The United States Geological Survey has gathered a volume of information on the subject of the gold fields of Alaska. The object of the expedition was to discover the source from which the gold of the Yukon placer mines was derived. A belt of auriferous rocks, five hundred miles long and from fifty to one hundred wide, runs from the British Territory across the American line at Forty Mile Creek. It is the opinion of the Geological Survey that the gold deposits of Alaska will rival those of South Africa.
Returning to Skagway the gentlemen of our party were entertained at a banquet given by the members of the Chamber of Commerce, in their building.
The ladies were invited by Mrs. Bracket to her lovely home where a delightful luncheon was served. The leading ladies of Skagway were met at the home of our charming hostess[86] to bid us welcome to their enterprising little city.
An employe of the engineering department of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad is at the Portland hotel. He came in from Cariboo Crossing to celebrate the Fourth, and recuperate from a hard trip up the Watson river and along the foothills of the mountains to the Fifty Mile river below White Horse Rapids. Most of the country through which the party traveled is entirely new to map makers and no signs of trails, mess debris, chopping or other evidences of a previous visitation could be found. As a consequence a number of streams and lakes were discovered. Of the latter some are quite large and are teeming with large lake trout. The latter were caught in large numbers by throwing a common pickerel trotting hook, attached to a line, out into the lake and hauling it ashore. It was seldom that a cast failed to land a fish. Artificial flies had no attraction for them. In appearance these fish look very much like the mountain trout of Puget Sound, but are much lighter in color. The topographer of the party says they are identical with the trout found in the Adirondack lake regions.
[87]
The head chainman killed a huge brown bear, which, after being shot, made a furious charge upon him and was only laid low when but a few feet away from his slayer.
The lower lands of this country are almost entirely devoid of rock. The soil is an ashy sand patched with powdered limestone stretching over the country in white patches like alkali lakes. On the Forty Mile river declivity the country is cut up with huge pot-holes. Many of these contain lakes of the purest water, that gleam in the sunlight in green, azure and dark blue according to their depths and shades. A curious peculiarity of these lakes lies in the fact that their outlets and inlets are subterranean. They receive their supply from the bottoms of lakes above and their overflow percolates through their lower banks to lakes below.
The country swarms with ducks, snipe and other water fowl. It is now the breeding season and ducks followed by broods of ducklings may be seen along the edge of every sheet of water. Much fresh sign of bear, moose, mountain sheep and cariboo were seen throughout the country, but the noise attendant upon the progress of the party along the line of their[88] journey, gave all the big game a good opportunity to get out of sight.
The open coulées and plateaus of this country are waving with luxuriant bunch-grass, rye-grass and redtop, but the mosquitoes are in such untold numbers and so violent in their attacks that the pack horses of the party were too worried to receive much benefit in grazing. In places are woodlands of large spruce and tall lodge-pole pines, but most of the timber is scrubby and fit only for fuel.
No indications of mineral could be seen.
The night before the Fourth a large flag was planted on top of Mt. Dewey. The town was decorated with bunting and flags. Well dressed people thronged the streets. An oration was delivered from the grand stand and foot and horse races lent zest to the sports.
The town has two fire companies. These exhibited their hose-carts and ran a race, making an exhibition of their skill in handling the hose. Water is plenty, as it comes down the mountain side in a vast volume from a lake near the summit of Mt. Dewey and is piped over the town.
While the town looks and is new there was nothing to distinguish the celebration of the national[89] holiday from the same day in the States.
We are now above the line of night. It is as light as day all night. No light is needed as one can read at any time of night without it. The sun scarcely sets in the west until it rises in the east. At Summit lake, which is at the top of the mountains, there is no night at all, it being in latitude sixty north and longitude one hundred and sixty west.
The display of the aurora borealis each night is a scene never to be forgotten. Night after night the whole northern sky is aflame with a light akin to sunlight tempered by moonlight and enriched by the splendor of the rainbow’s glorious hues. The Tlingit Indians believe the aurora to be the ghost-dance of dead warriors who live on the plains of the sky.
The Skagway enchantress is a figure in stone high up on the mountain side resembling a woman. Her flowing garments resemble those of a stylish Parisian gown. The Indians formerly crossed the mountains at this point, Chilkat Pass, but this witch long ago enchanted the trail, so that it meant death to follow it. The Indians now turn aside here and follow the White Pass.
High above the enchantress’s head a bear, whose head is plainly visible, stands guard over her.
If you look long enough on a moonlight night you can see the Enchantress move, but she cannot leave the mountain. She cannot come down, yet Chilkat Pass remains enchanted.
The sun shone bright and warm, but a cold wave swept over the glacier. It was the beautiful Muir glacier.
We left the steamer in a little boat and were rowed to the shore, landing on the sandy beach. High on the sand lay an Indian canoe, a dug-out. Near by a party of Indians wrapped in their scarlet blankets squatted on the sand. They had come to meet the steamer and sell their toys, baskets and slippers.
A little black eyed boy had a half dozen young seagulls, in a basket, great awkward squabs. Their coats were a dirty fuzzy down like that of a gosling, sprinkled over with black dots. Their big hungry mouths and frowsy coats gave no hint of the beautiful birds they would be when they grew up.
When I paused to look at the birds their owner regarded me with interest as he sat with the basket hugged to his breast. Then the[92] young merchant held one up for my inspection, with the remark, “hees nice bird.”
“Yes,” said I, “hees very nice.” I had no thought of buying a seagull. What would I do with it? Then I remembered a little invalid boy whom I thought might be pleased with a pet seagull.
“How much you give?” inquired my little Indian boy.
“How much will you take?”
“Two bits.”
So, I paid down my two bits and picked up my baby seagull. Then my little merchant spoke up, “Him want basket?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think that I want a basket.”
The basket was paid for and my enterprising little Indian tucked the baby gull in with a wisp of sea weed and handed him to me with the remark, “Him all right now.”
How that gull did squawk when he found himself all alone in a big basket. What cared he that I had purchased for him the prettiest basket on the beach? He wanted his brothers. When we arrived on the deck of the steamer I hurried my gull down to the steward and gained admission for him to the cook’s department,[93] where he was cared for the remainder of the voyage.
is something of a novelty to be seated at the base of a glacier in July. From the Chilkoot to the source of the Yukon river is only thirty-five miles, but the intervening mountain chain is several thousand feet high and bears numerous glaciers on its seaward side. Forty miles west of Lynn canal and separated from it by a low range of mountains is Glacier bay, and at the head of one of its inlets is the far-famed Muir glacier. It is one of the many fields of ice which stellates from a center fifteen miles back of the Muir front and covers the valley of the mountains between the Pacific and the headwaters of the Yukon river. Nine glaciers now discharge icebergs into the bay. All of these glaciers have receded from one to four miles in the past twenty years. Kate Field says, “In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty air-holed ice that has fastened itself like a cold porous plaster to the Alps. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been frozen when about to plunge into the sea.” There they lay, almost free from debris, clear and gleaming in the cold sunshine of Alaska. The most beautiful of them all is the[94] Muir glacier. It is named in honor of John Muir, who visited Alaska in company with Mr. Young, the Presbyterian missionary, in 1879, and discovered it. This glacier extends straight across the fiord, presenting at tide water a perpendicular wall two hundred to four hundred feet above and seven hundred and fifty feet below the surface, making a solid wall of ice a thousand feet high and three miles wide.
I cannot do better than to give Prof. Muir’s own description of this wonderful mer de glace: “The front and brow of the glacier were dashed and sculptured into a maze of yawning chasms, ravines, cañons, crevasses, and a bewildering chaos of architectural forms, beautiful beyond description, and so bewildering in their beauty as to almost make the spectator believe he is reveling in a dream. There were great clusters of glistening spires, gables, obelisks, monoliths, and castles, standing out boldly against the sky, with bastion and mural surmounted by fretted cornice and every interstice and chasm reflecting a sheen of scintillating light and deep blue shadow, making a combination of color, dazzling, startling and enchanting.”
This is nature’s iceberg factory. The “calving” of a berg is a wonderful sight and one never to be forgotten. Avalanches and great blocks of crumbling ice are continually falling with a crash and roar into the sea, while spray dashes high and great waves roll along the wall of the glacier, washing the blocks of floating ice upon the sandy beach on either side of the great ice-wall. The great buttresses on either side as they rise from the sea are solid white, veined and streaked with mud and rocks, but farther in near the middle of the wall the color changes to turquoise and sapphire blues, blended with the changeable greens of the sea.
The upper strata of a glacier moves faster than the lower and is constantly being pushed forward, producing a perpendicular and at times projecting front. A piece of the projecting front breaks off and falls with a heavy splash into the water, then up it comes almost white. Now a piece breaks from the lower and older strata and comes up a dazzling green. Again a deafening roar as of artillery and a huge piece of ice splits off from top to bottom of the sea wall and goes plunging and raving like a great lion to the bottom of the sea, then up it comes slowly, a berg of dazzling rainbow hues. Such a one, as big as all the business houses in a village, floated toward the beach and the outgoing[96] tide left it stranded there. We ate a piece of it, ice thousands of years old, and drank water from a cup or pocket in its side.
