Alaska Indians
Looking back on my Alaska travels, I have always been glad that good
luck gave me Mr. Young as a companion, for he brought me into confiding
contact with the Thlinkit tribes, so that I learned their customs, what
manner of men they were, how they lived and loved, fought and played,
their morals, religion, hopes and fears, and superstitions, how they
resembled and differed in their characteristics from our own and other
races. It was easy to see that they differed greatly from the typical
American Indian of the interior of this continent. They were doubtless
derived from the Mongol stock. Their down-slanting oval eyes, wide
cheek-bones, and rather thick, outstanding upper lips at once suggest
their connection with the Chinese or Japanese. I have not seen a single
specimen that looks in the least like the best of the Sioux, or indeed
of any of the tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains. They also
differ from other North American Indians in being willing to work, when
free from the contamination of bad whites. They manage to feed
themselves well, build good substantial houses, bravely fight their
enemies, love their wives and children and friends, and cherish a quick
sense of honor. The best of them prefer death to dishonor, and
sympathize with their neighbors in their misfortunes and sorrows. Thus
when a family loses a child by death, neighbors visit them to cheer and
console. They gather around the fire and smoke, talk kindly and
naturally, telling the sorrowing parents not to grieve too much,
reminding them of the better lot of their child in another world and of
the troubles and trials the little ones escape by dying young, all this
in a perfectly natural, straightforward way, wholly unlike the vacant,
silent, hesitating behavior of most civilized friends, who oftentimes
in such cases seem nonplussed, awkward, and afraid to speak, however
sympathetic.
The Thlinkits are fond and indulgent parents. In all my travels I never
heard a cross, fault-finding word, or anything like scolding inflicted
on an Indian child, or ever witnessed a single case of spanking, so
common in civilized communities. They consider the want of a son to
bear their name and keep it alive the saddest and most deplorable
ill-fortune imaginable.
The Thlinkit tribes give a hearty welcome to Christian missionaries. In
particular they are quick to accept the doctrine of the atonement,
because they themselves practice it, although to many of the civilized
whites it is a stumbling-block and rock of offense. As an example of
their own doctrine of atonement they told Mr. Young and me one evening
that twenty or thirty years ago there was a bitter war between their
own and the Sitka tribe, great fighters, and pretty evenly matched.
After fighting all summer in a desultory, squabbling way, fighting now
under cover, now in the open, watching for every chance for a shot,
none of the women dared venture to the salmon-streams or berry-fields
to procure their winter stock of food. At this crisis one of the
Stickeen chiefs came out of his block-house fort into an open space
midway between their fortified camps, and shouted that he wished to
speak to the leader of the Sitkas.
When the Sitka chief appeared he said:—
“My people are hungry. They dare not go to the salmon-streams or
berry-fields for winter supplies, and if this war goes on much longer
most of my people will die of hunger. We have fought long enough; let
us make peace. You brave Sitka warriors go home, and we will go home,
and we will all set out to dry salmon and berries before it is too
late.”
The Sitka chief replied:—
“You may well say let us stop fighting, when you have had the best of
it. You have killed ten more of my tribe than we have killed of yours.
Give us ten Stickeen men to balance our blood-account; then, and not
till then, will we make peace and go home.”
“Very well,” replied the Stickeen chief, “you know my rank. You know
that I am worth ten common men and more. Take me and make peace.”
This noble offer was promptly accepted; the Stickeen chief stepped
forward and was shot down in sight of the fighting bands. Peace was
thus established, and all made haste to their homes and ordinary work.
That chief literally gave himself a sacrifice for his people. He died
that they might live. Therefore, when missionaries preached the
doctrine of atonement, explaining that when all mankind had gone
astray, had broken God’s laws and deserved to die, God’s son came
forward, and, like the Stickeen chief, offered himself as a sacrifice
to heal the cause of God’s wrath and set all the people of the world
free, the doctrine was readily accepted.
“Yes, your words are good,” they said. “The Son of God, the Chief of
chiefs, the Maker of all the world, must be worth more than all mankind
put together; therefore, when His blood was shed, the salvation of the
world was made sure.”
A telling illustration of the ready acceptance of this doctrine was
displayed by Shakes, head chief of the Stickeens at Fort Wrangell. A
few years before my first visit to the Territory, when the first
missionary arrived, he requested Shakes to call his people together to
hear the good word he had brought them. Shakes accordingly sent out
messengers throughout the village, telling his people to wash their
faces, put on their best clothing, and come to his block-house to hear
what their visitor had to say. When all were assembled, the missionary
preached a Christian sermon on the fall of man and the atonement
whereby Christ, the Son of God, the Chief of chiefs, had redeemed all
mankind, provided that this redemption was voluntarily accepted with
repentance of their sins and the keeping of his commandments.
When the missionary had finished his sermon, Chief Shakes slowly arose,
and, after thanking the missionary for coming so far to bring them good
tidings and taking so much unselfish interest in the welfare of his
tribe, he advised his people to accept the new religion, for he felt
satisfied that because the white man knew so much more than the Indian,
the white man’s religion was likely to be better than theirs.
“The white man,” said he, “makes great ships. We, like children, can
only make canoes. He makes his big ships go with the wind, and he also
makes them go with fire. We chop down trees with stone axes; the Boston
man with iron axes, which are far better. In everything the ways of the
white man seem to be better than ours. Compared with the white man we
are only blind children, knowing not how best to live either here or in
the country we go to after we die. So I wish you to learn this new
religion and teach it to your children, that you may all go when you
die into that good heaven country of the white man and be happy. But I
am too old to learn a new religion, and besides, many of my people who
have died were bad and foolish people, and if this word the missionary
has brought us is true, and I think it is, many of my people must be in
that bad country the missionary calls ‘Hell,’ and I must go there also,
for a Stickeen chief never deserts his people in time of trouble. To
that bad country, therefore, I will go, and try to cheer my people and
help them as best I can to endure their misery.”
Toyatte was a famous orator. I was present at the meeting at Fort
Wrangell at which he was examined and admitted as a member of the
Presbyterian Church. When called upon to answer the questions as to his
ideas of God, and the principal doctrines of Christianity, he slowly
arose in the crowded audience, while the missionary said, “Toyatte, you
do not need to rise. You can answer the questions seated.”
To this he paid no attention, but stood several minutes without
speaking a word, never for a moment thinking of sitting down like a
tired woman while making the most important of all the speeches of his
life. He then explained in detail what his mother had taught him as to
the character of God, the great Maker of the world; also what the
shamans had taught him; the thoughts that often came to his mind when
he was alone on hunting expeditions, and what he first thought of the
religion which the missionaries had brought them. In all his gestures,
and in the language in which he expressed himself, there was a noble
simplicity and earnestness and majestic bearing which made the sermons
and behavior of the three distinguished divinity doctors present seem
commonplace in comparison.
Soon after our return to Fort Wrangell this grand old man was killed in
a quarrel in which he had taken no other part than that of peacemaker.
A number of the Taku tribe came to Fort Wrangell, camped near the
Stickeen village, and made merry, manufacturing and drinking
_hootchenoo_, a vile liquor distilled from a mash made of flour, dried
apples, sugar, and molasses, and drunk hot from the still. The
manufacture of _hootchenoo_ being illegal, and several of Toyatte’s
tribe having been appointed deputy constables to prevent it, they went
to the Taku camp and destroyed as much of the liquor as they could
find. The Takus resisted, and during the quarrel one of the Stickeens
struck a Taku in the face—an unpardonable offense. The next day
messengers from the Taku camp gave notice to the Stickeens that they
must make atonement for that blow, or fight with guns. Mr. Young, of
course, was eager to stop the quarrel and so was Toyatte. They advised
the Stickeen who had struck the Taku to return to their camp and submit
to an equal blow in the face from the Taku. He did so; went to the
camp, said he was ready to make atonement, and invited the person whom
he had struck to strike him. This the Taku did with so much force that
the balance of justice was again disturbed. The attention of the Takus
was called to the fact that this atoning blow was far harder than the
one to be atoned for, and immediately a sort of general free fist-fight
began, and the quarrel was thus increased in bitterness rather than
diminished.
Next day the Takus sent word to the Stickeens to get their guns ready,
for to-morrow they would come up and fight them, thus boldly declaring
war. The Stickeens in great excitement assembled and loaded their guns
for the coming strife. Mr. Young ran hither and thither amongst the men
of his congregation, forbidding them to fight, reminding them that
Christ told them when they were struck to offer the other cheek instead
of giving a blow in return, doing everything in his power to still the
storm, but all in vain. Toyatte stood outside one of the big
blockhouses with his men about him, awaiting the onset of the Takus.
Mr. Young tried hard to get him away to a place of safety, reminding
him that he belonged to his church and no longer had any right to
fight. Toyatte calmly replied:—
“Mr. Young, Mr. Young, I am not going to fight. You see I have no gun
in my hand; but I cannot go inside of the fort to a place of safety
like women and children while my young men are exposed to the bullets
of their enemies. I must stay with them and share their dangers, but I
will not fight. But you, Mr. Young, _you_ must go away; you are a
minister and you are an important man. It would not do for you to be
exposed to bullets. Go to your home in the fort; pretty soon ‘hi yu
poogh’” (much shooting).
At the first fire Toyatte fell, shot through the breast. Thus died for
his people the noblest old Roman of them all.
