OPENING APPROACHES
_Wednesday, the 11th._—H. spent a large part of the day in interviewing
the chief, ‘Billy Masterman,’ on the subject of canoes and men. We also
engaged two white men who, with several others, had come prospecting
up the coast from Juneau in a whale-boat, but had done no good and
were anxious to return in the ‘Alpha.’ ‘Ed.’—I never knew his other
name—was tall and dark; Finn, commonly called the Doctor, was a smaller,
red-haired man. Both seemed rather slight for packing, but had the
reputation of being good cooks. As they were repairing the schooner, we
pitched the green tent on the beach, and H., W., and I slept in it, E.,
who had a slight cold, preferring to remain on board.
_Thursday, the 12th._—We managed to engage two large canoes, one of
which was to wait at Icy Bay for us. Its owner agreed to this on the
condition that he was to stay with it, and with him a youth who was said
to be his son, but who subsequently proved to be his brother. Crews were
also secured, and we were to have started at three, but there was some
wind and they declined to go. W. and I went off and bathed, and then
wandered a little way along the beach after a small variety of plover, of
which we had seen a good many the day before, but now they all seemed to
have vanished. As we returned, however, we came on a small flock; ‘Dick,’
De Groff’s setter pup, spoilt the shot by chasing them, but I got four,
and he made some amends by fetching them out of the sea. This outer shore
of Kantag Island is a regular shingle beach exposed to the surf; H. and I
went along it the day before for about a mile to De Groff’s and Callsen’s
gold claim, where they were washing the black sand, or, as some call it,
the ruby sand from the quantity of garnets in it, in an amalgamator, but
they were doing little more than would pay their expenses.
In the evening the Indians suddenly announced their readiness to
start, and at nine o’clock we got off in the two big canoes, and a
smaller one which we had purchased for five dollars from one of the
miners returning to Sitka on the ‘Alpha.’ We were arranged thus:—In
the large canoe we were to keep at Icy Bay were E. and W., with Ed.,
Lyons, Billy, Jimmy, and three Yakutats; in the other, H. and I, with
Shorty, Matthew, Mike, and five Yakutats; and in the small one Finn and
two Yakutats. De Groff photographed us from the beach, and we started,
the Indians yelling wildly, and the two big canoes racing till we were
past the point, when they settled down to a more sedate stroke. Off Cape
Phipps, however, the weather looked so threatening in the south-east
that we returned ignominiously at half-past ten. We put up our tent on
the sand in front of the ranche; everything else was left in the canoes
ready for a start, with the sails, etc., stretched over them to protect
them from the rain, which came down in torrents. In the middle of the
night the tent collapsed at W.’s end, and he had to emerge in the wet
and fasten it again, in much peril from the Siwash dogs which we heard
growling indignantly as he disturbed their slumbers in the search for
something solid to which to attach the rope, while we chuckled inside
and congratulated ourselves that we did not sleep next the door. In the
morning we found the sand beneath us swarming with maggots bred from the
refuse which the Indians used to cast on the beach; the warmth of our
bodies had presumably brought them to the surface.
_Friday, the 13th._—Next day the weather looked better, and after
hiring two more Yakutats, who were put in the small canoe while Finn
was transferred to ours, we got off again at 11 A.M. We rowed round the
point, and some little way up the bay, when we set sail. There was a
strong north-east wind, and the small canoe was soon a good way behind.
About half-past three we were off Point Manby; things looked rather bad,
with dense black clouds to the south-east, so we waited for the others
to come up, and held a council of war. Shorty, who was always on the
safe side strongly urged our going ashore, pointing out that there was
no landing between Point Manby and Icy Bay, a distance of over thirty
miles, and that, should it come on to blow from the south-east, it would
probably be impossible to land through the surf by the time we reached
the latter place; we should be unable to turn back against the wind, and
our only chance would be to run right on before it, in which case we
should be carried on to Kayak unless we swamped by the way. Unwilling as
we were to land at Point Manby, which, if the weather became bad, would
involve a detention of unknown length, and would in any case cause much
confusion among our stores by our having to land, and then re-embark
them, H. and I were inclined to agree with him, but E. and W. so strongly
opposed it, pointing out with justice that the similar appearance of
the evening before had only resulted in heavy rain, that we gave way
and decided to go on, thereby, as I believe, running the biggest risk
encountered on the whole expedition. Fortunately the others were right,
the wind died down, causing the men to take to their oars, and was
succeeded by a deluge of rain, after which the north-east wind came again
and our canoe took the small one in tow.