The beach is strewn with rock, pebbles and bowlders carved by the icy hand of the glacier. Along the beach near the glacier, just above high tide, in the rocks and sand grow lagoon grass, laurel and beautiful clarkias. These brilliant purple flowers are named for Prof. Clarke, who first studied and classified them. They are sweet scented and belong to the evening primrose family.
The Tlingit Indians believe that mountains were once living creatures and that the glaciers are their children. These parents hold them in their arms, dip their feet into the sea, then cover them with snow in the winter and scatter rocks and sand over them in summer. These Indians dread the cold and always speak the name Sith, the ice god, in a whisper. They have no fear of a hades such as ours. To them hell is a place of everlasting cold. The chill of the ice god’s breath is death. He freezes rivers into glaciers and when angry heaves down the bergs and crushes canoes. When summer comes the ice spirit sleeps, but the Indians speak in whispers and never touch the icebergs with their canoe paddles for fear of awaking him.
Once upon a time glaciers plowed over Illinois. Manitoba and Hudson Bay were then great snow and ice fields, down from which swept the glaciers over the United States south to the Ohio river. Great rocks and bowlders were carried along and deposited here and there on the broad prairies. Many of these rocks and bowlders may still be seen in central Illinois, still bearing the marks of the glacial slide.
An odd old character in our neighborhood used to tell us children that those big flattened bowlders were left there for the good people to stand on when the world should be burned up. “Would they get hot?” we asked. “Oh, how could they when they had lain years in the heart of a glacier?” To all of our questions as to how he knew he always turned a deaf ear.
Our sailors rowed out and with ropes captured an iceberg which they said would weigh five tons and with rope and tackle hauled it aboard and put it down in the hold. Then they captured a second one not quite so large and after it was safely stored away we weighed anchor and steamed out of the beautiful bay, afloat with icebergs, many of them being larger above water than our ship. But one disappointment met me, not a polar bear was in sight.
A nunatak is an area of fertile land surrounded by ice. One of the finest on the Alaskan coast is Blossom island. It is quite a large tract of rich land covered with forest and brilliant flowers.
When Mr. Young (before mentioned) was missionary to the Hoonah Indians they appealed to him to pray to God to keep the glaciers from cutting down the trees on the bays putting into Cross sound. They said their medicine man had advised them to offer as a sacrifice two of their slaves to the ice god, but this they had done without any effect. They were greatly disappointed when Mr. Young told them that he could do nothing to prevent the glaciers destroying their forests.
is something of a novelty to be seated at the base of a glacier in July. From the Chilkoot to the source of the Yukon river is only thirty-five miles, but the intervening mountain chain is several thousand feet high and bears numerous glaciers on its seaward side. Forty miles west of Lynn canal and separated from it by a low range of mountains is Glacier bay, and at the head of one of its inlets is the far-famed Muir glacier. It is one of the many fields of ice which stellates from a center fifteen miles back of the Muir front and covers the valley of the mountains between the Pacific and the headwaters of the Yukon river. Nine glaciers now discharge icebergs into the bay. All of these glaciers have receded from one to four miles in the past twenty years. Kate Field says, “In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty air-holed ice that has fastened itself like a cold porous plaster to the Alps. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been frozen when about to plunge into the sea.” There they lay, almost free from debris, clear and gleaming in the cold sunshine of Alaska. The most beautiful of them all is the[94] Muir glacier. It is named in honor of John Muir, who visited Alaska in company with Mr. Young, the Presbyterian missionary, in 1879, and discovered it. This glacier extends straight across the fiord, presenting at tide water a perpendicular wall two hundred to four hundred feet above and seven hundred and fifty feet below the surface, making a solid wall of ice a thousand feet high and three miles wide.
I cannot do better than to give Prof. Muir’s own description of this wonderful mer de glace: “The front and brow of the glacier were dashed and sculptured into a maze of yawning chasms, ravines, cañons, crevasses, and a bewildering chaos of architectural forms, beautiful beyond description, and so bewildering in their beauty as to almost make the spectator believe he is reveling in a dream. There were great clusters of glistening spires, gables, obelisks, monoliths, and castles, standing out boldly against the sky, with bastion and mural surmounted by fretted cornice and every interstice and chasm reflecting a sheen of scintillating light and deep blue shadow, making a combination of color, dazzling, startling and enchanting.”
This is nature’s iceberg factory. The “calving” of a berg is a wonderful sight and one never to be forgotten. Avalanches and great blocks of crumbling ice are continually falling with a crash and roar into the sea, while spray dashes high and great waves roll along the wall of the glacier, washing the blocks of floating ice upon the sandy beach on either side of the great ice-wall. The great buttresses on either side as they rise from the sea are solid white, veined and streaked with mud and rocks, but farther in near the middle of the wall the color changes to turquoise and sapphire blues, blended with the changeable greens of the sea.
The upper strata of a glacier moves faster than the lower and is constantly being pushed forward, producing a perpendicular and at times projecting front. A piece of the projecting front breaks off and falls with a heavy splash into the water, then up it comes almost white. Now a piece breaks from the lower and older strata and comes up a dazzling green. Again a deafening roar as of artillery and a huge piece of ice splits off from top to bottom of the sea wall and goes plunging and raving like a great lion to the bottom of the sea, then up it comes slowly, a berg of dazzling rainbow hues. Such a one, as big as all the business houses in a village, floated toward the beach and the outgoing tide left it stranded there. We ate a piece of it, ice thousands of years old, and drank water from a cup or pocket in its side.
The beach is strewn with rock, pebbles and bowlders carved by the icy hand of the glacier. Along the beach near the glacier, just above high tide, in the rocks and sand grow lagoon grass, laurel and beautiful clarkias. These brilliant purple flowers are named for Prof. Clarke, who first studied and classified them. They are sweet scented and belong to the evening primrose family.
The Tlingit Indians believe that mountains were once living creatures and that the glaciers are their children. These parents hold them in their arms, dip their feet into the sea, then cover them with snow in the winter and scatter rocks and sand over them in summer. These Indians dread the cold and always speak the name Sith, the ice god, in a whisper. They have no fear of a hades such as ours. To them hell is a place of everlasting cold. The chill of the ice god’s breath is death. He freezes rivers into glaciers and when angry heaves down the bergs and crushes canoes. When summer comes the ice spirit sleeps, but the Indians speak in whispers and never touch the icebergs with their canoe paddles for fear of awaking him.
Once upon a time glaciers plowed over Illinois. Manitoba and Hudson Bay were then great snow and ice fields, down from which swept the glaciers over the United States south to the Ohio river. Great rocks and bowlders were carried along and deposited here and there on the broad prairies. Many of these rocks and bowlders may still be seen in central Illinois, still bearing the marks of the glacial slide.
An odd old character in our neighborhood used to tell us children that those big flattened bowlders were left there for the good people to stand on when the world should be burned up. “Would they get hot?” we asked. “Oh, how could they when they had lain years in the heart of a glacier?” To all of our questions as to how he knew he always turned a deaf ear.
Our sailors rowed out and with ropes captured an iceberg which they said would weigh five tons and with rope and tackle hauled it aboard and put it down in the hold. Then they captured a second one not quite so large and after it was safely stored away we weighed anchor and steamed out of the beautiful bay, afloat with icebergs, many of them being larger above water than our ship. But one disappointment met me, not a polar bear was in sight.
A nunatak is an area of fertile land surrounded by ice. One of the finest on the Alaskan coast is Blossom island. It is quite a large tract of rich land covered with forest and brilliant flowers.
When Mr. Young (before mentioned) was missionary to the Hoonah Indians they appealed to him to pray to God to keep the glaciers from cutting down the trees on the bays putting into Cross sound. They said their medicine man had advised them to offer as a sacrifice two of their slaves to the ice god, but this they had done without any effect. They were greatly disappointed when Mr. Young told them that he could do nothing to prevent the glaciers destroying their forests.
These Indians, the Kootznahoos, claim to have come from over the seas. They deny any relation with the Tlingits. They were the first Indians to distill hoochinoo, which carries more fight and warwhoop to the drop than any other liquor known. It is made from a mash of yeast and molasses, thickened with a little flour. They were great fighters and murdered the traders as soon as the Russians left. In 1869 Commander Mead shelled the village and took Kitchnatti prisoner. He was taken to Mare Island, California, and confined for a year. The tribe now numbers only five hundred souls. They are a peaceable people and follow fishing for a livelihood. Many of them are employed in the fish factory on the island. Kitchnatti is still the recognized chief, and is very proud of his position. He meets all the steamers coming in and is delighted to meet the officers of the vessels, all of whom are kind to him. He is quite vain in his dress, wearing a silk hat, long coat, black pantaloons and slippers. He also sports a cane, which is a sheathed sword. He claims descent from ancestry as old as “yonder granite mountain” which stands across the strait. His state dress consists of a crown made of goat horns and a tunic made of red felt trimmed with fur. Over his door he has posted his escutcheon, which some one has translated for him into English. It reads, “By the governor’s permission and the company’s commission I am made the Grand Tyhee of this entire illabee.”
