THE INLAND PASSAGE TO ALASKA.
[Illustration]
"The Inland Passage" to Alaska is the fjörd-like channel, resembling a
great river, which extends from the north-western part of Washington
Territory, through British Columbia, into south-eastern Alaska.
Along this coast line for about a thousand miles, stretches a vast
archipelago closely hugging the mainland of the Territories named
above, the southernmost important island being Vancouver, almost a
diminutive continent in itself, while to the north Tchichagoff Island
limits it on the seaboard.
From the little town of Olympia at the head of Puget Sound, in
Washington Territory, to Chilkat, Alaska, at the head of Lynn Channel,
or Canal, one sails as if on a grand river, and it is really hard to
comprehend that it is a portion of the ocean unless one can imagine
some deep fjörd in Norway or Greenland, so deep that he can sail on its
waters for a fortnight, for the fjörd-like character is very prominent
in these channels to which the name of "Inland Passage" is usually
given.
These channels between the islands and mainland are strikingly uniform
in width, and therefore river-like in appearance as one steams or
sails through, them. At occasional points they connect with the Pacific
Ocean, and if there be a storm on the latter, a few rolling swells may
enter at these places and disturb the equilibrium of sensitive stomachs
for a brief hour, but at all other places the channel is as quiet as
any broad river, whatever the weather. On the south we have the Strait
of Juan de Fuca and to the north Cross Sound as the limiting channels,
while between the two are found Dixon Entrance, which separates Alaska
from British Columbia, Queen Charlotte Sound, and other less important
outlets.
On the morning of the 24th of May we entered the Strait of Juan de
Fuca, named after an explorer--if such he may be called--who never
entered this beautiful sheet of water, and who owes his immortality
to an audacious guess, which came so near the truth as to deceive the
scientific world for many a century. To the left, as we enter, i.e.,
northward, is the beautiful British island of Vancouver, the name of
which commemorates one of the world's most famous explorers. Its high
rolling hills are covered with shaggy firs, broken near the beach into
little prairies of brighter green, which are dotted here and there with
pretty little white cottages, the humblest abodes we see among the
industrious, British or American, who live in the far west.
The American side, to the southward, gives us the same picture backed
by the high range of the Olympian Mountains, whose tops are covered
with perpetual snow, and upon whose cold sides drifting clouds are
condensed.
Through British Columbia the sides of this passage are covered with
firs and spruce to the very tops of the steep mountains forming them,
but as Northing is gained and Alaska is reached the summits are covered
with snow and ice at all months of the year, and by the time we cast
anchor in Chilkat Inlet, which is about the northernmost point of this
great inland salt-water river, we find in many places these crowns of
ice debouching in the shape of glaciers to the very water's level, and
the tourist beholds, on a regular line of steamboat travel, glaciers
and icebergs, and many of the wonders of arctic regions, although upon
a reduced scale. Alongside the very banks and edges of these colossal
rivers of ice one can gather the most beautiful of Alpine flowers and
wade up to his waist in grasses that equal in luxuriance the famed
fields of the pampas; while the singing of the birds from the woods and
glens and the fragrance of the foliage make one easily imagine that the
Arctic circle and equator have been linked together at this point.
Entering Juan de Fuca Strait a few hours were spent in the pretty
little anchorage of Neah Bay, the first shelter for ships after
rounding Cape Flattery, and here some merchandise was unloaded in the
huge Indian canoes that came alongside, each one holding at least a ton.
Victoria, the metropolis of British Columbia, was reached the same
day, and as it was the Queen's birthday we saw the town in all its
bravery of beer, bunting and banners. Our vessel tooted itself hoarse
outside the harbor to get a pilot over the bar, but none was to be
had till late in the day, when a pilot came out to us showing plainly
by his condition that he knew every bar in and about Victoria. With
the bar pilot on the bridge, as to save insurance should an accident
occur, we entered the picturesque little harbor in safety, despite the
discoveries of our guide that since his last visit all the buoys had
been woefully misplaced, and even the granite channel had changed its
course. But Victoria has many embellishments more durable than bunting
and banners, and most conspicuous among them are her well arranged and
well constructed roads, in which she has no equal on the Pacific coast
of North America, and but few rivals in any other part of the world.