All this time we were running along the face of the Agassiz, or rather
the Malaspina, Glacier, for it is all one field of ice, which here seems
quite motionless, its front covered with gravel and boulders, among
which appear a few sparse bushes. At last we reached a point which we
recognised as Cape Sitkagi from the delta of flat land which commenced
just beyond, and Gums, one of the Yakutats who had been with the former
expedition, indicated that we were near our destination. Going on some
five or six miles further we then prepared to land. From our men’s
accounts of surf-landings and from Seton-Karr’s book, we were prepared
for a fearful struggle with the waves. Shorty transferred himself to the
little canoe, and they went ashore without apparent difficulty; but then
she was light and small. Then came our turn, and H. and I went up into
the bows with instructions to jump the moment she touched, and, should
she get broadside on and capsize, to be careful to jump to sea, so as
not to be pounded between the canoe and the beach. After these cheerful
directions we were a shade nervous as we contemplated the shore, which we
were now rapidly approaching, while the others stood ready to receive
us, but as we got closer we came to the conclusion that the breakers were
very small, and before we touched our contempt for the Pacific surf in
its then condition was complete. We were now quite close; the Indians
paused for a favourable moment, and then dashed in their paddles with
wild yells. We rode in on the crest of a wave and were swept up the beach
as it broke. Instantly the others grasped the canoe, and there ensued
a scene of the wildest confusion. Every man seized the first thing he
could lay hold of, rushed up the beach with it, tossed it down, and ran
back for more, till the canoe was empty, when we hauled her up a little
way and prepared to receive the others, who were not quite so fortunate,
for, as they touched land, another breaker came in over their stern but
did no damage. The beach was now strewn with our properties, which were
gradually collected and conveyed beyond the reach of the highest tide,
where we pitched camp and the canoes were dragged up. It was now nine
o’clock, but quite light, and some of the Indians went off after seals
which had been seen in the mouth of a small river just to the east of
us. A good deal of firing was heard, and according to their own account
they shot three, but unfortunately these were all lost in the sea.
_Saturday, the 14th._—The morning was spent in sorting and arranging the
stores. With the object of remaining as long as possible in the vicinity
of the mountain, we four agreed to carry our own properties, so that the
men might be free to carry more food, and soon came to the conclusion
that we must leave our rifles at the beach. W. and E. tried to take one
between them, but left it at the first cache. We saw a green humming-bird
flashing along the shore, and another had been observed at Yakutat. In
the afternoon we all sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood; H. and
Ed. went along the beach, which was covered with bear-tracks, for some
four miles to the first outlet of the river, re-christened by Lieutenant
Schwatka with the euphonious name of Jones, and Ed. returned considerably
impressed with the walking powers of our gallant captain. E. and Shorty
penetrated with great difficulty for some distance along the banks of
the river, which ran into the sea close to camp. I took the shot-gun
and started with W. and Lyons along the beach, but I soon separated
from them, and went on the shore-side of the lagoons, where I hoped to
find duck. In this I was disappointed, but I shot a large sandpiper and
a couple of ring-necked plover. On the sandhills of the beach were the
largest wild strawberries I ever saw, some fully as big as a shilling,
while the supply was utterly inexhaustible. It came on to pour in
torrents, and we all returned soaked through, and quite undecided as to
our future route. All that night the rain descended in a deluge, and,
driven by a fierce east wind, even succeeded in penetrating our excellent
green tent which had stood so well on Mount Edgcumbe.
_Sunday, the 15th._—In the morning the men showed no sign of life, so
after a cold breakfast H. and W. sallied forth to see whether it would
be possible to ‘pack’ up the river by our camp, while E. and I curled
up again in our blankets. About 2 P.M. the rain began to leave off, and
the men emerged and made a fire. For lunch we fried some seal-meat, the
Indians having been successful in shooting one the day before. H. and
W. returned dripping at three o’clock, in time to share our repast, and
reported that the bush was too dense to pack through, so we decided to
start early next morning and follow the same route as the Schwatka party.
In the evening E. announced the presence of two plover by the river close
to camp, so I executed a stalk through the sand which brought me within
easy shot, but trying to get both at once, I missed with the first barrel
and only secured one. I then plucked and cleaned my four birds, and we
fried them with bacon for supper.
