The Return to Fort Wrangell
The day of our start for Wrangell was bright and the Hoon, the north
wind, strong. We passed around the east side of the larger island which
lies near the south extremity of the point of land between the Chilcat
and the Chilcoot channels and thence held a direct course down the east
shore of the canal. At sunset we encamped in a small bay at the head of
a beautiful harbor three or four miles south of Berner’s Bay, and the
next day, being Sunday, we remained in camp as usual, though the wind
was fair and it is not a sin to go home. The Indians spent most of the
day in washing, mending, eating, and singing hymns with Mr. Young, who
also gave them a Bible lesson, while I wrote notes and sketched.
Charley made a sweathouse and all the crew got good baths. This is one
of the most delightful little bays we have thus far enjoyed, girdled
with tall trees whose branches almost meet, and with views of
pure-white mountains across the broad, river-like canal.
Seeing smoke back in the dense woods, we went ashore to seek it and
discovered a Hootsenoo whiskey-factory in full blast. The Indians said
that an old man, a friend of theirs, was about to die and they were
making whiskey for his funeral.
Our Indians were already out of oily flesh, which they regard as a
necessity and consume in enormous quantities. The bacon was nearly gone
and they eagerly inquired for flesh at every camp we passed. Here we
found skinned carcasses of porcupines and a heap of wild mutton lying
on the confused hut floor. Our cook boiled the porcupines in a big pot
with a lot of potatoes we obtained at the same hut, and although the
potatoes were protected by their skins, the awfully wild penetrating
porcupine flavor found a way through the skins and flavored them to the
very heart. Bread and beans and dried fruit we had in abundance, and
none of these rank aboriginal dainties ever came nigh any meal of mine.
The Indians eat the hips of wild roses entire like berries, and I was
laughed at for eating only the outside of this fruit and rejecting the
seeds.
When we were approaching the village of the Auk tribe, venerable
Toyatte seemed to be unusually pensive, as if weighed down by some
melancholy thought. This was so unusual that I waited attentively to
find out the cause of his trouble.
When at last he broke silence it was to say, “Mr. Young, Mr. Young,”—he
usually repeated the name,—“I hope you will not stop at the Auk
village.”
“Why, Toyatte?” asked Mr. Young.
“Because they are a bad lot, and preaching to them can do no good.”
“Toyatte,” said Mr. Young, “have you forgotten what Christ said to his
disciples when he charged them to go forth and preach the gospel to
everybody; and that we should love our enemies and do good to those who
use us badly?”
“Well,” replied Toyatte, “if you preach to them, you must not call on
me to pray, because I cannot pray for Auks.”
“But the Bible says we should pray for all men, however bad they may
be.”
“Oh, yes, I know that, Mr. Young; I know it very well. But Auks are not
men, good or bad,—they are dogs.”
It was now nearly dark and quite so ere we found a harbor, not far from
the fine Auk Glacier which descends into the narrow channel that
separates Douglas Island from the mainland. Two of the Auks followed us
to our camp after eight o’clock and inquired into our object in
visiting them, that they might carry the news to their chief. One of
the chief’s houses is opposite our camp a mile or two distant, and we
concluded to call on him next morning.
I wanted to examine the Auk Glacier in the morning, but tried to be
satisfied with a general view and sketch as we sailed around its wide
fan-shaped front. It is one of the most beautiful of all the coast
glaciers that are in the first stage of decadence. We called on the Auk
chief at daylight, when he was yet in bed, but he arose goodnaturedly,
put on a calico shirt, drew a blanket around his legs, and comfortably
seated himself beside a small fire that gave light enough to show his
features and those of his children and the three women that one by one
came out of the shadows. All listened attentively to Mr. Young’s
message of goodwill. The chief was a serious, sharp-featured,
dark-complexioned man, sensible-looking and with good manners. He was
very sorry, he said, that his people had been drinking in his absence
and had used us so ill; he would like to hear us talk and would call
his people together if we would return to the village. This offer we
had to decline. We gave him good words and tobacco and bade him
good-bye.
