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ALASKA
THE GREAT COUNTRY
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: Photo by E. W. Merrill, Sitka
Courtesy of G. Kostrometinoff
ALEXANDER BARANOFF]
ALASKA
THE GREAT COUNTRY
BY
ELLA HIGGINSON
AUTHOR OF "MARIELLA, OF OUT-WEST," "WHEN THE BIRDS GO NORTH AGAIN,"
"FROM THE LAND OF THE SNOW-PEARLS," ETC.
_New York_
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1908. Reprinted
February, 1909; March, 1910.
_Norwood Press_
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
MR. AND MRS. HENRY ELLIOTT HOLMES
FOREWORD
When the Russians first came to the island of Unalaska, they were told
that a vast country lay to the eastward and that its name was
Al-ay-ek-sa. Their own island the Aleuts called Nagun-Alayeksa, meaning
"the land lying near Alayeksa."
The Russians in time came to call the country itself Alashka; the
peninsula, Aliaska; and the island, Unalashka. Alaska is an English
corruption of the original name.
A great Russian moved under inspiration when he sent Vitus Behring out
to discover and explore the continent lying to the eastward; two great
Americans--Seward and Sumner--were inspired when, nearly a century and a
half later, they saved for us, in the face of the bitterest opposition,
scorn, and ridicule, the country that Behring discovered and which is
now coming to be recognized as the most glorious possession of any
people; but, first of all, were the gentle, dark-eyed Aleuts inspired
when they bestowed upon this same country--with the simplicity and
dignified repression for which their character is noted--the beautiful
and poetic name which means "the great country."
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ALEXANDER BARANOFF _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
ALASKA (_colored map_) 1
COPPER SMELTER IN SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA 2
KASA-AN 9
HOWKAN 16
DISTANT VIEW OF DAVIDSON GLACIER 21
DAVIDSON GLACIER 36
A PHANTOM SHIP 41
ROAD THROUGH CUT-OFF CANYON 48
SCENE ON THE WHITE PASS 53
STEEL CANTILEVER BRIDGE, NEAR SUMMIT OF WHITE PASS 68
OLD RUSSIAN BUILDING, SITKA 73
GREEK-RUSSIAN CHURCH AT SITKA 80
ESKIMO IN WALRUS-SKIN KAMELAYKA 101
ESKIMO IN BIDARKA 116
RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION, EYAK LAKE 121
EYAK LAKE, NEAR CORDOVA 128
INDIAN HOUSES, CORDOVA 133
VALDEZ 148
AN ALASKAN ROAD HOUSE 153
KOW-EAR-NUK AND HIS DRYING SALMON 160
STEAMER "RESOLUTE" 165
"OBLEUK," AN ESKIMO GIRL IN PARKA 180
A NORTHERN MADONNA 185
ESKIMO LAD IN PARKA AND MUKLUKS 192
SCALES AND SUMMIT OF CHILKOOT PASS IN 1898 197
SUMMIT OF CHILKOOT PASS IN 1898 212
PINE FALLS, ATLIN 229
LAKE BENNETT IN 1898 244
WHITE HORSE, YUKON TERRITORY 249
GRAND CANYON OF THE YUKON 256
WHITE HORSE RAPIDS 261
WHITE HORSE RAPIDS IN WINTER 276
STEAMER "WHITE HORSE" IN FIVE-FINGER RAPIDS 293
A YUKON SNOW SCENE NEAR WHITE HORSE 308
A HOME IN THE YUKON 325
ONE AND A HALF MILLIONS OF KLONDIKE GOLD 340
A FAMOUS TEAM OF HUSKIES 357
CLOUD EFFECT ON THE YUKON 372
"WOLF" 389
DOG-TEAM EXPRESS, NOME 404
FOUR BEAUTIES OF CAPE PRINCE OF WALES WITH SLED
REINDEER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY HERD 421
COUNCIL CITY AND SOLOMON RIVER RAILROAD--A CHARACTERISTIC
LANDSCAPE OF SEWARD PENINSULA 436
TELLER 453
FAMILY OF KING'S ISLAND ESKIMOS LIVING UNDER SKIN
BOAT, NOME 468
WRECK OF "JESSIE," NOME BEACH 485
SUNRISE ON BEHRING SEA 500
SURF AT NOME 505
MOONLIGHT ON BEHRING SEA 512
ALASKA
THE GREAT COUNTRY
[Illustration: WILLIAMS ENGRAVING CO., N.Y.