On this first Alaska excursion I saw Toyatte under all
circumstances,—in rain and snow, landing at night in dark storms,
making fires, building shelters, exposed to all kinds of discomfort,
but never under any circumstances did I ever see him do anything, or
make a single gesture, that was not dignified, or hear him say a word
that might not be uttered anywhere. He often deplored the fact that he
had no son to take his name at his death, and expressed himself as very
grateful when I told him that his name would not be forgotten,—that I
had named one of the Stickeen glaciers for him.
Part II
_The Trip of 1880_
Chapter XIV
Sum Dum Bay
I arrived early on the morning of the eighth of August on the steamer
California to continue my explorations of the fiords to the northward
which were closed by winter the previous November. The noise of our
cannon and whistle was barely sufficient to awaken the sleepy town. The
morning shout of one good rooster was the only evidence of life and
health in all the place. Everything seemed kindly and familiar—the
glassy water; evergreen islands; the Indians with their canoes and
baskets and blankets and berries; the jet ravens, prying and flying
about the streets and spruce trees; and the bland, hushed atmosphere
brooding tenderly over all.
How delightful it is, and how it makes one’s pulses bound to get back
into this reviving northland wilderness! How truly wild it is, and how
joyously one’s heart responds to the welcome it gives, its waters and
mountains shining and glowing like enthusiastic human faces! Gliding
along the shores of its network of channels, we may travel thousands of
miles without seeing any mark of man, save at long intervals some
little Indian village or the faint smoke of a camp-fire. Even these are
confined to the shore. Back a few yards from the beach the forests are
as trackless as the sky, while the mountains, wrapped in their snow and
ice and clouds, seem never before to have been even looked at.
For those who really care to get into hearty contact with the coast
region, travel by canoe is by far the better way. The larger canoes
carry from one to three tons, rise lightly over any waves likely to be
met on the inland channels, go well under sail, and are easily paddled
alongshore in calm weather or against moderate winds, while snug
harbors where they may ride at anchor or be pulled up on a smooth beach
are to be found almost everywhere. With plenty of provisions packed in
boxes, and blankets and warm clothing in rubber or canvas bags, you may
be truly independent, and enter into partnership with Nature; to be
carried with the winds and currents, accept the noble invitations
offered all along your way to enter the mountain fiords, the homes of
the waterfalls and glaciers, and encamp almost every night beneath
hospitable trees.
I left Fort Wrangell the 16th of August, accompanied by Mr. Young, in a
canoe about twenty-five feet long and five wide, carrying two small
square sails and manned by two Stickeen Indians—Captain Tyeen and
Hunter Joe—and a half-breed named Smart Billy. The day was calm, and
bright, fleecy, clouds hung about the lowest of the mountain-brows,
while far above the clouds the peaks were seen stretching grandly away
to the northward with their ice and snow shining in as calm a light as
that which was falling on the glassy waters. Our Indians welcomed the
work that lay before them, dipping their oars in exact time with hearty
good will as we glided past island after island across the delta of the
Stickeen into Soutchoi Channel.
By noon we came in sight of a fleet of icebergs from Hutli Bay. The
Indian name of this icy fiord is Hutli, or Thunder Bay, from the sound
made by the bergs in falling and rising from the front of the inflowing
glacier.
As we floated happily on over the shining waters, the beautiful
islands, in ever-changing pictures, were an unfailing source of
enjoyment; but chiefly our attention was turned upon the mountains.
Bold granite headlands with their feet in the channel, or some
broad-shouldered peak of surpassing grandeur, would fix the eye, or
some one of the larger glaciers, with far-reaching tributaries clasping
entire groups of peaks and its great crystal river pouring down through
the forest between gray ridges and domes. In these grand picture
lessons the day was spent, and we spread our blankets beneath a Menzies
spruce on moss two feet deep.
Next morning we sailed around an outcurving bank of boulders and sand
ten miles long, the terminal moraine of a grand old glacier on which
last November we met a perilous adventure. It is located just opposite
three large converging glaciers which formerly united to form the
vanished trunk of the glacier to which the submerged moraine belonged.
A few centuries ago it must have been the grandest feature of this part
of the coast, and, so well preserved are the monuments of its
greatness, the noble old ice-river may be seen again in imagination
about as vividly as if present in the flesh, with snow-clouds crawling
about its fountains, sunshine sparkling on its broad flood, and its
ten-mile ice-wall planted in the deep waters of the channel and sending
off its bergs with loud resounding thunder.
About noon we rounded Cape Fanshawe, scudding swiftly before a fine
breeze, to the delight of our Indians, who had now only to steer and
chat. Here we overtook two Hoona Indians and their families on their
way home from Fort Wrangell. They had exchanged five sea-otter furs,
worth about a hundred dollars apiece, and a considerable number of
fur-seal, land-otter, marten, beaver, and other furs and skins, some
$800 worth, for a new canoe valued at eighty dollars, some flour,
tobacco, blankets, and a few barrels of molasses for the manufacture of
whiskey. The blankets were not to wear, but to keep as money, for the
almighty dollar of these tribes is a Hudson’s Bay blanket. The wind
died away soon after we met, and as the two canoes glided slowly side
by side, the Hoonas made minute inquiries as to who we were and what we
were doing so far north. Mr. Young’s object in meeting the Indians as a
missionary they could in part understand, but mine in searching for
rocks and glaciers seemed past comprehension, and they asked our
Indians whether gold-mines might not be the main object. They
remembered, however, that I had visited their Glacier Bay ice-mountains
a year ago, and seemed to think there might be, after all, some
mysterious interest about them of which they were ignorant. Toward the
middle of the afternoon they engaged our crew in a race. We pushed a
little way ahead for a time, but, though possessing a considerable
advantage, as it would seem, in our long oars, they at length overtook
us and kept up until after dark, when we camped together in the rain on
the bank of a salmon-stream among dripping grass and bushes some
twenty-five miles beyond Cape Fanshawe.
These cold northern waters are at times about as brilliantly
phosphorescent as those of the warm South, and so they were this
evening in the rain and darkness, with the temperature of the water at
forty-nine degrees, the air fifty-one. Every stroke of the oar made a
vivid surge of white light, and the canoes left shining tracks.
As we neared the mouth of the well-known salmon-stream where we
intended making our camp, we noticed jets and flashes of silvery light
caused by the startled movement of the salmon that were on their way to
their spawning-grounds. These became more and more numerous and
exciting, and our Indians shouted joyfully, “Hi yu salmon! Hi yu
muck-a-muck!” while the water about the canoe and beneath the canoe was
churned by thousands of fins into silver fire. After landing two of our
men to commence camp-work, Mr. Young and I went up the stream with
Tyeen to the foot of a rapid, to see him catch a few salmon for supper.
The stream ways so filled with them there seemed to be more fish than
water in it, and we appeared to be sailing in boiling, seething silver
light marvelously relieved in the jet darkness. In the midst of the
general auroral glow and the specially vivid flashes made by the
frightened fish darting ahead and to right and left of the canoe, our
attention was suddenly fixed by a long, steady, comet-like blaze that
seemed to be made by some frightful monster that was pursuing us. But
when the portentous object reached the canoe, it proved to be only our
little dog, Stickeen.
After getting the canoe into a side eddy at the foot of the rapids,
Tyeen caught half a dozen salmon in a few minutes by means of a large
hook fastened to the end of a pole. They were so abundant that he
simply groped for them in a random way, or aimed at them by the light
they themselves furnished. That food to last a month or two may thus be
procured in less than an hour is a striking illustration of the
fruitfulness of these Alaskan waters.
[Illustration: Vegetation at High-Tide Line, Sitka Harbor.]
Our Hoona neighbors were asleep in the morning at sunrise, lying in a
row, wet and limp like dead salmon. A little boy about six years old,
with no other covering than a remnant of a shirt, was lying peacefully
on his back, like Tam o’ Shanter, despising wind and rain and fire. He
is up now, looking happy and fresh, with no clothes to dry and no need
of washing while this weather lasts. The two babies are firmly strapped
on boards, leaving only their heads and hands free. Their mothers are
nursing them, holding the boards on end, while they sit on the ground
with their breasts level with the little prisoners’ mouths.
This morning we found out how beautiful a nook we had got into. Besides
the charming picturesqueness of its lines, the colors about it,
brightened by the rain, made a fine study. Viewed from the shore, there
was first a margin of dark-brown algæ, then a bar of yellowish-brown,
next a dark bar on the rugged rocks marking the highest tides, then a
bar of granite boulders with grasses in the seams, and above this a
thick, bossy, overleaning fringe of bushes colored red and yellow and
green. A wall of spruces and hemlocks draped and tufted with gray and
yellow lichens and mosses embowered the campground and overarched the
little river, while the camp-fire smoke, like a stranded cloud, lay
motionless in their branches. Down on the beach ducks and sandpipers in
flocks of hundreds were getting their breakfasts, bald eagles were seen
perched on dead spars along the edge of the woods, heavy-looking and
overfed, gazing stupidly like gorged vultures, and porpoises were
blowing and plunging outside.