The scenery all through the channel is magnificent, something like
Yosemite Valley in its lofty avalanche-swept wall cliffs, especially on
the mainland side, which are so steep few trees can find footing. The
lower island side walls are mostly forested. The trees are heavily
draped with lichens, giving the woods a remarkably gray, ancient look.
I noticed a good many two-leafed pines in boggy spots. The water was
smooth, and the reflections of the lofty walls striped with cascades
were charmingly distinct.
It was not easy to keep my crew full of wild flesh. We called at an
Indian summer camp on the mainland about noon, where there were three
very squalid huts crowded and jammed full of flesh of many colors and
smells, among which we discovered a lot of bright fresh trout, lovely
creatures about fifteen inches long, their sides adorned with vivid red
spots. We purchased five of them and a couple of salmon for a box of
gun-caps and a little tobacco. About the middle of the afternoon we
passed through a fleet of icebergs, their number increasing as we
neared the mouth of the Taku Fiord, where we camped, hoping to explore
the fiord and see the glaciers where the bergs, the first we had seen
since leaving Icy Bay, are derived.
[Illustration: Stranded Icebergs, Taku Glacier.]
We left camp at six o’clock, nearly an hour before daybreak. My Indians
were glad to find the fiord barred by a violent wind, against which we
failed to make any headway; and as it was too late in the season to
wait for better weather, I reluctantly gave up this promising work for
another year, and directed the crew to go straight ahead down the
coast. We sailed across the mouth of the happy inlet at fine speed,
keeping a man at the bow to look out for the smallest of the bergs, not
easily seen in the dim light, and another bailing the canoe as the tops
of some of the white caps broke over us. About two o’clock we passed a
large bay or fiord, out of which a violent wind was blowing, though the
main Stephens Passage was calm. About dusk, when we were all tired and
anxious to get into camp, we reached the mouth of Sum Dum Bay, but
nothing like a safe landing could we find. Our experienced captain was
indignant, as well he might be, because we did not see fit to stop
early in the afternoon at a good camp-ground he had chosen. He seemed
determined to give us enough of night sailing as a punishment to last
us for the rest of the voyage. Accordingly, though the night was dark
and rainy and the bay full of icebergs, he pushed grimly on, saying
that we must try to reach an Indian village on the other side of the
bay or an old Indian fort on an island in the middle of it. We made
slow, weary, anxious progress while Toyatte, who was well acquainted
with every feature of this part of the coast and could find his way in
the dark, only laughed at our misery. After a mile or two of this
dismal night work we struck across toward the island, now invisible,
and came near being wrecked on a rock which showed a smooth round back
over which the waves were breaking. In the hurried Indian shouts that
followed and while we were close against the rock, Mr. Young shouted,
as he leaned over against me, “It’s a whale, a whale!” evidently
fearing its tail, several specimens of these animals, which were
probably still on his mind, having been seen in the forenoon. While we
were passing along the east shore of the island we saw a light on the
opposite shore, a joyful sight, which Toyatte took for a fire in the
Indian village, and steered for it. John stood in the bow, as guide
through the bergs. Suddenly, we ran aground on a sand bar. Clearing
this, and running back half a mile or so, we again stood for the light,
which now shone brightly. I thought it strange that Indians should have
so large a fire. A broad white mass dimly visible back of the fire Mr.
Young took for the glow of the fire on the clouds. This proved to be
the front of a glacier. After we had effected a landing and stumbled up
toward the fire over a ledge of slippery, algæ-covered rocks, and
through the ordinary tangle of shore grass, we were astonished to find
white men instead of Indians, the first we had seen for a month. They
proved to be a party of seven gold-seekers from Fort Wrangell. It was
now about eight o’clock and they were in bed, but a jolly Irishman got
up to make coffee for us and find out who we were, where we had come
from, where going, and the objects of our travels. We unrolled our
chart and asked for information as to the extent and features of the
bay. But our benevolent friend took great pains to pull wool over our
eyes, and made haste to say that if “ice and sceneries” were what we
were looking for, this was a very poor, dull place. There were “big
rocks, gulches, and sceneries” of a far better quality down the coast
on the way to Wrangell. He and his party were prospecting, he said, but
thus far they had found only a few colors and they proposed going over
to Admiralty Island in the morning to try their luck.
