A Cruise in the Cassiar
Shortly after our return to Wrangell the missionaries planned a grand
mission excursion up the coast of the mainland to the Chilcat country,
which I gladly joined, together with Mr. Vanderbilt, his wife, and a
friend from Oregon. The river steamer Cassiar was chartered, and we had
her all to ourselves, ship and officers at our command to sail and stop
where and when we would, and of course everybody felt important and
hopeful. The main object of the missionaries was to ascertain the
spiritual wants of the warlike Chilcat tribe, with a view to the
establishment of a church and school in their principal village; the
merchant and his party were bent on business and scenery; while my mind
was on the mountains, glaciers, and forests.
This was toward the end of July, in the very brightest and best of
Alaska summer weather, when the icy mountains towering in the pearly
sky were displayed in all their glory, and the islands at their feet
seemed to float and drowse on the shining mirror waters.
After we had passed through the Wrangell Narrows, the mountains of the
mainland came in full view, gloriously arrayed in snow and ice, some of
the largest and most river-like of the glaciers flowing through wide,
high-walled valleys like Yosemite, their sources far back and
concealed, others in plain sight, from their highest fountains to the
level of the sea.
Cares of every kind were quickly forgotten, and though the Cassiar
engines soon began to wheeze and sigh with doleful solemnity,
suggesting coming trouble, we were too happy to mind them. Every face
glowed with natural love of wild beauty. The islands were seen in long
perspective, their forests dark green in the foreground, with varying
tones of blue growing more and more tender in the distance; bays full
of hazy shadows, graduating into open, silvery fields of light, and
lofty headlands with fine arching insteps dipping their feet in the
shining water. But every eye was turned to the mountains. Forgotten now
were the Chilcats and missions while the word of God was being read in
these majestic hieroglyphics blazoned along the sky. The earnest,
childish wonderment with which this glorious page of Nature’s Bible was
contemplated was delightful to see. All evinced eager desire to learn.
“Is that a glacier,” they asked, “down in that cañon? And is it all
solid ice?”
“Yes.”
“How deep is it?”
“Perhaps five hundred or a thousand feet.”
“You say it flows. How can hard ice flow?”
“It flows like water, though invisibly slow.”
“And where does it come from?”
“From snow that is heaped up every winter on the mountains.”
“And how, then, is the snow changed into ice?”
“It is welded by the pressure of its own weight.”
“Are these white masses we see in the hollows glaciers also?”
“Yes.”
“Are those bluish draggled masses hanging down from beneath the
snow-fields what you call the snouts of the glaciers?”
“Yes.”
“What made the hollows they are in?”
“The glaciers themselves, just as traveling animals make their own
tracks.”
“How long have they been there?”
“Numberless centuries,” etc. I answered as best I could, keeping up a
running commentary on the subject in general, while busily engaged in
sketching and noting my own observations, preaching glacial gospel in a
rambling way, while the Cassiar, slowly wheezing and creeping along the
shore, shifted our position so that the icy cañons were opened to view
and closed again in regular succession, like the leaves of a book.
About the middle of the afternoon we were directly opposite a noble
group of glaciers some ten in number, flowing from a chain of
crater-like snow fountains, guarded around their summits and well down
their sides by jagged peaks and cols and curving mural ridges. From
each of the larger clusters of fountains, a wide, sheer-walled cañon
opens down to the sea. Three of the trunk glaciers descend to within a
few feet of the sea-level. The largest of the three, probably about
fifteen miles long, terminates in a magnificent valley like Yosemite,
in an imposing wall of ice about two miles long, and from three to five
hundred feet high, forming a barrier across the valley from wall to
wall. It was to this glacier that the ships of the Alaska Ice Company
resorted for the ice they carried to San Francisco and the Sandwich
Islands, and, I believe, also to China and Japan. To load, they had
only to sail up the fiord within a short distance of the front and drop
anchor in the terminal moraine.
Another glacier, a few miles to the south of this one, receives two
large tributaries about equal in size, and then flows down a forested
valley to within a hundred feet or so of sea-level. The third of this
low-descending group is four or five miles farther south, and, though
less imposing than either of the two sketched above, is still a truly
noble object, even as imperfectly seen from the channel, and would of
itself be well worth a visit to Alaska to any lowlander so unfortunate
as never to have seen a glacier.
