TUBE KUSKO TIMES!
A. X. Qrut, Publisher, Sole
Owner and Editor.
Published Every Saturday
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Entered as seeona-class matter Au
jgtist 29th, 1923, at the postoffice at
r7okotna, Alaska, under the Act of
JMareh 3, 1879.
Takolna, Alaska, Nov. 2, 1929.
WHERE AID IS NEEDED.
•The Anchorage Times, in a recent
iissue, under the above caption, plain
ly states the situation hereabouts re
-igarding the necessity for the station
ing of a government physician in this;
interior section. The Times’ article—
-quite timely, very appropriate, and
•tone which may prove of real help to
the residents of this section—is as |
■■"follows:
“Readers of The Times who know,
something of that vast area of Alas
ka embracing the upper Kuskokwim,
Jditarod and Ophir districts, will give
isyinpathttic support to the appeal
'which is being made for the station
ing of a government physician there.
.None of the communities within the
..-area are sufficiently populous to
jgive adequate support to a physician
-and the otjfcK. way in which the situa
tion can i>dX^elieved seems to be
ithrough government aid.
“It is the white residents of the
-district who are making the appeal,
'.but they do not speak for themselves
^alone. There are in the district more
tnatives than there are whites and,
lbeing wards of the government,,
ttbes.e natives are are dependent upon
ithe government for aid when illnness
^renders them incapable of caring for
-'themselves. Their health cannot be
-jproperly safeguarded with the near
<est physician 300 miles away and not
ieven a trained nurse among them to
-give them first aid.
“The stationing of a physician in
Ahe district wou ldimprove conditions
.-among the natives and give them
protection in time of epidemic; it
■would also relieve a tendency to dis
-courage residence in that isolated re
gion. The government knows what
.the conditions there are and so does
•the new chief of the Federal Bureau
of Education; between them they
may be able to find a way to grant !
the appeal. They cannot say the re
quested service is not needed.”
DESCRIBES SEARCH FOR
BURIED GOLD ON THE
SUNKEN STR. ISLANDER I
Captain Thomas P. Quinn, who
«aune north with the Olympia, Wash.,
company that is attempting to salv
age treasure from the ill-fated ship
Islander, which was wecked off the
lower end of Douglas Island in 1901,
and «n which steamer it is vaguely
reported there was gold to the value
«f 4700,000, returned to Seattle a few
weeks ago and gave an interesting
interview to the Dail yTimes, in
which he told of his experience in a
diving hel 324 feet beneath the sur
face of the water, as follows:
"They finally let me overboard and
began lowering away—down, down,1
down," he said. "A* a depth of 160
fleet all daylight fre mabove failed,
f peered through the glass. It was
am black as ink. j
"And there'wasn’t a sound. It was
as still as death. I was- at the mercy
of the men and the machinery. Then
1 was slung about like a rock in a
sling. 1 had struck the reverse tide.
“Now and then there was the re
assuring voice of the man at the'
other end of the teleephone, and my,;
how good it. sounded. The English
telephone expression of ‘Are you
then*?’ seemed to have added signifi
cance on that occasion. I watched
the gauge and noticed that as 1 went
down the dial went up. When the
bell landed on the ship’s deck the
pressure had reached 140 pounds to
the square inch. I was glad the walls
of that bel were thick and strong and
that it had been built egg-shaped so
it would withstand the pressure.
“Turning the spotlight about, 1 saw
the wreck. Fears and misgivings
were forgotten now as my innterest
in what lay hefore me increased.
There lay the Islander, once one of
the best steamers of its kind afloat.
Some of the red, paint on her hull're
mained. There she had settled in the
mud 28 years before, and thAe she
had stayed as . the tides had swept
over her and the barnacles and other
sea life had all but devoured her.
“Her masts were .gone, only a sug- '
| gestion of one stack remained, a few
! stee stanchions stood upright, and
now and then .a porthole was visible.
! Her upper decks had long since been
swept away. Encrusted with white
barnacles of weird shape from eight
inches to eight feet through, she in
i truth looked like a ghost ship. It was
i fascinating to play the shaft of light
! from one end of her hull to the other.
“As the hoist swung me to the aft
deck over a spot known as the ‘glory
hole,’ a part of the ship .usually .occu
pied by the waiters and room boys, I
was horrified to see scattered about
: the ’deck a large number of human
: bones, washed clean, of course, by the
action of the water.