On the 26th we crossed over to Port Townsend, the port of entry for
Puget sound, and on the 27th we headed for Alaska by way of the Inland
Passage.
For purposes of description this course should have been designated
the "inland passages," in the plural, for its branches are almost
innumerable, running in all directions like the streets of an irregular
city, although now and then they are reduced to a single channel or
fjörd which the steamer is obliged to take or put out to sea. At one
point in Discovery Passage leading from the Gulf of Georgia toward
Queen Charlotte Sound, the inland passage is so narrow that our long
vessel had to steam under a slow bell to avoid accidents, and at this
place, called Seymour Narrows, there was much talk of bridging the
narrow way in the grand scheme of a Canadian Pacific Railway, which
should have its western terminus at Victoria. Through this contracted
way the water fairly boils when at its greatest velocity, equaling
ten miles an hour in spring tides, and at such times the passage is
hazardous even to steamers, while all other craft avoid it until slack
water. Jutting rocks increase the danger, and on one of these the
United States man-of-war _Saranac_ was lost just eight years before
we passed through. At the northern end of this picturesque Discovery
Passage you see the inland passage trending away to the eastward,
with quite a bay on the left around Chatham Point, and while you are
wondering in that half soliloquizing way of a traveler in new lands
what you will see after you have turned to the right, the great ship
swings suddenly to the left, and you find that what you took for a
bay is after all the inland passage itself, which stretches once more
before you like the Hudson looking upward from West Point, or the
Delaware at the Water Gap. For all such little surprises must the
tourist be prepared on this singular voyage.
The new bend now becomes Johnstone Strait and so continues to Queen
Charlotte Sound, with which it connects by one strait, two passages
and a channel, all alike, except in name, and none much over ten miles
long. At nearly every point where a new channel diverges both arms take
on a new name, and they change as rapidly as the names of a Lisbon
street, which seldom holds the same over a few blocks. The south side
of Johnstone Strait is particularly high, rising abruptly from the
water fully 5,000 feet, and in grandeur not unlike the Yellowstone
Cañon. These summits were still covered with snow and probably on
northern slopes snow remains the summer through. One noticeable valley
was on the Vancouver Island side, with a conspicuous conical hill in
its bosom that may have been over a thousand feet in height. These
cone-like hills are so common in flat valleys in north-western America
that I thought it worth while to mention the fact in this place. I
shall have occasion to do so again at a later point in my narrative.
Occasionally windrows occur through the dense coniferous forests of
the inland passage, where the trees have been swept or leveled in a
remarkable manner. Such as were cut vertically had been caused by an
avalanche, and in these instances the work of clearing had been done as
faithfully as if by the hands of man. Sometimes the bright green moss
or grass had grown up in these narrow ways, and when there was more
than one of about the same age there was quite a picturesque effect of
stripings of two shades of green, executed on a most colossal plan.
These windrows of fallen trees sometimes stretched along horizontally
in varying widths, an effect undoubtedly produced by heavy gales
rushing through the contracted "passage."
One's notice is attracted by a species of natural beacon which
materially assists the navigator. Over almost all the shoals and
submerged rocks hang fields of kelp, a growth with which the whole
"passage" abounds, thus affording a timely warning badly needed where
the channel has been imperfectly charted. As one might surmise the
water is very bold, and these submerged and ragged rocks are in general
most to be feared. Leaving Johnstone Strait we enter Queen Charlotte
Sound, a channel which was named, lacking only three years, a century
ago. It widens into capacious waters at once and we again felt the
"throbbing of old Neptune's pulse," and those with sensitive stomachs
perceived a sort of flickering of their own.
