PRINCE RUPERT AND ALASKA
Mrs. Carlyle declared that when Robert Browning's poem of _Sordello_
appeared she read it through twice with the deepest attention, but
that at the conclusion of the second reading she was utterly unable
to determine as to whether "Sordello" was a tree, an island, or a
man. Somewhat of the same bewilderment has beset many people of late
years in regard to any mention of Prince Rupert, the young seaport of
the great North-West. One citizen of the United States to whom a
rather unusual degree of cosmopolitan travel had been allotted by the
Fates that appointed his not undistinguished destiny, and who enjoyed
the well-earned admiration of a host of friends as being
pre-eminently entitled to speak with authority on many abstract
matters for which those less erudite cared little and, alas! knew
less, assured his votaries, on inquiry, that Prince Rupert was a town
somewhere in the "Dolomites" and that its title should be spelled
with a final "z"; while another cheerfully relegated Prince Rupert to
the maritime provinces of Canada. Still another, who was nothing if
not historical, connected the name only with that of the son of
Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, who was created Duke of
Cumberland in 1644 and who so distinguished himself in scientific
pursuits that he {190} was rewarded with a tomb in Westminster Abbey
(somewhere about 1682). His portrait, painted by Sir Peter Lely, is
in the National Portrait Gallery at London. Not to prolong mere
pleasantries, however, the Prince Rupert whose citizens forecast for
it the future of the "Liverpool of America" is really the terminal of
that vast and splendid new transcontinental highway, the Grand Trunk
System.
Prince Rupert was really created in Boston (U.S.A.), for before the
dense forest covering the rocky island with an almost impenetrable
growth was felled, the town was laid out by Messrs. Brett and Hall,
one of the most distinguished firms of landscape architects in the
United States. As a result it is one of the most charmingly designed
cities of the entire northern continent. The scenic setting of
Prince Rupert is one of incomparable beauty, with its ineffable glory
of sea and sky, its hills and cliffs, with terrace above terrace, a
scenic setting that suggests, and even rivals, that of Algiers, or
Naples, or Genoa, in that unique order of picturesque loveliness
investing the cities that rise from terraces above blue seas, with
architectural splendours silhouetted against the sapphire sky.
Kaien Island, upon which the main part of the city will stand,
comprises some 28 square miles lying 550 miles north of Vancouver.
From the magnificent harbour the island rises imperiously, dominated
by its central peak, Mount Hays, which towers to some 2300 feet in
the clear air, with a {191} grandeur of outlook that the artistic
genius of Messrs. Brett and Hall admirably utilised in a way that
insures the young city so novel and delightful a background. From
Mount Hays the view over the harbour, the islands, and the far waters
of the Pacific, and over lakes, forests, and rivers on the mainlands,
is a view to be included among the noblest scenic delights of the
world. No more romantic panorama discloses itself from Amalfi, Hong
Kong, or from the Acropolis of Athens. Nor is Prince Rupert icebound
and stormbound in the winter, for the Japanese current that washes
the shores insures an open harbour all the year round. The entrance
to the bay is singularly commodious and is usually free from fog.
The harbour of Prince Rupert has every claim to be considered one of
the finest in the world.
The task on which Messrs. Brett and Hall entered was a novel one. It
was nothing less than the creation of a city seen in ideal vision.
On the actual site was a waste and wild of rocks and stones, of
tangled undergrowth and huge stumps of trees that had been felled.
The mountain, also, had to be reckoned with, and even if the Boston
landscape experts had possessed that traditional faith which is said
to be able to remove mountains, they did not wish to remove Mount
Hays. Like Mount Royal, in stately, splendid Montreal, the mountain
was the most picturesque of assets. Here and there some giant tree
had escaped the fate of its companions, and stood as if contemplating
their fate. The uncompromising debris, the {192} rocky sub-stratum,
the abounding mass of loose stone, all combined to present
difficulties. "Prince Rupert! A town hewn out of solid rock," has
since that day been the description of the new city, quoted with
appreciative interest.
How did Messrs. Hall and Brett attack the problem? It was a
complexity of topography that baffled, if it did not defy, solutions.
But Nature yields, perforce, to the necromancy of genius, and the
initial achievement was to create a series of planes, planes level,
planes inclined, and they then discovered that the trend of all these
was, naturally, from north-east to south-west. Nature smiled upon
them to the degree of establishing the means for all these planes to
be, approximately, parallel in direction. Doubtless these landscape
creators (being Bostonians) congratulated themselves in true
Emersonian phrase on the truth that:
"... the world is built in order
And the atoms march in tune."
