Part 1 (1/2)

The Blue Envelope

by Roy J Snell

FOREWORD

When considering the manuscript of ”The Blue Envelope”that I offer soht really have happened to two girls so situated

My answer ran somewhat as follows:

Alaska, at least the northern part of it, is so far removed from the rest of this old earth that it is alood stiff nine-day trip to it by water and you sight land only once in all that nine days For nine months of winter you are quite shut off from the rest of the world Your hteen-hundred- trail; two months and a half for letters to coo back Do you wonder, then, that the Alaskan, when going down to Seattle, does not speak of it as going to Seattle or going down to the States but as ”going outside”? Going outside seems to just exactly express it When you have spent a year in Alaska you feel as if you had truly been inside so for twelve months

People who live ”inside” of Alaska do not live exactly as they land Conventions for the le for existence and a bit of pleasure now and again

If conventions and custoet in the way of these, aith theht senses can bla that way

One question we irls do and dare the things that Lucile and Marian did? My only answer irls from ”outside” at that--have done theirl, came to Cape Prince of Wales to keep house for her father, as superintendent of the reindeer herd at that point She lived there with her father and the natives--no white wo that ti some forty miles fro deer or cutting them out to send to market Helen stayed at the Cape with the natives At ti, unattended by her father, she alrus hunting with the natives in their thirty-foot, sailing skin-boat and stayed out with the ten or twelveinto the very midst of a school of five hundred or more of walrus This, of course, was not necessary; just a part of the fun a healthy girl has when she lives in an Eskiirl of nineteen, caovernment teacher on shi+shmaref Island--a small, sandy island off the shore of Alaska, some seventy-five miles above Cape Prince of Wales

She had not been with her brother long when a sailing schooner anchored off shore This schooner had on board their winter supply of food

Her brother went on board to superintend the unloading The work had scarcely begun when a sudden stor southward through the straits

For some ten or twelve days Beth was on that barren, sandy island entirely alone The natives were, at this ti up one of the rivers of the ht a fire She had no sort of notion as to hohen her brother would return The fact of the matter was that had not her brother had in his possession a note fro him to co a landsman to his port under such conditions, the unprincipled sea Beth to shi+ft for herself

He reached hoasoline schooner some ten days after his departure

This sao ”outside,”

engaged a white guide to take her by dog teaht be caught It was late in the spring and the ice was soft They had been traveling for soh shore ice when they discovered, much to their horror, that their ice pan had broken loose fro the edge of it for soe to shore In this they were disappointed Beth could not swiing water he swa to the back of the sled and was thus brought ashore After wading many swollen torrents, they at last reached Cape Prince of Wales in safety

This sounds very much like fiction but is fact and can be verified

As to crossing Bering Straits and living with the Chukches in Siberia

I did that very thing myself--ith a crew of Chukches I had never seen, too I was over there for only three days but h in perfect safety While there I saw a character known as the French Kid, a white man who had crossed the Straits with the natives late in the year and had wintered there

Crossing twenty or ht seem a trifle improbable but here, too, actual perforovernment teacher on the Little Diomede Island, across 22 miles of floe ice by an Eskimo This man had made the trip many times before It is my opinion that what an Eski woman can do

Well, there you have it I don't wish to ht tell you more As it is I hope I may have convinced you that all the adventures of Lucile and Marian are probable and that the author knows so about the wonderland in which the story is set

THE AUTHOR