One who is acquainted merely in a general way with the history and
geography of this confusing country finds many more Spanish names than
he anticipates, and to his surprise, a conscientious investigation
shows that even as it is the vigorous old Castilian explorers have
not received all the credit to which they are entitled, for many of
their discoveries in changing hands changed names as well: the Queen
Charlotte Islands, a good day's run to the north-westward of us, were
named in 1787 by an Englishman, who gave the group the name of his
vessel, an appellation which they still retain, although as Florida
Blanca they had known the banner of Castile and Leon thirteen years
before. Mount Edgecumbe, so prominent in the beautiful harbor of Sitka,
was once Monte San Jacinto, and a list of the same tenor might be given
that would prove more voluminous than interesting. American changes in
the great north-west have not been so radical. Boca de Quadra Inlet
has somehow become Bouquet Inlet to those knowing it best. La Creole
has degenerated into Rickreall, and so on: the foreign names have been
mangled but not annihilated. We sail across Queen Charlotte Sound as
if we were going to bump right into the high land ahead of us, but a
little indentation over the bow becomes a valley, then a bay, and in
ample time to prevent accidents widens into another salt-water river,
about two miles wide and twenty times as long, called Fitzhugh Sound.
Near the head of the sound we turn abruptly westward into the Lama
Passage, and on its western shores we see nearly the first sign of
civilization in the inland passage, the Indian village of Bella Bella,
holding probably a dozen native houses and a fair looking church, while
a few cattle grazing near the place had a still more civilized air.
[Illustration: SCENES IN THE INLAND PASSAGE.]
As we steamed through Seaforth Channel, a most tortuous affair, Indians
were seen paddling in their huge canoes from one island to another
or along the high, rocky shores, a cheering sign of habitation not
previously noticed.
The great fault of the inland passage as a resort for tourists is in
the constant dread of fogs that may at any time during certain months
of the year completely obscure the grand scenery that tempted the
travelers thither. The waters of the Pacific Ocean on the seaboard of
Alaska are but a deflected continuation of the warm equatorial current
called the Kuro Siwo of the Japanese; from these waters the air is
laden with moisture, which being thrown by the variable winds against
the snow-clad and glacier-covered summits of the higher mountains,
is precipitated as fog and light rain, and oftentimes every thing
is wrapped for weeks in these most annoying mists. July, with June
and August, are by far the most favorable months for the traveler.
The winter months are execrable, with storms of rain, snow and sleet
constantly occurring, the former along the Pacific frontage, and the
latter near the channels of the mainland.
Milbank Sound gave us another taste of the ocean swells which spoiled
the flavor of our food completely, for although we were only exposed
for less than an hour that hour happened to come just about dinner
time; after which we entered Finlayson Passage, some twenty-five miles
long. This is a particularly picturesque and bold channel of water, its
shores covered with shaggy conifers as high as the eye can reach, and
the mountains, with their crowns of snow and ice, furnishing supplies
of spray for innumerable beautiful waterfalls. At many places in the
inland passage from here on, come down the steep timbered mountains
the most beautiful waterfalls fed from the glaciers hidden in the fog.
At every few miles we pass the mouths of inlets and channels, leading
away into the mountainous country no one knows whither. There are no
charts which show more than the mouths of these inlets. Out of or into
these an occasional canoe speeds its silent way perchance in quest of
salmon that here abound, but the secrets of their hidden paths are
locked in the savage mind. How tempting they must be for exploration,
and how strange that, although so easy of access, they still remain
unknown. After twisting around through a few "reaches," channels and
passages, we enter the straightest of them all, Grenville Channel, so
straight that it almost seems to have been mapped by an Indian. As you
steam through its forty or fifty miles of mathematically rectilinear
exactness you think the sleepy pilot might tie his wheel, put his heels
up in the spokes, draw his hat over his eyes and take a quiet nap. In
one place it seems to be not over two or three hundred yards wide, but
probably is double that, the high towering banks giving a deceptive
impression. The windrows through the timber of former avalanches of
snow or landslides, now become thicker and their effects occasionally
picturesque in the very devastation created. Beyond Grenville Channel
the next important stretch of salt water is Chatham Sound, which is
less like a river than any yet named. Its connection with Grenville
Channel is by the usual number of three or four irregular water-ways
dodging around fair sized islands, which had at one time, however, a
certain importance because it was thought that the Canadian Pacific
Railway might make Skeena Inlet off to our right its western terminus.