Alaska]
ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
Every year, from June to September, thousands of people "go to Alaska."
This means that they take passage at Seattle on the most luxurious
steamers that run up the famed "inside passage" to Juneau, Sitka,
Wrangell, and Skaguay. Formerly this voyage included a visit to Muir
Glacier; but because of the ruin wrought by a recent earthquake, this
once beautiful and marvellous thing is no longer included in the tourist
trip.
This ten-day voyage is unquestionably a delightful one; every imaginable
comfort is provided, and the excursion rate is reasonable. However, the
person who contents himself with this will know as little about Alaska
as a foreigner who landed in New York, went straight to Niagara Falls
and returned at once to his own country, would know about America.
Enchanting though this brief cruise may be when the weather is
favorable, the real splendor, the marvellous beauty, the poetic and
haunting charm of Alaska, lie west of Sitka. "To Westward" is called
this dream-voyage past a thousand miles of snow-mountains rising
straight from the purple sea and wrapped in coloring that makes it seem
as though all the roses, lilies, and violets of heaven had been pounded
to a fine dust and sifted over them; past green islands and safe
harbors; past the Malaspina and the Columbia glaciers; past Yakutat,
Kyak, Cordova, Valdez, Seward, and Cook Inlet; and then, still on "to
Westward"--past Kodiak Island, where the Russians made their first
permanent settlement in America in 1784 and whose sylvan and idyllic
charm won the heart of the great naturalist, John Burroughs; past the
Aliaska Peninsula, with its smoking Mount Pavloff; past Unimak Island,
one of whose active volcanoes, Shishaldin, is the most perfect and
symmetrical cone on the Pacific Coast, not even excepting Hood--and on
and in among the divinely pale green Aleutian Islands to Unalaska, where
enchantment broods in a mist of rose and lavender and where one may
scarcely step without crushing violets and bluebells.
The spell of Alaska falls upon every lover of beauty who has voyaged
along those far northern snow-pearled shores with the violet waves of
the North Pacific Ocean breaking splendidly upon them; or who has
drifted down the mighty rivers of the interior which flow, bell-toned
and lonely, to the sea.
I know not how the spell is wrought; nor have I ever met one who could
put the miracle of its working into words. No writer has ever described
Alaska; no one writer ever will; but each must do his share, according
to the spell that the country casts upon him.
Some parts of Alaska lull the senses drowsily by their languorous charm;
under their influence one sinks to a passive delight and drifts
unresistingly on through a maze of tender loveliness. Nothing irritates.
All is soft, velvety, soothing. Wordless lullabies are played by
different shades of blue, rose, amber, and green; by the curl of the
satin waves and the musical kiss of their cool and faltering lips; by
the mists, light as thistle-down and delicately tinted as wild-rose
petals, into which the steamer pushes leisurely; by the dreamy poise of
sea-birds on white or lavender wings high in the golden atmosphere; by
the undulating flight of purple Shadow, tiptoe, through the dim fiords;
by the lap of waves on shingle, the song of birds along the wooded
shore, the pressure of soft winds on the temples and hair, the sparkle
of the sea weighing the eyelids down. The magic of it all gets into the
blood.
[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
COPPER SMELTER IN SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA]
The steamer slides through green and echoing reaches; past groups of
totems standing like ghosts of the past among the dark spruce or cedar
trees; through stone-walled canyons where the waters move dark and
still; into open, sunlit seas.
But it is not until one sails on "to Westward" that the spell of Alaska
falls upon one; sails out into the wild and splendid North Pacific
Ocean. Here are the majesty, the sublimity, that enthrall; here are the
noble spaces, the Titanic forces, the untrodden heights, that thrill and
inspire.