On a green slope stands a Greek church, established by the Russian government. The priest lives in a tiny cottage next door.
At the wharf a dozen little Indian boys, dressed in sweaters and overalls, displayed much energy and skill in helping to unload the freight which was landed at this point. The first officer gave them fifty cents apiece when the work was completed and away they went to spend it, American boy like, at the candy store.
One of the most interesting things that I saw in the village was a little papoose taking his bath in a big dishpan on the front veranda. He did not like it at all and kicked and screamed but his mother without a word proceeded with the bathing.
Just off Killisnoo the steamer anchored several hours to give the passengers an opportunity to try deep-sea fishing. Some fine halibut were brought aboard. Then we weighed anchor and steamed toward the old town of Sitka. This ancient capital of the Romanoffs is the seat of the territorial government of Alaska. A strong effort is being made by the mining interest of Juneau to move it to that point.
Sitka is beautifully located at the foot of the mountains and commands a fine view seaward. The streets are not regularly laid out. Everyone appears to have chosen the site that pleased him best, regardless of his neighbors. Many of the buildings are old. At every turn one is made aware of Russian architecture. Several blocks from the wharf and directly in the middle of the street stands the Russian orthodox church of St. Michaels. The interior is richly decorated. Many rich paintings adorn the walls. A handsome brass chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Massive brass candlesticks stand on either side of the door. The interior is finished in white and gold, and the inner sanctuary where women may not enter is separated from the church proper by fine bronze doors.
The Sitka Mission and Industrial School was established by the Presbyterian board in 1878.[104] There are now enrolled sixty-four boys and forty-six girls. School continues nine months of the year. The boys and girls occupy separate buildings. The forenoon the pupils spend in the school rooms and the afternoons the girls spend in the sewing room and the boys in the shops. The superintendent called a bright boy about twelve years of age and asked him if he could show me about the grounds and through the workshops while he conducted a larger party in a different direction. “Yes sir,” and with a touch of his cap to me, led the way to the carpenter shop. Two young men busy at work at a long bench touched their caps and a “Good afternoon, madam,” greeted me. “Yes madam, I am a carpenter,” proudly replied one of the young men to my question. He was about eighteen years old, while his companion was only sixteen. In this shop the pupils make tables, chairs and all sorts of furniture. I was next conducted to the tin shop, where besides pots and pans, stoves are made out of sheet iron and scraps of any old thing that is left over. All of the stoves in the school buildings are made in this way. My young Indian guide next conducted me to the shoe shop.
The schools are having vacation now, so the[105] shops are not running a full number of pupils. The conductor and two pupils were at work, the former on fine shoes and the latter on heavy Klondike boots. Each boy has his own cobbler’s bench and a full set of tools. A third boy was sauntering about the room making himself familiar with his surroundings. The conductor of the shop told me that this lad had chosen the shoe maker’s trade and was to begin work on the following morning.
The boys all greeted me with a smile of welcome when I entered and bade me good-by when I departed. My guide said that the paint shop was closed, but he explained to me the object of the shop and the work done there. When I asked him if he had chosen his trade he politely explained that he had only been in the school a year and that he had not decided what he would like. The pupils enter for five years, the parents or guardian signing a contract to that effect. My guide conducted me to the gate, where I thanked him for his kindness. He gracefully touched his cap and said: “Good-by madam, I was glad to show you about.”
All of the dormitories, play rooms and school rooms are models of neatness. In the[106] girls’ building the bread was just being taken out of the bake oven. Thirty loaves was the day’s baking. The boys make the bread and put it to rise. The girls mould it out and bake it. The Indians are very proud of the school and come of their own accord seeking admission for their children. This school is making these Indians self-supporting and consequently prosperous. One sees many bright faces among them and the younger people are happy and contented, with nothing in their dress or manner to distinguish them from young white Americans of the same age. In an old blockhouse located on a rocky prominence overlooking the sea some of the boys of the school spend the evening hours in band practice. They played until eleven o’clock on the parade ground without a light, reading their music by twilight. The selections were choice and well rendered. They played “Star Spangled Banner” as an opening piece. Sitka is rightfully proud of her Indian band. The Indian is given his chance in this land of the midnight sun and he is making the most of his opportunities.
Opposite the Mission on the bank of the Indian River is a large square rock called the[107] Blarney-stone, which dowers the kisser with a magic tongue, but never a four leafed shamrock in all the merry dell with which to weave a magic spell.
The Sitkans, like all native races have a mythical legend as to their origin.
Two brothers, twins, lived in paradise. One of them ate a sea cucumber. It was the one forbidden fruit. The paradise became a wilderness. The brothers were starving when a band of roving Stickines came that way one day and pitying them left them wives to care for them.
From one of these pairs sprang all the Kaksatti, the Crow clan. From the other descended all the Kokwantons, the Wolf clan.
The legends of these Indians as well as all other tribes in this country, contain a full account of the landing of Columbus. The news was carried overland from post to post and tribe to tribe by runners. The history of the tribe at Sitka runs back five hundred years. Beyond that period they have no record and frankly say that they have no authentic account of their origin.
Their stature, their industry, their faith in the shaman, their belief in transmigration of[108] souls, all point to Asiatic origin. Their word for water is agua, much like the Latin aqua.
The Mission and Training schools have transformed these savages, whose ancestors murdered the intrepid Muscovites, into frontier fishermen, boatmen and loggers.
An Indian never willingly consents to have his photograph taken, because, when you have a picture of him, he firmly believes that you have power over his soul. The educated Indian, however, is fearless of the camera.
The Kletwantans and the Klukwahuttes, two branches of the Frog clan, are at variance over the erection of a totem pole and have gone into court to settle the matter. The Klukwahuttes are the true aristocrats of Indian society in Sitka. The Kletwantons are the wealthy members of the real Indian four hundred, but having made their money in fish and oil, are considered upstarts by their more aristocratic brothers. The Kletwantons decided to build a new home for the chief and to set up an elaborately carved and decorated totem pole. The eyes of the frog which was to surmount this wonderful pole were to be twenty-dollar gold pieces. A grand potlatch was to be held when the pole was ready to set up. All of the Indians up and down the[109] coast, from Juneau, Killisnoo, Skagway, Ft. Wrangel and Bella Bella, were invited, but the aristocratic Klukwahuttes were left out. Did they sit down and quietly ignore this insult? No indeed. They told their wealthy brothers in true American style what they thought of such conduct, and the matter would, no doubt, have been dropped here had not the wealthy fish oil makers denied that the Klukwahuttes belonged to the Frog clan at all. Upon this things grew so warm that the missionary appealed to the district attorney to aid him in making the Indians keep the peace. Then the disgusted Klukwahuttes went to him asking for an injunction to keep the pretended Frogs from holding the potlatch and setting up the pole. He replied to them that he would take the case upon them paying him a retainer of five hundred dollars, feeling sure that would end the matter, well knowing that they could not raise the money. Petitioned again he reduced his fee to two hundred and fifty dollars, feeling quite sure that they could not raise even that amount. But he reckoned without his host. In less than two hours the leading men of the Klukwahuttes filed into his office, carrying goat skin bags and pouches filled with money and[110] counted out the two hundred and fifty dollars in small coins, no coin being larger than a fifty-cent piece. The attorney was obliged to keep his word and take the case. The injunction was issued restraining the oil makers from building the house and setting up the totem pole. The potlatch, however, was held.
When the Juneau Indians arrived in their canoes off the shore the chief stood up and chanted their traditions to prove that they belonged to the Frog clan and were rightfully invited. When he had finished the leaders of the Klukwahuttes, who were standing on the beach, recited their traditions to prove that they and not the Kletwantans were the true Frogs. The Klukwahuttes, however, made no disturbance during the feast. Later the Kletwantans employed a young Boston lawyer who was stopping at Sitka and sued the Klukwahuttes for damages. Not wishing to be outdone by the aristocratic Klukwahuttes, they at once paid their lawyer a retainer of two hundred and fifty dollars. There the case rests. The lawyers are trying to settle it out of court.
On an eminence which commands a fine view of the harbor and the town, stood the Baranhoff castle, which was burned a few years ago. It[111] did not in the least resemble a castle. The picture makes it look like an old country inn. The ruins are still visible and the two flights of steps leading to it still exist. Around this historic ground cluster the scenes and incidents of the past century. The castle, like the island on which it stood, took its name from the Russian governor, Baranhoff, who in the early part of the century ruled the people with an iron hand, beginning with the knout and ending with the ax.