As for the salmon, as seen this morning urging their way up the swift
current,—tens of thousands of them, side by side, with their backs out
of the water in shallow places now that the tide was low,—nothing that
I could write might possibly give anything like a fair conception of
the extravagance of their numbers. There was more salmon apparently,
bulk for bulk, than water in the stream. The struggling multitudes,
crowding one against another, could not get out of our way when we
waded into the midst of them. One of our men amused himself by seizing
them above the tail and swinging them over his head. Thousands could
thus be taken by hand at low tide, while they were making their way
over the shallows among the stones.
Whatever may be said of other resources of the Territory, it is hardly
possible to exaggerate the importance of the fisheries. Not to mention
cod, herring, halibut, etc., there are probably not less than a
thousand salmon-streams in southeastern Alaska as large or larger than
this one (about forty feet wide) crowded with salmon several times a
year. The first run commenced that year in July, while the king salmon,
one of the five species recognized by the Indians, was in the Chilcat
River about the middle of the November before.
From this wonderful salmon-camp we sailed joyfully up the coast to
explore icy Sum Dum Bay, beginning my studies where I left off the
previous November. We started about six o’clock, and pulled merrily on
through fog and rain, the beautiful wooded shore on our right, passing
bergs here and there, the largest of which, though not over two hundred
feet long, seemed many times larger as they loomed gray and indistinct
through the fog. For the first five hours the sailing was open and
easy, nor was there anything very exciting to be seen or heard, save
now and then the thunder of a falling berg rolling and echoing from
cliff to cliff, and the sustained roar of cataracts.
About eleven o’clock we reached a point where the fiord was packed with
ice all the way across, and we ran ashore to fit a block of wood on the
cutwater of our canoe to prevent its being battered or broken. While
Captain Tyeen, who had had considerable experience among berg ice, was
at work on the canoe, Hunter Joe and Smart Billy prepared a warm lunch.
The sheltered hollow where we landed seems to be a favorite
camping-ground for the Sum Dum seal-hunters. The pole-frames of tents,
tied with cedar bark, stood on level spots strewn with seal bones, bits
of salmon, and spruce bark.
We found the work of pushing through the ice rather tiresome. An
opening of twenty or thirty yards would be found here and there, then a
close pack that had to be opened by pushing the smaller bergs aside
with poles. I enjoyed the labor, however, for the fine lessons I got,
and in an hour or two we found zigzag lanes of water, through which we
paddled with but little interruption, and had leisure to study the
wonderful variety of forms the bergs presented as we glided past them.
The largest we saw did not greatly exceed two hundred feet in length,
or twenty-five or thirty feet in height above the water. Such bergs
would draw from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet of water. All
those that have floated long undisturbed have a projecting base at the
water-line, caused by the more rapid melting of the immersed portion.
When a portion of the berg breaks off, another base line is formed, and
the old one, sharply cut, may be seen rising at all angles, giving it a
marked character. Many of the oldest bergs are beautifully ridged by
the melting out of narrow furrows strictly parallel throughout the
mass, revealing the bedded structure of the ice, acquired perhaps
centuries ago, on the mountain snow fountains. A berg suddenly going to
pieces is a grand sight, especially when the water is calm and no
motion is visible save perchance the slow drift of the tide-current.
The prolonged roar of its fall comes with startling effect, and heavy
swells are raised that haste away in every direction to tell what has
taken place, and tens of thousands of its neighbors rock and swash in
sympathy, repeating the news over and over again. We were too near
several large ones that fell apart as we passed them, and our canoe had
narrow escapes. The seal-hunters, Tyeen says, are frequently lost in
these sudden berg accidents.
In the afternoon, while we were admiring the scenery, which, as we
approached the head of the fiord, became more and more sublime, one of
our Indians called attention to a flock of wild goats on a mountain
overhead, and soon afterwards we saw two other flocks, at a height of
about fifteen hundred feet, relieved against the mountains as white
spots. They are abundant here and throughout the Alaskan Alps in
general, feeding on the grassy slopes above the timber-line. Their
long, yellowish hair is shed at this time of year and they were snowy
white. None of nature’s cattle are better fed or better protected from
the cold. Tyeen told us that before the introduction of guns they used
to hunt them with spears, chasing them with their wolf-dogs, and thus
bringing them to bay among the rocks, where they were easily approached
and killed.
The upper half of the fiord is about from a mile to a mile and a half
wide, and shut in by sublime Yosemite cliffs, nobly sculptured, and
adorned with waterfalls and fringes of trees, bushes, and patches of
flowers; but amid so crowded a display of novel beauty it was not easy
to concentrate the attention long enough on any portion of it without
giving more days and years than our lives could afford. I was
determined to see at least the grand fountain of all this ice. As we
passed headland after headland, hoping as each was rounded we should
obtain a view of it, it still remained hidden.
“Ice-mountain hi yu kumtux hide,”—glaciers know how to hide extremely
well,—said Tyeen, as he rested for a moment after rounding a huge
granite shoulder of the wall whence we expected to gain a view of the
extreme head of the fiord. The bergs, however, were less closely packed
and we made good progress, and at half-past eight o’clock, fourteen and
a half hours after setting out, the great glacier came in sight at the
head of a branch of the fiord that comes in from the northeast.
The discharging front of this fertile, fast-flowing glacier is about
three quarters of a mile wide, and probably eight or nine hundred feet
deep, about one hundred and fifty feet of its depth rising above the
water as a grand blue barrier wall. It is much wider a few miles
farther back, the front being jammed between sheer granite walls from
thirty-five hundred to four thousand feet high. It shows grandly from
where it broke on our sight, sweeping boldly forward and downward in
its majestic channel, swaying from side to side in graceful fluent
lines around stern unflinching rocks. While I stood in the canoe making
a sketch of it, several bergs came off with tremendous dashing and
thunder, raising a cloud of ice-dust and spray to a height of a hundred
feet or more.
“The ice-mountain is well disposed toward you,” said Tyeen. “He is
firing his big guns to welcome you.”
After completing my sketch and entering a few notes, I directed the
crew to pull around a lofty burnished rock on the west side of the
channel, where, as I knew from the trend of the cañon, a large glacier
once came in; and what was my delight to discover that the glacier was
still there and still pouring its ice into a branch of the fiord. Even
the Indians shared my joy and shouted with me. I expected only one
first-class glacier here, and found two. They are only about two miles
apart. How glorious a mansion that precious pair dwell in! After sunset
we made haste to seek a camp-ground. I would fain have shared these
upper chambers with the two glaciers, but there was no landing-place in
sight, and we had to make our way back a few miles in the twilight to
the mouth of a side cañon where we had seen timber on the way up. There
seemed to be a good landing as we approached the shore, but, coming
nearer, we found that the granite fell directly into deep water without
leading any level margin, though the slope a short distance back was
not very steep.
After narrowly scanning the various seams and steps that roughened the
granite, we concluded to attempt a landing rather than grope our way
farther down the fiord through the ice. And what a time we had climbing
on hands and knees up the slippery glacier-polished rocks to a shelf
some two hundred feet above the water and dragging provisions and
blankets after us! But it proved to be a glorious place, the very best
camp-ground of all the trip,—a perfect garden, ripe berries nodding
from a fringe of bushes around its edges charmingly displayed in the
light of our big fire. Close alongside there was a lofty mountain
capped with ice, and from the blue edge of that ice-cap there were
sixteen silvery cascades in a row, falling about four thousand feet,
each one of the sixteen large enough to be heard at least two miles.
How beautiful was the firelight on the nearest larkspurs and geraniums
and daisies of our garden! How hearty the wave greeting on the rocks
below brought to us from the two glaciers! And how glorious a song the
sixteen cascades sang!
The cascade songs made us sleep all the sounder, and we were so happy
as to find in the morning that the berg waves had spared our canoe. We
set off in high spirits down the fiord and across to the right side to
explore a remarkably deep and narrow branch of the main fiord that I
had noted on the way up, and that, from the magnitude of the glacial
characters on the two colossal rocks that guard the entrance, promised
a rich reward for our pains.
After we had sailed about three miles up this side fiord, we came to
what seemed to be its head, for trees and rocks swept in a curve around
from one side to the other without showing any opening, although the
walls of the cañon were seen extending back indefinitely, one majestic
brow beyond the other.
When we were tracing this curve, however, in a leisurely way, in search
of a good landing, we were startled by Captain Tyeen shouting, “Skookum
chuck! Skookum chuck!” (strong water, strong water), and found our
canoe was being swept sideways by a powerful current, the roar of which
we had mistaken for a waterfall. We barely escaped being carried over a
rocky bar on the boiling flood, which, as we afterwards learned, would
have been only a happy shove on our way. After we had made a landing a
little distance back from the brow of the bar, we climbed the highest
rock near the shore to seek a view of the channel beyond the inflowing
tide rapids, to find out whether or no we could safely venture in. Up
over rolling, mossy, bushy, burnished rock waves we scrambled for an
hour or two, which resulted in a fair view of the deep-blue waters of
the fiord stretching on and on along the feet of the most majestic
Yosemite rocks we had yet seen. This determined our plan of shooting
the rapids and exploring it to its farthest recesses. This novel
interruption of the channel is a bar of exceedingly hard resisting
granite, over which the great glacier that once occupied it swept,
without degrading it to the general level, and over which tide-waters
now rush in and out with the violence of a mountain torrent.
