HOMEWARD BOUND.
Life on the waveless arms of the ocean has a great fascination for one
on these Alaska trips, and crowded with novelty, incidents, and
surprises as each day is, the cruise seems all too short when the end
approaches. One dreads to get to land again and end the easy, idle
wandering through the long archipelago. A voyage is but one protracted
marine picnic and an unbroken succession of memorable days. Where in all
the list of them to place the red letter or the white stone puzzles one.
The passengers beg the captain to reverse the engines, or boldly turn
back and keep up the cruise until the autumn gales make us willing to
return to the region of earthly cares and responsibilities, daily mails
and telegraph wires. The long, nightless days never lose their spell,
and in retrospect the wonders of the northland appear the greater. The
weeks of continuous travel over deep, placid waters in the midst of
magnificent scenery might be a journey of exploration on a new
continent, so different is it from anything else in American travel.
Seldom is anything but an Indian canoe met, for days no signs of a
settlement are seen along the quiet fiords, and, making nocturnal visits
to small fisheries, only the unbroken wilderness is in sight during
waking hours. The anchoring in strange places, the going to and fro in
small boats, the queer people, the strange life, the peculiar
fascination of the frontier, and the novelty of the whole thing, affect
one strongly. Each arm of the sea and the unknown, unexplored wilderness
that lies back of every mile of shore continually tempt the imagination.
Along these winding channels in “the sea of mountains,” only the rushing
tides ever stir the surface of the waters where the surveyor’s line
drops one hundred, two hundred, and four hundred fathoms without finding
bottom, and the navigator casts his lead for miles without finding
anchorage. All piloting is by sight, and when clouds, fogs, or the long
winter nights of inky darkness obscure the landmarks, the fog whistle is
kept going according to regulation, and the ship’s course determined by
the echoes flung back from the hidden mountains. Such feats in time of
fog gave zest to ship life, and Captain Carroll, who performed them, was
accused of being the original of Mark Twain’s man, who made a collection
of echoes. At every place in Alaska he had a particular echo that he
brought out with the cannon’s salute. At Fort Wrangell the hills
repeated the shot five times; and at Juneau it came back seven times,
before dying away in a long roll. At Sitka there was the din of a naval
battle when the cannon was fired point blank at Mt. Verstovaia, and up
among the glaciers, the echoes drowned the thunder of the falling ice.
Captain Carroll, for so many years in command of the mail steamer on
this Alaska route, is a genius in his way, and a character, a typical
sea captain, a fine navigator, and a bold and daring commander, whose
skill and experience have carried his ships through the thousand dangers
of the Alaska coast. He is a strict disciplinarian, whose authority is
supreme, and the etiquette of the bridge and quarter-deck is severely
maintained. When he leaves the deck and lays aside his official
countenance, the children play and tumble over him and cling to him, and
he is a merciless joker with the elders. He is possessed of a fund of
stories and adventures that would make the fortune of a wit or
_raconteur_ on shore, and their momentary piquancy, as of salt water and
stiff winds, makes it impossible for one to repeat them well. His fish
stories are unequalled, and the despair of the most accomplished
anglers. He leaves nothing undone to promote the pleasure and comfort of
his passengers, who are in a sense his guests during the three or four
weeks of a summer pleasure trip, and gold watches and several sets of
resolutions have expressed appreciation of his courtesy and attentions
to travellers. He is deeply interested in the welfare of the region that
he has seen slowly awakening to the march of progress, and, being so
identified with these early days and the development of the territory,
is destined to live as an historic figure in Alaskan annals.
The pilot, Captain George, is everyone’s friend, and his patience and
good nature have to stand the strain of a steady questioning and
cross-examination from the beginning to the end of a cruise. He is
appealed to for all the heights, depths, distances, and names along the
route; and finally, when everyone has bought a large Hydrographic Office
chart of Alaska, Captain George is asked to mark out the ship’s course
through the maze of island channels. He has been pilot for twenty years
on the northwest coast, and Mr. Seward and many others who saw the
country under his guidance speak of him as a Russian. As his early home
in “the States” was at Oshkosh, one can understand how that
foreign-sounding name misled people. He, as well as all of the ship’s
officers, keeps a log of each cruise, and Captain George has furnished
many notes and notices for the Coast Survey publications, and helps the
memory of the tourists, who keep some of the most remarkable journals
and diaries for the first few days of the cruise.
A character in the lower rank on one trip was the captain’s boy, “John,”
a faithful henchman and valet, whose devotion and attachment to his
master were quite wonderful. John is a Swede by birth, and his pale-blue
eyes, fair complexion, and light hair were offset by a continuous array
of spotlessly white jackets and ties. In the most Northern latitudes
John would trip about the deck with his spry and jaunty tread, clad in
these snowy habiliments of the tropics, and after a ramble among Indian
lodges on shore, John would appear to our enraptured eyes as the very
apotheosis of cleanliness and starchy perfection. At luncheon one day
John set two pies before the captain, and announcing them as “mince and
apple,” withdrew deferentially behind his master’s chair. “Which is the
apple pie, John?” asked the captain, as he held a knife suspended over a
disk of golden crust. “The starboard pie, sir,” said John respectfully,
and with a seriousness that robbed the thing of any intention.
