIED OF STARVATION. "The remainder oE us, about 21 in number, managed to reach the *Copper River, most of which was frozen and solid. "*fter several days' labour we managed to rig up three dugout canoes, on which we embarked without paddles or anything hardly but a little food m each vessel. "The first day out toward nightfall the first canoe, containing sev3n men capsized AND ALL WERE DROWNED. The third day two of the men in our canoe became insane and jumped overboard, never coming to the surface again. "A storm swamped canoe No. 2 some time during the fou th night. On the morning of the sixth day two more of the men in our canoe, both Swedes, were found dead, and we threw the bodies overboard. On the eighth day, which is the last I remember until I revived on board the Orca, we resolved that if we did not reach the Gujf by night that we would cast locs as to which of the three of us was to be killed and eaten. All the food was gone and for 48 hours we had subsisted on the juice extraoted by sucking the leather of our leggings." Mr Blodgett says the original party of miuers and prospectors was composed of men from all parts of the United States. The majority of them Swedes.