The boilers of our little steamer were not made for sea water, but it
was hoped that fresh water would be found at available points along our
course where streams leap down the cliffs. In this particular we
failed, however, and were compelled to use salt water an hour or two
before reaching Cape Fanshawe, the supply of fifty tons of fresh water
brought from Wrangell having then given out. To make matters worse, the
captain and engineer were not in accord concerning the working of the
engines. The captain repeatedly called for more steam, which the
engineer refused to furnish, cautiously keeping the pressure low
because the salt water foamed in the boilers and some of it passed over
into the cylinders, causing heavy thumping at the end of each piston
stroke, and threatening to knock out the cylinder-heads. At seven
o’clock in the evening we had made only about seventy miles, which
caused dissatisfaction, especially among the divines, who thereupon
called a meeting in the cabin to consider what had better be done. In
the discussions that followed much indignation and economy were brought
to light. We had chartered the boat for sixty dollars per day, and the
round trip was to have been made in four or five days. But at the
present rate of speed it was found that the cost of the trip for each
passenger would be five or ten dollars above the first estimate.
Therefore, the majority ruled that we must return next day to Wrangell,
the extra dollars outweighing the mountains and missions as if they had
suddenly become dust in the balance.
Soon after the close of this economical meeting, we came to anchor in a
beautiful bay, and as the long northern day had still hours of good
light to offer, I gladly embraced the opportunity to go ashore to see
the rocks and plants. One of the Indians, employed as a deck hand on
the steamer, landed me at the mouth of a stream. The tide was low,
exposing a luxuriant growth of algæ, which sent up a fine, fresh sea
smell. The shingle was composed of slate, quartz, and granite, named in
the order of abundance. The first land plant met was a tall grass, nine
feet high, forming a meadow-like margin in front of the forest. Pushing
my way well back into the forest, I found it composed almost entirely
of spruce and two hemlocks (_Picea sitchensis, Tsuga heterophylla_ and
_T. mertensiana_) with a few specimens of yellow cypress. The ferns
were developed in remarkable beauty and size—aspidiums, one of which is
about six feet high, a woodsia, lomaria, and several species of
polypodium. The underbrush is chiefly alder, rubus, ledum, three
species of vaccinium, and _Echinopanax horrida_, the whole about from
six to eight feet high, and in some places closely intertangled and
hard to penetrate. On the opener spots beneath the trees the ground is
covered to a depth of two or three feet with mosses of indescribable
freshness and beauty, a few dwarf conifers often planted on their rich
furred bosses, together with pyrola, coptis, and Solomon’s-seal. The
tallest of the trees are about a hundred and fifty feet high, with a
diameter of about four or five feet, their branches mingling together
and making a perfect shade. As the twilight began to fall, I sat down
on the mossy instep of a spruce. Not a bush or tree was moving; every
leaf seemed hushed in brooding repose. One bird, a thrush, embroidered
the silence with cheery notes, making the solitude familiar and sweet,
while the solemn monotone of the stream sifting through the woods
seemed like the very voice of God, humanized, terrestrialized, and
entering one’s heart as to a home prepared for it. Go where we will,
all the world over, we seem to have been there before.
The stream was bridged at short intervals with picturesque,
moss-embossed logs, and the trees on its banks, leaning over from side
to side, made high embowering arches. The log bridge I crossed was, I
think, the most beautiful of the kind I ever saw. The massive log is
plushed to a depth of six inches or more with mosses of three or four
species, their different tones of yellow shading finely into each
other, while their delicate fronded branches and foliage lie in
exquisite order, inclining outward and down the sides in rich, furred,
clasping sheets overlapping and felted together until the required
thickness is attained. The pedicels and spore-cases give a purplish
tinge, and the whole bridge is enriched with ferns and a row of small
seedling trees and currant bushes with colored leaves, every one of
which seems to have been culled from the woods for this special use, so
perfectly do they harmonize in size, shape, and color with the mossy
cover, the width of the span, and the luxuriant, brushy abutments.
Sauntering back to the beach, I found four or five Indian deck hands
getting water, with whom I returned aboard the steamer, thanking the
Lord for so noble an addition to my life as was this one big mountain,
forest, and glacial day.