On the 29th of May, very early in the morning, we crossed Dixon
Entrance, and were once more on American soil, that is, in a commercial
sense, the United States having drawn a check for its value of
$7,200,000, and the check having been honored; but in regard to
government the country may be called no man's land, none existing in
the territory. Dixon Entrance bore once a Spanish name in honor of
its discoverer, a name which is heard no more, although a few still
call the channel by its Indian name, Kaiganee. Broad Dixon Entrance
contracts into the narrow Portland Inlet, which, putting back into
the mainland for some seventy-five miles, forms the water boundary
between Alaska and British Columbia. From here it becomes a thirty mile
wide strip drawn "parallel to tide-water," which continues with a few
modifications to about Mount St. Elias.
The forenoon of the same day we entered Boca de Quadra Inlet, where
a pioneer company had established a salmon cannery, for which we had
some freight. The cannery was about half completed and the stores were
landed on a raft made of only two logs, which impressed me with the
size of the Sitka cedar. The largest log was probably seventy-five feet
long and fully eight feet at the butt. It is said to be impervious to
the teredo, which makes such sad havoc with all other kinds of wood
sunk in salt water. Owing to its fine grain and peculiar odor, handsome
chests can be made of it in which that universal pest, the moth, will
not live. It is purely an Alaskan tree, and even north of Quadra Inlet
it is found in its densest growth. As around all white habitations
in frontier lands, we found the usual number of natives, although
in this case they were here for the commendable object of seeking
employment in catching salmon whenever the run should commence. Their
canoes are constructed of the great cedar tree, by the usual Indian
method of hollowing them out to a thin shell and then boiling water in
them by throwing in red hot stones in the water they hold, producing
pliability of the wood by the steaming process, when, by means of
braces and ties they are fashioned into nautical "lines." The peaks
of the prows are often fantastically carved into various insignia,
usually spoken of as "totems," and painted in wild barbaric designs
(see page 43,) the body of the boat being covered with deep black made
from soot and seal oil. Crawling along under the somber shadows of the
dense overhanging trees in the deep dark passages, these canoes can
hardly be seen until very near, and when a flash of the water from the
paddle reveals their presence, they look more like smugglers or pirates
avoiding notice than any thing else. The genial superintendent, Mr.
Ward, spoke of his rambles up the picturesque shores of the inlet and
his adventures since he had started his new enterprise. A trip of a
few days before up one of the diminutive valleys drained by a little
Alpine brook, had rewarded him with the sight of no less than eight
bears scurrying around through the woods. He had an Indian companion
who was armed with a flintlock, smooth bore Hudson Bay Company musket,
while the superintendent had a shot gun for any small game that might
happen along, and even with these arms they succeeded in bagging a
bear apiece, both being of the black--or small--variety. Hunting the
little black bear is not far removed from a good old-fashioned "coon"
hunt, and not much more dangerous. The dogs, mostly the sharp-eared,
sharp-nosed and sharp-barking Indian variety, once after a bear, force
him up a tree to save his hamstrings being nipped uncomfortably, and
then he is shot out of it, at the hunter's leisure, and if wounded is
so small and easily handled by the pack of dogs that he can hardly
be called dangerous. Not so, however, with the great brown bear, or
barren-ground bear of Alaska, so often spoken of in these parts as the
"grizzly" from his similarity in size and savageness to "the California
King of the Chaparral." Everywhere in his dismal dominions he is
religiously avoided by the native Nimrod, who declares that his meat
is not fit to be eaten, that his robe is almost worthless, and that he
constantly keeps the wrong end presented to his pursuers. Although he
is never hunted encounters with him are not altogether unknown, as he
is savage enough to become the hunter himself at times, and over some
routes the Indians will never travel unless armed so as to be fairly
protected from this big Bruin. This Indian fear of the great brown
bear I found to be co-extensive with all my travels in Alaska and the
British North-west Territory. Mr. Ward told me that wherever the big
bear was found, the little black variety made his presence scarce, as
the two in no way affiliate, and the latter occupies such country as
the abundance of his big brother will allow. These districts may be
intermixed as much as the black and white squares on a chess-board, but
they are as sharply, though not as mathematically, defined, each one
remaining faithfully on his own color, so to speak. A new repeating
rifle was on our vessel consigned to the sportsman superintendent, and
he expected to decrease the bear census during the summer, so far as
his duties would allow.