Returning to the canoe, we pushed off, and in a few moments were racing
over the bar with lightning speed through hurrahing waves and eddies
and sheets of foam, our little shell of a boat tossing lightly as a
bubble. Then, rowing across a belt of back-flowing water, we found
ourselves on a smooth mirror reach between granite walls of the very
wildest and most exciting description, surpassing in some ways those of
the far-famed Yosemite Valley.
As we drifted silent and awe-stricken beneath the shadows of the mighty
cliffs, which, in their tremendous height and abruptness, seemed to
overhang at the top, the Indians gazing intently, as if they, too, were
impressed with the strange, awe-inspiring grandeur that shut them in,
one of them at length broke the silence by saying, “This must be a good
place for woodchucks; I hear them calling.”
When I asked them, further on, how they thought this gorge was made,
they gave up the question, but offered an opinion as to the formation
of rain and soil. The rain, they said, was produced by the rapid
whirling of the earth by a stout mythical being called Yek. The water
of the ocean was thus thrown up, to descend again in showers, just as
it is thrown off a wet grindstone. They did not, however, understand
why the ocean water should be salt, while the rain from it is fresh.
The soil, they said, for the plants to grow on is formed by the washing
of the rain on the rocks and gradually accumulating. The grinding
action of ice in this connection they had not recognized.
Gliding on and on, the scenery seemed at every turn to become more
lavishly fruitful in forms as well as more sublime in dimensions—snowy
falls booming in splendid dress; colossal domes and battle meets and
sculptured arches of a fine neutral-gray tint, their bases raved by the
blue fiord water; green ferny dells; bits of flower-bloom on ledges;
fringes of willow and birch; and glaciers above all. But when we
approached the base of a majestic rock like the Yosemite Half Dome at
the head of the fiord, where two short branches put out, and came in
sight of another glacier of the first order sending off bergs, our joy
was complete. I had a most glorious view of it, sweeping in grand
majesty from high mountain fountains, swaying around one mighty bastion
after another, until it fell into the fiord in shattered overleaning
fragments. When we had feasted awhile on this unhoped-for treasure, I
directed the Indians to pull to the head of the left fork of the fiord,
where we found a large cascade with a volume of water great enough to
be called a river, doubtless the outlet of a receding glacier not in
sight from the fiord.
This is in form and origin a typical Yosemite valley, though as yet its
floor is covered with ice and water,—ice above and beneath, a noble
mansion in which to spend a winter and a summer! It is about ten miles
long, and from three quarters of a mile to one mile wide. It contains
ten large falls and cascades, the finest one on the left side near the
head. After coming in an admirable rush over a granite brow where it is
first seen at a height of nine hundred or a thousand feet, it leaps a
sheer precipice of about two hundred and fifty feet, then divides and
reaches the tide-water in broken rapids over boulders. Another about a
thousand feet high drops at once on to the margin of the glacier two
miles back from the front. Several of the others are upwards of three
thousand feet high, descending through narrow gorges as richly
feathered with ferns as any channel that water ever flowed in, though
tremendously abrupt and deep. A grander array of rocks and waterfalls I
have never yet beheld in Alaska.
The amount of timber on the walls is about the same as that on the
Yosemite walls, but owing to greater moisture, there is more small
vegetation,—bushes, ferns, mosses, grasses, etc.; though by far the
greater portion of the area of the wall-surface is bare and shining
with the polish it received when occupied by the glacier that formed
the fiord. The deep-green patches seen on the mountains back of the
walls at the limits of vegetation are grass, where the wild goats, or
chamois rather, roam and feed. The still greener and more luxuriant
patches farther down in gullies and on slopes where the declivity is
not excessive, are made up mostly of willows, birch, and huckleberry
bushes, with a varying amount of prickly ribes and rubus and
echinopanax. This growth, when approached, especially on the lower
slopes near the level of the sea at the jaws of the great side cañons,
is found to be the most impenetrable and tedious and toilsome
combination of fighting bushes that the weary explorer ever fell into,
incomparably more punishing than the buckthorn and manzanita tangles of
the Sierra.
The cliff gardens of this hidden Yosemite are exceedingly rich in
color. On almost every rift and bench, however small, as well as on the
wider table-rocks where a little soil has lodged, we found gay
multitudes of flowers, far more brilliantly colored than would be
looked for in so cool and beclouded a region,—larkspurs, geraniums,
painted-cups, bluebells, gentians, saxifrages, epilobiums, violets,
parnassia, veratrum, spiranthes and other orchids, fritillaria, smilax,
asters, daisies, bryanthus, cassiope, linnæa, and a great variety of
flowering ribes and rubus and heathworts. Many of the above, though
with soft stems and leaves, are yet as brightly painted as those of the
warm sunlands of the south. The heathworts in particular are very
abundant and beautiful, both in flower and fruit, making delicate green
carpets for the rocks, flushed with pink bells, or dotted with red and
blue berries. The tallest of the grasses have ribbon leaves well
tempered and arched, and with no lack of bristly spikes and nodding
purple panicles. The alpine grasses of the Sierra, making close carpets
on the glacier meadows, I have not yet seen in Alaska.
The ferns are less numerous in species than in California, but about
equal in the number of fronds. I have seen three aspidiums, two
woodsias, a lomaria, polypodium, cheilanthes, and several species of
pteris.
In this eastern arm of Sum Dum Bay and its Yosemite branch, I counted
from my canoe, on my way up and down, thirty small glaciers back of the
walls, and we saw three of the first order; also thirty-seven cascades
and falls, counting only those large enough to make themselves heard
several miles. The whole bay, with its rocks and woods and ice,
reverberates with their roar. How many glaciers may be disclosed in the
other great arm that I have not seen as yet, I cannot say, but, judging
from the bergs it sends down, I guess not less than a hundred pour
their turbid streams into the fiord, making about as many joyful,
bouncing cataracts.
About noon we began to retrace our way back into the main fiord, and
arrived at the gold-mine camp after dark, rich and weary.
On the morning of August 21 I set out with my three Indians to explore
the right arm of this noble bay, Mr. Young having decided, on account
of mission work, to remain at the gold-mine. So here is another fine
lot of Sum Dum ice,—thirty-five or forty square miles of bergs, one
great glacier of the first class descending into the fiord at the head,
the fountain whence all these bergs were derived, and thirty-one
smaller glaciers that do not reach tidewater; also nine cascades and
falls, large size, and two rows of Yosemite rocks from three to four
thousand feet high, each row about eighteen or twenty miles long,
burnished and sculptured in the most telling glacier style, and well
trimmed with spruce groves and flower gardens; a’ that and more of a
kind that cannot here be catalogued.
For the first five or six miles there is nothing excepting the icebergs
that is very striking in the scenery as compared with that of the
smooth unencumbered outside channels, where all is so evenly beautiful.
The mountain-wall on the right as you go up is more precipitous than
usual, and a series of small glaciers is seen along the top of it,
extending their blue-crevassed fronts over the rims of pure-white snow
fountains, and from the end of each front a hearty stream coming in a
succession of falls and rapids over the terminal moraines, through
patches of dwarf willows, and then through the spruce woods into the
bay, singing and dancing all the way down. On the opposite side of the
bay from here there is a small side bay about three miles deep, with a
showy group of glacier-bearing mountains back of it. Everywhere else
the view is bounded by comparatively low mountains densely forested to
the very top.
After sailing about six miles from the mine, the experienced
mountaineer could see some evidence of an opening from this wide lower
portion, and on reaching it, it proved to be the continuation of the
main west arm, contracted between stupendous walls of gray granite, and
crowded with bergs from shore to shore, which seem to bar the way
against everything but wings. Headland after headland, in most imposing
array, was seen plunging sheer and bare from dizzy heights, and
planting its feet in the ice-encumbered water without leaving a spot on
which one could land from a boat, while no part of the great glacier
that pours all these miles of ice into the fiord was visible. Pushing
our way slowly through the packed bergs, and passing headland after
headland, looking eagerly forward, the glacier and its fountain
mountains were still beyond sight, cut off by other projecting headland
capes, toward which I urged my way, enjoying the extraordinary grandeur
of the wild unfinished Yosemite. Domes swell against the sky in fine
lines as lofty and as perfect in form as those of the California
valley, and rock-fronts stand forward, as sheer and as nobly
sculptured. No ice-work that I have ever seen surpasses this, either in
the magnitude of the features or effectiveness of composition.
On some of the narrow benches and tables of the walls rows of spruce
trees and two-leaved pines were growing, and patches of considerable
size were found on the spreading bases of those mountains that stand
back inside the cañons, where the continuity of the walls is broken.
Some of these side cañons are cut down to the level of the water and
reach far back, opening views into groups of glacier fountains that
give rise to many a noble stream; while all along the tops of the walls
on both sides small glaciers are seen, still busily engaged in the work
of completing their sculpture. I counted twenty-five from the canoe.
Probably the drainage of fifty or more pours into this fiord. The
average elevation at which they melt is about eighteen hundred feet
above sea-level, and all of them are residual branches of the grand
trunk that filled the fiord and overflowed its walls when there was
only one Sum Dum glacier.