The marvels here are not the marvels of men. They are wrought of fire
and stone and snow by the tireless hand that has worked through
centuries unnumbered and unknown.
He that would fall under the spell of Alaska, will sail on "to
Westward," on to Unalaska; or he will go Northward and drift down the
Yukon--that splendid, lonely river that has its birth within a few miles
of the sea, yet flows twenty-three hundred miles to find it.
Alaskan steamers usually sail between eight o'clock in the evening and
midnight, and throngs of people congregate upon the piers of Seattle to
watch their departure. The rosy purples and violets of sunset mix with
the mists and settle upon the city, climbing white over its hills; as
hours go by, its lights sparkle brilliantly through them, yet still the
crowds sway upon the piers and wait for the first still motion of the
ship as it slides into the night and heads for the far, enchanted
land--the land whose sweet, insistent calling never ceases for the one
who has once heard it.
Passengers who stay on deck late will be rewarded by the witchery of
night on Puget Sound--the soft fragrance of the air, the scarlet, blue,
and green lights wavering across the water, the glistening wake of the
ship, the city glimmering faintly as it is left behind, the dim shores
of islands, and the dark shadows of bays.
One by one the lighthouses at West Point on the starboard side, and at
Point-No-Point, Marrowstone, and Point Wilson, on the port, flash their
golden messages through the dusk. One by one rise, linger, and fade the
dark outlines of Magnolia Bluff, Skagit Head, Double Bluff, and Liplip
Point. If the sailing be early in the evening, midnight is saluted by
the lights of Port Townsend, than which no city on the Pacific Coast has
a bolder or more beautiful situation.
The splendid water avenue--the burning "Opal-Way"--that leads the ocean
into these inland seas was named in 1788 by John Meares, a retired
lieutenant of the British navy, for Juan de Fuca (whose real name was
Apostolos Valerianos), a Greek pilot who, in 1592, was sent out in a
small "caravela" by the Viceroy of Mexico in search of the fabled
"Strait of Anian," or "Northwest Passage"--supposed to lead from the
Pacific to the Atlantic north of forty degrees of latitude.
As early as the year 1500 this strait was supposed to have been
discovered by a Portuguese navigator named Cortereal, and to have been
named by him for one of his brothers who accompanied him.
The names of certain other early navigators are mentioned in connection
with the "Strait of Anian." Cabot is reported vaguely as having located
it "neere the 318 meridian, between 61 and 64 degrees in the eleuation,
continuing the same bredth about 10 degrees West, where it openeth
Southerly more and more, until it come under the tropicke of Cancer, and
so runneth into Mar del Zur, at least 18 degrees more in bredth there
than where it began;" Frobisher; Urdaneta, "a Fryer of Mexico, who came
out of Mar del Zur this way into Germanie;" and several others whose
stories of having sailed the dream-strait that was then supposed to lead
from ocean to ocean are not now considered seriously until we come to
Juan de Fuca, who claimed that in his "caravela" he followed the coast
"vntill hee came to the latitude of fortie seuen degrees, and that there
finding that the land trended North and Northeast, with a broad Inlet of
Sea between 47 and 48 degrees of Latitude, hee entered thereinto,
sayling therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending
still sometime Northwest and Northeast and North, and also East and
Southeastward, and very much broader sea then was at said entrance, and
that hee passed by diuers Ilands in that sayling. And that at the
entrance of this said Strait, there is on the Northwest coast thereof, a
great Hedland or Iland, with an exceeding high pinacle or spired Rocke,
like a pillar, thereupon."
He landed and saw people clothed in the skins of beasts; and he reported
the land fruitful, and rich in gold, silver, and pearl.
Bancroft and some other historians consider the story of Juan de Fuca's
entrance to Puget Sound the purest fiction, claiming that his
descriptions are inaccurate and that no pinnacled or spired rock is to
be found in the vicinity mentioned.