[Illustration: Alaskan Hemlocks and Spruces, Sitka.]
Next morning most of the company seemed uncomfortably
conscience-stricken, and ready to do anything in the way of
compensation for our broken excursion that would not cost too much. It
was not found difficult, therefore, to convince the captain and
disappointed passengers that instead of creeping back to Wrangell
direct we should make an expiatory branch-excursion to the largest of
the three low-descending glaciers we had passed. The Indian pilot, well
acquainted with this part of the coast, declared himself willing to
guide us. The water in these fiord channels is generally deep and safe,
and though at wide intervals rocks rise abruptly here and there,
lacking only a few feet in height to enable them to take rank as
islands, the flat-bottomed Cassiar drew but little more water than a
duck, so that even the most timid raised no objection on this score.
The cylinder-heads of our engines were the main source of anxiety;
provided they could be kept on all might yet be well. But in this
matter there was evidently some distrust, the engineer having
imprudently informed some of the passengers that in consequence of
using salt water in his frothing boilers the cylinder-heads might fly
off at any moment. To the glacier, however, it was at length decided we
should venture.
Arriving opposite the mouth of its fiord, we steered straight inland
between beautiful wooded shores, and the grand glacier came in sight in
its granite valley, glowing in the early sunshine and extending a noble
invitation to come and see. After we passed between the two mountain
rocks that guard the gate of the fiord, the view that was unfolded
fixed every eye in wondering admiration. No words can convey anything
like an adequate conception of its sublime grandeur—the noble
simplicity and fineness of the sculpture of the walls; their
magnificent proportions; their cascades, gardens, and forest
adornments; the placid fiord between them; the great white and blue ice
wall, and the snow-laden mountains beyond. Still more impotent are
words in telling the peculiar awe one experiences in entering these
mansions of the icy North, notwithstanding it is only the natural
effect of appreciable manifestations of the presence of God.
Standing in the gateway of this glorious temple, and regarding it only
as a picture, its outlines may be easily traced, the water foreground
of a pale-green color, a smooth mirror sheet sweeping back five or six
miles like one of the lower reaches of a great river, bounded at the
head by a beveled barrier wall of blueish-white ice four or five
hundred feet high. A few snowy mountain-tops appear beyond it, and on
either hand rise a series of majestic, pale-gray granite rocks from
three to four thousand feet high, some of them thinly forested and
striped with bushes and flowery grass on narrow shelves, especially
about half way up, others severely sheer and bare and built together
into walls like those of Yosemite, extending far beyond the ice
barrier, one immense brow appearing beyond another with their bases
buried in the glacier. This is a Yosemite Valley in process of
formation, the modeling and sculpture of the walls nearly completed and
well planted, but no groves as yet or gardens or meadows on the raw and
unfinished bottom. It is as if the explorer, in entering the Merced
Yosemite, should find the walls nearly in their present condition,
trees and flowers in the warm nooks and along the sunny portions of the
moraine-covered brows, but the bottom of the valley still covered with
water and beds of gravel and mud, and the grand glacier that formed it
slowly receding but still filling the upper half of the valley.
Sailing directly up to the edge of the low, outspread, water-washed
terminal moraine, scarce noticeable in a general view, we seemed to be
separated from the glacier only by a bed of gravel a hundred yards or
so in width; but on so grand a scale are all the main features of the
valley, we afterwards found the distance to be a mile or more.
The captain ordered the Indian deck hands to get out the canoe, take as
many of us ashore as wished to go, and accompany us to the glacier in
case we should need their help. Only three of the company, in the first
place, availed themselves of this rare opportunity of meeting a glacier
in the flesh,—Mr. Young, one of the doctors, and myself. Paddling to
the nearest and driest-looking part of the moraine flat, we stepped
ashore, but gladly wallowed back into the canoe; for the gray mineral
mud, a paste made of fine-ground mountain meal kept unstable by the
tides, at once began to take us in, swallowing us feet foremost with
becoming glacial deliberation. Our next attempt, made nearer the middle
of the valley, was successful, and we soon found ourselves on firm
gravelly ground, and made haste to the huge ice wall, which seemed to
recede as we advanced. The only difficulty we met was a network of icy
streams, at the largest of which we halted, not willing to get wet in
fording. The Indian attendant promptly carried us over on his back.