The afternoon was wearing away as we pushed on and on through the
drifting bergs without our having obtained a single glimpse of the
great glacier. A Sum Dum seal-hunter, whom we met groping his way
deftly through the ice in a very small, unsplitable cottonwood canoe,
told us that the ice-mountain was yet fifteen miles away. This was
toward the middle of the afternoon, and I gave up sketching and making
notes and worked hard with the Indians to reach it before dark. About
seven o’clock we approached what seemed to be the extreme head of the
fiord, and still no great glacier in sight—only a small one, three or
four miles long, melting a thousand feet above the sea. Presently, a
narrow side opening appeared between tremendous cliffs sheer to a
height of four thousand feet or more, trending nearly at right angles
to the general trend of the fiord, and apparently terminated by a
cliff, scarcely less abrupt or high, at a distance of a mile or two. Up
this bend we toiled against wind and tide, creeping closely along the
wall on the right side, which, as we looked upward, seemed to be
leaning over, while the waves beating against the bergs and rocks made
a discouraging kind of music. At length, toward nine o’clock, just
before the gray darkness of evening fell, a long, triumphant shout told
that the glacier, so deeply and desperately hidden, was at last hunted
back to its benmost bore. A short distance around a second bend in the
cañon, I reached a point where I obtained a good view of it as it pours
its deep, broad flood into the fiord in a majestic course from between
the noble mountains, its tributaries, each of which would be regarded
elsewhere as a grand glacier, converging from right and left from a
fountain set far in the silent fastnesses of the mountains.
“There is your lost friend,” said the Indians laughing; “he says,
‘Sagh-a-ya’” (how do you do)? And while berg after berg was being born
with thundering uproar, Tyeen said, “Your friend has klosh tumtum (good
heart). Hear! Like the other big-hearted one he is firing his guns in
your honor.”
I stayed only long enough to make an outline sketch, and then urged the
Indians to hasten back some six miles to the mouth of a side cañon I
had noted on the way up as a place where we might camp in case we
should not find a better. After dark we had to move with great caution
through the ice. One of the Indians was stationed in the bow with a
pole to push aside the smaller fragments and look out for the most
promising openings, through which he guided us, shouting, “Friday!
Tucktay!” (shoreward, seaward) about ten times a minute. We reached
this landing-place after ten o’clock, guided in the darkness by the
roar of a glacier torrent. The ground was all boulders and it was hard
to find a place among them, however small, to lie on. The Indians
anchored the canoe well out from the shore and passed the night in it
to guard against berg-waves and drifting waves, after assisting me to
set my tent in some sort of way among the stones well back beyond the
reach of the tide. I asked them as they were returning to the canoe if
they were not going to eat something. They answered promptly:—
“We will sleep now, if your ice friend will let us. We will eat
to-morrow, but we can find some bread for you if you want it.”
“No,” I said, “go to rest. I, too, will sleep now and eat to-morrow.”
Nothing was attempted in the way of light or fire. Camping that night
was simply lying down. The boulders seemed to make a fair bed after
finding the best place to take their pressure.
During the night I was awakened by the beating of the spent ends of
berg-waves against the side of my tent, though I had fancied myself
well beyond their reach. These special waves are not raised by wind or
tide, but by the fall of large bergs from the snout of the glacier, or
sometimes by the overturning or breaking of large bergs that may have
long floated in perfect poise. The highest berg-waves oftentimes travel
half a dozen miles or farther before they are much spent, producing a
singularly impressive uproar in the far recesses of the mountains on
calm dark nights when all beside is still. Far and near they tell the
news that a berg is born, repeating their story again and again,
compelling attention and reminding us of earthquake-waves that roll on
for thousands of miles, taking their story from continent to continent.
When the Indians came ashore in the morning and saw the condition of my
tent they laughed heartily and said, “Your friend [meaning the big
glacier] sent you a good word last night, and his servant knocked at
your tent and said, ‘Sagh-a-ya, are you sleeping well?’”
I had fasted too long to be in very good order for hard work, but while
the Indians were cooking, I made out to push my way up the cañon before
breakfast to seek the glacier that once came into the fiord, knowing
from the size and muddiness of the stream that drains it that it must
be quite large and not far off. I came in sight of it after a hard
scramble of two hours through thorny chaparral and across steep
avalanche taluses of rocks and snow. The front reaches across the cañon
from wall to wall, covered with rocky detritus, and looked dark and
forbidding in the shadow cast by the cliffs, while from a low, cavelike
hollow its draining stream breaks forth, a river in size, with a
reverberating roar that stirs all the cañon. Beyond, in a cloudless
blaze of sunshine, I saw many tributaries, pure and white as new-fallen
snow, drawing their sources from clusters of peaks and sweeping down
waving slopes to unite their crystal currents with the trunk glacier in
the central cañon. This fine glacier reaches to within two hundred and
fifty feet of the level of the sea, and would even yet reach the fiord
and send off bergs but for the waste it suffers in flowing slowly
through the trunk cañon, the declivity of which is very slight.
Returning, I reached camp and breakfast at ten o’clock; then had
everything packed into the canoe, and set off leisurely across the
fiord to the mouth of another wide and low cañon, whose lofty outer
cliffs, facing the fiord, are telling glacial advertisements. Gladly I
should have explored it all, traced its streams of water and streams of
ice, and entered its highest chambers, the homes and fountains of the
snow. But I had to wait. I only stopped an hour or two, and climbed to
the top of a rock through the common underbrush, whence I had a good
general view. The front of the main glacier is not far distant from the
fiord, and sends off small bergs into a lake. The walls of its
tributary cañons are remarkably jagged and high, cut in a red
variegated rock, probably slate. On the way back to the canoe I
gathered ripe salmon-berries an inch and a half in diameter, ripe
huckleberries, too, in great abundance, and several interesting plants
I had not before met in the territory.
About noon, when the tide was in our favor, we set out on the return
trip to the gold-mine camp. The sun shone free and warm. No wind
stirred. The water spaces between the bergs were as smooth as glass,
reflecting the unclouded sky, and doubling the ravishing beauty of the
bergs as the sunlight streamed through their innumerable angles in
rainbow colors.
Soon a light breeze sprang up, and dancing lily spangles on the water
mingled their glory of light with that burning on the angles of the
ice.
On days like this, true sun-days, some of the bergs show a purplish
tinge, though most are white from the disintegrating of their weathered
surfaces. Now and then a new-born one is met that is pure blue crystal
throughout, freshly broken from the fountain or recently exposed to the
air by turning over. But in all of them, old and new, there are azure
caves and rifts of ineffable beauty, in which the purest tones of light
pulse and shimmer, lovely and untainted as anything on earth or in the
sky.
As we were passing the Indian village I presented a little tobacco to
the headmen as an expression of regard, while they gave us a few smoked
salmon, after putting many questions concerning my exploration of their
bay and bluntly declaring their disbelief in the ice business.
About nine o’clock we arrived at the gold camp, where we found Mr.
Young ready to go on with us the next morning, and thus ended two of
the brightest and best of all my Alaska days.
Chapter XV
From Taku River to Taylor Bay
I never saw Alaska looking better than it did when we bade farewell to
Sum Dum on August 22 and pushed on northward up the coast toward Taku.
The morning was clear, calm, bright—not a cloud in all the purple sky,
nor wind, however gentle, to shake the slender spires of the spruces or
dew-laden grass around the shores. Over the mountains and over the
broad white bosoms of the glaciers the sunbeams poured, rosy as ever
fell on fields of ripening wheat, drenching the forests and kindling
the glassy waters and icebergs into a perfect blaze of colored light.
Every living thing seemed joyful, and nature’s work was going on in
glowing enthusiasm, not less appreciable in the deep repose that
brooded over every feature of the landscape, suggesting the coming
fruitfulness of the icy land and showing the advance that has already
been made from glacial winter to summer. The care-laden commercial
lives we lead close our eyes to the operations of God as a workman,
though openly carried on that all who will look may see. The scarred
rocks here and the moraines make a vivid showing of the old winter-time
of the glacial period, and mark the bounds of the _mer-de-glace_ that
once filled the bay and covered the surrounding mountains. Already that
sea of ice is replaced by water, in which multitudes of fishes are fed,
while the hundred glaciers lingering about the bay and the streams that
pour from them are busy night and day bringing in sand and mud and
stones, at the rate of tons every minute, to fill it up. Then, as the
seasons grow warmer, there will be fields here for the plough.
Our Indians, exhilarated by the sunshine, were garrulous as the gulls
and plovers, and pulled heartily at their oars, evidently glad to get
out of the ice with a whole boat.
“Now for Taku,” they said, as we glided over the shining water.
“Good-bye, Ice-Mountains; good-bye, Sum Dum.” Soon a light breeze came,
and they unfurled the sail and laid away their oars and began, as usual
in such free times, to put their goods in order, unpacking and sunning
provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has an old flintlock musket
suggestive of Hudson’s Bay times, which he wished to discharge and
reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at a gull that was
flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell slowly with
outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping from its bill.
I asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed the question by a
severe reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to which he could offer no
other excuse than that he had learned from the whites to be careless
about taking life. Captain Tyeen denounced the deed as likely to bring
bad luck.
Before the whites came most of the Thlinkits held, with Agassiz, that
animals have souls, and that it was wrong and unlucky to even speak
disrespectfully of the fishes or any of the animals that supplied them
with food. A case illustrating their superstitious beliefs in this
connection occurred at Fort Wrangell while I was there the year before.