This stupendous work was first entered upon by the architects in
January of 1908, the preliminary hydrographic and topographic surveys
having been made in the two previous years by a large engineering
force under the direction of James H. Bacon, the Harbour Engineer of
the Grand Trunk Pacific. The planes being appropriately parallel
allowed rectangular systems of blocks for building, thus offering the
best facilities for traffic; and the lie of the land permitted the
splendid, spacious avenues with {193} charm of vista and vast
perspective, in combination with curving streets of limited
crescents, so attractive for the residential part of the city.
Beside Mount Hays Park, other plaza reservations were made, squares
and playgrounds being especially considered. Along Hays Creek was a
wonderful natural park which was utilised, and there has perhaps
seldom been a combination of art and nature more artistically blended.
For the most beautiful residential section the eastern end of Kaien
Island was selected. Connecting this residential region with the
business section was a broad highway called Prince Rupert Boulevard,
which also formed a link in a circular drive of twenty miles,
extending around the island. There is a superb view obtained from
here over Lake Morse and Lake Wainwright, and in this transparent
air, under a glowing sky, this view alone would be a signal
inspiration to painter or poet. For Prince Rupert is one of the most
ideally enchanting places to be found on any shore; and one of the
notable drives of the world, hardly even excepting that picturesque
and romantic pilgrimage route between Sorrento and Amalfi, is found
in Prince Rupert Boulevard in its connection with Lake Avenue. These
shores of all the marvellous North-West are only comparable with
those of Italy in their ineffable charm.
It is not alone, however, for the romance of beauty that Prince
Rupert is notable. This brilliant young city is destined to be a
traffic centre of great {194} proportions and of cosmopolitan
importance. It will inevitably become the emporium of Alaska and of
all the great Northern region. The port is but thirty miles south of
the Alaskan boundary, and it is thus the natural starting-point for
Dawson, Nome, and other of the Alaskan and Yukon centres. From
Prince Rupert to New York or to Boston or to Chicago there is now
this direct line through Edmonton and Winnipeg, and thus it cannot
but become a great international port. Prince Rupert is four hundred
miles nearer to Yokohama than is Vancouver, and it is six hundred
miles less than by way of San Francisco. Since the completion of the
Grand Trunk Pacific this route has offered the shortest and most
direct route to the Yukon and to Alaska. The first train over the
new extension of the Grand Trunk from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert
arrived at this port on April 9, 1914, a date not unimportant in the
history of progress in Canada, as it initiated conditions which
inaugurate an entirely new era in its prosperous development.
This romantic young city has the distinction of having had more time
and money devoted to its design than has perhaps ever before been
bestowed upon a town seen only in vision. Henri Bergson might almost
point to it as an illustration of his creative evolution. Before the
opening of the town site, plank sidewalks and roadways, sewers and
water mains, and other municipal facilities for the sanitary welfare
and the comfort of ten thousand {195} people were constructed. At
the present time in this city, which only celebrated its ninth
birthday in January 1917, there are already seven thousand
inhabitants. There are three daily newspapers, the _News_,
_Journal_, and _Empire_. There are five banks, branches of the Bank
of Montreal, Canadian Bank of Commerce, Union Bank of Canada, the
Royal, and the Bank of British North America. Two clubs, the Prince
Rupert and the Pioneer, have each attractive houses of their own, and
include in their membership the leading professional and business men
of the city.
The harbour is equipped for the most modern and exacting
requirements. It might well be called the harbour for the ships from
the Seven Seas. The Grand Trunk Pacific Steamship Company have also
established a splendid service between Skagway, Prince Rupert, and
Seattle, the _Prince Rupert_ and the _Prince George_ providing all
the comforts of the best ocean liners, and offering scenery on the
voyage that is so resplendent a feature with its perpetual surprises.
Prince Rupert has an exceptionally high order of population, people
of education, refinement, energy, and enterprise. Churches abound;
the schools are the pride of the city; the social life is interesting
and especially distinctive in having so large a preponderance of
cultivated people.
The fishing industry at Prince Rupert is already one of the most
important and the cold storage plant is one of the largest on the
continent. There is {196} a vast cannery interest, for the salmon
pack of the Skeena River has established itself with the public as
being of a finer order than salmon caught farther south. Prince
Rupert is already the acknowledged centre of the Skeena salmon
fishery, there being twelve manufactories on the river, employing
twelve hundred boats in constant service and more than five thousand
labourers, women as well as men working in this industry. The
halibut landed at the port in the first nine months of 1916 amounted
to 11,667,300 lbs.