When my turn came I told him I would ford, but he bowed his shoulders
in so ludicrously persuasive a manner I thought I would try the queer
mount, the only one of the kind I had enjoyed since boyhood days in
playing leapfrog. Away staggered my perpendicular mule over the
boulders into the brawling torrent, and in spite of top-heavy
predictions to the contrary, crossed without a fall. After being
ferried in this way over several more of these glacial streams, we at
length reached the foot of the glacier wall. The doctor simply played
tag on it, touched it gently as if it were a dangerous wild beast, and
hurried back to the boat, taking the portage Indian with him for
safety, little knowing what he was missing. Mr. Young and I traced the
glorious crystal wall, admiring its wonderful architecture, the play of
light in the rifts and caverns, and the structure of the ice as
displayed in the less fractured sections, finding fresh beauty
everywhere and facts for study. We then tried to climb it, and by dint
of patient zigzagging and doubling among the crevasses, and cutting
steps here and there, we made our way up over the brow and back a mile
or two to a height of about seven hundred feet. The whole front of the
glacier is gashed and sculptured into a maze of shallow caves and
crevasses, and a bewildering variety of novel architectural forms,
clusters of glittering lance-tipped spires, gables, and obelisks, bold
outstanding bastions and plain mural cliffs, adorned along the top with
fretted cornice and battlement, while every gorge and crevasse, groove
and hollow, was filled with light, shimmering and throbbing in
pale-blue tones of ineffable tenderness and beauty. The day was warm,
and back on the broad melting bosom of the glacier beyond the crevassed
front, many streams were rejoicing, gurgling, ringing, singing, in
frictionless channels worn down through the white disintegrated ice of
the surface into the quick and living blue, in which they flowed with a
grace of motion and flashing of light to be found only on the crystal
hillocks and ravines of a glacier.
Along the sides of the glacier we saw the mighty flood grinding against
the granite walls with tremendous pressure, rounding outswelling
bosses, and deepening the retreating hollows into the forms they are
destined to have when, in the fullness of appointed time, the huge ice
tool shall be withdrawn by the sun. Every feature glowed with
intention, reflecting the plans of God. Back a few miles from the
front, the glacier is now probably but little more than a thousand feet
deep; but when we examine the records on the walls, the rounded,
grooved, striated, and polished features so surely glacial, we learn
that in the earlier days of the ice age they were all over-swept, and
that this glacier has flowed at a height of from three to four thousand
feet above its present level, when it was at least a mile deep.
Standing here, with facts so fresh and telling and held up so vividly
before us, every seeing observer, not to say geologist, must readily
apprehend the earth-sculpturing, landscape-making action of flowing
ice. And here, too, one learns that the world, though made, is yet
being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains
long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers,
basins hollowed for lakes; that moraine soil is being ground and
outspread for coming plants,—coarse boulders and gravel for forests,
finer soil for grasses and flowers,—while the finest part of the grist,
seen hastening out to sea in the draining streams, is being stored away
in darkness and builded particle on particle, cementing and
crystallizing, to make the mountains and valleys and plains of other
predestined landscapes, to be followed by still others in endless
rhythm and beauty.
Gladly would we have camped out on this grand old landscape mill to
study its ways and works; but we had no bread and the captain was
keeping the Cassiar whistle screaming for our return. Therefore, in
mean haste, we threaded our way back through the crevasses and down the
blue cliffs, snatched a few flowers from a warm spot on the edge of the
ice, plashed across the moraine streams, and were paddled aboard,
rejoicing in the possession of so blessed a day, and feeling that in
very foundational truth we had been in one of God’s own temples and had
seen Him and heard Him working and preaching like a man.
Steaming solemnly out of the fiord and down the coast, the islands and
mountains were again passed in review; the clouds that so often hide
the mountain-tops even in good weather were now floating high above
them, and the transparent shadows they cast were scarce perceptible on
the white glacier fountains. So abundant and novel are the objects of
interest in a pure wilderness that unless you are pursuing special
studies it matters little where you go, or how often to the same place.
