From the Far North.
Sitka is the turning-point in the Alaskan summer cruise. It is the
beginning of the end; and I am more than half inclined to think that in
most cases--charming as the voyage is and unique in its way beyond any
other voyage within reach of the summer tourist--the voyager is glad of
it. One never gets over the longing for some intelligence from the outer
world; never quite becomes accustomed to the lonely, far-away feeling
that at times is a little painful and often is a bore.
During the last hours at Sitka, Mount Edgecombe loomed up gloriously,
and reminded one of Fugjyamma. It is a very handsome and a highly
ornamental mountain. So are the islands that lie between it and the
Sitkan shore handsome and ornamental, but there are far too many of
them. The picture is overcrowded, and in this respect is as unlike the
Bay of Naples as possible; though some writers have compared them, and
of course, as is usual in cases of comparison, to the disadvantage of
the latter.
Leaving Sitka, we ran out to sea. It was much easier to do this than go
a long way round among the islands; and, as the weather was fair, the
short cut was delightful. We rocked like a cradle--the _Ancon_ rocks
like a cradle on the slightest provocation. The sea sparkled, the
wavelets leaped and clapped their hands. Once in awhile a plume of spray
was blown over the bow, and the delicate stomach recoiled upon itself
suggestively; but the deliciousness of the air in the open sea and the
brevity of the cruise--we were but five or six hours outside--kept us in
a state of intense delight. Presently we ran back into the maze of
fiords and land-locked lakes, and resumed the same old round of daily
and nightly experiences.
Juneau, Douglas Island, Fort Wrangell, and several fishing stations were
revisited. They seemed a little stale to us, and we were inclined to
snub them slightly. Of course we thought we knew it all--most of us knew
as much as we cared to know; and so we strolled leisurely about the
solemn little settlements, and, no doubt, but poorly succeeded in
disguising the superior air which distinguishes the new arrival in a
strange land. It is but a step from a state of absolute greenness on
one's arrival at a new port to a _blase_ languor, wherein nothing can
touch one further; and the step is easily and usually taken inside of a
week. May the old settlers forgive us our idiocy!
There was a rainy afternoon at Fort Wrangell,--a very proper background,
for the place is dismal to a degree. An old stern-wheel steamboat,
beached in the edge of the village, was used as a hotel during the
decline of the gold fever; but while the fever was at its height the
boat is said to have cleared $135,000 per season. The coolie has bored
into its hollow shell and washes there, clad in a semi-Boyton suit of
waterproof.
I made my way through the dense drizzle to the Indian village at the far
end of the town. The untrodden streets are grass-grown; and a number of
the little houses, gray with weather stains, are deserted and falling to
decay. Reaching a point of land that ran out and lost itself in mist, I
found a few Indians smoking and steaming, as they sat in the damp sand
by their canoes.
A long footbridge spans a strip of tide land. I ventured to cross it,
though it looked as if it would blow away in the first gust of wind. It
was a long, long bridge, about broad enough for a single passenger; yet
I was met in the middle of it by a well-blanketed squaw, bound inland.
It was a question in my mind whether it were better to run and leap
lightly over her, since we must pass on a single rail, or to lie down
and allow her to climb over me. O happy inspiration! In the mist and the
rain, in the midst of that airy path, high above the mud flats, and with
the sullen tide slowly sweeping in from the gray wastes beyond the
capes, I seized my partner convulsively, and with our toes together we
swung as on a pivot and went our ways rejoicing.
The bridge led to the door of a chief's house, and the door stood open.
It was a large, square house, of one room only, and with the floor sunk
to the depth of three feet in the centre. It was like looking into a dry
swimming bath. A step, or terrace, on the four sides of the room made
the descent easy, and I descended. The chief, in a cast-off military
jacket, gave me welcome with a mouthful of low gutterals. I found a good
stove in the lodge and several comfortable-looking beds, with chintz
curtains and an Oriental superabundance of pillows. A few photographs in
cheap frames adorned the walls; a few flaming chromos--Crucifixions and
the like--hung there, along with fathoms of fishnet, clusters of
fish-hooks, paddles, kitchen furniture, wearing apparel, and a
blunderbuss or two. Four huge totem poles, or ponderous carvings,
supported the heavy beams of the roof in the manner of caryatides. These
figures, half veiled in shadow, were most impressive, and gave a kind of
Egyptian solemnity to the dimly lighted apartment.
The chief was not alone. His man Friday was with him, and together we
sat and smoked in a silence that was almost suffocating. It fairly
snapped once or twice, it was so dense; and then we three exchanged
grave smiles and puffed away in great contentment. The interview was
brought to a sudden close by the chief's making me a very earnest offer
of $6 for my much-admired gum ulster, and I refusing it with scorn--for
it was still raining. So we parted coldly, and I once more walked the
giddy bridge with fear and trembling; for I am not a somnambulist, who
alone might perform there with impunity.