Prince Rupert has, also, another important commercial asset in its
pulpwood. Untold quantities of valuable timber are at its very
doors. Mining industries, too, are forecast, as it is believed that
there is much rich ore in the adjacent region, and a smelter is
already projected. All these, however, are held as subordinate in
any case to the commercial possibilities of the city which promise an
undoubted destiny. The Skeena River is one of the invaluable assets,
increasing all traffic conveniences for fruit-raising and
agricultural production, and offering a waterway delightful for
excursions and explorations. The completion of the Grand Trunk
Pacific has brought the eastern portion of the United States and
Alaska forty-eight hours nearer to each other through Chicago, and
has greatly enhanced the commercial interests between the two
countries. The climate of Prince Rupert has a remarkably even
temperature, averaging in summer {197} about seventy-seven degrees,
and the coldest record in any winter (this one being exceptional) was
that of eight degrees below zero. As a rule the winter temperature
does not reach so low a degree. The climate thus permits much
out-of-door life and is perhaps not an altogether negligible factor
in the easy grace of social intercourse. The town has the beginning
of a library, and more than one magazine and reading club. "To open
a door, to widen the horizon, this is human service of the highest
order." The creation of Prince Rupert is well calculated to rank
high in this service.
[Illustration: Junction of Skeena and Bulkley Rivers, British
Columbia]
One of the interesting features of this town, which is one full of
surprises lying in wait for the alert and expectant traveller, is the
great dry dock of the Grand Trunk Pacific and Ship Repair Company,
which has cost something like three million dollars, and was
completed in 1915. This ship-building and repair plant is virtually
three docks in one; and it can handle a ship of twenty thousand tons
displacement and a length of six hundred feet, drawing thirty feet of
water; moreover, it can deal with three ships at a time. It has
derricks that can lift out, for repair, boilers weighing sixty tons,
and after passing them through the shops replace them in the ship.
It also furnishes power, light, compressed air, with wharf and
storage space. The dock, in conjunction with the machine and the
repair shops, can handle any class of work, wood or steel, boilers or
any kind of mechanism. During its construction {198} over a hundred
and fifty men were employed, with a pay-roll that ran to some twelve
thousand dollars a month. The inestimable convenience of such a
plant for vessels in these waters in need of repair can hardly be
over-estimated.
In June 1915 the great enterprise was undertaken across the harbour
opposite Prince Rupert of clearing seven hundred acres for
residential use. Within three months one hundred acres of this was
prepared, but from causes connected with the war, and temporary
conditions of finance, the entire completion of the work is delayed
for a time. In Prince Rupert the site for the magnificent terminal
station is already cleared; and when the war shall be ended and
conditions in the Dominion resume their prosperity, these buildings
will be erected. The telegraph service of Prince Rupert is
admirable. There is a direct service establishing through
communication with the East, and the rates between Prince Rupert and
Vancouver have been reduced to one dollar for a ten-word message.
There is direct communication by telephone with Hazleton, Skeena
Crossing, and with the mine of the Montana Development Company at
Carnaby.
The civic affairs of Prince Rupert are well administered. The city
has adopted the single-tax plan. It owns its electric lighting and
power, its telephone and water systems. The fire department is
equipped with the most modern appliances. It has twenty-one miles of
planked roadways; it has five miles of {199} plank pavements for
pedestrians; and has already three miles of sewers. Five parks
aggregate nearly a hundred acres of reservation for the city's
recreation.
The lumber industry in British Columbia is one of the utmost
importance as the northern part of the province alone produces an
annual output of some twelve million feet. The southern portion of
the province also makes considerable shipments. The Forestry
Department of the Provincial Government of the Dominion report that
there is available, in Prince Rupert district, twenty-five million
acres averaging over fifteen thousand feet to the acre. In addition
there is a tract which will be available for commercial purposes,
within the next half century, of an area of seventeen million acres.
About half this timber is spruce, red cedar and hemlock come next in
order, and there is perhaps ten per cent. of balsam and yellow cedar.
The cannery repairs and boxes required for the salmon pack and for
the halibut trade make enormous demands on lumber. This branch of
commerce was completely transformed by the completion of the Grand
Trunk Pacific. It enabled Prince Rupert to compete on an equal basis
with many other points, for a direct railroad line running through
the centre of the Prairie Provinces to Winnipeg, and especially a
railroad that has a better grade and shorter haul than any other with
which it competes, places Prince Rupert on a fortunate basis with
regard to markets.