Two deck passengers that enlivened the return trip of the _Idaho_ were
small black bear cubs four or five months old. There was always high
revel on the hurricane deck during the “dog watches” when the bears were
fed, and cakes and lumps of sugar from the cabin table enticed them to
play pranks. The treacherous young bruin bought at Chilkat grew fat on
the voyage, and was twice the size of a little stunted cub bought of a
trader at Fort Wrangell. The Chilkat cub climbed the rigging like a born
sailor after a fortnight’s training, but much teasing made him surly and
suspicious, and he would run for the ratlines at sight of a man. For the
ladies, who fed them on sugar and salmon berries, both bears showed a
great fondness, and the two clumsy pets would trot around the deck after
them as tamely as kittens, and stand up and beg for sugar plainly. The
little Fort Wrangell bear would crawl up on a bench beside one, and make
plaintive groans until it was petted, and it would sun itself
contentedly there for hours. They were amiable playfellows together, but
they were puzzled and bewitched by the agile little toy-terrier “Toots,”
who lived on an afghan in the captain’s cabin. That aristocratic little
mite of a dog delighted to caper around and bewilder the bears with his
quick motions, and it was a funny by-play to watch these young animals
together. One evening in the Gulf of Georgia, we lingered on deck to
watch a stormy, crimson sunset, and after that, when the moon rose like
a fiery ball from the water, and faded to pale gold and silver in the
zenith, the company grew musical and sang in enthusiastic chorus all the
good old sea songs. With the first notes of the music the bears came
pattering out, and, circling gravely before the singers, lay down,
folded their forepaws before them in the most human attitude and
listened attentively to “Nancy Lee” and “John Brown.” Two young fawns,
caught as they were swimming the channel near Fort Wrangell one morning,
were quartered on the lower deck. In captivity their soft black eyes
were sadly pathetic, and they were visited daily and fed on all the
dainties for deer that could be gathered on shore. Foxes, strange birds,
Esquimaux dogs, and other pets have been passengers on the return trips
of the steamer, and the officers of the ship have done their share in
presenting animals to different city gardens and parks.
As the end of Vancouver Island drew near, the scenery of the British
Columbia coast gained in beauty, with the prospect of so soon losing our
wild surroundings. After leaving Metlakatlah there was not a sign of
civilization for two days, and in spite of Buffon and Henry James, Jr.,
we grew the more enthusiastic over the “brute nature” that so offends
those worldlings. The days were clear, but one night the fog promised to
be so dense that the ship made an outside run from the Milbank to Queen
Charlotte Sound, over waters so still that none suspected that we had
left the narrow inside channels.
We never met the oulikon, or “candle fish” of this coast, except as we
saw the piscatorial torch at grocers’ stores in Victoria; but we sailed
for four hours through a school of herring one afternoon, as we neared
the Vancouver shore. Sharks were following them by dozens, and sea-gulls
flew overhead, ready to swoop upon the unlucky herring that jumped to
the enemy in the air to escape the one in the water. Both times on the
return voyage we slipped through Seymour Narrows without knowing it, so
smoothly was the water boiling at the flood tide, and so absorbed were
we once in the soft poetic sunset that finally left a glowing wall of
orange in the west, against which the ragged forest line of the summits
and the mountain masses were as if carved in jet. Looking upwards, even
the masts and spars were sharply silhouetted against the glorious amber
zenith, and it was hours before it faded to the pure violet sky of such
midsummer nights.
Besides Mt. St. Elias, the Alaska passengers always beg for a view of
Bute Inlet, which opens from the network of channels there at the head
of the Gulf of Georgia, and runs far into the heart of the mountain
range that borders the mainland shore. We hung over the captain’s charts
of the inlet with the greatest interest, and, with his explanations,
imagination could picture that grand fiord, not a quarter of a mile in
width, and with vertical mountain walls that rise from four thousand
feet at the entrance, to eight thousand feet above the water’s level at
the head of the inlet. Soundings of four hundred fathoms are marked on
the chart, and with cascades and glaciers pouring into the chasm, little
is left for a scenic artist to supply. A trail was once cleared from the
head of the inlet to the Cariboo mining district on the Frazer river,
and surveys were made looking to a terminus of the Canadian Pacific
Railroad, but both have been abandoned, and Bute Inlet is not accessible
by any established line of boats. Lord Dufferin and the Marquis of Lorne
visited it on British men-of-war, and carried its fame to England, by
extolling its scenery as the grandest on any coast. When Lord Dufferin
had gone further up and into Alaska, he made his prophecy that this
northwest coast, with its long stretch of protected waters, would in
time become one of the favorite yachting grounds of the world.
If the beautiful Gulf of Georgia is wonderland and dreamland by day, it
is often fairyland by night, and there was an appropriate finale to the
last cruise, when the captain came down the deck at midnight and rapped
up the passengers. “Wake up! The whole sea is on fire” said the
commander. We roused and flung open stateroom doors and windows to see
the water shining like a sheet of liquid silver for miles on every side.
