Leaving Wrangell, the steamer soon passes, on the port side and at the
entrance to Sumner Strait, Zarembo Island, named for that Lieutenant
Zarembo who so successfully prevented the Britishers from entering
Stikine River. Baron Wrangell bestowed the name, desiring in his
gratitude and appreciation to perpetuate the name and fame of the
intrepid young officer.
From Sumner Strait the famed and perilously beautiful Wrangell Narrows
is entered. This ribbonlike water-way is less than twenty miles long,
and in many places so narrow that a stone may be tossed from shore to
shore. It winds between Mitkoff and Kupreanoff islands, and may be
navigated only at certain stages of the tide. Deep-draught vessels do
not attempt Wrangell Narrows, but turn around Cape Decision and proceed
by way of Chatham Strait and Frederick Sound--a course which adds at
least eighty miles to the voyage.
The interested voyager will not miss one moment of the run through the
narrows, either for sleep or hunger. Better a sleepless night or a
dinnerless day than one minute lost of this matchless scenic attraction.
The steamer pushes, under slow bell, along a channel which, in places,
is not wider than the steamer itself. Its sides are frequently touched
by the long strands of kelp that cover the sharp and dangerous reefs,
which may be plainly seen in the clear water.
The timid passenger, sailing these narrows, holds his breath a good
part of the time, and casts anxious glances at the bridge, whereon the
captain and his pilots stand silent, stern, with steady, level gaze set
upon the course. One moment's carelessness, ten seconds of inattention,
might mean the loss of a vessel in this dangerous strait.
Intense silence prevails, broken only by the heavy, slow throb of the
steamer and the swirl of the brown water in whirlpools over the rocks;
and these sounds echo far.
The channel is marked by many buoys and other signals. The island shores
on both sides are heavily wooded to the water, the branches spraying out
over the water in bright, lacy green. The tree trunks are covered with
pale green moss, and long moss-fringes hang from the branches, from the
tips of the trees to the water's edge. The effect is the same as that of
festal decoration.
Eagles may always be seen perched motionless upon the tall tree-tops or
upon buoys.
The steamship _Colorado_ went upon the rocks between Spruce and Anchor
points in 1900, where her storm-beaten hull still lies as a silent, but
eloquent, warning of the perils of this narrow channel.
The tides roaring in from the ocean through Frederick Sound on the north
and Sumner Strait on the south meet near Finger Point in the narrows.
Sunrise and sunset effects in this narrow channel are justly famed. I
once saw a mist blown ahead of my steamer at sunset that, in the vivid
brilliancy of its mingled scarlets, greens, and purples, rivalled the
coloring of a humming-bird.
At dawn, long rays of delicate pink, beryl, and pearl play through this
green avenue, deepening in color, fading, and withdrawing like Northern
Lights. When the scene is silvered and softened by moonlight, one looks
for elves and fairies in the shadows of the moss-dripping spruce trees.
The silence is so intense and the channel so narrow, that frequently at
dawn wild birds on the shores are heard saluting the sun with song; and
never, under any other circumstances, has bird song seemed so nearly
divine, so golden with magic and message, as when thrilled through the
fragrant, green stillness of Wrangell Narrows at such an hour.
I was once a passenger on a steamer that lay at anchor all night in
Sumner Strait, not daring to attempt the Narrows on account of storm and
tide. A stormy sunset burned about our ship. The sea was like a great,
scarlet poppy, whose every wave petal circled upward at the edges to
hold a fleck of gold. Island upon island stood out through that riot of
color in vivid, living green, and splendid peaks shone burnished against
the sky.
There was no sleep that night. Music and the dance held sway in the
cabins for those who cared for them, and for the others there was the
beauty of the night. In our chairs, sheltered by the great smoke-stacks
of the hurricane-deck, we watched the hours go by--each hour a different
color from the others--until the burned-out red of night had paled into
the new sweet primrose of dawn. The wind died, leaving the full tide
"that, moving, seems asleep"; and no night was ever warmer and sweeter
in any tropic sea than that.
Wrangell Narrows leads into Frederick Sound--so named by Whidbey and
Johnstone, who met there, in 1794, on the birthday of Frederick, Duke of
York.