Not one of the intrepid Muscovites who landed here in 1741 were left to tell the tale of their capture and execution by the native Sitkans. In 1800 another party arrived and placed themselves under the protection of the Archangel Gabriel instead of trusting to the power of gunpowder and stockades. They too were massacred and their homes destroyed by fire. Baranhoff was at once sent out by the Russian government. He erected the castle and stockade, withdrew the town from the protection of Gabriel and placed it under the protection of the Archangel Michael.
This old castle was once the home of nobility and the scene of grand festivities. Here princes and princesses of the blood royal ate[112] their caviare, quaffed their vodka and measured a minuet. It was in this old castle that Lady Franklin spent three weeks twenty-five years ago when in search of her husband, Sir John. It was here that W. H. Seward spent several days when on a trip to Alaska after its purchase from Russia, through the sagacity of himself and Charles Sumner. At one of the windows sat the beautiful Princess Maksoutoff weeping bitter tears as the Russian flag was lowered for the last time. On the 18th of October, 1867, three United States warships lay at anchor in the bay. They were the Ossipee, Resaca and Jamestown, commanded by Captains Emmons, Bradford and McDougal. Each vessel was dressed in the national colors, while the Russian soldiers, citizens and Indians assembled upon the open space at the foot of the castle carrying aloft the eagle of the czar of all the Russias. At a given signal the American navy fired a salute in honor of the Russian flag, which was lowered from the staff on the castle. After a national salute from the Russian garrison in honor of our flag, the stars and stripes were hoisted to the top of the old flag staff.
The Russian parade ground has been converted[113] into a base ball ground, where Indian and white teams contest for honors.
The native races of Alaska are slowly dying out. The bright light of civilization is always the death doom of savagism.
The most beautiful natural park in the world lies just above Sitka, on the banks of the Indian River, which rises in the valley between the mountains and winding down, empties into the sea.
Here are the greenest of pines, cedars and firs. The grasses and mosses are the brilliant green of the tropics. A neat suspension foot bridge swings clear of the water from buttress to buttress. The shallow, murmuring, sparkling water bathes the brown roots of shrubs and trees. Great cedars lie prostrate, covered with short green moss. Giant firs are draped with a delicate sea green moss, which hangs in festoons and pendants from branch, limb and trunk. The pine tops sigh softly the music of the seas.
Sunny banks are yellow with the familiar cinquefoil, the blossoms of which are five or six times as large as they are at home. In open glades the ground is white with cornells, and tiny dogwood shrubs growing from two to five inches high. The wild purple geranium[114] brightens sunny glades, while the mountain spiraea, the most beautiful of all spiraeas, bends and sways in the breeze.
Thickets of salmon berry and wonderful mazes of strange ferns meet one at every turn. One of the handsomest bushes in the park is the magnificent Devil’s Club. There are great thickets of them twenty feet high casting an enticing but dangerous shade. The dainty green leaves, as large as dinner plates, rear their heads aloft, umbrella-like. The stems, limbs, and trunk are covered with thousands of tiny poisonous prickles, which work deep into the flesh, making ugly sores.
Down on the beach are the graves of Lisiansky’s men, who were killed by ambuscaded Indians while taking water for their ship, in 1804.
Friday evening we weighed anchor and steamed out of the harbor. The beautiful bay, with its beautiful islands, slowly receded from view and we bade farewell to the historic old town of Sitka.
Hamerton, in his charming work on Landscape, says: “There are, I believe, four new experiences for which no description ever adequately prepares us, the first sight of the sea, the first journey in the desert, the sight of flowing[115] molten lava, and a walk on a great glacier. We feel in each case that the strange thing is pure nature, as much nature as a familiar English moor, yet so extraordinary that we might be in another planet.”
I would add a fifth, sunset at sea. Earth holds nothing more fair, nothing more beautiful than sunshine.
A little while ago the sky was blue, flaked with fleecy white clouds, the snows on the coast range lay sparkling like diamonds in the sun, the forest lay dark and green on the mountainside, the sea gray and blue by turns; but now a change comes over nature’s moods, the clouds glow, the snows take on brilliant hues, the dark old forest grows darker, the sea shimmers and sparkles, a flaming molten mass.
The imperial sunset throws its red flame afar, ’till the land, the sea, the mountains, the sky, the very air it incarnadines in one grand flame of scarlet. Long, long will the beholder remember that glorious sunset at Sitka.
A friend of the writer who owns mines at Cook’s Inlet thus describes his voyage north along the coast to Unalaska:
We were now aboard the Excelsior. About noon the next day we put out to sea and saw no more island passages such as we had seen while aboard the Queen.
Our first stop was at Yakutat, an Indian village on the Yakutat Bay. This bay is only an indentation of the coast, curving inward for about twenty miles. The whole force of the Pacific sweeps into it. Landing is both difficult and dangerous. In the bay are always many icebergs from the glaciers at its head.
Great excitement prevailed here in 1880 when gold was discovered in the black sand beaches. The rotary hand amalgamators were used and as much as forty dollars per day to the man was often realized. The miners, however, had reckoned without their host; the[117] Yakutat chief, who suddenly developed financial ability worthy of his white brother, exacted licenses and royalties from the miners.
This black sand mine was not yet exhausted when a tidal wave heaped the coast with fish. These decayed in the hot sun and the oil soaked down into the sand. The mercury would not work and the miners moved to a new beach, but again a tidal wave ruined the mines by washing all the black sand out to sea. Yakutat was then deserted by the miners. The Indian women of this village are the finest basket weavers in Alaska.
Soon after leaving Yakutat we sighted Mt. St. Elias and the Malispania glacier. The Indians call it Bolshoi Shopka—great one. This snow-clad mountain, nearly four miles high, beautiful as Valaskjalf, the silver roofed mansion of Odin, is a most magnificent sight. Such grandeur, such solidity, such poetry of color,—the white peak kisses the blue heaven,—such solitude. Like the golden few of earth’s great ones, it stands alone, isolated by its very greatness.
The Malispania glacier which flows down from a great névé field in the mountains, is said to be the largest glacier in the world. It is[118] nearly one hundred miles long and thirty-five miles wide where it pours into the sea, and rises four hundred and fifty feet above tide water.
Orca, on the shore of Prince William’s Sound, lies snuggled up under the rugged cliffs, which rise sheer thousands of feet high. From the woods beyond a noisy river goes leaping down the rocks to the sea, where its power is chained to run the machinery of a cannery. That other Orca was a powerful sea dragon, especially fond of a seal diet, but this Orca preys only on the salmon.
Our next stop was at Valdes, where two years ago two thousand miners started for Copper River, to prospect for gold, but they were doomed to disappointment, as yet no gold has been discovered on this river. Many and sad are the tales of hardships endured by these miners. Some worked their way up the Copper River and down Tanana River to the Yukon, but by far the greater number returned to Valdes destitute. Many of the miners lost their lives on the Valdes’ glacier. In going to Copper River they had to travel eighteen miles across this treacherous glacier. Nine men lost their lives here last winter.
At Valdes is located a government expedition under the command of Captain Ambercrombie. The object of this expedition is to study the topography of the country and to make surveys. The government is doing much to aid stranded miners to reach Seattle. For thirty days’ work they are paid five dollars and given a free passage to that city.
Prince William Sound is a fine body of water. It is almost surrounded by land. Abrupt mountains rise seemingly out of the sea. It is deeply indented by fiords and inlets running back from ten to twenty-five miles. On the south it is protected by mountainous islands. In coming out of this sound we passed around Mummy Point, into the ocean. Presently we came to the Seal Rocks. They were alive with seals. When the engineer blew the whistle they went plunging into the sea, making a great splash. Whales and porpoises bob their noses up through the brine—descendants, no doubt, of that gallant crew of Tyrrhenian mariners changed by angry Bacchus to dolphins in that dusky old time when the gods held sway over nature’s forces.
From here to Cook’s Inlet we had rough sailing.[120] Neptune was out on a lark. We realized fully that he was king of the sea and that we were his timid subjects.
The crowning glory of Alaska’s natural attractions is Cook’s Inlet. Sheltered by a great mountain wall on the west, its shores enjoy delightful summer weather. Only the pen of a Milton or the matchless brush of a Turner could paint this fair empire of earth, sea and air. Glacier after glacier, frozen to the cold breast of the mountains, lay glistening in the sunshine. The finest waterfalls in Alaska leap from rugged cliffs and go singing to the sea.
A grand panorama of snowy peaks, smoking volcanoes, forested slopes, grassy glades bright with flowers and fertile valleys, lend enchantment to this wild Arcadia of the North. Goethe truly says: “Him whom the gods true art would teach, they send out into the mighty world.”
Moose graze in the open glades, mountain goat and sheep leap from cliff to rock and away. Extensive level plateaus line both shores of the inlet, which will make fine grazing country some day in the near future. The grass grows luxuriantly and in many places reaches a height of six feet. We traveled up the inlet seventy[121] miles to a branch of the inlet known as the Turnagain Arm, which is from five to eight miles wide and enclosed by high mountains. These mountains are covered with timber at the base. Tall grass covers the mountain side to the height of three thousand feet, sweet grass for all the flocks of some future Pan.