One of the sub-chiefs of the Stickeens had a little son five or six
years old, to whom he was very much attached, always taking him with
him in his short canoe-trips, and leading him by the hand while going
about town. Last summer the boy was taken sick, and gradually grew weak
and thin, whereupon his father became alarmed, and feared, as is usual
in such obscure cases, that the boy had been bewitched. He first
applied in his trouble to Dr. Carliss, one of the missionaries, who
gave medicine, without effecting the immediate cure that the fond
father demanded. He was, to some extent, a believer in the powers of
missionaries, both as to material and spiritual affairs, but in so
serious an exigency it was natural that he should go back to the faith
of his fathers. Accordingly, he sent for one of the shamans, or
medicine-men, of his tribe, and submitted the case to him, who, after
going through the customary incantations, declared that he had
discovered the cause of the difficulty.
“Your boy,” he said, “has lost his soul, and this is the way it
happened. He was playing among the stones down on the beach when he saw
a crawfish in the water, and made fun of it, pointing his finger at it
and saying, ‘Oh, you crooked legs! Oh, you crooked legs! You can’t walk
straight; you go sidewise,’ which made the crab so angry that he
reached out his long nippers, seized the lad’s soul, pulled it out of
him and made off with it into deep water. And,” continued the
medicine-man, “unless his stolen soul is restored to him and put back
in its place he will die. Your boy is really dead already; it is only
his lonely, empty body that is living now, and though it may continue
to live in this way for a year or two, the boy will never be of any
account, not strong, nor wise, nor brave.”
The father then inquired whether anything could be done about it; was
the soul still in possession of the crab, and if so, could it be
recovered and re-installed in his forlorn son? Yes, the doctor rather
thought it might be charmed back and re-united, but the job would be a
difficult one, and would probably cost about fifteen blankets.
After we were fairly out of the bay into Stephens Passage, the wind
died away, and the Indians had to take to their oars again, which ended
our talk. On we sped over the silvery level, close alongshore. The dark
forests extending far and near, planted like a field of wheat, might
seem monotonous in general views, but the appreciative observer,
looking closely, will find no lack of interesting variety, however far
he may go. The steep slopes on which they grow allow almost every
individual tree, with its peculiarities of form and color, to be seen
like an audience on seats rising above one another—the blue-green,
sharply tapered spires of the Menzies spruce, the warm yellow-green
Mertens spruce with their finger-like tops all pointing in the same
direction, or drooping gracefully like leaves of grass, and the airy,
feathery, brownish-green Alaska cedar. The outer fringe of bushes along
the shore and hanging over the brows of the cliffs, the white mountains
above, the shining water beneath, the changing sky over all, form
pictures of divine beauty in which no healthy eye may ever grow weary.
Toward evening at the head of a picturesque bay we came to a village
belonging to the Taku tribe. We found it silent and deserted. Not a
single shaman or policeman had been left to keep it. These people are
so happily rich as to have but little of a perishable kind to keep,
nothing worth fretting about. They were away catching salmon, our
Indians said. All the Indian villages hereabout are thus abandoned at
regular periods every year, just as a tent is left for a day, while
they repair to fishing, berrying, and hunting stations, occupying each
in succession for a week or two at a time, coming and going from the
main, substantially built villages. Then, after their summer’s work is
done, the winter supply of salmon dried and packed, fish-oil and
seal-oil stored in boxes, berries and spruce bark pressed into cakes,
their trading-trips completed, and the year’s stock of quarrels with
the neighboring tribe patched up in some way, they devote themselves to
feasting, dancing, and hootchenoo drinking. The Takus, once a powerful
and warlike tribe, were at this time, like most of the neighboring
tribes, whiskied nearly out of existence. They had a larger village on
the Taku River, but, according to the census taken that year by the
missionaries, they numbered only 269 in all,—109 men, 79 women, and 81
children, figures that show the vanishing condition of the tribe at a
glance.
Our Indians wanted to camp for the night in one of the deserted houses,
but I urged them on into the clean wilderness until dark, when we
landed on a rocky beach fringed with devil’s-clubs, greatly to the
disgust of our crew. We had to make the best of it, however, as it was
too dark to seek farther. After supper was accomplished among the
boulders, they retired to the canoe, which they anchored a little way
out, beyond low tide, while Mr. Young and I at the expense of a good
deal of scrambling and panax stinging, discovered a spot on which we
managed to sleep.
The next morning, about two hours after leaving our thorny camp, we
rounded a great mountain rock nearly a mile in height and entered the
Taku fiord. It is about eighteen miles long and from three to five
miles wide, and extends directly back into the heart of the mountains,
draining hundreds of glaciers and streams. The ancient glacier that
formed it was far too deep and broad and too little concentrated to
erode one of those narrow cañons, usually so impressive in sculpture
and architecture, but it is all the more interesting on this account
when the grandeur of the ice work accomplished is recognized. This
fiord, more than any other I have examined, explains the formation of
the wonderful system of channels extending along the coast from Puget
Sound to about latitude 59 degrees, for it is a marked portion of the
system,—a branch of Stephens Passage. Its trends and general sculpture
are as distinctly glacial as those of the narrowest fiord, while the
largest tributaries of the great glacier that occupied it are still in
existence. I counted some forty-five altogether, big and little, in
sight from the canoe in sailing up the middle of the fiord. Three of
them, drawing their sources from magnificent groups of snowy mountains,
came down to the level of the sea and formed a glorious spectacle. The
middle one of the three belongs to the first class, pouring its
majestic flood, shattered and crevassed, directly into the fiord, and
crowding about twenty-five square miles of it with bergs. The next
below it also sends off bergs occasionally, though a narrow strip of
glacial detritus separates it from the tidewater. That forenoon a large
mass fell from it, damming its draining stream, which at length broke
the dam, and the resulting flood swept forward thousands of small bergs
across the mud-flat into the fiord. In a short time all was quiet
again; the flood-waters receded, leaving only a large blue scar on the
front of the glacier and stranded bergs on the moraine flat to tell the
tale.
These two glaciers are about equal in size—two miles wide—and their
fronts are only about a mile and a half apart. While I sat sketching
them from a point among the drifting icebergs where I could see far
back into the heart of their distant fountains, two Taku seal-hunters,
father and son, came gliding toward us in an extremely small canoe.
Coming alongside with a goodnatured “Sagh-a-ya,” they inquired who we
were, our objects, etc., and gave us information about the river, their
village, and two other large glaciers that descend nearly to the
sea-level a few miles up the river cañon. Crouching in their little
shell of a boat among the great bergs, with paddle and barbed spear,
they formed a picture as arctic and remote from anything to be found in
civilization as ever was sketched for us by the explorers of the Far
North.
Making our way through the crowded bergs to the extreme head of the
fiord, we entered the mouth of the river, but were soon compelled to
turn back on account of the strength of the current. The Taku River is
a large stream, nearly a mile wide at the mouth, and, like the
Stickeen, Chilcat, and Chilcoot, draws its sources from far inland,
crossing the mountain-chain from the interior through a majestic cañon,
and draining a multitude of glaciers on its way.
The Taku Indians, like the Chilcats, with a keen appreciation of the
advantages of their position for trade, hold possession of the river
and compel the Indians of the interior to accept their services as
middle-men, instead of allowing them to trade directly with the whites.
When we were baffled in our attempt to ascend the river, the day was
nearly done, and we began to seek a camp-ground. After sailing two or
three miles along the left side of the fiord, we were so fortunate as
to find a small nook described by the two Indians, where firewood was
abundant, and where we could drag our canoe up the bank beyond reach of
the berg-waves. Here we were safe, with a fine outlook across the fiord
to the great glaciers and near enough to see the birth of the icebergs
and the wonderful commotion they make, and hear their wild, roaring
rejoicing. The sunset sky seemed to have been painted for this one
mountain mansion, fitting it like a ceiling. After the fiord was in
shadow the level sunbeams continued to pour through the miles of bergs
with ravishing beauty, reflecting and refracting the purple light like
cut crystal. Then all save the tips of the highest became dead white.
These, too, were speedily quenched, the glowing points vanishing like
stars sinking beneath the horizon. And after the shadows had crept
higher, submerging the glaciers and the ridges between them, the divine
alpenglow still lingered on their highest fountain peaks as they stood
transfigured in glorious array. Now the last of the twilight purple has
vanished, the stars begin to shine, and all trace of the day is gone.
Looking across the fiord the water seems perfectly black, and the two
great glaciers are seen stretching dim and ghostly into the shadowy
mountains now darkly massed against the starry sky.
Next morning it was raining hard, everything looked dismal, and on the
way down the fiord a growling head wind battered the rain in our faces,
but we held doggedly on and by 10 A.M. got out of the fiord into
Stephens Passage. A breeze sprung up in our favor that swept us bravely
on across the passage and around the end of Admiralty Island by dark.
We camped in a boggy hollow on a bluff among scraggy, usnea-bearded
spruces. The rain, bitterly cold and driven by a stormy wind, thrashed
us well while we floundered in the stumpy bog trying to make a fire and
supper.
When daylight came we found our camp-ground a very savage place. How we
reached it and established ourselves in the thick darkness it would be
difficult to tell. We crept along the shore a few miles against strong
head winds, then hoisted sail and steered straight across Lynn Canal to
the mainland, which we followed without great difficulty, the wind
having moderated toward evening. Near the entrance to Icy Strait we met
a Hoona who had seen us last year and who seemed glad to see us. He
gave us two salmon, and we made him happy with tobacco and then pushed
on and camped near Sitka Jack’s deserted village.