_Monday, the 16th._—Fine at last and some sunshine! We had a grand view
of St. Elias through the clouds, which gradually cleared off, and we were
able at our leisure to survey the monarch, who looked most formidable,
but we hoped he would improve on acquaintance.
Though we were up at five, there was so much to be done that it was not
till eight that the procession began its march along the sandhills. As it
was the first day, the men were not used to their burdens of from sixty
to eighty pounds, and could only go about two miles an hour, in addition
to which they stopped to rest every three or four hundred yards. As some
of the Indians seemed to be overburdened, I went back to H., who had not
yet started, and we hired for the day three of the other Yakutats. At
the site of Schwatka’s shore camp we picked up a short .44 cartridge and
a piece of sheet-lead. While resting there I suddenly perceived a bear
cantering along the other side of the lagoon about five hundred yards
off. Shorty, who was carrying his rifle, which was also left at the first
cache, was anxious to go in pursuit, but H. declined to allow this, as
being a waste of valuable time. Progressing very slowly, and halting
continually to attack the strawberries, we at length reached the first
river at half-past eleven. Seton-Karr recommends the ascent of this, but
it looked very unpromising and we kept on. Most of the men stripped more
or less to cross this stream, which was well over our knees and horribly
cold, but as we knew there would be lots more wading, none of us four
took the trouble of taking off boots or stockings. In an hour more,
across a flat grassy plain with scattered fir-trees we reached a creek
of the main river and halted for lunch, after which the fun began.
The streams were not deep, being seldom above our knees, but their beds,
and generally the spaces in between, were of that terrible glacier mud,
as glutinous as quicksands, and through this we toiled, every now and
then skirting the edge of the forest, where a scanty vegetation of sedge
and marestails gave a little sounder going, and resting whenever a fallen
log or two offered something substantial to sit on. Presently it began
to rain heavily; Gums pointed out a spot where he declared Schwatka
halted the first day, but this disagreed with Seton-Karr’s account,
and as it was yet early we pushed on in hope of at least finding a dry
camping-place. In this, although the moraine of the Agassiz Glacier was
now looming near at hand, we were doomed to be disappointed; and after
two unusually deep and rapid crossings, in one of which Lyons lost his
footing and emerged in a pitiable plight, though with nothing gone except
his temper, we sought the shelter of the woods, thoroughly numbed by this
ceaseless wading in ice-water. Such a thing as a flat place was not to
be found above the level of the mud, but by careful search we discovered
a spot where the logs and stones were more or less disguised by the
dense layer of moss, and pitched the tents. With the aid of a couple of
roaring fires and some excellent pea-soup we restored some warmth to our
shivering limbs, but, as it was still pouring, dryness was not to be
hoped for, and decidedly weary with the first day’s march, we sought our
blankets. E. and I then discovered the deceitfulness of the moss; H. and
W. were fairly well off, but at our end of the tent an enormous boulder
projected. With the aid of knapsacks I enlarged the mountain, so that I
was able to doze more or less on its summit, while E. curled himself in a
ball in the valley at my feet. The mosquitoes attacked us in myriads, but
E. and W. were soon asleep; H. and I were not so fortunate, and I never
became enough accustomed to the absence of darkness to sleep well. In the
middle of the night, just as I was dropping off, I was suddenly aroused
by something tickling my neck, and putting up my hand grasped an enormous
beetle. Flinging it from me, I promptly massacred it, and discovered H.
eyeing my movements with mild astonishment. I explained, and we composed
ourselves to rest again, if not to sleep.
_Tuesday, the 17th._—Next morning we got off at half-past seven and
continued up the river, but with less wading as we were now next the
Agassiz moraine. At one point, which must have been very near the site of
Schwatka’s first camp, we halted for about an hour while W. and H. made
an attempt to get up the face of the moraine. In this they succeeded,
but only to find the scrub on the glacier itself so dense that it would
have been impossible for the packers to penetrate it, and we pushed on
up the bed of the river. Gums soon announced that there would be no more
wading, to the delight of the men, who put on their boots; but their
joy was turned to wrath when, on rounding the next corner, we had to
plunge in again. Of course these streams are always changing their bed,
and we found very great variations in their rise and fall apart from
their natural increase by day and decrease by night. This was probably
to be accounted for by the periodical closing and bursting of the many
glacier lakes. At last the river began to contract, and its bed was now
only about a mile wide. On the other side was the bare ice of the Guyot
Glacier, while we were now driven by the depth of one of the main streams
on to the moraine of the Agassiz Glacier, where we halted from half-past
eleven till two, while we had lunch, made a cache, and dismissed our
three extra Yakutats, one of whom was the boy who was to stay at Icy Bay
as company for the canoe-owner.