“There lay—God only knew who!—
prowling through their graveyard!
To add to the horror of the scene,-a.
great octopus moved slowly over the
pile of bones as I watched spell
bound. The growth of barnacles and
shells wag everywhere Bush-like
vegetation had fastened itself to the
hull. Great fish swam about, some at
terrifis speed. It was not uncommon
to feel one-hit oe the sidn of the div
ing bel with a thud.
“We kept searching over the after
part of the ship in an ecort to find
the offioe, but with no success. Then
one day we went to Juneau, 12 miles
away, and boarded a C. P. R. vessel
that happened to be in port, thinking)
perhaps we might find somebody who
could locate a diagram of the Islander
for us. The captain had none ' and
knew of no one who did, but he did
, tell us that a Chinese cook who was
chief cook on the Islander at the time
she went town had been rescued and
was at that moment working in the'
galley of his ship.
“An officer took us to see the Chi- ;
nese, and you should have seen the1
| Celestial’s face when we showed him
a picture of the Islander,
j “‘Ah, that ship long time my
home,’ he said gleefully as he exam
ined the picture. ‘Yes, me long time
cook on that ship and get very wet
when she went down.’
“We explained to him briefly what
we wanted to know about the ship
and asked him where the purser’s
office was. He knew in a minute what
we were looking for and told us the
purser’s office was forward on the
port side. We had spent 23 days
looking aft an the starboard side. He
described the mail room also as being
riah and told us where to look for it.
“That meant a compete rearrange
ment of the scow and our anchors,
but we finally got the rigging in
shape and the boys began going down
in the location described by the Chi
nese as being the purser’s office, i
Bulkheads were down and the deckj
was a mass of tangled wreckage,!
piled high with the immense growth)
of barnacles .and shells, so thick that
from the surface, was
the mechanical arm of the hell could
not bulge it. [
“A connsultation was held and the
owner* of the bel decided to fro to Ju
neau, and began making some sort of
grapp*! that would he sufficiently
strong to pry loose the. great pile of
debris under which it is believed, the
safe . and the strong boxes are
buried.”
Ik U. understood some change in the
construction of the appliances worn
by the diver is to be made and that
the work will continue until either
something of -value is found or it is
demonstrated that what is there can
not be recovered.
THE OLD-TIME FIGHTERS.
“I drove John L. Sullivan, too,”
said Mr. Louis Repeti, one of the
hack drivers of the nineties, in an in
terview for the World, “and. Boh
Fitzsimmons, but I didn't care so
much about them. Old John. L. would
kick the windows out of your.cab if
he felt like it, and Fitzsimmons had
a habit of offering to light you,for
his fare.” And here, it seems to . us,
is one aspect of the good old days
that gets too. little attention.
It is all very well to argue that in
this glorious time the fighters were
tougher, and probably they were, yet
when you stop to think . about. . it,
toughness is one of those things
which have their advantages ; and.
their disadvantages. Fighters,, it
should be remembered, do not spend
all of their time in the ring. In fact,
they do not spend even 1 per cent of
their time in the ring. The other 99
per cent plus making speeches, set
ting an example to the youth of .the
land. And.what citizen would like to
haw hi .Ron. emulate John L. Sulli
van? . Or Robert Fitzsimmons ? . If
boys, tank to emulating them for any
conside rable period American civiliza
tion -would be put back so far that
even «n Eskimo would laugh at it.
Much better, in our opinion, is the
modern type of fighter, like Dempsey,
.wbfli. addresses the Wisconsin senate,
or like Tunney, who gives, lectures at.
Yale.
And so far as the time spent, in .the
ring goes, if ...you match Sullivan
against Dempsey, and Fitzsimmons
against. ..Tunney, -.or vice versa, our
money? will he on the ^modern lads
every .time. Something tells us that
in spite tif their soft manners they
could have cleaned these old-time
idols' without soap.—New York World;
Observing the Law.
Mrs. Multikids—I wish you’d round
up all . the children and take them out
for a walk. I need, a rest.
Her Husband—But I don’t dare
take all those kids out on the street.
The police’ll think I’m leading.. a
street parade without a. permit.
Are you a Kusko Tidies subscriber?
Why not?
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