In the morning, however, when the prospectors were to have gone over to
the island, we noticed a smoke half a mile back on a large stream, the
outlet of the glacier we had seen the night before, and an Indian told
us that the white men were building a big log house up there. It
appeared that they had found a promising placer mine in the moraine and
feared we might find it and spread the news. Daylight revealed a
magnificent fiord that brought Glacier Bay to mind. Miles of bergs lay
stranded on the shores, and the waters of the branch fiords, not on
Vancouver’s chart, were crowded with them as far as the eye could
reach. After breakfast we set out to explore an arm of the bay that
trends southeastward, and managed to force a way through the bergs
about ten miles. Farther we could not go. The pack was so close no open
water was in sight, and, convinced at last that this part of my work
would have to be left for another year, we struggled across to the west
side of the fiord and camped.
I climbed a mountain next morning, hoping to gain a view of the great
fruitful glaciers at the head of the fiord or, at least, of their snowy
fountains. But in this also I failed; for at a distance of about
sixteen miles from the mouth of the fiord a change to the northward in
its general trend cut off all its upper course from sight.
Returning to camp baffled and weary, I ordered all hands to pack up and
get out of the ice as soon as possible. And how gladly was that order
obeyed! Toyatte’s grand countenance glowed like a sun-filled glacier,
as he joyfully and teasingly remarked that “the big Sum Dum
ice-mountain had hidden his face from me and refused to let me pay him
a visit.” All the crew worked hard boring a way down the west side of
the fiord, and early in the afternoon we reached comparatively open
water near the mouth of the bay. Resting a few minutes among the
drifting bergs, taking last lingering looks at the wonderful place I
might never see again, and feeling sad over my weary failure to explore
it, I was cheered by a friend I little expected to meet here. Suddenly,
I heard the familiar whir of an ousel’s wings, and, looking up, saw my
little comforter coming straight from the shore. In a second or two he
was with me, and flew three times around my head with a happy salute,
as if saying, “Cheer up, old friend, you see I am here and all’s well.”
He then flew back to the shore, alighted on the topmost jag of a
stranded iceberg, and began to nod and bow as though he were on one of
his favorite rocks in the middle of a sunny California mountain
cataract.
Mr. Young regretted not meeting the Indians here, but mission work also
had to be left until next season. Our happy crew hoisted sail to a fair
wind, shouted “Good-bye, Sum Dum!” and soon after dark reached a harbor
a few miles north of Hobart Point.
We made an early start the next day, a fine, calm morning, glided
smoothly down the coast, admiring the magnificent mountains arrayed in
their winter robes, and early in the afternoon reached a lovely harbor
on an island five or six miles north of Cape Fanshawe. Toyatte
predicted a heavy winter storm, though only a mild rain was falling as
yet. Everybody was tired and hungry, and as the voyage was nearing the
end, I consented to stop here. While the shelter tents were being set
up and our blankets stowed under cover, John went out to hunt and
killed a deer within two hundred yards of the camp. When we were at the
camp-fire in Sum Dum Bay, one of the prospectors, replying to Mr.
Young’s complaint that they were oftentimes out of meat, asked Toyatte
why he and his men did not shoot plenty of ducks for the minister.
“Because the duck’s friend would not let us,” said Toyatte; “when we
want to shoot, Mr. Muir always shakes the canoe.”
Just as we were passing the south headland of Port Houghton Bay, we
heard a shout, and a few minutes later saw four Indians in a canoe
paddling rapidly after us. In about an hour they overtook us. They were
an Indian, his son, and two women with a load of fish-oil and dried
salmon to sell and trade at Fort Wrangell. They camped within a dozen
yards of us; with their sheets of cedar bark and poles they speedily
made a hut, spread spruce boughs in it for a carpet, unloaded the
canoe, and stored their goods under cover. Toward evening the old man
came smiling with a gift for Toyatte,—a large fresh salmon, which was
promptly boiled and eaten by our captain and crew as if it were only a
light refreshment like a biscuit between meals. A few minutes after the
big salmon had vanished, our generous neighbor came to Toyatte with a
second gift of dried salmon, which after being toasted a few minutes
tranquilly followed the fresh one as though it were a mere mouthful.