Though the wind was still ahead next morning, we made about twenty
miles before sundown and camped on the west end of Farewell Island. We
bumped against a hidden rock and sprung a small leak that was easily
stopped with resin. The salmon-berries were ripe. While climbing a
bluff for a view of our course, I discovered moneses, one of my
favorites, and saw many well-traveled deer-trails, though the island is
cut off from the mainland and other islands by at least five or six
miles of icy, berg-encumbered water.
We got under way early next day,—a gray, cloudy morning with rain and
wind. Fair and head winds were about evenly balanced throughout the
day. Tides run fast here, like great rivers. We rowed and paddled
around Point Wimbledon against both wind and tide, creeping close to
the feet of the huge, bold rocks of the north wall of Cross Sound,
which here were very steep and awe-inspiring as the heavy swells from
the open sea coming in past Cape Spencer dashed white against them,
tossing our frail canoe up and down lightly as a feather. The point
reached by vegetation shows that the surf dashes up to a height of
about seventy-five or a hundred feet. We were awe-stricken and began to
fear that we might be upset should the ocean waves rise still higher.
But little Stickeen seemed to enjoy the storm, and gazed at the
foam-wreathed cliffs like a dreamy, comfortable tourist admiring a
sunset. We reached the mouth of Taylor Bay about two or three o’clock
in the afternoon, when we had a view of the open ocean before we
entered the bay. Many large bergs from Glacier Bay were seen drifting
out to sea past Cape Spencer. We reached the head of the fiord now
called Taylor Bay at five o’clock and camped near an immense glacier
with a front about three miles wide stretching across from wall to
wall. No icebergs are discharged from it, as it is separated from the
water of the fiord at high tide by a low, smooth mass of outspread,
overswept moraine material, netted with torrents and small shallow
rills from the glacier-front, with here and there a lakelet, and
patches of yellow mosses and garden spots bright with epilobium,
saxifrage, grass-tufts, sedges, and creeping willows on the higher
ground. But only the mosses were sufficiently abundant to make
conspicuous masses of color to relieve the dull slaty gray of the
glacial mud and gravel. The front of the glacier, like all those which
do not discharge icebergs, is rounded like a brow, smooth-looking in
general views, but cleft and furrowed, nevertheless, with chasms and
grooves in which the light glows and shimmers in glorious beauty. The
granite walls of the fiord, though very high, are not deeply
sculptured. Only a few deep side cañons with trees, bushes, grassy and
flowery spots interrupt their massive simplicity, leaving but few of
the cliffs absolutely sheer and bare like those of Yosemite, Sum Dum,
or Taku. One of the side cañons is on the left side of the fiord, the
other on the right, the tributaries of the former leading over by a
narrow tide-channel to the bay next to the eastward, and by a short
portage over into a lake into which pours a branch glacier from the
great glacier. Still another branch from the main glacier turns to the
right. Counting all three of these separate fronts, the width of this
great Taylor Bay Glacier must be about seven or eight miles.
While camp was being made, Hunter Joe climbed the eastern wall in
search of wild mutton, but found none. He fell in with a brown bear,
however, and got a shot at it, but nothing more. Mr. Young and I
crossed the moraine slope, splashing through pools and streams up to
the ice-wall, and made the interesting discovery that the glacier had
been advancing of late years, ploughing up and shoving forward moraine
soil that had been deposited long ago, and overwhelming and grinding
and carrying away the forests on the sides and front of the glacier.
Though not now sending off icebergs, the front is probably far below
sea-level at the bottom, thrust forward beneath its wave-washed
moraine.
Along the base of the mountain-wall we found abundance of
salmon-berries, the largest measuring an inch and a half in diameter.
Strawberries, too, are found hereabouts. Some which visiting Indians
brought us were as fine in size and color and flavor as any I ever saw
anywhere. After wandering and wondering an hour or two, admiring the
magnificent rock and crystal scenery about us, we returned to camp at
sundown, planning a grand excursion for the morrow.
I set off early the morning of August 30 before any one else in camp
had stirred, not waiting for breakfast, but only eating a piece of
bread. I had intended getting a cup of coffee, but a wild storm was
blowing and calling, and I could not wait. Running out against the
rain-laden gale and turning to catch my breath, I saw that the
minister’s little dog had left his bed in the tent and was coming
boring through the storm, evidently determined to follow me. I told him
to go back, that such a day as this had nothing for him.
“Go back,” I shouted, “and get your breakfast.” But he simply stood
with his head down, and when I began to urge my way again, looking
around, I saw he was still following me. So I at last told him to come
on if he must and gave him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket.
Instead of falling, the rain, mixed with misty shreds of clouds, was
flying in level sheets, and the wind was roaring as I had never heard
wind roar before. Over the icy levels and over the woods, on the
mountains, over the jagged rocks and spires and chasms of the glacier
it boomed and moaned and roared, filling the fiord in even, gray,
structureless gloom, inspiring and awful. I first struggled up in the
face of the blast to the east end of the ice-wall, where a patch of
forest had been carried away by the glacier when it was advancing. I
noticed a few stumps well out on the moraine flat, showing that its
present bare, raw condition was not the condition of fifty or a hundred
years ago. In front of this part of the glacier there is a small
moraine lake about half a mile in length, around the margin of which
are a considerable number of trees standing knee-deep, and of course
dead. This also is a result of the recent advance of the ice.
Pushing up through the ragged edge of the woods on the left margin of
the glacier, the storm seemed to increase in violence, so that it was
difficult to draw breath in facing it; therefore I took shelter back of
a tree to enjoy it and wait, hoping that it would at last somewhat
abate. Here the glacier, descending over an abrupt rock, falls forward
in grand cascades, while a stream swollen by the rain was now a
torrent,—wind, rain, ice-torrent, and water-torrent in one grand
symphony.
At length the storm seemed to abate somewhat, and I took off my heavy
rubber boots, with which I had waded the glacial streams on the flat,
and laid them with my overcoat on a log, where I might find them on my
way back, knowing I would be drenched anyhow, and firmly tied my
mountain shoes, tightened my belt, shouldered my ice-axe, and, thus
free and ready for rough work, pushed on, regardless as possible of
mere rain. Making my way up a steep granite slope, its projecting
polished bosses encumbered here and there by boulders and the ground
and bruised ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been
uprooted by the glacier during its recent advance, I traced the side of
the glacier for two or three miles, finding everywhere evidence of its
having encroached on the woods, which here run back along its edge for
fifteen or twenty miles. Under the projecting edge of this vast
ice-river I could see down beneath it to a depth of fifty feet or so in
some places, where logs and branches were being crushed to pulp, some
of it almost fine enough for paper, though most of it stringy and
coarse.
After thus tracing the margin of the glacier for three or four miles, I
chopped steps and climbed to the top, and as far as the eye could
reach, the nearly level glacier stretched indefinitely away in the gray
cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now almost moderate, though
rain continued to fall, which I did not mind, but a tendency to mist in
the drooping draggled clouds made me hesitate about attempting to cross
to the opposite shore. Although the distance was only six or seven
miles, no traces at this time could be seen of the mountains on the
other side, and in case the sky should grow darker, as it seemed
inclined to do, I feared that when I got out of sight of land and
perhaps into a maze of crevasses I might find difficulty in winning a
way back.
Lingering a while and sauntering about in sight of the shore, I found
this eastern side of the glacier remarkably free from large crevasses.
Nearly all I met were so narrow I could step across them almost
anywhere, while the few wide ones were easily avoided by going up or
down along their sides to where they narrowed. The dismal cloud ceiling
showed rifts here and there, and, thus encouraged, I struck out for the
west shore, aiming to strike it five or six miles above the front wall,
cautiously taking compass bearings at short intervals to enable me to
find my way back should the weather darken again with mist or rain or
snow. The structure lines of the glacier itself were, however, my main
guide. All went well. I came to a deeply furrowed section about two
miles in width where I had to zigzag in long, tedious tacks and make
narrow doublings, tracing the edges of wide longitudinal furrows and
chasms until I could find a bridge connecting their sides, oftentimes
making the direct distance ten times over. The walking was good of its
kind, however, and by dint of patient doubling and axe-work on
dangerous places, I gained the opposite shore in about three hours, the
width of the glacier at this point being about seven miles.
Occasionally, while making my way, the clouds lifted a little,
revealing a few bald, rough mountains sunk to the throat in the broad,
icy sea which encompassed them on all sides, sweeping on forever and
forever as we count time, wearing them away, giving them the shape they
are destined to take when in the fullness of time they shall be parts
of new landscapes.
Ere I lost sight of the east-side mountains, those on the west came in
sight, so that holding my course was easy, and, though making haste, I
halted for a moment to gaze down into the beautiful pure blue crevasses
and to drink at the lovely blue wells, the most beautiful of all
Nature’s water-basins, or at the rills and streams outspread over the
ice-land prairie, never ceasing to admire their lovely color and music
as they glided and swirled in their blue crystal channels and potholes,
and the rumbling of the moulins, or mills, where streams poured into
blue-walled pits of unknown depth, some of them as regularly circular
as if bored with augers. Interesting, too, were the cascades over blue
cliffs, where streams fell into crevasses or slid almost noiselessly
down slopes so smooth and frictionless their motion was concealed. The
round or oval wells, however, from one to ten feet wide, and from one
to twenty or thirty feet deep, were perhaps the most beautiful of all,
the water so pure as to be almost invisible. My widest views did not
probably exceed fifteen miles, the rain and mist making distances seem
greater.