{200}
It is hardly possible to estimate the future that lies before Prince
Rupert. As tributary resources it has an ocean and an Empire. To
its port will come the ships from all countries. They will bring
products from the East, of the various far-off continents, and they
will sail away laden with lumber and the rich exports of the vast
North-West. Never was a city more skilfully planned. The Dominion
Government's Hydrographic Survey had made a complete survey of Prince
Rupert Harbour and its approaches, discovering that from the entrance
to the extreme end, a distance of fourteen miles, it was entirely
free from rocks or obstructions of any kind, and that the depth
afforded ample anchorage. The Provincial Government of British
Columbia appropriated two hundred thousand dollars for preliminary
improvements, in the construction of roads and pavements, of sewers
and water mains, before the town site was opened. While the
Provincial Government makes Prince Rupert its headquarters for the
northern part of the Province, with a court-house and buildings for
offices, the Dominion Government is erecting a permanent and handsome
post-office and customs house. Surrounded by a country whose
richness and variety of resources are beyond comparison, its rapid
growth is inevitable.
The easy proximity of Prince Rupert to Alaska is one of the most
important things in connection with this unique and brilliant young
seaport of the Pacific. Seattle and Skagway are 1000 miles apart,
{201} and thus the round trip between Seattle and Skagway is 2000
miles; but from Prince Rupert to Skagway is of course a sail of far
less distance. The trip is one of entrancing scenery, fiords, bays
all mountain-locked in supreme majesty and beauty, arms of the sea
extending into coast indentations with an unexcelled panorama of
glancing lights, play of colours, and moving-picture panoramas of
grandeur and picturesqueness. Between Seattle, Prince Rupert, and
Skagway the entire round trip occupies some eleven days. It is a
voyage unmatched on the entire globe. In the distance the towering
peaks clothed in snow of dazzling whiteness rise beyond the mountain
ranges in their royal purple with evanescent flitting gleams of gold
and rose from the brilliant sun; the green water of the bays is alive
with thousands of leaping salmon; and the shores are defined by the
dark pine forests, standing in an impenetrable tangle of ferns and
trailing undergrowth. Through this "Inside Passage," as it is
called, a fleet of steamers has been employed by the Grand Trunk
Pacific in a splendid coast service between Seattle and Skagway. "I
am in the writing-room on the upper deck of the _Prince George_
sailing amid such ineffable glory that I only write about one word to
every ten minutes," said an enthusiastic voyager in a personal letter
to a friend in the early September days of 1915; "only one word in
ten minutes will be allotted to you, for I must LOOK! It is the time
of my life, and I can write letters (at {202} all events to you, to
whom they write themselves) anywhere. But this voyage--it is the
dream of a lifetime! I have sailed the enchanted Mediterranean with
our rapturous callings at Algiers, rising on terraced hills in her
unspeakable beauty; at Naples, with all the Neapolitan coast a very
vision of the ethereal realms; I have sailed on to Genoa, with
Ischia, dream-haunted by Victoria Colonna, Italy's immortal
woman-poet, and made my pilgrimage to the island and over the ancient
Castel d'Ischia by local boats from Naples; I once sailed through the
Ionian Isles in the late afternoon of a May day that was all azure
and gold; I have sailed the Italian lakes and cruised about on the
Alpine lakes of Switzerland: but it still remained for this one
enchanted voyaging to give me that thrill of untranslatable ecstasy.
This combination of the sea and mountains in what they call the
'Inside Passage' is simply superb. And the _Prince George_ is
perfectly ideal in all conditions.
"I have a large, beautiful state-room alone--every state-room on
these steamers is an outside one; the entire steamer is richly
carpeted in soft moss-green; finished in the native woods, polished
till you could use the woodwork for a mirror (and if it reflected you
how decorative it would be!); beside that, there are mirrors galore,
of the regulation order, and a news-stand with all the world's
literature, so to speak; the most delightful bathrooms, but I don't
spend the entire time at sea in salt baths, as you unkindly {203}
assert; the table is excellent, being rather noted, I am told, for
its fine cuisine, and there is to me a very direct connection between
delicious coffee and various accompaniments, and feeling 'up' to
things for the day; anyway, everything is delicious, and the
splendid, spacious decks to enjoy a paradise of walking on;
writing-desks well stocked with stationery at every turn, on every
deck; and these steamers are 'twin-screw' if you know what that
means! I confess I don't! but apparently people who do know consider
a 'twin' screw as of far more importance in the universe than one
lone, lorn screw; and they are equipped with wireless telegraph (I do
know what that means) and with oil engines, and every modern device
of safety, and with fairly luxurious comfort; and, indeed, the whole
voyage is ideal and has only one fault--alas! alas! that it will
come to an end. If only it would never end! I count off the flying
hours as a miser counts his gold, I can hardly bear to sleep to miss
one hour of its glory and loveliness, yet sleep, too, is a joy in
this magical air, and, at all events, this voyage will not be ended
when it is over. I shall have it all the rest of my life ... to live
over again and again 'in the ethereal,' where all outer experiences
find their record. I am quite sure the Recording Angel sets this
down in illuminated pages."