We were now reduced to our proper quota of fourteen, and our retainers
deserve a somewhat more elaborate description than they have hitherto
had. Of our four whites, our right-hand man was Arthur McConnahay,
nicknamed Shorty, apparently on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle,
being some six feet four inches in height. Very handsome, with fair
hair and blue eyes, he was the ideal Anglo-Saxon in appearance, and,
being extremely good-natured, he was a great favourite with our Indians,
with whom he would readily share his last bit of tobacco; but he was an
inveterate grumbler, and often roused H.’s wrath by his ceaseless growls
against the hardships of the way. Though the son of an Indiana farmer,
he had been on the Pacific coast for some years, and, being captured
in one of the sealers seized in the Behring’s Sea, had been stranded
at Sitka without means to get away. In May he had been up to Yakutat
and back in a canoe, searching for a lost sloop, the ‘Leola,’ and the
knowledge he thus obtained of the coast proved subsequently most useful
to me. He had, however, once been shipwrecked near Valparaiso, when he
had a narrow escape of his life, being washed up insensible, and always
had a great distrust of bad weather at sea.
Harry Lyons, his great friend, though not so tall, was a man of immense
strength, with light hair and grey eyes. He hailed from Iowa, and had
been for some time a fisherman on the Columbia river, where he seemed
to have had some rather exciting experiences, and to have made things
exciting for other people too; for, when one of the steamers was running
through his salmon-nets, he put a bullet into the bridge within a foot of
the captain. He once got in one haul seven hundred and fourteen salmon,
each over twenty pounds, and also captured the biggest salmon ever taken
in the river, weighing over seventy-four pounds. Having lost boat and
nets in a storm he had gone in for sealing, and when we engaged him had
just come in on the ‘Alpha.’ A good packer, and a first-rate man in a
boat, he was terribly lazy in camp, not wilfully, but it didn’t seem to
occur to him to do things.
Ed. and Finn were both Eastern men, the former coming from Maine, and
the latter from Erie. Neither was conspicuous for ardour in packing, and
it would have been pretty safe to bet on their loads being lighter than
other people’s. But in camp they were very useful, especially as bakers.
Ed. generally undertook this task, and it was not till we were back in
Yakutat, and the baking-powder began to run short, that we discovered
Finn’s talent for ‘sour-dough’ bread. He was a man of considerable
education and of a scientific turn of mind, with some knowledge of
chemistry and botany. With Ed. and three or four others, he had come
prospecting up the coast from Juneau, stopping every few miles. They
had been up in Disenchantment Bay, a long fiord running inland from the
head of Yakutat Bay, and were going on to Nuchuk, but a few miles west
of Point Manby they were imprisoned on the beach by a storm from the
south-east. Trying to get off too soon, they were swamped, and barely
escaped with their lives. Luckily for them their boat was not injured,
and when they got off a day or two later, they returned to Yakutat, as
they had lost most of their stores, and there we found them.
Of our Indians, Matthew, our so-called interpreter, was not popular with
us. He had been a mission boy, and accordingly thought a good deal of
himself, and was inclined to be insolent.
Mike, a short burly fellow, with a most ruffianly cast of countenance,
was in reality very good-natured, and, like all the Indians, a
magnificent packer; but he was very slow and somewhat dense.
Billy, who had been specially recommended to us by Milmore, steward to
Captain Newell of the ‘Pinta,’ was my favourite among them. Taller than
usual, and not at all deformed in the legs, he had almost a European cast
of countenance.
Jimmy was just the contrary, being very small and ugly, with
much-distorted lower limbs. Both he and Billy were extremely strong, and
on the occasion of my return from Camp I to Camp J their loads came very
near a hundred pounds.
Of the two Yakutats who accompanied us, ‘Gums’ was quite a character.
He had been so christened by Schwatka, from his peculiar smile, which
revealed not only his teeth, but the whole of the interior of his mouth.