The water around us was thickly starred with phosphorescence, and at a
short distance, the million points of lights mingled in a solid stretch
of miles of pale, unearthly flame. It lighted the sky with a strange
reflection, and the shores, which there, off Cape Lazro, are twenty
miles away, seemed near at hand in the clear, ghostly light. A broad
pathway of pale-green, luminous water trailed after us, and the
paddle-wheels threw off dazzling cascades. Under the bows the foaming
spray washed high on the black hull, and cast long lines of unearthly,
greenish white flame, that illuminated the row of faces hanging over the
guards as sharply as calcium rays. A bucket was lowered and filled with
the water, and the marvel of the shining sea was repeated in miniature
on deck, each time the water was stirred. It was a most wonderful
display, and many, who had seen this glory of the seas in the tropics,
declared that they had never seen phosphorescent waters more brilliant
than those of the Gulf of Georgia.
With such an illumination and marine fireworks we brought the last
cruise virtually to an end, and another morning found the ship tied to
the same coal wharf in Departure Bay. The pleasure travellers laid their
plans for other trips, and in a few days the company was scattered.
Those who went up the Frazer River to its cañons said later: “The best
of the Frazer only equals Grenville Channel, and the dust and heat are
intolerable after the northern coast.”
Those who went down past Mt. Tacoma, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Shasta, and into
the Yosemite, said: “If we had only seen these places first, and not
after the Alaska trip.”
All agreed in the summing up of an enthusiast, who had travelled the
fairest scenes of Europe and his own country, and wrote: “Take the best
of the Hudson and the Rhine, of Lake George and Killarney, the Yosemite
and all Switzerland, and you can have a faint idea of the glorious green
archipelago and the Alaska coast.”
My first journey on the _Idaho_ in 1883 ended with our staying by the
ship, and going around outside from Puget Sound to the Columbia River,
and then we were tied up for three days at the government wharf at
Tongue Point, near Astoria, while three hundred tons of Wellington coal
was slowly unloaded. The smoke of forest fires and the summer fogs hid
all the magnificent shores and headlands at the mouth of the great
river, and the hundreds of little fishing-boats, with their pointed
sails, that set out at sunset, soon vanished in the opaline mists. After
dark a thousand tiny points of flame could be dimly seen on the water,
as the fishermen lighted the fires in their boats to cook their suppers,
or set their lanterns in the bows as they sailed slowly back to the
canneries with their loads of salmon. Five days after we crossed the
Columbia River bar, the ship reached Portland, and the journey was over.
The second cruise, which was blessed with clear sunshiny weather from
beginning to end, was concluded at Port Townsend, where for three weeks
we enjoyed such perfect summer days as are known nowhere but on Puget
Sound. With Mt. Baker on one side as a snowy sentinel, and the broken
range of the Olympic Mountains a violet wall against the western sky, it
needed only the foreground of water and the immaculate silver cone of
Mt. Tacoma rising over level woodlands, to make the view from Port
Townsend’s heights the finest on Puget Sound. When a great full moon
hung in the purple sky of night, miles of the waters of the bay were
pure, rippling silver; and, like a vision in the southern sky, glistened
a faint, ethereal image, the peak of Mt. Tacoma, sixty miles away.
Appreciating all that was overhead and around us, we found a wonderland
under foot one morning by rowing and poling a small boat far in under
the wharf, at the low tide. The water having receded thirteen feet, the
piles for that distance were covered with the strangest and most
fanciful marine growths. Star fish, pink, yellow, white, and purple,
clung to the piles, many of them with eighteen and twenty-one feelers
radiating from their thick fleshy bodies, that were twelve inches and
more in diameter. There were slender, skeleton-like little starfish of
the brightest carmine, and bunches of snow-white and pale yellow
anemones (_actinia_) that looked like large cauliflower blossoms when
opened fully under the water. Long brown pipes, growing in clusters on
the piles, hung out crimson petals and ragged streamers until it seemed
as though thousands of carnation pinks had been swept in among the
piles. The _serpula_, that lives in this pipe-stem house, is valued for
fish bait, and the voyage under the wharf was not wholly for studies in
zoology. Huge jelly-fish floated by, opening and shutting their
umbrella-like disks of pink and yellow, as if some wind were blowing
rudely the petals of these wonderful blossoms of the sea. Shells of the
“Spanish dollar” lay on the sands at the bottom, and at the water line
little jelly-fish could be seen shimmering like disks of ice in the
clear light of the early summer morning. A scientist would have been
wild at sight of that natural aquarium, and to any one it would appear
as a part of wonderland, a beautifully decorated hall for mermaids’
revels, and a model for a transformation fairy scene in some spectacular
drama. The woods and drives, the scenes and shores about Port Townsend,
excite the admiration of every visitor, and when the aquarium under the
wharf is regularly added to its list of attractions, that charming town
will have done its whole duty to the travelling public.