From Puget Sound 500 miles of the voyage is through Canadian waters,
so vast is the Dominion. For one hundred and twenty miles the
steamer is {204} sailing through the Straits of Georgia, which
separates the main land of British Columbia from Vancouver Island,
with the range of the Olympic Mountains astern, from whence the gods
look down on mortals. Do they not, indeed, dwell on Olympian
heights? Passing into the Seymour Narrows from the Georgian Strait,
the Channel is hardly more than one third of a mile wide, and the
rocky walls with the lofty mountains just behind are so overgrown
with trees as to present an almost solid wall of emerald green,
tempting the passenger to reach out his hand and grasp the cedar
needles that seem so near. On sunny days the reflections in the
water are bewilderingly clear, and here and there pour down rushing
cataracts of foam-crested water from the melting snow of the
mountains.
[Illustration: Indians spearing Salmon in Bulkley Cañon]
"Queen Charlotte Sound," writes Ella Higginson,[1] "is a splendid
sweep of purple water.... The warm breath of the Kuro Siwo,
penetrating all these inland seas and passages, is converted by the
great white peaks of the horizon into pearl-like mist that drifts in
clouds and fragments upon the blue waters. Nowhere are these mists
more frequent, nor more elusive, than in Queen Charlotte Sound. At
sunrise they take on the delicate tones of the primrose or the
pinkish star-flower; at sunset, all the royal rose and purple
blendings; all the warm flushes of amber, orange, and gold. Through
a maze of pale yellow, whose fine, cool needles sting one's face and
set one's hair with seed pearls, one passes into a little open
water-world where a blue sky sparkles above a bluer sea, and the air
is like clear, washed gold. But a mile ahead a solid wall of
amethyst closes in this brilliant sea; shattering it into particles
that {205} set the hair with amethysts instead of pearls.... It is
this daily mist-shower that bequeaths to British Columbia and Alaska
their marvellous and luxuriant growth of vegetation, their spiced
sweetness of atmosphere, their fairness and freshness."
[1] _Alaska; the Great Country_, by Ella Higginson. New York: The
Macmillan Company.
Forty miles north of Prince Rupert is Dixon's Entrance, that marks
the international boundary between the Canadian and Alaskan waters.
Some haunting impress left upon the air by the great navigators who
made their pioneer voyages in these intricate waterways--Perez and
Valdez, Duncan, Vancouver, Meares, Caudra--their dauntless courage
and their perils fling spectra on the passing winds and waves. The
scenic effects grow more and more sublime as the steamer advances.
At a distance of about seventy-five miles north of Prince Rupert the
traveller comes in sight of a remarkable series of mountain terraces,
rising more than six thousand feet into the air, with sheer walls and
castellated summits.
The first call at port after Prince Rupert is at Ketchikan, seven
hundred miles from Seattle, with a population of some two thousand
people, the distributing point for the mines and fisheries of
Southern Alaska. On its crescent-shaped harbour and with its eternal
guard of mountains, with its lake and its falls and its wonderful
gorge, three miles distant into the woodlands, it is a picturesque
town, and with its electric lighting and steam heating it leaves
little to be desired for comfortable residence. Between Ketchikan
and Wrangell are {206} the Wrangell Narrows, a channel where ethereal
vapours, many-hued, like tropical flowers, are breeze-blown in the
air; and the long, green moss, on the trees on either side, sways
like drapery. Miss Scidmore, writing of Wrangell Narrows, thus
pictured it with her fascinating pen:
"It was an enchanting trip up that narrow channel of deep water,
rippling between bold island shores and parallel mountain walls.
Beside clear emerald tide, reflecting tree and rock, there was the
beauty of foaming cataracts leaping down the sides of snow-capped
mountains and the grandeur of great glaciers pushing down through
sharp ravines and dropping miniature icebergs into the sea. Touched
by the last light of the sun, Patterson Glacier was a frozen lake of
a wonderland, shining with silvery lights, and showing a pale
ethereal green and deep, pure blue in all the rifts and crevices of
its icy front."
