As the subtitle suggests, there are multiple threads to this
well-documented account of courage and chicanery in the
Arctic.Taliaferro (Tarzan Forever, 1999, etc.), a former senior
editor at Newsweek, has packed his story with a host of vivid
characters: dedicated and not-so-dedicated missionaries, wheelers
and dealers, sea captains, politicos, stranded whalers, Lapp
reindeer herders, goldminers and beleaguered Alaskan natives.
Central to all this are the amazingly sturdy and resourceful Lopps,
Tom and Ellen. Unfazed by the murder of another missionary, they
try to bring both Christianity and a better life to the Alaskan
natives around Cape Prince of Wales. Sheldon Jackson, the general
agent for education in Alaska, had proposed importing trainable
reindeer, along with Lapp reindeer herders, from Europe, at first
to improve the lot of the caribou-hunting Alaskan natives, but
later as part of a grand plan to provide mail service and
transportation for white settlers. This plan was well under way
when, in 1897, a group of whaling ships became ice-bound in the
Arctic Ocean. With their crews believed to be on the brink of
starvation, San Francisco newspapers demanded that the federal
government act, and subsequently Treasury Secretary Gage authorized
the captain of a Revenue Cutter Service ship to contact Lopp and
persuade him to drive his large herd of reindeer several hundred
miles north in the dead of winter to come to the aid of the
whalers. Taliaferro weaves into one highly readable story the
travails of this Overland Relief Expedition, the life of plucky
Ellen Lopp and her ever-growing brood of little Lopps, the tale of
the stranded but definitely not starving whalers and the concurrent
gold rush that was to change Alaska forever.The grand but failed
scheme to make reindeer the camels of the north is in itself a
story that deserves to be better known, and Taliaferro does it
justice. (Kirkus Reviews)
In the fall of 1897, eight whaling ships became trapped in the ice
on Alaska's northern coast. Without relief, two hundred whalers
would starve to death by winter's end. Mercifully, an extraordinary
missionary, Tom Lopp, and seven Eskimo herders embarked on a
harrowing journey to save the whalers, driving four hundred
reindeer more than seven hundred untracked miles.
At the heart of the rescue expedition lies another, in some ways
more compelling, journey. "In a Far Country" is the personal
odyssey of Tom and his wife Ellen Lopp-- their commitment to the
natives and the rugged but happy life they built for themselves
amid a treeless tundra at the top of the world. The Lopps pulled
through on grit and wits, on humility and humor, on trust and love,
and by the grace of God. Their accomplishment would surely have
received broader acclaim had it not been eclipsed by two
simultaneous events: the Spanish- American War and the Alaska gold
rush. The United States and its territories were transformed
abruptly and irrevocably by these fits of expansionist fever, and
despite the thoughtful, determined guidance of the Lopps, the
natives of the North were soon overwhelmed by a force mightier than
the fiercest Arctic winter: the twentieth century.
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