Wherever you chance to be always seems at the moment of all places the
best; and you feel that there can be no happiness in this world or in
any other for those who may not be happy here. The bright hours were
spent in making notes and sketches and getting more of the wonderful
region into memory. In particular a second view of the mountains made
me raise my first estimate of their height. Some of them must be seven
or eight thousand feet at the least. Also the glaciers seemed larger
and more numerous. I counted nearly a hundred, large and small, between
a point ten or fifteen miles to the north of Cape Fanshawe and the
mouth of the Stickeen River. We made no more landings, however, until
we had passed through the Wrangell Narrows and dropped anchor for the
night in a small sequestered bay. This was about sunset, and I eagerly
seized the opportunity to go ashore in the canoe and see what I could
learn. It is here only a step from the marine algæ to terrestrial
vegetation of almost tropical luxuriance. Parting the alders and
huckleberry bushes and the crooked stems of the prickly panax, I made
my way into the woods, and lingered in the twilight doing nothing in
particular, only measuring a few of the trees, listening to learn what
birds and animals might be about, and gazing along the dusky aisles.
In the mean time another excursion was being invented, one of small
size and price. We might have reached Fort Wrangell this evening
instead of anchoring here; but the owners of the Cassiar would then
receive only ten dollars fare from each person, while they had incurred
considerable expense in fitting up the boat for this special trip, and
had treated us well. No, under the circumstances, it would never do to
return to Wrangell so meanly soon.
It was decided, therefore, that the Cassiar Company should have the
benefit of another day’s hire, in visiting the old deserted Stickeen
village fourteen miles to the south of Wrangell.
“We shall have a good time,” one of the most influential of the party
said to me in a semi-apologetic tone, as if dimly recognizing my
disappointment in not going on to Chilcat. “We shall probably find
stone axes and other curiosities. Chief Kadachan is going to guide us,
and the other Indians aboard will dig for us, and there are interesting
old buildings and totem poles to be seen.”
It seemed strange, however, that so important a mission to the most
influential of the Alaskan tribes should end in a deserted village. But
divinity abounded nevertheless; the day was divine and there was plenty
of natural religion in the newborn landscapes that were being baptized
in sunshine, and sermons in the glacial boulders on the beach where we
landed.
The site of the old village is on an outswelling strip of ground about
two hundred yards long and fifty wide, sloping gently to the water with
a strip of gravel and tall grass in front, dark woods back of it, and
charming views over the water among the islands—a delightful place. The
tide was low when we arrived, and I noticed that the exposed boulders
on the beach—granite erratics that had been dropped by the melting ice
toward the close of the glacial period—were piled in parallel rows at
right angles to the shore-line, out of the way of the canoes that had
belonged to the village.
Most of the party sauntered along the shore; for the ruins were
overgrown with tall nettles, elder bushes, and prickly rubus vines
through which it was difficult to force a way. In company with the most
eager of the relic-seekers and two Indians, I pushed back among the
dilapidated dwellings. They were deserted some sixty or seventy years
before, and some of them were at least a hundred years old. So said our
guide, Kadachan, and his word was corroborated by the venerable aspect
of the ruins. Though the damp climate is destructive, many of the house
timbers were still in a good state of preservation, particularly those
hewn from the yellow cypress, or cedar as it is called here. The
magnitude of the ruins and the excellence of the workmanship manifest
in them was astonishing as belonging to Indians. For example, the first
dwelling we visited was about forty feet square, with walls built of
planks two feet wide and six inches thick. The ridgepole of yellow
cypress was two feet in diameter, forty feet long, and as round and
true as if it had been turned in a lathe; and, though lying in the damp
weeds, it was still perfectly sound. The nibble marks of the stone adze
were still visible, though crusted over with scale lichens in most
places. The pillars that had supported the ridgepole were still
standing in some of the ruins. They were all, as far as I observed,
carved into life-size figures of men, women, and children, fishes,
birds, and various other animals, such as the beaver, wolf, or bear.
Each of the wall planks had evidently been hewn out of a whole log, and
must have required sturdy deliberation as well as skill. Their
geometrical truthfulness was admirable. With the same tools not one in
a thousand of our skilled mechanics could do as good work. Compared
with it the bravest work of civilized backwoodsmen is feeble and
bungling. The completeness of form, finish, and proportion of these
timbers suggested skill of a wild and positive kind, like that which
guides the woodpecker in drilling round holes, and the bee in making
its cells.