On reaching the farther shore and tracing it a few miles to northward,
I found a large portion of the glacier-current sweeping out westward in
a bold and beautiful curve around the shoulder of a mountain as if
going direct to the open sea. Leaving the main trunk, it breaks into a
magnificent uproar of pinnacles and spires and up-heaving, splashing
wave-shaped masses, a crystal cataract incomparably greater and wilder
than a score of Niagaras.
Tracing its channel three or four miles, I found that it fell into a
lake, which it fills with bergs. The front of this branch of the
glacier is about three miles wide. I first took the lake to be the head
of an arm of the sea, but, going down to its shore and tasting it, I
found it fresh, and by my aneroid perhaps less than a hundred feet
above sea-level. It is probably separated from the sea only by a
moraine dam. I had not time to go around its shores, as it was now near
five o’clock and I was about fifteen miles from camp, and I had to make
haste to recross the glacier before dark, which would come on about
eight o’clock. I therefore made haste up to the main glacier, and,
shaping my course by compass and the structure lines of the ice, set
off from the land out on to the grand crystal prairie again. All was so
silent and so concentred, owing to the low dragging mist, the beauty
close about me was all the more keenly felt, though tinged with a dim
sense of danger, as if coming events were casting shadows. I was soon
out of sight of land, and the evening dusk that on cloudy days precedes
the real night gloom came stealing on and only ice was in sight, and
the only sounds, save the low rumbling of the mills and the rattle of
falling stones at long intervals, were the low, terribly earnest
moanings of the wind or distant waterfalls coming through the
thickening gloom. After two hours of hard work I came to a maze of
crevasses of appalling depth and width which could not be passed
apparently either up or down. I traced them with firm nerve developed
by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on dizzy edges
after cutting footholds, taking wide crevasses at a grand leap at once
frightful and inspiring. Many a mile was thus traveled, mostly up and
down the glacier, making but little real headway, running much of the
time as the danger of having to pass the night on the ice became more
and more imminent. This I could do, though with the weather and my
rain-soaked condition it would be trying at best. In treading the mazes
of this crevassed section I had frequently to cross bridges that were
only knife-edges for twenty or thirty feet, cutting off the sharp tops
and leaving them flat so that little Stickeen could follow me. These I
had to straddle, cutting off the top as I progressed and hitching
gradually ahead like a boy riding a rail fence. All this time the
little dog followed me bravely, never hesitating on the brink of any
crevasse that I had jumped, but now that it was becoming dark and the
crevasses became more troublesome, he followed close at my heels
instead of scampering far and wide, where the ice was at all smooth, as
he had in the forenoon. No land was now in sight. The mist fell lower
and darker and snow began to fly. I could not see far enough up and
down the glacier to judge how best to work out of the bewildering
labyrinth, and how hard I tried while there was yet hope of reaching
camp that night! a hope which was fast growing dim like the sky. After
dark, on such ground, to keep from freezing, I could only jump up and
down until morning on a piece of flat ice between the crevasses, dance
to the boding music of the winds and waters, and as I was already tired
and hungry I would be in bad condition for such ice work. Many times I
was put to my mettle, but with a firm-braced nerve, all the more
unflinching as the dangers thickened, I worked out of that terrible
ice-web, and with blood fairly up Stickeen and I ran over common danger
without fatigue. Our very hardest trial was in getting across the very
last of the sliver bridges. After examining the first of the two widest
crevasses, I followed its edge half a mile or so up and down and
discovered that its narrowest spot was about eight feet wide, which was
the limit of what I was able to jump. Moreover, the side I was on—that
is, the west side—was about a foot higher than the other, and I feared
that in case I should be stopped by a still wider impassable crevasse
ahead that I would hardly be able to take back that jump from its lower
side. The ice beyond, however, as far as I could see it, looked
temptingly smooth. Therefore, after carefully making a socket for my
foot on the rounded brink, I jumped, but found that I had nothing to
spare and more than ever dreaded having to retrace my way. Little
Stickeen jumped this, however, without apparently taking a second look
at it, and we ran ahead joyfully over smooth, level ice, hoping we were
now leaving all danger behind us. But hardly had we gone a hundred or
two yards when to our dismay we found ourselves on the very widest of
all the longitudinal crevasses we had yet encountered. It was about
forty feet wide. I ran anxiously up the side of it to northward,
eagerly hoping that I could get around its head, but my worst fears
were realized when at a distance of about a mile or less it ran into
the crevasse that I had just jumped. I then ran down the edge for a
mile or more below the point where I had first met it, and found that
its lower end also united with the crevasse I had jumped, showing
dismally that we were on an island two or three hundred yards wide and
about two miles long and the only way of escape from this island was by
turning back and jumping again that crevasse which I dreaded, or
venturing ahead across the giant crevasse by the very worst of the
sliver bridges I had ever seen. It was so badly weathered and melted
down that it formed a knife-edge, and extended across from side to side
in a low, drooping curve like that made by a loose rope attached at
each end at the same height. But the worst difficulty was that the ends
of the down-curving sliver were attached to the sides at a depth of
about eight or ten feet below the surface of the glacier. Getting down
to the end of the bridge, and then after crossing it getting up the
other side, seemed hardly possible. However, I decided to dare the
dangers of the fearful sliver rather than to attempt to retrace my
steps. Accordingly I dug a low groove in the rounded edge for my knees
to rest in and, leaning over, began to cut a narrow foothold on the
steep, smooth side. When I was doing this, Stickeen came up behind me,
pushed his head over my shoulder, looked into the crevasses and along
the narrow knife-edge, then turned and looked in my face, muttering and
whining as if trying to say, “Surely you are not going down there.” I
said, “Yes, Stickeen, this is the only way.” He then began to cry and
ran wildly along the rim of the crevasse, searching for a better way,
then, returning baffled, of course, he came behind me and lay down and
cried louder and louder.
After getting down one step I cautiously stooped and cut another and
another in succession until I reached the point where the sliver was
attached to the wall. There, cautiously balancing, I chipped down the
upcurved end of the bridge until I had formed a small level platform
about a foot wide, then, bending forward, got astride of the end of the
sliver, steadied myself with my knees, then cut off the top of the
sliver, hitching myself forward an inch or two at a time, leaving it
about four inches wide for Stickeen. Arrived at the farther end of the
sliver, which was about seventy-five feet long, I chipped another
little platform on its upcurved end, cautiously rose to my feet, and
with infinite pains cut narrow notch steps and finger-holds in the wall
and finally got safely across. All this dreadful time poor little
Stickeen was crying as if his heart was broken, and when I called to
him in as reassuring a voice as I could muster, he only cried the
louder, as if trying to say that he never, never could get down
there—the only time that the brave little fellow appeared to know what
danger was. After going away as if I was leaving him, he still howled
and cried without venturing to try to follow me. Returning to the edge
of the crevasse, I told him that I must go, that he could come if he
only tried, and finally in despair he hushed his cries, slid his little
feet slowly down into my footsteps out on the big sliver, walked slowly
and cautiously along the sliver as if holding his breath, while the
snow was falling and the wind was moaning and threatening to blow him
off. When he arrived at the foot of the slope below me, I was kneeling
on the brink ready to assist him in case he should be unable to reach
the top. He looked up along the row of notched steps I had made, as if
fixing them in his mind, then with a nervous spring he whizzed up and
passed me out on to the level ice, and ran and cried and barked and
rolled about fairly hysterical in the sudden revulsion from the depth
of despair to triumphant joy. I tried to catch him and pet him and tell
him how good and brave he was, but he would not be caught. He ran round
and round, swirling like autumn leaves in an eddy, lay down and rolled
head over heels. I told him we still had far to go and that we must now
stop all nonsense and get off the ice before dark. I knew by the
ice-lines that every step was now taking me nearer the shore and soon
it came in sight. The head-land four or five miles back from the front,
covered with spruce trees, loomed faintly but surely through the mist
and light fall of snow not more than two miles away. The ice now proved
good all the way across, and we reached the lateral moraine just at
dusk, then with trembling limbs, now that the danger was over, we
staggered and stumbled down the bouldery edge of the glacier and got
over the dangerous rocks by the cascades while yet a faint light
lingered. We were safe, and then, too, came limp weariness such as no
ordinary work ever produces, however hard it may be. Wearily we
stumbled down through the woods, over logs and brush and roots,
devil’s-clubs pricking us at every faint blundering tumble. At last we
got out on the smooth mud slope with only a mile of slow but sure
dragging of weary limbs to camp. The Indians had been firing guns to
guide me and had a fine supper and fire ready, though fearing they
would be compelled to seek us in the morning, a care not often applied
to me. Stickeen and I were too tired to eat much, and, strange to say,
too tired to sleep. Both of us, springing up in the night again and
again, fancied we were still on that dreadful ice bridge in the shadow
of death.
Nevertheless, we arose next morning in newness of life. Never before
had rocks and ice and trees seemed so beautiful and wonderful, even the
cold, biting rainstorm that was blowing seemed full of loving-kindness,
wonderful compensation for all that we had endured, and we sailed down
the bay through the gray, driving rain rejoicing.
Chapter XVI
Glacier Bay