From Wrangell on to Juneau the entrance to Taku Inlet is passed. The
far-famed Taku Glacier is differentiated by the extreme brilliancy of
its colouring from all other glaciers of the Alaskan regions. Taku
Inlet, with its forty-five ice streams, is a fitting approach to this
marvel of Nature. Every blast of the steamer's whistle is as the
call of a giant monster which is answered by masses of ice that,
detached by the vibration, plunge headlong into the sea with a noise
like thunder. "That day on the Taku Glacier will live forever as one
of the rarest and most perfect enjoyment," again writes Alaska's
vivid interpreter, Miss Scidmore: "The grandest objects in Nature
were before us, the primeval forces that mould the face of the earth
{207} were at work, and it was all so out of the every-day world that
we might have been walking a new planet, fresh fallen from the
Creator's hand." The Taku Glacier has a sheer, precipitous front
three hundred feet high, the colour making it seem one gigantic
sapphire, so intense is the blue. Yet again there are glints of
green and rose and gold that flash out as if a casket of jewels had
been flung over it, or an avalanche of star-dust, windswept, from the
far spaces of the universe. John Muir, the great naturalist, whose
vision was that of the artist and whose spirit was always open to the
message of the eternal world, was deeply impressed by Taku and by
Sundum fiords, and in one allusion he says of Taku:
"A hundred or more glaciers of the second and third class may be seen
along these walls, and as many snowy cataracts, which, with the
plunging bergs, keep all the fiord in a roar. The scenery is of the
wildest description, especially in their upper reaches, where the
granite walls, streaked with waterfalls, rise in sheer massive
precipices, like those of Yosemite Valley, to a height of three and
four thousand feet."
The poetic eye of John Burroughs keenly recognised the grandeur of
all this voyage and the especial splendour that lies between Prince
Rupert and Skagway; and of the gleaming brilliancy of the glacier
regions he said that it was as if "the solid earth became spiritual
and translucent."
This new route to Alaska, which is under the auspices of the Grand
Trunk Pacific, has greatly increased the tourist travel, as the
safety of the {208} "Inside Route," combined with the luxurious
conditions and the ineffable panorama of beauty, render the journey
as easy and feasible as it is delightful. There is a saving of three
days by journeying over the Grand Trunk Pacific to Prince Rupert and
there embarking for Alaska. In January of 1916, the well-known
traveller and writer, Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, made this trip of which
he wrote:
"... I despair of giving you any idea of the beauties of this voyage,
they are so many and so varied. Now you have the wonders of the
Swiss Lakes, now those of the Inland Sea of Japan, and now beauties
like those on the coasts of New Zealand. There are all sorts of
combinations of sea and sky, of evergreen slopes and snow-capped
mountains. The colour effects are beyond description and the sunsets
indescribable in their changes and beauties. The islands are of all
shapes and sizes and they float upon sapphire seas. Many of the
islands have snow-capped mountains that rise in green walls almost
straight up from the water, and their heads are often crested with
silver."
Juneau, the capital and principal metropolis of Alaska, is on
Gastineau Channel, which is eight miles in length and more than a
mile wide at the entrance, gradually growing less as it nears the
mainland, till it becomes like a narrow avenue of blue water through
which the sunset pours in the late afternoon with an almost unearthly
beauty. Mount Juneau, in the centre of the town, rises to a height
of 3000 feet, with sloping sides of a pale green down which rush
numberless cascades of silvery, sparkling water. Juneau is already
an important {209} business centre, with incalculably rich mining
properties tributary to the city, and with almost every branch of
business and the industries represented. It is the commercial supply
centre of all the camps; it is on the direct line of travel from
Seattle to the Upper Yukon, and has its banks, assay laboratories,
transportation facilities, and good schools, while it is the
residence of the Governor of Alaska and the seat of all the Federal
offices. There is a Chamber of Commerce, and there are women's clubs
and imported gowns. The hospitalities of Juneau are already famous,
and social life rises to a gaiety and whirl that leaves the Parisian
life, as it existed in its social tide before the war, quite in the
shade. The Parisienne is seldom reckless in her extravagance; a
certain well-adjusted economy is a part of French life, even among
the most fashionable and wealthy. But economy can hardly be said to
have achieved much for itself in Juneau. Is not Alaska stuffed with
gold? Not a few of its residents live as if that conviction were
their financial basis. The entertaining is on a lavish scale; the
women are dressed so smartly as to put a modest traveller quite to
rout; and money is apparently regarded as something to be put into
immediate circulation.