[Illustration: Old Chief and Totem Pole, Wrangell.]
The carved totem-pole monuments are the most striking of the objects
displayed here. The simplest of them consisted of a smooth, round post
fifteen or twenty feet high and about eighteen inches in diameter, with
the figure of some animal on top—a bear, porpoise, eagle, or raven,
about life-size or larger. These were the totems of the families that
occupied the houses in front of which they stood. Others supported the
figure of a man or woman, life-size or larger, usually in a sitting
posture, said to resemble the dead whose ashes were contained in a
closed cavity in the pole. The largest were thirty or forty feet high,
carved from top to bottom into human and animal totem figures, one
above another, with their limbs grotesquely doubled and folded. Some of
the most imposing were said to commemorate some event of an historical
character. But a telling display of family pride seemed to have been
the prevailing motive. All the figures were more or less rude, and some
were broadly grotesque, but there was never any feebleness or obscurity
in the expression. On the contrary, every feature showed grave force
and decision; while the childish audacity displayed in the designs,
combined with manly strength in their execution, was truly wonderful.
The colored lichens and mosses gave them a venerable air, while the
larger vegetation often found on such as were most decayed produced a
picturesque effect. Here, for example, is a bear five or six feet long,
reposing on top of his lichen-clad pillar, with paws comfortably
folded, a tuft of grass growing in each ear and rubus bushes along his
back. And yonder is an old chief poised on a taller pillar, apparently
gazing out over the landscape in contemplative mood, a tuft of bushes
leaning back with a jaunty air from the top of his weatherbeaten hat,
and downy mosses about his massive lips. But no rudeness or
grotesqueness that may appear, however combined with the decorations
that nature has added, may possibly provoke mirth. The whole work is
serious in aspect and brave and true in execution.
Similar monuments are made by other Thlinkit tribes. The erection of a
totem pole is made a grand affair, and is often talked of for a year or
two beforehand. A feast, to which many are invited, is held, and the
joyous occasion is spent in eating, dancing, and the distribution of
gifts. Some of the larger specimens cost a thousand dollars or more.
From one to two hundred blankets, worth three dollars apiece, are paid
to the genius who carves them, while the presents and feast usually
cost twice as much, so that only the wealthy families can afford them.
I talked with an old Indian who pointed out one of the carvings he had
made in the Wrangell village, for which he told me he had received
forty blankets, a gun, a canoe, and other articles, all together worth
about $170. Mr. Swan, who has contributed much information concerning
the British Columbian and Alaskan tribes, describes a totem pole that
cost $2500. They are always planted firmly in the ground and stand
fast, showing the sturdy erectness of their builders.
While I was busy with my pencil, I heard chopping going on at the north
end of the village, followed by a heavy thud, as if a tree had fallen.
It appeared that after digging about the old hearth in the first
dwelling visited without finding anything of consequence, the
archæological doctor called the steamer deck hands to one of the most
interesting of the totems and directed them to cut it down, saw off the
principal figure,—a woman measuring three feet three inches across the
shoulders,—and convey it aboard the steamer, with a view to taking it
on East to enrich some museum or other. This sacrilege came near
causing trouble and would have cost us dear had the totem not chanced
to belong to the Kadachan family, the representative of which is a
member of the newly organized Wrangell Presbyterian Church. Kadachan
looked very seriously into the face of the reverend doctor and pushed
home the pertinent question: “How would you like to have an Indian go
to a graveyard and break down and carry away a monument belonging to
your family?”
However, the religious relations of the parties and a few trifling
presents embedded in apologies served to hush and mend the matter.
Some time in the afternoon the steam whistle called us together to
finish our memorable trip. There was no trace of decay in the sky; a
glorious sunset gilded the water and cleared away the shadows of our
meditations among the ruins. We landed at the Wrangell wharf at dusk,
pushed our way through a group of inquisitive Indians, across the two
crooked streets, and up to our homes in the fort. We had been away only
three days, but they were so full of novel scenes and impressions the
time seemed indefinitely long, and our broken Chilcat excursion, far
from being a failure as it seemed to some, was one of the most
memorable of my life.