We landed at Sunrise, which is the largest city on the inlet. It has a population of one hundred and fifty, mostly miners. Hope, twelve miles away, has a population of seventy-five miners. Fine vegetables grow here. A storekeeper has a small garden. His potatoes are as fine as any grown in the states, some weighing one and one-half pounds. He has cabbages weighing seven pounds, and turnips weighing eleven pounds. Beets, peas and other vegetables are as fine as grown anywhere. People who have lived here during the winters say that the temperature rarely falls twenty degrees below zero, and that the winters are dry and without blizzards.
Moose, mountain goat and wild sheep furnish the towns and camps with meat, which is usually bought from the Indians, who are good hunters, but very superstitious. They are afraid of a giant who, Odin like, rides from mountain[122] to mountain on the wind, killing every Indian whom he finds traveling alone. White men don’t count, so if you wish to employ a guide to accompany you on a hunting expedition you must also employ a brother Indian to protect him, or he “no go.”
Farther south along the coast a black dwarf haunts the mountains, making life miserable for lone Indians. His arrows, like the magical spear of Odin, never miss their mark.
In the mountains north and west of the inlet a giant floats his birch canoe on the wind, from peak to peak, seeking lone Indians, whom he slays with the canoe paddles. This wonderful canoe, like that good ship of Frey, always gets a fair wind, no matter for what port its oarsman is bound.
This portion of the inlet, Turnagain Arm, is a treacherous bit of water. The highest tides rise fifty feet. Then there is the bore, which runs up just as the tide comes in, rising eighteen to twenty feet perpendicularly.
No boat can live in it. The tide usually comes in three great waves, one right after the other. The water is thick with mud, ground up by the glaciers at the head of the Arm and brought down by the streams.
[123]
There will be some good placer mines in Cook’s Inlet when the country is properly opened, but it has hardly been prospected as yet, owing to the difficulty in sinking shafts to bed rock on account of the water coming in so rapidly. It is necessary to go through bed rock to the glacier channels below for the main deposits of gold.
By timbering the shafts the water may be kept out. The soil and gravel taken out of a shaft which has just been sunk averages only twenty-five cents per cubic yard, but the owners intend to go through the rock to the channels below, where they expect to strike a rich vein, make their fortunes and return to civilization.
There is usually a light freeze about the middle of September, after which the weather is fine until the last of November.
The king of volcanoes in this region is Iliamna. Steam and smoke issue from two craters at the summit of the snow-clad mountain. During an eruption this giant shakes the earth to its very center.
This wonderful estuary was discovered by Captain Cook, on the natal day of Princess Elizabeth, May 21, 1778. He took possession in the name of her majesty, and buried his[124] records in a bottle at Possession Point. Vancouver searched for these records in vain.
Tramways, stone piers and decaying buildings speak in unmistakable language of busy scenes during Russian occupation.
Five hundred miles west of Sitka, on the shore of Kadiak, one of the emerald isles of the Alaskan coast, is St. Paul, the first capital of Alaska, and the center of the fur trade established by Shelikoff and Baranhoff.
The natives say that many summers ago the Kadiak Islands were separated from the mainland by a very narrow channel. One day a big otter attempting to swim through was caught fast. He struggled until he widened the Shelikoff Strait, when he swam triumphantly through. A bad Indian and his dog sent adrift on a big stone turned into the largest Kadiak, on the shore of which St. Paul is located. The Kadiakers are descended from the daughter of a great chief of the north, who, with her husband and dogs, was banished from her father’s lodge.
The forest on these islands consists of a few scattered groves. The grass, shrubs and mosses bathed in a perpetual fog are so brilliantly green as to dazzle the eye.
[125]
The dug-out canoe disappears here and boats of sea lion and walrus skins stretched over frames of drift wood lightly skim the blue waters of the cold sea.
As we steam along through sunshine and fog, past glaciers, mountains and fiords, “so wide the loneliness, so lucid the air,” we are reminded that the Ancient Mariner sailed the blue Pacific. Now the sun drops into the sea, lighting it up with a luminous glow. With a tremor and a sparkle the purple waves glimmer red, now shadow to a violet hue, and now to a crimson blue.
“Tries one, tries all, and will not stay
But flits from opal hue to hue.”
The volcanoes of Alaska! What a grand, what a wonderful panorama, as if you had rubbed Aladdin’s lamp. Expectation stood in awe when this giant upheaval was in progress. Enwrapped always in the mellow haze of white smoke and blue atmosphere, the cold clouds kissing their white brows, these sentinels old, like Wordsworth mountain, “look familiar with forgotten years.”
The prince of them all, Shishaldin, rises nine thousand feet, trailing his white robes in the blue sea.
[126]
The seventy islands of the Aleutian chain lie along the coast for thousands of miles. These islands are treeless, but green with Arctic grasses and mosses.
At Unalaska the Russians have a nicely built church. These Greek churches have no pews, the congregation standing and kneeling during the service. The priest in charge of this church speaks no English. These churches all pay an annual tribute to the patriarch in Moscow. This is all un-American. The Mary Lee Home, a Methodist mission, has a small school here.
The Aleuts, a kind, gentle people, suffered much at the hands of their Russian masters in the past. The Aleuts living in sod huts are the Crofters of America.
The fine flower of the fauna of Alaska is found in the valley of the Koyukuk River. Here tusks and bones of mastodons are found imbedded in the sand banks and gravel bars.
Since the discovery of gold in Alaska the Indians have saved many lives. Born and reared amidst these wild surroundings, where winter white and hoary stands ever at the gate of the North, wagging his shaggy beard, they have partaken of the very nature of their own rugged mountains. The long Arctic nights and the intense[127] cold have given these people hearts of steel and muscles of iron.
Are you ill? Are you starving? No mountain is too high, no snow too deep, but one of these heroes will climb the one or plunge undauntedly through the other to bring you succor.
In the chilly Arctic sea there lies a mysterious island, the home of the ice goblin, who kicked it loose from, no one knows where, so the legend runs, and towed it to its present location.
Its mountains are the highest, its gorges the deepest, and its fields and fiords the grandest in the world.
It was a most magnificent island before the goblin stole it and dragged it away into the great ice fields of the North. It was clothed in rich verdure. Birds sang, flowers bloomed, and gay butterflies hovered over them.
This was not at all to the goblin’s taste, so he threw a sheet of ice over mountain, field and fiord. In his ice castle on the summit of the loftiest peak reigns the great ice goblin, sending out storms over sea and land, and pouring ice, snow and glaciers down over the island to his heart’s content.
In the Arctic region a dark cloud called the[128] “loom of the water” overhangs where ever there is clear water.
The Arctic sea! The land of the midnight sun! What a fascinating subject! What an inexhaustible field for those three happy brothers, the poet, the painter and the scientist! The land of jötums, penguins and ice packs. The land where night kisses morning. The realm of bright-haired Aurora and sable-robed Niobe.
Returning along the self same route the mind never tires nor the eye wearies of the matchless scenery. Like a moving panorama, grand, austere, majestic, sublime. Here reigns Vidar, the god of silence.
Magnificent fiords indent the coast. The dark mountains rise to a vast height, their snow crowned peaks standing out clear and sharp against the blue sky.
Glaciers like huge giants clasp the mountains in their frosty arms, while their tears course down the mountain’s weather-beaten cheek.
Here and there a fleecy white cloud envelopes the summit of a mountain. A silvery thread comes creeping out over the rocks, loses itself in the pine forest on the slopes, emerges and with a boundless sweep plunges into the ocean.
All this wild scenery from base to peak stands mirrored in the sea-green water of the fiord.
At Skagway quite a number of miners came on board, bound for home. One hears from them many sad tales of the Klondike. One man aboard is dying of consumption and scurvy, contracted in the mining region. A purse is being made up to enable him to reach his home in Toronto, Canada. He hopes to live to see his wife and child. An impromptu entertainment in the salon netted one hundred and fifty dollars for the sick miner.
Another tale not quite so pathetic is that of Mike McCarty, of San Francisco. He bought a claim and paid all the money he possessed for it. When he went to have the lease recorded he was told that it was not legal, that the property was not his, but still belonged to the Queen. “Damn the Quane,” said Mike, “I bought it and paid me money for it. The Quane has nothing to do with it at all.” Then he was informed that some one had sold the claim to him under[130] false pretense and besides losing it he would get three months’ imprisonment for insulting the Queen. “Faith and how could I insult the Quane when I niver see her?” queried Mike. “All right,” said the magistrate, “you go up for three months and the claim still belongs to the Queen.” “Damn the Quane,” said Mike, as he was taken away to his cell. Mr. McCarty is on his way home, a ragged, penniless, but a wiser man.