Vancouver's expedition actually ended here, and the search for the
"Strait of Anian" was finally abandoned.
Several glaciers are in this vicinity: Small, Patterson, Summit, and Le
Conte. The Devil's Thumb, a spire-shaped peak on the mainland, rises
more than two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and stands
guard over Wrangell Narrows and the islands and glaciers of the
vicinity.
On Soukhoi Island fox ranches were established about five years ago;
they are said to be successful.
The Thunder Bay Glacier is the first on the coast that discharges bergs.
The thunder-like roars with which the vast bulks of beautiful blue-white
ice broke from the glacier's front caused the Indians to believe this
bay to be the home of the thunder-bird, who always produces thunder by
the flapping of his mighty wings.
Baird Glacier is in Thomas Bay, noted for its scenic charms,--glaciers,
forestation, waterfalls, and sheer heights combining to give it a
deservedly wide reputation among tourists. Elephant's Head, Portage Bay,
Farragut Bay, and Cape Fanshaw are important features of the vicinity.
The latter is a noted landmark and storm-point. It fronts the southwest,
and the full fury of the fiercest storms beats mercilessly upon it.
Light craft frequently try for days to make this point, when a wild gale
is blowing from the Pacific.
Of the scenery to the south of Cape Fanshaw, Whidbey reported to
Vancouver, on his final trip of exploration in August, 1794, that "the
mountains rose abruptly to a prodigious height ... to the South, a part
of them presented an uncommonly awful appearance, rising with an
inclination towards the water to a vast height, loaded with an immense
quantity of ice and snow, and overhanging their base, which seemed to be
insufficient to bear the ponderous fabric it sustained, and rendered the
view of the passage beneath it horribly magnificent."
At the Cape he encountered such severe gales that a whole day and night
were consumed in making a distance of sixteen miles.
There are more fox ranches on "The Brothers" Islands, and soon after
passing them Frederick Sound narrows into Stephens' Passage. Here, to
starboard, on the mainland, is Mount Windham, twenty-five hundred feet
in height, in Windham Bay.
Gold was discovered in this region in the early seventies, and mines
were worked for a number of years before the Juneau and Treadwell
excitement. The mountains abound in game.
Sumdum is a mining town in Sumdum, or Holkham, Bay. The fine, live
glacier in this arm is more perfectly named than any other in
Alaska--Sumdum, as the Indians pronounce it, more clearly describing the
deep roar of breaking and falling ice, with echo, than any other
syllables.
Large steamers do not enter this bay; but small craft, at slack-tide,
may make their way among the rocks and icebergs. It is well worth the
extra expense and trouble of a visit.
To the southwest of Cape Fanshaw, in Frederick Sound, is Turnabout
Island, whose suggestive name is as forlorn as Turnagain Arm, in Cook
Inlet, where Cook was forced to "turn again" on what proved to be his
last voyage.
Stephens' Passage is between the mainland and Admiralty Island. This
island barely escapes becoming three or four islands. Seymour Canal, in
the eastern part, almost cuts off a large portion, which is called Glass
Peninsula, the connecting strip of land being merely a portage;
Kootznahoo Inlet cuts more than halfway across from west to east, a
little south of the centre of the island; and at the northern end had
Hawk Inlet pierced but a little farther, another island would have been
formed. The scenery along these inlets, particularly Kootznahoo, where
the lower wooded hills rise from sparkling blue waters to glistening
snow peaks, is magnificent. Whidbey reported that although this island
appeared to be composed of a rocky substance covered with but little
soil, and that chiefly consisting of vegetables in an imperfect state of
dissolution, yet it produced timber which he considered superior to any
he had before observed on the western coast of America.
It is a pity that some steamship company does not run at least one or
two excursions during the summer to the little-known and unexploited
inlets of southeastern Alaska--to the abandoned Indian villages,
graveyards, and totems; the glaciers, cascades, and virgin spruce
glades; the roaring narrows and dim, sweet fiords, where the regular
passenger and "tourist" steamers do not touch. A month might easily be
spent on such a trip, and enough nature-loving, interested, and
interesting people could be found to take every berth--without the
bugaboo, the increasing nightmare of the typical tourist, to rob one of
his pleasure.