Then, from the same generous hands, came a third gift,—a large
milk-panful of huckleberries and grease boiled together,—and, strange
to say, this wonderful mess went smoothly down to rest on the broad and
deep salmon foundation. Thus refreshed, and appetite sharpened, my
sturdy crew made haste to begin on the buck, beans, bread, etc., and,
boiling and roasting, managed to get comfortably full on but little
more than half of it by sundown, making a good deal of sport of my pity
for the deer and refusing to eat any of it and nicknaming me the ice
_ancou_ and the deer and duck’s _tillicum_.
Sunday was a wild, driving, windy day with but little rain but big
promise of more. I took a walk back in the woods. The timber here is
very fine, about as large as any I have seen in Alaska, much better
than farther north. The Sitka spruce and the common hemlock, one
hundred and fifty and two hundred feet high, are slender and handsome.
The Sitka spruce makes good firewood even when green, the hemlock very
poor. Back a little way from the sea, there was a good deal of yellow
cedar, the best I had yet seen. The largest specimen that I saw and
measured on the trip was five feet three inches in diameter and about
one hundred and forty feet high. In the evening Mr. Young gave the
Indians a lesson, calling in our Indian neighbors. He told them the
story of Christ coming to save the world. The Indians wanted to know
why the Jews had killed him. The lesson was listened to with very
marked attention. Toyatte’s generous friend caught a devil-fish about
three feet in diameter to add to his stores of food. It would be very
good, he said, when boiled in berry and colicon-oil soup. Each arm of
this savage animal with its double row of button-like suction discs
closed upon any object brought within reach with a grip nothing could
escape. The Indians tell me that devil-fish live mostly on crabs,
mussels, and clams, the shells of which they easily crunch with their
strong, parrot-like beaks. That was a wild, stormy, rainy night. How
the rain soaked us in our tents!
“Just feel that,” said the minister in the night, as he took my hand
and plunged it into a pool about three inches deep in which he was
lying.
“Never mind,” I said, “it is only water. Everything is wet now. It will
soon be morning and we will dry at the fire.”
Our Indian neighbors were, if possible, still wetter. Their hut had
been blown down several times during the night. Our tent leaked badly,
and we were lying in a mossy bog, but around the big camp-fire we were
soon warm and half dry. We had expected to reach Wrangell by this time.
Toyatte said the storm might last several days longer. We were out of
tea and coffee, much to Mr. Young’s distress. On my return from a walk
I brought in a good big bunch of glandular ledum and boiled it in the
teapot. The result of this experiment was a bright, clear
amber-colored, rank-smelling liquor which I did not taste, but my
suffering companion drank the whole potful and praised it. The rain was
so heavy we decided not to attempt to leave camp until the storm
somewhat abated, as we were assured by Toyatte that we would not be
able to round Cape Fanshawe, a sheer, outjutting headland, the nose as
he called it, past which the wind sweeps with great violence in these
southeastern storms. With what grateful enthusiasm the trees welcomed
the life-giving rain! Strong, towering spruces, hemlocks, and cedars
tossed their arms, bowing, waving, in every leap, quivering and
rejoicing together in the gray, roaring storm. John and Charley put on
their gun-coats and went hunting for another deer, but returned later
in the afternoon with clean hands, having fortunately failed to shed
any more blood. The wind still held in the south, and Toyatte, grimly
trying to comfort us, told us that we might be held here a week or
more, which we should not have minded much, for we had abundance of
provisions. Mr. Young and I shifted our tent and tried to dry blankets.