These miners are bringing down a great deal of gold. One man who has made sixty-five thousand dollars in mining is taking two children to Seattle to be educated.
One lady has her bustle stuffed with paper money, another her dress skirt interlined with five and ten dollar bills.
Gold may be converted into paper money in Dawson City at the rate of fifteen dollars per ounce. Its actual value runs from sixteen to eighteen dollars per ounce.
Living is quite high at Dawson, owing to the long distance over which freight must be carried. Coal oil sells at seven dollars for a five-gallon can, bread at fifty cents a loaf, beefsteak at two dollars a pound, candles at one dollar each. This is an item in household expenses, as during the winter months it is twilight only[131] from eleven o’clock in the morning to two o’clock in the afternoon. Candles are used for lights in the mines.
There is plenty of gold in Alaska, but one must go equipped to withstand the winters and prepared to work his claim properly. Mining in Colorado and California is not mining in the Klondike. For various reasons mining in the Klondike is much more expensive than in either of the other places. The British mounted police are very vigilant, so that miners lose but little by thieving.
We arrived at Juneau at eleven o’clock at night. The sun having just set it was still daylight. Nearly the entire population was at the wharf, eager to learn the news of the outside world. We repaired to the opera house, where we attended an impromptu political meeting. The mayor presided and Judge Delany, judge of Alaska under Cleveland, set forth in a forcible manner the needs of Alaska. The speaker said that this rapidly growing child seemed to be somewhat neglected by legislators, mainly because Congress does not know her needs. “First of all,” said he, “we want the boundary line settled. We want every foot of land called for in our treaty with Russia in 1867. Until[132] the discovery of gold in the Klondike England had never questioned her treaty made with Russia in 1825. But when gold is discovered up comes England and plants her flags on our territory. Our government sent out troops and forced them back to the original line. Now let Congress settle it once for all. It interferes with business and until this question is settled we don’t know where we are ‘at.’ Next we want better school facilities. In Juneau we have two hundred and forty children of school age and room for only forty. This state of things exists all over Alaska. If Congress will give us half as much attention as is bestowed on the seal we promise to ask no more. We want some sort of government. We have no government and are not represented in Congress. Next we want more judges and more courts, instead of one judge and one district as now. We think that Alaska should be divided into three districts.”
Congressmen Warner, Dazill, Payne and Hull replied in short speeches and the meeting adjourned just at dawn, one o’clock. The opera house is lighted with electric lights and heated with a furnace. It has a parquet, dress circle and[133] boxes, and is a model from an architectural point of view. The acoustic properties of the hall are beyond criticism.
Leaving Juneau to carry on the struggle of leading Alaska to statehood, we board our good ship, the Queen, weigh anchor, and sail away.
The upper deck is the salon, the reception hall, the library. Here we leave our steamer rugs and chairs. Here we come for a better view of the mountains and the sea. Here we meet our friends. Here we may take a book and, snugly ensconced, pass a quiet hour. Many of us, however, found it difficult to read a single line or to enjoy our rugs and chairs for long at a time, for just as your companion has tucked you all snugly in, exclamations of surprise and delight from some other part of the vessel lures you away, as the ship turns her prow this way and that, now steaming straight ahead, as if she meant to knock that mountain from its seat, and now quickly changing her course, giving us a magnificent view down a fiord.
Everyone is reading, “David Harum,” and their comments are quite as interesting as the book itself.
Sweet Sixteen—“O, I do just love John and[134] Mary, but that stupid old David is so tiresome.”
A critic—“Literature, indeed. Where’s the plot? You couldn’t find it with a telescope.”
A judge—“Served his good-for-nothing brother just right.”
Pious looking old gentleman—“Good man, David, but he lacked religion.”
Business man—“Too soft hearted; ought to have kicked that idiot Timson out long before he did.”
An old farmer lays down the book and laughs until the tears roll down his weather-beaten cheeks. “Now, there’s a man as is a man. Knows all about farmin’ and tradin’ horses, he, he; traded horses myself, he, he, he; best book ever read, he, he, he.”
The first interesting sight to greet us on our way south was a group of small rocky islands, where more than a hundred eagles were fishing. Out they would fly by twos and threes, seize a fish in their talons, return to the rocks and proceed to eat him.
From Dixon’s Entrance to Milbank Sound lie the Alps of America, a double panorama of unbroken beauty two hundred miles in length. Green slopes reflected in greener waters. The shores rise perpendicularly from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet, above which snow-clad mountains rise as high again. Tall trees climb and cling to these rocky walls like vines and cascades come gliding out from snowbanks and go hurrying and singing to the sea, some like delicate silver threads winding down, others dashing mountain torrents.
Late in the evening a mist Jötun rose out of the sea and enveloped us, and the ship lay at anchor for several hours. The next morning the sun shone clear and bright. The clouds lay on the water like a veil of rare old lace flecked with pearls, diamonds and sapphires, caught up here and there by unseen hands and wreathed about the mountains’ snowy brows.
Scene after scene of wild beauty greets the eye at every turn of the vessel’s prow. Wild deer and fawn come down to the water’s edge and stand gazing at our ship. We ran into a school of whales disporting in the water and scattered them right and left. Flock after flock of wild ducks skim the water, to light in yonder cove. Flock after flock, battalion after battalion of wild geese swing along overhead, led by an old commodore, giving his commands with military precision, “Honk, honk,” until[136] the very air quivers with their joyous shouts and greetings. The cormorant is your true diver. Down he goes, a ripple, and the water is smooth again. While you are lost in speculation as to where he will reappear up he comes in some placid spot away beyond. If you guess that he will come up at your right he is sure to appear much further to your left. If you guess that he will remain under water two minutes he is likely to remain five. In fact he never does the thing you expect of him at all, but like Thoreau’s loon on Walden pond, he’ll lead you a merry chase if you board your canoe and attempt to follow him.
Seattle is now full of people on their way to Alaska, principally tourists, as the miners are now all coming down to rest or visit with relatives and to make preparations to return to the Klondike for the winter. Now that the Yukon and White Pass railroad is completed over the mountains to Lake Bennett the trip thus far is made in about four hours which formerly required four weeks over a rough, rocky mountain trail. Freight rates are much cheaper than when the Indians carried the freight over at twenty-five cents per pound. Living will be cheaper in the Klondike and more mines will be worked. Success or failure waits on the mining industry as well as every other, and the man who would succeed in the field must study the business thoroughly.
From a scientific point of view Alaska is certainly a wonderful country. From the point of development and commerce it gives promise of[138] becoming an important State. The possibilities in the way of development of its mineral resources and fisheries are incalculable.
Seattle is deeply interested in the boundary question. This city conducts the bulk of the northwest trade to Alaska and were England given a port at Lynn canal, Seattle would feel it keenly, as would Washington and other Western States. Congressman Warner says we have nothing to concede to Great Britain in the way of territory. That we stand on the right of possession acquired by the Russian purchase. England is anxious indeed to lay hands on the Porcupine mining district, which is considered as rich as the Klondike.
Traveling south from Seattle, we enter the grazing and fruit-growing district. Cattle graze on the hill-sides while the fruit farms occupy a more level tract. The fine cherries, known as the Rocky Mountain variety, are ripe now. There are three varieties; the sweet, the sour and the blood-red, seen in our market. The currant farms are of equal interest. The currants too are ripe. Boys and girls are employed as pickers. They enjoy the work and consider it great sport. The luscious fruit is placed in baskets and carried to the manager, who measures[139] it and sets down the amount opposite the picker’s name. The fruit is much larger and juicier than in the Eastern States.
Portland is the center of the hop belt. A hop field is quite as interesting, from a financial point of view, as a field of broom-corn. If the crop is a success it pays and pays well, but if a failure from blight or worm, it is likely to bankrupt the owner. So you see that a hop ranch is an interesting speculation. The fields themselves are beautiful, indeed. The varied shades of green, from the darker hues of the older leaves to the delicate sea green of the new tendrils as they wreathe themselves about the tall poles, or twine about the wires which in many fields run from pole to pole, forming a beautiful green canopy from end to end of the large fields. Not the least interesting part of the hop ranches are the store and dry-houses. The hops are dried by hot air process, and are then baled and ready for shipment. King Revelry holds high carnival in the hop districts when the hops are ripe. Everyone looks forward to this harvest with the greatest of pleasure. The invalid, because he would be healed by the wonderful medicinal qualities of the hops; the well because he would have an outing and be earning good[140] wages at the same time; the boys and girls, because it is their annual festival of frolic and fun; a time of camp-fires, ghost stories and witch tales. The real old-fashioned kind that chills your blood and makes you afraid of the dark and to go to bed lest the goblins get you “ef you don’t watch out.” The pickers camp in the fields and along the road sides. The hops are picked and placed in trays. Each picker may have a tray to himself or an entire family may use one tray. When the trays are full they are carried to the warehouse where they are weighed.