It was a bad day for curios. The town had been sacked on the voyage up;
yet I prowled in these quarters, where one would least expect to find
treasure, inasmuch as it is mostly found just there. Presently the most
hideous of faces was turned up at me from the threshold of a humble
lodge. It was of a dead green color, with blood trimmings; the nose
beaked like a parrot's, the mouth a gaping crescent; the eyeless sockets
seemed to sparkle and blink with inner eyes set in the back of the
skull; murderous scalp locks streamed over the ill-shapen brow; and from
the depths of this monstrosity some one, or something, said, "Boo!" I
sprang backward, only to hear the gurgle of baby laughter, and see the
wee face of a half-Indian cherub peering from behind the mask. Well,
that mask is mine now; and whenever I look at it I think of the falling
dusk in Fort Wrangell, and of the child on all-fours who startled me on
my return from the chief's house beyond the bridge, and who cried as if
her little heart would break when I paid for her plaything and cruelly
bore it away.
Some of the happiest hours of the voyage were the "wee sma'" ones, when
I lounged about the deserted deck with Captain George, the pilot. A
gentleman of vast experience and great reserve, for years he has haunted
that archipelago; he knows it in the dark, and it was his nightly duty
to pace the deck while the ship was almost as still as death. He has
heard the great singers of the past, the queens of song whose voices
were long since hushed. We talked of these in the vast silence of the
Alaskan night, and of the literature of the sea, and especially of that
solitary northwestern sea, while we picked our way among the unpeopled
islands that crowded all about us.
On such a night, while we were chatting in low voices as we leaned over
the quarter-rail, and the few figures that still haunted the deck were
like veritable ghosts, Captain George seized me by the arm and
exclaimed: "Look there!" I looked up into the northern sky. There was
not a cloud visible in all that wide expanse, but something more filmy
than a cloud floated like a banner among the stars. It might almost have
been a cobweb stretched from star to star--each strand woven from a star
beam,--but it was ever changing in form and color. Now it was
scarf-like, fluttering and waving in a gentle breeze; and now it hung
motionless--a deep fringe of lace gathered in ample folds. Anon it
opened suddenly from the horizon, and spread in panels like a fan that
filled the heavens. As it opened and shut and swayed to and fro as if it
were a fan in motion, it assumed in turn all the colors of the rainbow,
but with a delicacy of tint and texture even beyond that of the rainbow.
Sometimes it was like a series of transparencies--shadow pictures thrown
upon the screen of heaven, lit by a light beyond it--the mysterious
light we know not of. That is what the pilot and I saw while most of the
passengers were sleeping. It was the veritable _aurora borealis_, and
that alone were worth the trip to Alaska.
One day we came to Fort Tongass--a port of entry, and our last port in
the great, lone land--for all the way down through the British
possessions we touch no land until we reach Victoria or Nanaimo. Tongass
was once a military post, and now has the unmistakable air of a desert
island. Some of us were not at all eager to go on shore. You see, we
were beginning to get our fill of this monotonous out-of-the-world and
out-of-the-way life. Yet Tongass is unique, and certainly has the most
interesting collection of totem poles that one is likely to see on the
voyage. At Tongass there is a little curving beach, where the ripples
sparkle among the pebbles. Beyond the beach is a strip of green lawn,
and at the top of the lawn the old officers' quarters, now falling to
decay. For background there are rocks and trees and the sea. The sea is
everywhere about Tongass, and the sea-breezes blow briskly, and the
sea-gulls waddle about the lawn and sit in rows upon the sagging roofs
as if they were thoroughly domesticated. Oh, what a droll place it is!
After a little deliberation we all went ashore in several huge
boat-loads; and, to our surprise, were welcomed by a charming young
bride in white muslin and ribbons of baby-blue. Somehow she had found
her way to the desert island--or did she spring up there like a wild
flower? And the grace with which she did the honors was the subject of
unbounded praise during the remainder of the voyage.
This pretty Bret Harte heroine, with all of the charms and virtues and
none of the vices of his camp-followers, led us through the jagged rocks
of the dilapidated quarters, down among the spray-wet rocks on the
other side of the island, and all along the dreary waste that fronts the
Indian village. Oh, how dreary that waste is!--the rocks, black and
barren, and scattered far into the frothing sea; the sandy path along
the front of the Indian lodges, with rank grass shaking and shivering in
the wind; the solemn and grim array of totem poles standing in front or
at the sides of the weather-stained lodges--and the whole place
deserted. I know not where the Indians had gone, but they were not
there--save a sick squaw or two. Probably, being fishermen, the tribe
had gone out with their canoes, and were now busy with the spoils
somewhere among the thousand passages of the archipelago.
The totem poles at Tongass are richly carved, brilliantly colored, and
grotesque in the extreme. Some of the lodges were roomy but sad-looking,
and with a perpetual shade hovering through them. We found inscriptions
in English--very rudely lettered--on many of the lodges and totem poles:
"In memory of" some one or another chief or notable red-man. Over one
door was this inscription: "In memory of ----, who died by his own
hand." The lodge door was fastened with a rusty padlock, and the place
looked ghoulish.
I think we were all glad to get out of Tongass, though we received our
best welcome there. At any rate, we sat on the beach and got our feet
wet and our pockets full of sand waiting for the deliberate but
dead-sure boatmen to row us to the ship. When we steamed away we left
the little bride in her desert island to the serene and sacred joy of
her honeymoon, hoping that long before it had begun to wane she might
return to the world; for in three brief weeks we were beginning to lust
after it. That evening we anchored in a well-wooded cove and took on
several lighter-loads of salmon casks. Captain Carroll and the best
shots in the ship passed the time in shooting at a barrel floating three
hundred yards distant. So ran our little world away, as we were homeward
bound and rapidly nearing the end of the voyage.