At present an excursion steamer sails from Seattle, and from the hour of
its sailing the steamer throbs through the most beautiful archipelago in
the world, the least known, and the one most richly repaying study,
making only five or six landings, and visiting two glaciers at most. It
is quite true that every moment of this "tourist" trip of ten days is,
nevertheless, a delight, if the weather be favorable; that the steamer
rate is remarkably cheap, and that no one can possibly regret having
made this trip if he cannot afford a longer one in Alaska. But this does
not alter the fact that there are hundreds of people who would gladly
make the longer voyage each summer, if transportation were afforded.
Local transportation in Alaska is so expensive that few can afford to go
from place to place, waiting for steamers, and paying for boats and
guides for every side trip they desire to make.
Admiralty Island is rich in gold, silver, and other minerals. There are
whaling grounds in the vicinity, and a whaling station was recently
established on the southwestern end of the Island, near Surprise Harbor
and Murder Cove. Directly across Chatham Strait from this station, on
Baranoff Island, only twenty-five miles from Sitka, are the famous
Sulphur Hot Springs.
There are fine marble districts on the western shores of Admiralty
Island.
On the southern end are Woewodski Harbor and Pybas Bay.
Halfway through Stephens' Passage are the Midway Islands, and but a
short distance farther, on the mainland, is Port Snettisham, a mining
settlement on an arm whose northern end is formed by Cascades Glacier,
and from whose southern arm musically and exquisitely leaps a cascade
which is the only rival of Sarah Island in the affections of
mariners--_Sweetheart Falls_.
Who so tenderly named this cascade, and for whom, I have not been able
to learn; but those pale green, foam-crested waters shall yet give up
their secret. Never would Vancouver be suspected of such naming. Had he
so prettily and sentimentally named it, the very waters would have
turned to stone in their fall, petrified by sheer amazement.
The scenery of Snettisham Inlet is the finest in this vicinity of fine
scenic effects, with the single exception of Taku Glacier.
In Taku Harbor is an Indian village, called Taku, where may be found
safe anchorage, which is frequently required in winter, on account of
what are called "Taku winds." Passing Grand Island, which rises to a
wooded peak, the steamer crosses the entrance to Taku Inlet and enters
Gastineau Channel.
There are many fine peaks in this vicinity, from two to ten thousand
feet in height.
The stretch of water where Stephens' Passage, Taku Inlet, Gastineau
Channel, and the southeastern arm of Lynn Canal meet is in winter
dreaded by pilots. A squall is liable to come tearing down Taku Inlet
at any moment and meet one from some other direction, to the peril of
navigation.
At times a kind of fine frozen mist is driven across by the violent
gales, making it difficult to see a ship's length ahead. At such times
the expressive faces on the bridge of a steamer are psychological
studies.
In summer, however, no open stretch of water could be more inviting.
Clear, faintly rippled, deep sapphire, flecked with the first glistening
bergs floating out of the inlet, it leads the way to the glorious
presence that lies beyond.
I had meant to take the reader first up lovely Gastineau Channel to
Juneau; but now that I have unintentionally drifted into Taku Inlet, the
glacier lures me on. It is only an hour's run, and the way is one of
ever increasing beauty, until the steamer has pushed its prow through
the hundreds of sparkling icebergs, under slow bell, and at last lies
motionless. One feels as though in the presence of some living, majestic
being, clouded in mystery. The splendid front drops down sheer to the
water, from a height of probably three hundred feet. A sapphire mist
drifts over it, without obscuring the exquisite tintings of rose, azure,
purple, and green that flash out from the glistening spires and columns.
The crumpled mass pushing down from the mountains strains against the
front, and sends towered bulks plunging headlong into the sea, with a
roar that echoes from peak to peak in a kind of "linked sweetness long
drawn out" and ever diminishing.
There is no air so indescribably, thrillingly sweet as the air of a
glacier on a fair day. It seems to palpitate with a fragrance that
ravishes the senses. I saw a great, recently captured bear, chained on
the hurricane deck of a steamer, stand with his nose stretched out
toward the glacier, his nostrils quivering and a look of almost human
longing and rebellion in his small eyes. The feeling of pain and pity
with which a humane person always beholds a chained wild animal is
accented in these wide and noble spaces swimming from snow mountain to
snow mountain, where the very watchword of the silence seems to be
"Freedom." The chained bear recognized the scent of the glacier and
remembered that he had once been free.