Meares, however, and many people of intelligence gave it credence; and
when we consider the differences in the descriptions of other places by
early navigators, it is not difficult to believe that Juan de Fuca
really sailed into the strait that now bears his name. Schwatka speaks
of him as, "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."
The Strait of Juan de Fuca is more than eighty miles long and from ten
to twelve wide, with a depth of about six hundred feet. At the eastern
end it widens into an open sea or sound where beauty blooms like a rose,
and from which forest-bordered water-ways wind slenderly in every
direction.
From this vicinity, on clear days, may be seen the Olympic Mountains
floating in the west; Mount Rainier, in the south; the lower peaks of
the Crown Mountains in the north; and Mount Baker--or Kulshan, as the
Indians named it--in the east.
The Island of San Juan, lying east of the southern end of Vancouver
Island, is perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most historic, on
the Pacific Coast. It is the island that barely escaped causing a
declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States, over the
international boundary, in the late fifties. For so small an island,--it
is not more than fifteen miles long, by from six to eight wide,--it has
figured importantly in large affairs.
The earliest trouble over the boundary between Vancouver Island and
Washington arose in 1854. Both countries claimed ownership of San Juan
and other islands near by, the Oregon Treaty of 1846 having failed to
make it clear whether the boundary was through the Canal de Haro or the
Strait of Rosario.
I. N. Ebey, American Collector of Customs, learning that several
thousand head of sheep, cattle, and hogs had been shipped to San Juan
without compliance with customs regulations, visited the island and was
promptly insulted by a British justice of the peace. The _Otter_ made
her appearance in the harbor, bearing James Douglas, governor of
Vancouver Island and vice-admiral of the British navy; but nothing
daunted, Mr. Ebey stationed Inspector Webber upon the island, declaring
that he would continue to discharge his official duties. The final
trouble arose, however, in 1859, when an American resident shot a
British pig; and serious trouble was precipitated as swiftly as when a
United States warship was blown up in Havana Harbor. General Harney
hastily established military quarters on one end of the island, known as
the American Camp, Captain Pickett transferring his company from Fort
Bellingham for this purpose. English Camp was established on the
northern end. Warships kept guard in the harbors. Joint occupation was
agreed upon, and until 1871 the two camps were maintained, the
friendliest social relations existing between them. In that year the
Emperor of Germany was chosen as arbitrator, and decided in favor of the
United States, the British withdrawing the following year.
Until 1895 the British captain's house still stood upon its beautiful
bluff, a thousand feet above the winding blue bay, the shore descending
in steep, splendid terraces to the water, stairwayed in stone, and grown
with old and noble trees. Macadam roads led several miles across the
island; the old block-house of pioneer days remained at the water's
edge; and clustered around the old parade ground--now, alas! a meadow of
hay--were the quarters of the officers, overgrown with English ivy. The
captain's house, which has now been destroyed by fire, was a low,
eight-roomed house with an immense fireplace in each room; the old
claret- and ivory-striped wall-paper--which had been brought "around the
Horn" at immense cost--was still on the walls. Gay were the scenes and
royal the hospitalities of this house in the good days of the sixties.
Its site, commanding the straits, is one of the most effective on the
Pacific Coast; and at the present writing it is extremely probable that
a captain's house may again rise among the old trees on the terraced
bluff--but not for the occupancy of a British captain.
Every land may occasionally have a beautiful sunset, and many lands have
gorgeous and brilliant ones; but nowhere have they such softly burning,
milky-rose, opaline effects as on this inland sea.
Their enchanting beauty is doubtless due to the many wooded islands
which lift dark green forestated hills around open sweeps of water,
whereon settle delicate mists. When the fires of sunrise or of sunset
sink through these mists, the splendor of coloring is marvellous and not
equalled anywhere. It is as though the whole sound were one great opal,
which had broken apart and flung its escaping fires of rose, amethyst,
amber, and green up through the maze of trembling pearl above it. The
unusual beauty of its sunsets long ago gave Puget Sound the poetic name
of Opal-Sea or Sea of Opal.
[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
KASA-AN]