Plank roads abound in Washington. One-half of the road is laid down in a plank walk, which is used when the roads are muddy, so that when the roads dry they are ready to travel without that wearing-down process which is so trying to the nerves of both man and beast.
Oregon is the most important state in the union from an Indian’s point of view, for it was here that the first man was created. It is needless to say that he was a red man, and his Garden of Eden was at the foot of the Cascade mountains. That was long before the bad Manitou created the white man.
Portland is a larger city than Seattle. There[141] is more wealth here too. This city is the outlet for the immense crops of wheat raised in southern Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The fine peaches, plums, cherries, currants and apples grown here find their way to eastern markets. Wood is so plentiful and cheap here that every man has his wood-pile. (The little coal used on the Pacific coast comes from Australia.) The enterprising wood sawyer rigs a small steam saw mill on a wagon, drives up to your door and without removing the mill from the wagon saws your wood while you wait.
An interesting feature of river life in Portland is the houseboat, moored to the shore. Sometimes they are floated miles down the river to the fishing grounds. Most of them are neat one-story cottages and nicely painted. Nearly always there is a tiny veranda where flowers in pots are blooming.
An aged couple lives in a tiny houseboat, painted white, which is moored apart from the others. A veranda runs across the front of the boat and there are shelves on either side of the door. They have a fine collection of geraniums and just now the entire front of their water home is aglow with the blooms. Misfortune overtook these people and they[142] adopted this mode of life because of its cheapness. Another boat was moored under the lea of the steep bank. Up the side of the bank a path led to the top, where the children have built a small pen from twigs and sticks. Inside the pen are five fat ducks, a pair of bantams and a pig.
Portland is the third wealthiest city for its size in the world. Frankfort on the Main takes first rank and Hartford, Conn., second. The climate is delightful. In summer the average temperature is eighty, with always a cool breeze blowing from the sea or the snow-capped mountains.
The trip up the Columbia river to the dalles is a continuous panorama of beautiful scenes. On each side along the densely wooded shores are low green islands. Here and there barren rocks fifty to one hundred feet high stand, sentinel like, while over their rugged sides pour waterfalls. Ruskin says that “mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.” This wonderful river inspired Bryant’s “Where rolls the Oregon,” Oregon being the former name of this river—the Indian name.
James Brice paid a tribute of admiration to the superb extinct volcanos, bearing snow[143] fields and glaciers which rise out of the vast and somber forest on the banks of the Columbia river and the shores of Puget Sound. The Oregon chain of mountains from Shasta to Mount Tacoma is a line of extinct volcanos. A peculiar basaltic formation three hundred feet high stands at the gateway to the white capped Cascades of the Columbia river. Here a Lorelei might sit enthroned and lure to death with her entrancing music, sailors and fishermen. The Cascades are so dangerous that the government has built locks at this point, through which every boat passes on its way up or down the river. The Indian legend as to the origin of the upheaval in the bed of the river now called the Cascades runs in this wise: Years ago when the earth was young, Mount Hood was the home of the Storm Spirit and Mt. Adams of the Fire Spirit. Across the vale that spread between them stretched a mighty bridge of stone joining peak to peak. On this altar “the bridge of the gods,” the Indian laid his offering of fish and dressed skins for Nanne the goddess of summer. These two spirits, Storm and Fire, both loving the fair goddess, grew jealous of each other and fell to fighting. A perfect gale of fire, lightning, splintered trees[144] and rocks swept the bridge, but the brave goddess courageously kept her place on this strange altar. In the deep shadows of the rocks, a warrior who had loved her long but hopelessly, kept watch. The storm waxed stronger, the altar trembled, the earth to its very center shook. The young chief sprang forward and caught Nanne in his arms, a crash and the beautiful goddess and the brave warrior were buried under the debris forever. The Columbia now goes whirling, tossing and dashing over that old altar and hurrying on to the sea. The Spirits of Storm and Fire still linger in their old haunts but never again will they see the fair Nanne. The Indian invariably mixes a grain of truth with much that is wild, weird and strange. It was Umatilla, chief of the Indians at the Cascades who brought about peace between the white man and his red brother. He had lost all of his children by the plague except his youngest son, Black Eagle, his father called him, Benjamin the white man called him. Black Eagle was still a lad when an eastern man built a little schoolhouse by the river and began teaching the Indians. A warm friendship sprang up between teacher and pupil. One sad day Black Eagle fell ill with the plague.[145] Old Umatilla received the news that his son could not live, with all the stoicism of his race, but he went away alone into the wood, returning at the dawn of day. When he returned Black Eagle was dying.
Slowly the pale lids closed over the sunken eyes, a breath and the brave lad had trusted his soul to the white man’s God.
The broken-hearted old chief sat the long night through by the corpse of his son. When morning came he called the tribe together and told them he wished to follow his last child to the grave, but he wanted them to promise him that they would cease to war with the white man and seek his friendship. At first many of the warriors refused, but Umatilla had been a good chief, and always had given them fine presents at the potlatches. Consulting among themselves they finally consented. When the grave was ready, the braves laid the body of Black Eagle to rest. Then said the old chief: “My heart is in the grave with my son. Be always kind to the white man as you have promised me, and bury us together. One last look into the grave of him I loved and Umatilla too shall die.” The next instant the gentle, kind hearted old chief dropped to the ground[146] dead. Peace to his ashes. They buried him as he had requested and a little later sought the teacher’s friendship, asking him to guide them. That year saw the end of the trouble between the Indians and the white race at the Dalles.
The old chief still lives in the history of his country. Umatilla is a familiar name in Dalles City. The principal hotel bears the name of Umatilla.
On either side of the river farm houses, orchards and wheat fields dot the landscape.
Salmon fishing is the great industry on the river. The wheels along both sides of the river have been having a hard time of it this season from the drift wood, the high water and the big sturgeon, which sometimes get into the wheels. A big sturgeon got into a wheel belonging to the Dodon Company and slipped into the bucket, but was too large to be thrown out. It was carried around and around until it was cut to pieces, badly damaging the wheel. Now the law expressly states, as this is the close season for sturgeon, that when caught they must be thrown back in the water. “But what is the use,” inquires the Daily News, “if they are dead?”
A visit to a salmon cannery is full of interest. As the open season for salmon is from April first to August first, the buildings though large are mere sheds. The work is all done by Chinamen. The fish are tossed onto the wharf, where they are seized by the men, who carry them in and throw them on to long tables, chop off their heads, dress them and hold them, one fish at a time, under a stream of pure mountain water, which pours through a faucet over the long sink. Next they are thrown onto another table, where other Chinamen cut them up ready for the cans, all in much less time than it takes to tell about it. The tin is shipped in the sheet to the canneries and the cans are made on the ground.
Astoria, the Venus of America, is headquarters for the salmon fishing on the Columbia River. Joaquin Miller described it as a town which “clings helplessly to a humid hill side, that seems to want to glide into the great bay-like river.” Much of it has long ago glided into the river. Usually the salmon canneries are built on the shores, but down here and on toward the sea, where the river is some seven miles wide, they are built on piles in mid stream. Nets are[148] used quite as much as wheels in salmon fishing. Sometimes a hungry seal gets into the nets, eating an entire “catch,” and playing havoc with the net. Up toward the Dalles on the Washington side of the river, are three springs. These springs have long been considered by the Indians a veritable fountain of youth. Long before the coming of the white man they carried their sick and aged to these springs, across the “Bridge of the Gods.” Just above Dalles City lies the dalles which obstruct navigation for twelve miles. Beyond this point the river is navigable two hundred miles. Here, too, legends play an important part.
When the volcanoes of the northwest were blazing forth their storm of fire, ashes and lava, a tribe known as the Fire Fiends walked the earth and held high revelry in this wild country. When Mount Rainier had ceased to burn the Devil called the leaders of the tribe together one day and proposed that they follow nature’s mood and live more peaceably, and that they quit killing and eating each other. A howl met this proposal. The Devil deemed it wise just at this moment to move on, so off he set, a thousand Fire Fiends after him. Now his majesty could easily whip a score of Fiends, but[149] he was no match for a thousand. He lashed his wondrous tail about and broke a great chasm in the ground. Many of the Fiends fell in, but the greater part leaped the rent and came on. A second time the ponderous tail came down with such force that a large ravine was cracked out of the rocks, the earth breaking away into an inland sea. The flood engulfed the Fiends to a man. The bed of the sea is now a prairie and the three strokes of the Devil’s tail are plainly visible in the bed of the Columbia at the dalles.
Just across the river from Dalles City on a high bluff, stands a four story building, the tower in the center running two stories higher. The building stands out there alone, a monument to the enterprise of one American. He called it a shoe factory, but no machinery was ever put in position. After the pseudo shoe factory was completed false fronts of other buildings were set up and the rugged bluffs laid out in streets. An imaginary bridge spanned the broad river. Electric lights, also imaginary, light up this imaginary city. The pictures which this genius drew of his town showed street cars running on the principal streets and a busy throng of people passing to[150] and fro. As to the shoe factory, it was turning out thousands of imaginary shoes every day. Now this rogue, when all was ready, carried the maps and cuts of his town to the east, where he sold the factory and any number of lots at a high figure, making a fortune out of his paper town.