The wind moderated considerably, and at 7 A.M. we started but met a
rough sea and so stiff a wind we barely succeeded in rounding the cape
by all hands pulling their best. Thence we struggled down the coast,
creeping close to the shore and taking advantage of the shelter of
protecting rocks, making slow, hard-won progress until about the middle
of the afternoon, when the sky opened and the blessed sun shone out
over the beautiful waters and forests with rich amber light; and the
high, glacier-laden mountains, adorned with fresh snow, slowly came to
view in all their grandeur, the bluish-gray clouds crawling and
lingering and dissolving until every vestige of them vanished. The
sunlight made the upper snow-fields pale creamy yellow, like that seen
on the Chilcat mountains the first day of our return trip. Shortly
after the sky cleared, the wind abated and changed around to the north,
so that we ventured to hoist our sail, and then the weary Indians had
rest. It was interesting to note how speedily the heavy swell that had
been rolling for the last two or three days was subdued by the
comparatively light breeze from the opposite direction. In a few
minutes the sound was smooth and no trace of the storm was left, save
the fresh snow and the discoloration of the water. All the water of the
sound as far as I noticed was pale coffee-color like that of the
streams in boggy woods. How much of this color was due to the inflow of
the flooded streams many times increased in size and number by the
rain, and how much to the beating of the waves along the shore stirring
up vegetable matter in shallow bays, I cannot determine. The effect,
however, was very marked.
About four o’clock we saw smoke on the shore and ran in for news. We
found a company of Taku Indians, who were on their way to Fort
Wrangell, some six men and about the same number of women. The men were
sitting in a bark hut, handsomely reinforced and embowered with fresh
spruce boughs. The women were out at the side of a stream, washing
their many bits of calico. A little girl, six or seven years old, was
sitting on the gravelly beach, building a playhouse of white quartz
pebbles, scarcely caring to stop her work to gaze at us. Toyatte found
a friend among the men, and wished to encamp beside them for the night,
assuring us that this was the only safe harbor to be found within a
good many miles. But we resolved to push on a little farther and make
use of the smooth weather after being stormbound so long, much to
Toyatte and his companion’s disgust. We rowed about a couple of miles
and ran into a cozy cove where wood and water were close at hand. How
beautiful and homelike it was! plushy moss for mattresses decked with
red corner berries, noble spruce standing guard about us and spreading
kindly protecting arms. A few ferns, aspidiums, polypodiums, with
dewberry vines, coptis, pyrola, leafless huckleberry bushes, and ledum
grow beneath the trees. We retired at eight o’clock, and just then
Toyatte, who had been attentively studying the sky, presaged rain and
another southeaster for the morrow.
The sky was a little cloudy next morning, but the air was still and the
water smooth. We all hoped that Toyatte, the old weather prophet, had
misread the sky signs. But before reaching Point Vanderpeut the rain
began to fall and the dreaded southeast wind to blow, which soon
increased to a stiff breeze, next thing to a gale, that lashed the
sound into ragged white caps. Cape Vanderpeut is part of the terminal
of an ancient glacier that once extended six or eight miles out from
the base of the mountains. Three large glaciers that once were
tributaries still descend nearly to the sea-level, though their fronts
are back in narrow fiords, eight or ten miles from the sound. A similar
point juts out into the sound five or six miles to the south, while the
missing portion is submerged and forms a shoal.
All the cape is forested save a narrow strip about a mile long,
composed of large boulders against which the waves beat with loud
roaring. A bar of foam a mile or so farther out showed where the waves
were breaking on a submerged part of the moraine, and I supposed that
we would be compelled to pass around it in deep water, but Toyatte,
usually so cautious, determined to cross it, and after giving
particular directions, with an encouraging shout every oar and paddle
was strained to shoot through a narrow gap. Just at the most critical
point a big wave heaved us aloft and dropped us between two huge
rounded boulders, where, had the canoe been a foot or two closer to
either of them, it must have been smashed. Though I had offered no
objection to our experienced pilot’s plan, it looked dangerous, and I
took the precaution to untie my shoes so they could be quickly shaken
off for swimming. But after crossing the bar we were not yet out of
danger, for we had to struggle hard to keep from being driven ashore
while the waves were beating us broadside on. At length we discovered a
little inlet, into which we gladly escaped. A pure-white iceberg,
weathered to the form of a cross, stood amid drifts of kelp and the
black rocks of the wave-beaten shore in sign of safety and welcome. A
good fire soon warmed and dried us into common comfort. Our narrow
escape was the burden of conversation as we sat around the fire.
Captain Toyatte told us of two similar adventures while he was a strong
young man. In both of them his canoe was smashed and he swam ashore out
of the surge with a gun in his teeth. He says that if we had struck the
rocks he and Mr. Young would have been drowned, all the rest of us
probably would have been saved. Then, turning to me, he asked me if I
could have made a fire in such a case without matches, and found a way
to Wrangell without canoe or food.