In front of the glacier stretched miles of sapphire, sunlit sea, set
with sparkling, opaline-tinted icebergs. Now and then one broke and fell
apart before our eyes, sending up a funnel-shaped spray of color,--rose,
pale green, or azure.
At every blast of the steamer's whistle great masses of ice came
thundering headlong into the sea--to emerge presently, icebergs.
Canoeists approach glaciers closely at their peril, never knowing when
an iceberg may shoot to the surface and wreck their boat. Even larger
craft are by no means safe, and tourists desiring a close approach
should voyage with intrepid captains who sail safely through everything.
The wide, ceaseless sweep of a live glacier down the side of a great
mountain and out into the sea holds a more compelling suggestion of
power than any other action of nature. I have never felt the appeal of a
mountain glacier--of a stream of ice and snow that, so far as the eye
can discover, never reaches anywhere, although it keeps going forever.
The feeling of forlornness with which, after years of anticipation, I
finally beheld the renowned glacier of the Selkirks, will never be
forgotten. It was the forlornness of a child who has been robbed of her
Santa Claus, or who has found that her doll is stuffed with sawdust.
But to behold the splendid, perpendicular front of a live glacier rising
out of a sea which breaks everlastingly upon it; to see it under the
rose and lavender of sunset or the dull gold of noon; to see and hear
tower, minaret, dome, go thundering down into the clear depths and pound
them into foam--this alone is worth the price of a trip to Alaska.
We were told that the opaline coloring of the glacier was unusual, and
that its prevailing color is an intense blue, more beautiful and
constant than that of other glaciers; and that even the bergs floating
out from it were of a more pronounced blue than other bergs.
But I do not believe it. I have seen the blue of the Columbia Glacier in
Prince William Sound; and I have sailed for a whole afternoon among the
intensely blue ice shallops that go drifting in an endless fleet from
Glacier Bay out through Icy Straits to the ocean. If there be a more
exquisite blue this side of heaven than I have seen in Icy Straits and
in the palisades of the Columbia Glacier, I must see it to believe it.
There are three glaciers in Taku Inlet: two--Windham and Twin--which are
at present "dead"; and Taku, the Beautiful, which is very much alive.
The latter was named Foster, for the former Secretary of the Treasury;
but the Indian name has clung to it, which is one more cause for
thanksgiving.
The Inlet is eighteen miles long and about seven hundred feet wide. Taku
River flows into it from the northeast, spreading out in blue ribbons
over the brown flats; at high tide it may be navigated, with caution, by
small row-boats and canoes. It was explored in early days by the Hudson
Bay Company, also by surveyors of the Western Union Telegraph Company.
Whidbey, entering the Inlet in 1794, sustained his reputation for
absolute blindness to beauty. He found "a compact body of ice extending
some distance nearly all around." He found "frozen mountains," "rock
sides," "dwarf pine trees," and "undissolving frost and snow." He
lamented the lack of a suitable landing-place for boats; and reported
the aspect in general to be "as dreary and inhospitable as the
imagination can possibly suggest."
Alas for the poor chilly Englishman! He, doubtless, expected
silvery-gowned ice maidens to come sliding out from under the glacier in
pearly boats, singing and kissing their hands, to bear him back into
their deep blue grottos and dells of ice, and refresh him with Russian
tea from old brass samovars; he expected these maidens to be girdled and
crowned with carnations and poppies, and to pluck winy grapes--with
_dust_ clinging to their bloomy roundness--from living vines for him to
eat; and most of all, he expected to find in some remote corner of the
clear and sparkling cavern a big fireplace, "which would remind him
pleasantly of England;" and a brilliant fire on a well-swept hearth,
with the smoke and sparks going up through a melted hole in the glacier.
About fifteen miles up Taku River, Wright Glacier streams down from the
southeast and fronts upon the low and marshy lands for a distance of
nearly three miles.
The mountains surrounding Taku Inlet rise to a height of four thousand
feet, jutting out abruptly, in places, over the water.