From Dalles City across the country to Prineville in the Bunch Grass country, a distance of a hundred miles, the country is principally basalt, massive and columnar, presenting many interesting geological features. Deep gorges separate the rolling hills which are covered with a soil that produces bunch grass in abundance. This same ground produces fine wheat and rye. This is a good sheep country and wool is one of the principal products.
Crater Lake is haunted by witches and wizards. Ghosts, with seven leagued boots, hold high revelry on its shores on moonlight nights, catching any living thing that comes their way and tossing it into the deep waters of the lake, where the water devils drag it under.
We spent two delightful days on an Oregon farm near Hubbard, thirty miles south of Portland.
We drove from Hubbard in the morning to[151] Puddin river. The bridge was being repaired, so we walked across, our man carrying our traps. We had just passed Whisky hill when we met our friend Mr. Kauffman and his daughter, driving down the road. We were warmly welcomed and after an exchange of greetings we drove back with them to their home, where we partook of such a dinner as only true hospitality can offer.
Mr. Kauffman owns three hundred acres of fine farming land. There is no better land anywhere on the Pacific coast than in this beautiful valley of the Willamette river. Beautiful flowers and shrubs of all sorts in fine contrast to the green lawn surround the house, which is painted white, as Ruskin says all houses should be when set among green trees. Near by is a spring of pure mountain water. In the woods pasture beyond the spring pheasants fly up and away at your approach. Tall ferns nod and sway in the wind, while giant firs beautiful enough for the home of a hamadryad lend an enticing shade at noontime.
If any part of an Oregon farm can be more interesting than another it is the orchard, where apple, peach, plum, pear and cherry trees vie with each other in producing perfect[152] fruit. Grapes, too, reach perfection in this delightful climate. One vine in Mr. Kauffman’s vineyard measures eighteen inches in circumference. The dryhouse where the prunes are dried for market is situated on the south side of the orchard. No little care and skill is required to dry this fruit properly.
Wednesday morning we reluctantly bade good-by to our kind hostess and departed with Mr. Kauffman for Woodburn, where we took the train for Portland. The drive of ten miles took us through a fine farming district. Here farms may be seen in all stages of advancement from the “slashing” process, which is the first step in making a farm in this wooded country, to the perfect field of wheat, rye, barley or hops.
Arriving at Woodburn we lunched at a tidy little restaurant. The train came all too soon and we regretfully bade our host farewell.
The memory of that delightful visit will linger with us as long as life shall last.
There are few regions in the West to-day where game is as abundant as in times past. Yet there are a few spots where sport of the old time sort may be had, and the lake district of Southern Oregon is one of these. Here, deer and bear abound as in days of yore, while[153] grouse, squirrel, mallard duck and partridge are most plentiful.
Fort Klamath lake is a beautiful sheet of water, sixty miles long by thirty wide. Among the tules in the marshes the mallard is at home, while grouse and nut brown partridge by the thousands glide through the grass. Fish lake speaks for itself, while the very name, Lake of the Woods, carries with it an enticing invitation to partake of its hospitality and royal sport.
Travel is an educator. It gives one a broader view of life and one soon comes to realize that this great world swinging in space is a vast field where millions and millions of souls are traveling each his own road, all doing different things, all good, all interesting.
In our journeyings we have met many interesting people, but none more interesting than Miss McFarland, whom we met on our voyage up the Columbia river. Miss McFarland was the first American child born in Juneau, Alaska.
Her only playmates were Indian children. She speaks the language like a native and was for years her father’s interpreter in his mission work. She has lived the greater part of her life on the Hoonah islands. The Hoonah[154] Indians are the wealthiest Indians in America. Having all become Christians they removed the last totem pole two years ago.
Reminiscences of Miss McFarland’s childhood days among the Indians of Alaska would make interesting reading.
The old people as well as the children attend the mission schools. One day an old chief came in asking to be taught to read. He came quite regularly until the close of the school for the summer vacation. The opening of the school in the autumn saw the old man in his place, but his eyes had failed. He could not see to read and was in despair. Being advised to consult an optician he did so and triumphantly returned with a pair of “white man’s eyes.”
Upon one occasion Miss McFarland’s mother gave a Christmas dinner to the old people of her mission. It is a custom of the Indians to carry away from the feast all of the food which has not been eaten. One old man had forgotten his basket, but what matter, Indian ingenuity came to his aid. Stepping outside the door he removed his coat and taking off his dress shirt triumphantly presented it as a substitute in which to carry home his share of the good things of the feast.
These Indians believe that earthquakes are caused by an old man who shakes the earth. Compare this with Norse Mythology. When the gods had made the unfortunate Loke fast with strong cords, a serpent was suspended over him in such a manner that the venom fell into his face causing him to writhe and twist so violently that the whole earth shook.
When Miss McFarland left her home in Hoonah last fall to attend Mill’s college every Indian child in the neighborhood came to say good-by. They brought all sorts of presents and with many tears bade her a long farewell. “Edna go away?” “Ah! Oh! Me so sorry.” “Edna no more come back?” “We no more happy now Edna gone,” “No more happy, Oh! Oh!” “Edna no more come back.” “Oh, good-by, Edna, good-by.”
Every Christmas brings Miss McFarland many tokens of affection from her former playmates. Pin cushions, beaded slippers, baskets, rugs, beaded portemonnaies. Always something made with their own hands.
Miss McFarland’s name, through that of her parents, is indissolubly connected with Indian advancement in Alaska.
One meets curious people, too, in traveling.[156] In the parlor at the hotel one evening a party of tourists were discussing the point of extending their trip to Alaska. The yeas and nays were about equal when up spoke a flashily dressed little woman, “Well,” said she, “what is there to see when you get there?” That woman belongs to the class with some of our fellow passengers, both men and women who sat wrapped in furs and rugs from breakfast to luncheon and from luncheon to dinner reading “A Woman’s Revenge,” “Blind Love,” and “Maude Percy’s Secret,” perfectly oblivious to the grandest scenery on the American Continent, scenery which every year numbers of foreigners cross continents and seas to behold.
One of our fellow travelers is a German physician who is spending the summer on the coast. He is deeply interested in the woman question in America. He is quite sure that American women have too much liberty. “Why,” said he, “they manage everything. They rule the home, the children and their husbands, too. Why, madam, it is outrageous. Now surely the man ought to be the head of the house and manage the children and the wife too, she belongs to him, doesn’t she?”
“Not in America,” we replied, “the men are too busy, and besides they enjoy having their homes managed for them. Then, too, the women are too independent.”
“That is just what I say, madam, they have too much liberty, they are too independent. They go everywhere they like, do everything they like and ask no man nothings at all.”
My German friend evidently thinks that unless this wholesale independence of women is checked our country will go to destruction. The war with Spain does not compare with it. I am wondering yet if our critic’s wife is one of those independent American women.
Just below Portland on the banks of the Willamette river and connected with Portland by an electric street railway stands the first capital of Oregon, Oregon City, the stronghold of the Hudson Bay Company, which aided England in so nearly wrenching that vast territory from the United States.
This quaint old town is rapidly taking on the marks of age. The warehouse of that mighty fur company stands at the wharf, weather beaten and silent. No busy throng of trappers, traders and Indians awaken its echoes with[158] barter and jest. No fur loaded canoe glides down the river. No camp fire smoke curls up over the dark pine tops.
The Indian with his blanket, the trapper with his snares and the trader with his wares have all disappeared before the march of a newer civilization. The camp fire has given place to the chimney; the blanket to the overcoat; the trader to the merchant and the game preserves to fields of waving grain.
The lonely old warehouse looks down in dignified silence on the busy scenes of a city full of American push and go.
All the forenoon the drowsy porter sat on his stool at the door of the sleeper, ever and anon peering down the aisle or scanning the features of the passengers.
What could be the cause of his anxiety? Was he a detective in disguise? Had some one been robbed the night before? Had some one forgotten to pay for services rendered? Had that handsome man run away with the beautiful fair haired woman at his side? Visions of the meeting with an irate father at the next station dawned on the horizon.
The train whirled on and still the porter kept up his vigilance.
It was nearly noon when I stepped across to my own section and picked up my shoes. The sleepy porter was wide awake now. His face was a study. For one brief moment I was sure that he was a detective and that he thought he had caught the rogue for whom he was looking.
“Them your shoes, Madam?” said he approaching me.
“Yes.”
“Why, Madam, I’ve been waitin’ here all mornin’ for the owner to come and get ’em.”
Ah, now I understood. He was responsible for the shoes and he thought that they belonged to a man. Fifty cents passed into the faithful black hands and my porter disappeared with just a hint of a smile on his face.