We started about daybreak from our blessed white cross harbor, and,
after rounding a bluff cape opposite the mouth of Wrangell Narrows, a
fleet of icebergs came in sight, and of course I was eager to trace
them to their source. Toyatte naturally enough was greatly excited
about the safety of his canoe and begged that we should not venture to
force a way through the bergs, risking the loss of the canoe and our
lives now that we were so near the end of our long voyage.
“Oh, never fear, Toyatte,” I replied. “You know we are always lucky—the
weather is good. I only want to see the Thunder Glacier for a few
minutes, and should the bergs be packed dangerously close, I promise to
turn back and wait until next summer.”
Thus assured, he pushed rapidly on until we entered the fiord, where we
had to go cautiously slow. The bergs were close packed almost
throughout the whole extent of the fiord, but we managed to reach a
point about two miles from the head—commanding a good view of the
down-plunging lower end of the glacier and blue, jagged ice-wall. This
was one of the most imposing of the first-class glaciers I had as yet
seen, and with its magnificent fiord formed a fine triumphant close for
our season’s ice work. I made a few notes and sketches and turned back
in time to escape from the thickest packs of bergs before dark. Then
Kadachan was stationed in the bow to guide through the open portion of
the mouth of the fiord and across Soutchoi Strait. It was not until
several hours after dark that we were finally free from ice. We
occasionally encountered stranded packs on the delta, which in the
starlight seemed to extend indefinitely in every direction. Our danger
lay in breaking the canoe on small bergs hard to see and in getting too
near the larger ones that might split or roll over.
“Oh, when will we escape from this ice?” moaned much-enduring old
Toyatte.
We ran aground in several places in crossing the Stickeen delta, but
finally succeeded in groping our way over muddy shallows before the
tide fell, and encamped on the boggy shore of a small island, where we
discovered a spot dry enough to sleep on, after tumbling about in a
tangle of bushes and mossy logs.
We left our last camp November 21 at daybreak. The weather was calm and
bright. Wrangell Island came into view beneath a lovely rosy sky, all
the forest down to the water’s edge silvery gray with a dusting of
snow. John and Charley seemed to be seriously distressed to find
themselves at the end of their journey while a portion of the stock of
provisions remained uneaten. “What is to be done about it?” they asked,
more than half in earnest. The fine, strong, and specious deliberation
of Indians was well illustrated on this eventful trip. It was fresh
every morning. They all behaved well, however, exerted themselves under
tedious hardships without flinching for days or weeks at a time; never
seemed in the least nonplussed; were prompt to act in every exigency;
good as servants, fellow travelers, and even friends.
We landed on an island in sight of Wrangell and built a big smoky
signal fire for friends in town, then set sail, unfurled our flag, and
about noon completed our long journey of seven or eight hundred miles.
As we approached the town, a large canoeful of friendly Indians came
flying out to meet us, cheering and handshaking in lusty Boston
fashion. The friends of Mr. Young had intended to come out in a body to
welcome him back, but had not had time to complete their arrangements
before we landed. Mr. Young was eager for news. I told him there could
be no news of importance about a town. We only had real news, drawn
from the wilderness. The mail steamer had left Wrangell eight days
before, and Mr. Vanderbilt and family had sailed on her to Portland. I
had to wait a month for the next steamer, and though I would have liked
to go again to Nature, the mountains were locked for the winter and
canoe excursions no longer safe.
So I shut myself up in a good garret alone to wait and work. I was
invited to live with Mr. Young but concluded to prepare my own food and
enjoy quiet work. How grandly long the nights were and short the days!
At noon the sun seemed to be about an hour high, the clouds colored
like sunset. The weather was rather stormy. North winds prevailed for a
week at a time, sending down the temperature to near zero and chilling
the vapor of the bay into white reek, presenting a curious appearance
as it streamed forward on the wind, like combed wool. At Sitka the
minimum was eight degrees plus; at Wrangell, near the storm-throat of
the Stickeen, zero. This is said to be the coldest weather ever
experienced in southeastern Alaska.