About noon, after much backing and putting of lines ashore, and working
on them from the donkey engines fore and aft, we succeeded in turning
our long steamer in the narrow channel, the pilot remarking in reply to
the captain's inquiries as to shoals, that he wished he could exchange
the depth for the width and he would have no trouble in turning around.
Through this part of the inland passage sea-otters are said to be
found, and it was thought that one or two were seen by some of the
people on board, but no one could vouch for the discovery.
The everlasting mountain scenery now commences to pall and offers
nothing in the way of the picturesque except the same old high
mountains, the same dense growth of timber on their steep sides, and
the same salt-water canals cutting through them. A valley putting off
any where would have been a relief, and breaks in the uniformly high
mountains that looked as if they might be ravines, so persistently
became other arms and canals of the great networks of passage, that we
were any thing but sorry when a fog bank settled down about two hundred
feet above our eyes and cut the fjörd as sharply at that height as if
it had been the crest line of a fortification extending off into miles
of bastions and covered ways.
Early morning on the 30th found us at the little port of Wrangell,
named after one of Russia's many famous explorers in northern regions.
It was the most tumble-down looking company of cabins I ever saw, the
"Chinese quarter" (every place on the Pacific coast has its "Chinese
quarter" if it is only a single house) being a wrecked river vessel
high and dry on the pebbly beach, which, however, was not much inferior
to the rest of the town. Not far from here comes in the Stickeen river,
the largest stream that cuts through the south-eastern or "tide-water
strip" of Alaska. About its headwaters are the Cassiar mines of British
Columbia, and as the Stickeen river is the nearest available way to
reach them, although the traveler's course is against the stream of
a mountain torrent, the circumstance has made something of a port of
Wrangell, which nearly ten years ago was at the height of its glory of
gold-dust and excitement. Even at this distance the dark green water of
the deep channel is tinged with a white chalky color ground from the
flanks of the calcareous hills by the eroding glaciers, then swept into
the swift river and by it carried far out into the tortuous passages.
Every stream, however small, in this part of the world, with glaciers
along its course or upon its tributaries, carries this milk-like water
in its current.
With all its rickety appearance there was no small amount of business
doing in Wrangell, no less than four or five fair sized backwoods
stores being there, all apparently in thrifty circumstances. Indian
curiosities of all kinds were to be had, from carved spoons of the
mountain goat at "two bits" (twenty-five cents) apiece to the most
elaborate idols or totemic carvings. A fair market is found for these
articles among the few visitors who travel in this out-of-the-way
corner of the earth, and when the supply is exhausted in any line the
natives will immediately set to work to satisfy the demand. One huge
carved horn spoon was evidently of very ancient make and very fine
workmanship, an old pioneer of these regions who had owned it for
many years having refused sixty dollars for it from some curiosity
collectors only the year before.
From Wrangell we debouched westward by Sumner Strait, the wide
salt-water river that continues the narrow fresh-water river of
Stickeen to the Pacific Ocean.