Life is at high tide. Juneau has a creditable library, it has
several cleverly edited newspapers, and the general vitality of the
social and commercial life is not unworthy of the sparkling
splendours of the scenic setting. As Juneau was founded in 1880, its
{210} initial mining camp developing towards a town, the period of
its existence that antedates the dawn of the twentieth century is
regarded by its up-to-date residents as ancient history. The Rome of
the fifth century is not more remote from the Rome of 1916 than is
the decade of the 'eighties from Juneau. The people are the true
"futurists" in every sense. No grass grows under their glancing
feet. They drive, and dress, and dine, and dance. They begin where
the older cities leave off, so to speak. If they are remote from the
great world centres, so much the worse for the same centres! Life is
perpetually _en fête_ in Juneau. The vital exhilaration, the
sparkling energy, the eye on the future, and the disregard of the
past, are characteristics of the general march of progress.
It is interesting to recall that the first book ever written on
Alaska was by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore of Washington, the capital of
the United States, a book published by the Lothrop house in Boston
(U.S.A.) early in the decade of 1880-90. Miss Scidmore was the first
American woman to visit Alaska, sailing from San Francisco by a
freight steamer some time before any passenger service was
inaugurated for that wonderful voyage. An adventurous spirit, her
eager imagination always flitting before to penetrate some unknown
region, Miss Scidmore thus began, in her early girlhood, the
extensive and somewhat remarkable travels which have been continued
in her picturesque life. Since {211} those days of her first
youthful achievement her name has flown widely on the wings of fame
as that of one of the most brilliant and able women writers of her
country. Taking the Orient for her happy hunting-ground, Miss
Scidmore has made numerous voyages over the Pacific, with many
prolonged sojourns in China, Japan, and India; making a pilgrimage to
Java and writing of its old temples and mysterious customs in a
richly illustrated paper that appeared in the _Century Magazine_ and
which attracted wide attention. Among her books _A Winter in China_
and _Jinrikisha Days_ have come to be regarded as almost
indispensable handbooks for travellers as well as the enchanters of
the fireside or the summer piazza; and by means of many years'
residence in Tokio and Yokohama, Miss Scidmore has become an
acknowledged authority on Oriental art, a connoisseur whose judgment
has been sought by more than one of the great art collectors in the
States. With her keen intellectual grasp she has also entered into
the politics of the Far East; and to _The Outlook_, and other leading
reviews in both London and New York, Miss Scidmore has contributed
articles so able in their discernment as to be widely quoted and
discussed.
Miss Scidmore's initial trip to Alaska, interpreted in a book
offering a series of singularly vivid impressions, combined, too,
with a study of facts and prevailing conditions, and fascinating
pictorial descriptions of this "water-colour land" as she {212}
termed it, from the faint evanescent hues of sunshine on the
glaciers, perhaps contributed more than any other single cause to
stimulate the demand for passenger excursions to this country.
Miss Scidmore's description of Muir Glacier, an exquisite piece of
word-painting, has often been reproduced; and of her last, lingering
view of this spectacle she wrote:
"The whole brow was transfigured with the fires of sunset; the blue
and silvery pinnacles, the white and shining front dreamlike on a
roseate and amber sea, and the range and circle of dull violet
mountains lifting their glowing summits into a sky flecked with
crimson and gold."
Somewhere about 1889 another gifted American woman, Kate Field,
author, lecturer, and a charming figure in society, visited Alaska;
and to Miss Field belongs the honour of having delivered the first
lecture ever given in that country. It was in Juneau, in a primitive
and unfinished room, that Miss Field gave this lecture, utilising a
rough table as a platform. Her audience included miners in their
working garb, prospectors, many of the usual camp-followers, a few
Indians, and several of her fellow-passengers from the steamer. Her
theme was that of good citizenship, and one of her hearers afterwards
reported that she gave them wholesome truths with characteristic
vehemence and earnestness. Miss Field was rewarded by being
presented with the "freedom" of the town (then hardly more than a
mining-camp), with a pair of silver bracelets made by the Indians,
{213} a bottle of virgin gold, and a totem pole. These picturesque
tributes were highly valued by their witty and graceful recipient,
and she often displayed them with pride and pleasure to her friends
in Washington, New York, Paris, or London. Visiting the Muir Glacier
at this early period when its unequalled grandeur was at its
perfection (for of late years earthquakes and devastations have
changed its contour) Miss Field thus described it:
"Imagine a glacier three miles wide and three hundred feet high, and
you have a slight idea of Muir Glacier. Picture a background of
mountains fifteen thousand feet high, all snow-clad, and then imagine
a gorgeous sun lighting up crystals with rainbow colouring. The face
of the crystal takes on the hue of aquamarine--the hue of every bit
of floating ice that surrounds the steamer. This dazzling serpent
moves sixty-four feet a day, tumbling headlong into the sea,
startling the air with submarine thunder."