Between five and six in the afternoon we are rounding Cape Ommaney,
where our pilot tells us it storms eight days in the week. It certainly
gave us double rations of wind that day, and many retired early. Even
the old Spanish navigators who first laid eyes upon it must have borne
it a grudge to have called it _Punta Oeste de la Entrada del Principe_;
all its geographical characteristics and relations being shouldered on
it for a name.
Early next morning we were in the harbor of Sitka, or New Archangel,
as the Russians called it when they had it for their capital of this
province. The strong, bold bluffs of the interior passages now give
way to gentler elevations along the Pacific seaboard, but the country
gradually rises from the coast until but a few miles back the same old
cloud-capped, snow-covered peaks recur, and as we stand well out to sea
they look as abrupt as ever.
Sitka is a picturesque place when viewed from any point except from
within the town limits. From the south-west, looking north-east, Mount
Edgecumbe (of Cook) affords a beautiful background against the western
sky, and when that is full of low white clouds the abrupt manner in
which the point of the mountain is cut off gives it the appearance of
being buried in the clouds, thus seeming several times higher than it
really is.
[Illustration: SITKA, ALASKA].
The harbor of Sitka is so full of small islands that looking at it from
a height it seems as if it could only be mapped with a pepper-box, and
one wonders how any vessel can get to her wharf. Once alongside, the
water seems as clear as the atmosphere above, and the smallest objects
can be easily identified at the bottom, though there must have been
fully thirty or forty feet of water where we made our observations.
On one of the large islands in Sitka harbor, called Japanese Island, an
old Niphon junk was cast, early in the present century, and her small
crew of Japanese were rescued by the Russians. Sitka has been so often
described that it is unnecessary to do more than refer the reader to
other accounts of the place.
Ten o'clock in the forenoon of the 31st saw us under way steaming
northward, still keeping to the inland passage, and _en route_ to
deliver wrecking machinery at a point in Peril Straits where the
_Eureka_, a small steamer of the same line to which our ship belonged,
had formerly run on a submerged rock in the channel, which did not
appear upon the charts. The unfortunate boat had just time to reach
the shore and beach herself before she filled with water. The Eureka's
wreck was reached by two in the afternoon, and as our boat might be
detained for some time in assisting the disabled vessel, many of us
embraced the opportunity to go ashore in the wilds of the Alexander
Archipelago. The walking along the beach between high and low tide was
tolerable, and even agreeable for whole stretches, especially after our
long confinement on the ship, where the facilities for promenading were
poor. To turn inland from the shore was at once to commence the ascent
of a slope that might vary from forty to eighty degrees, the climbing
of which almost beggars description. The compact mass of evergreen
timber had looked dense enough from the ship, but at its feet grew a
denser mass of tangled undergrowth of bushes and vines, and at their
roots again was a solid carpeting of moss, lichens, and ferns that
often ran up the trees and underbrush for heights greater than a man's
reach, and all of it moist as a sponge, the whole being absolutely
tropical in luxuriance. This thick carpet of moss extends from the
shore line to the edges of the glaciers on the mountain summits, and
the constant melting of the ice through the warm summer supplies it
with water which it absorbs like a sponge. The air is saturated with
moisture from the warm ocean current, and every thing you see and touch
is like Mr. Mantalini's proposed body, "dem'd moist and unpleasant."
It is almost impossible to conceive how heavily laden with tropical
moisture the atmosphere is in this supposed sub-Arctic colony of ours.