[Illustration: Prince Rupert, British Columbia]
Miss Field's experience in Juneau must have been, indeed, a contrast
to the scenic setting of her girlhood, when, in Florence, Italy, she
studied music and art; where Walter Savage Landor taught her Latin
and wrote classic verse to her; where Robert and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning welcomed her to their poets' home in Casa Guidi; and where
she met George Eliot, whose genius kindled her own. With her
literary talent stimulated and all aglow in this radiant atmosphere,
Miss Field wrote that exquisite series of monographs on Landor, Mrs.
Browning, Madame la Marchesa Ristori, and several of the Italian
poets, which were published in the _Atlantic {214} Monthly_ (then the
magazine which was the very arbiter of American literary destiny), a
series that has been often erroneously attributed to the eminent
sculptor and poet, William Wetmore Story, as in those days the
_Atlantic Monthly_ preserved the silence of the gods regarding the
identity of its contributors.
It is something to have passed one's early youth in Arcady; and
between those Florentine days, and her appearance as the first
lecturer in Alaska, there lay a series of richly varied years and
achievements. Kate Field seemed to be always winging her shining
way, and it was during an interlude in Hawaii, whose beauty steeped
her in gladness, that she fared forth, on a golden day in the Maytime
of 1896, on still another journey; a mystic journey into those realms
of the Life More Abundant, and entered on a new phase of experiences,
even those of the Adventure Beautiful.
From Juneau the Grand Trunk Pacific Line of steamers proceeds to
Skagway, through the Lynn Canal, considered, all in all, the most
beautiful of the fiords of Alaska. Skagway rejoices in the poetic
designation of "the flower City of Alaska" from the amazing
luxuriance and loveliness of the riotous floral growth in the gardens
of the town and also in the outlying country. Skagway is the gateway
to the Yukon, and the tourist who wishes to visit Canada's portion of
this great Northland embarks on the White Pass and Yukon Railway,
which affords easy access to Lake Atlin and down the Yukon to Dawson,
the capital of Yukon Territory.
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The future importance of Skagway depends largely on the success of
the White Pass and Yukon Railway. Of this, however, there is
practically no question. Skagway has a population of more than two
thousand; and it is splendidly equipped with cable, telephone and
telegraph services; with electric lighting; with good schools and
churches; and with shops and stores furnishing an adequate assortment
for all needs of utility and of taste and beauty; it has a very
attractive resident region, and its gardens are already famous.
During the Klondike excitement of 1897-98, Skagway was the base of
operations for many thousands of prospectors who thronged this
region. It is especially attractive to the devotees of ethnological
science, as it is near some of the more interesting Indian villages,
and it has supreme attractions for the artist. The glaciers of
Davidson and Mendenhall are near, and nowhere are the enchantments of
a summer in the far northlands more alluring and spellbinding to the
lover of flowers and fragrances, of stars and sunsets, of the beauty
that flashes from solid mountain walls of opal pinnacles and
glittering palisades, in an atmosphere prismatic in colour--nowhere
are there more lovely "lands of summer beyond the sea" than in and
around Skagway.
It has been more or less generally supposed that the climate of
Alaska was inevitably severe and fairly arctic in its character. On
the contrary, the mean temperature of Juneau for July is fifty-seven
degrees and the thermometer often ranges from {216} seventy to even
ninety. Thus the mean temperature of Juneau for July is only one
degree less than that of San Francisco for August. The equability of
the temperature in Southern Alaska is a feature of importance. The
entire land, in summer, is covered with a dense vegetation.
One of the great marvels of nature in the Alaskan and Yukon regions
is that of the matchless spectacle of the Northern Lights. Not even
the glacier can rival Aurora Borealis. It is Robert Service who is
the bard of the mystic illuminations that are fairly before the eye
of the reader of that scintillating poem, the "Ballad of the Northern
Lights."
"And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in the
primrose haze;
And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with
a blinding blaze.
They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver
shod;
It was not good for the eyes of man, 'twas a sight for the eyes
of God.
"And the skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing,
thrilling flame
Amber, and rose, and violet, opal and gold it came.
Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled;
Sudden splendours of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were
hurled;
There in our awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted
eyes,
Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battleground of the
skies."
Prince Rupert and Alaska! They offer the traveller the very glory of
the world and of all the heavenly spaces.
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