It oozes up around your feet as you walk, and drips from overhead like
an April mist, and nothing is exempt from it. Even the Indians' tall,
dead "totem-poles" of hemlock or spruce, which would make fine kindling
wood any where else, bear huge clumps of dripping moss and foliage
on their tops, at heights varying from ten to thirty feet above the
ground. An occasional stray seed of a Sitka spruce may get caught in
this elevated tangle, and make its home there just as well as if it
were on the ground. It sprouts, and as its branches run up in the air,
the roots crawl down the "totem-pole" until the ground is reached, when
they bury themselves in it, and send up fresh sustenance to the trunk
and limbs, which until then have been living a parasitic sort of life
off the decayed moss. This is shown in illustration on page 19, being
a view at Kaigan Village. Imagine a city boy tossing a walnut from a
fourth story window, and its lodging on top of a telegraph pole, there
sprouting next spring, and in the course of a couple of years extending
its roots down the pole, insinuating themselves in the crevices and
splitting it open, then piercing the pavement; the tree continuing to
grow for years until the boy, as a man, can reach out from his window
and pick walnuts every fall, and the idea seems incredible; and yet
the equivalent occurs quite often in the south-eastern portions of our
distant colony. Nor is all this marshy softness confined to the levels
or to almost level slopes, as one would imagine from one's experience
at home, but it extends up the steepest places, where the climbing
would be hard enough without this added obstacle. In precipitous
slopes where the foot tears out a great swath of moist moss, it may
reveal underneath a slippery shingle or shale where nothing but a bird
could find a footing in its present condition. There is wonderful
preservative power in all these conditions, for nothing seems to rot in
the ground, and the accumulated timber of ages, standing and fallen,
stumps, limbs, and trunks, "criss-cross and tumble-tangled," as the
children say, forms a bewildering mass which, covered and intertwined
as it is with a compact entanglement of underbrush and moss, makes
the ascent of the steep hillsides a formidable undertaking. A fallen
trunk of a tree is only indicated by a ridge of moss, and should the
traveler on this narrow path deviate a little too far to the right
or left, he may sink up to his arm-pits in a soft mossy trap from
which he can scramble as best he may, according to his activity in
the craft of "backwoodsman-ship." Having once reached the tops of the
lower hills--the higher ones are covered with snow and glacier ice the
year round--a few small openings may be seen, which, if any thing, are
more boggy and treacherous to the feet than the hillsides themselves,
lagoon-like morasses, covered with pond lilies and aquatic plant life,
being connected by a network of sluggish canals with three or four
inches of amber colored water and as many feet of soft black oozy mud,
with here and there a clump of willow brake or "pussy-tails" springing
above the waste of sedge and flags. In these bayou openings a hunter
may now and then run across a stray deer, bear, or mountain goat,
but, in general, inland hunting in south-eastern Alaska is a complete
failure, owing to the scarcity of game and the labor of hunting.
The worst part of Peril Strait being ahead of us, we backed out with
our long unwieldy vessel and turned westward, passing out late in the
evening through Salisbury Strait to the Pacific Ocean, ours being,
according to the pilot, the first steam vessel to essay the passage. A
last night on the Pacific's rolling water, and early next morning we
rounded Cape Ommaney, and entered the inland passage of Chatham Strait,
our prow once more pointed northward, the sheet of water lying as quiet
as a mill pond. About 4 P.M. we reached Killisnoo, a pretty little port
in the Strait. Cod-fish abounding here in unusual numbers, a regular
fishery has been established by a company for the purpose of catching
and preserving the cod for the markets of the Pacific coast. Here I
saw many of the Kootznahoo Indians of the place, who do the principal
fishing for the white men. Their already ugly faces were plastered
over with black, for which, according to the superintendent, there
were two causes. A few of the Indians were clad in mourning, to which
this artificial blackness is an adjunct, while the remainder followed
the custom in order to protect their faces and especially their eyes
from the intense glare of the sun on the water while fishing. Chatham
Strait at its northern end subdivides into Icy Straits and Lynn Canal,
the latter being taken as our course. At its northern end it again
branches into the Chilkat and Chilkoot Inlets, the former being taken;
and at its head, the highest northing we can reach in this great inland
salt-water river, our voyage on the _Victoria_ terminated. Icy Straits
lead off to the westward and unite with the Pacific, by way of Cross
Sound, the most northern of these connecting passages, which marks the
point where the archipelago, and with it the inland passage, ceases,
for from here northward to St. Elias and beyond a bold bad coast faces
the stormy Pacific, and along its frowning cliffs of rock and ice even
the amphibious Indian seldom ventures.