He was the incarnation of undisciplined devilry. Full of pluck, he would
rather wade a glacier stream twice over than go a hundred yards round,
as we often found to our cost when he was professing to guide us up the
river. If we declined to follow the route he selected, or if he thought
his burden too great, he would get very sulky, not to say wrathful; but,
like a child, he was easily appeased.
Of the other one, George (not to be confounded with the second chief
of Yakutat), I recall but little, except that on our return he set the
fashion of wearing knickerbockers in the village by rolling his trousers
up to his knees, after the manner of the Swiss guides. The extreme
brilliancy of his striped stockings impressed this fact on my memory.
After leaving the cache we went on up stream for about a mile, sometimes
on little strips of beach, but oftener driven by the river on to the
face of the moraine, which was covered with dense alder scrub, offering
terrible difficulty to the laden packers, as the boughs, pressed down by
the winter’s snow, mostly sloped down-hill, while the foothold on the
slope itself was of a most precarious character. Eventually we left the
river and steered to the east, hoping to get through to bare ice, but
the bush seemed to grow thicker and the ubiquitous devil’s clubs more
numerous at every step. At last, as we were resting, thoroughly sick of
creeping and crawling through the tangle, W. valiantly climbed a somewhat
stouter alder than usual, and from that eminence, which threatened
momentarily to collapse with him, announced, to our intense delight, that
he could see bare rocks only a few hundred yards ahead.
Summoning up our last energies, we soon pushed through, and as it was
now half-past four, E. and I, who were ahead, began to search at once
for a convenient spot for camp. Although on a glacier, water was the
great desideratum, for the ice was here completely covered with rocks
and gravel, but I was fortunate enough to discover a tiny stream by its
sound in a convenient hollow, and set to work, with E.’s assistance, to
level a place for the tent, while H. and W. pushed on a little way to
get some idea of our route for the next day. It had been discovered that
our bacon was fading away too rapidly, so we confined ourselves to soup
and bread for supper, after which the sun came out and held out hopes
of improvement in the weather. My watch now caused me some annoyance by
stopping twice, and though it went spasmodically for about a week, it
then gave out altogether.
_Wednesday, the 18th._—Our luxurious couch of alder-boughs did not manage
to keep the cold out, so that we did not sleep very well, and obeyed with
alacrity H.’s réveille at five o’clock. It was a glorious morning and
we were off by seven, in a northerly direction at first, but the going
was so bad that we went back westwards to the depression where the two
glaciers joined. This Agassiz Glacier, on which it was our miserable fate
to meander so much, to the great detriment of our boots and our tempers,
was covered with the worst kind of moraine I have ever encountered,
not excepting the streets of the city of San Francisco. At first sight
it appeared to consist of mounds of stones, but appearances were, as
usual, deceitful; for these mounds were in reality of ice, produced by
the effect of weathering, and covered with a skin of rocks and dirt,
which was thick on the north, but thin and often altogether absent on
the south side. Plenty of mud lay in the hollows between, varied by an
occasional ‘moulin,’ and we were rarely able to travel twenty yards in
a straight line. In the depression it was at first a little better, but
soon after our lunch of bread and smoked salmon it got much worse, so
that frequently E. and I, who were in front, had to cut a few steps, and
in one of these places Gums came a most splendid cropper.
At length we left this and steered east again, being much cheered by
reaching a comparatively flat region, and soon afterwards clear ice. We
had had a grand view of our mountain all day, but it was still too far
off for us to make out any possible route. On the white ice we progressed
much more rapidly, though it was anything but level, being weathered
into hummocks three or four feet high. There were not many crevasses,
and those only a few inches in width. By four o’clock we were not more
than two miles from the Chaix Hills, which we could see were well wooded
on their lower slopes, but we were steering for a break in them some
seven or eight miles off, where we hoped might lie the glacier reported
by Professor Libbey as coming direct from St. Elias. But the men were
thoroughly exhausted, and it was evidently impossible to get there that
night, so we held a council. H., wisely as it afterwards proved, was in
favour of sleeping where we were on the glacier, and continuing our route
next day; but the rest of us opposed this frigid course with such warmth,
that he reluctantly gave way, and we accordingly turned north-west to
gain the hills, and soon got into difficulties again among the stony
mounds; while, when H. and I at last reached the edge of the glacier,
we found ice-cliffs, varying in height from fifty to a hundred feet,
utterly cutting us off from the land. However, I thought I saw a possible
place half-a-mile or so further up, and going on with great difficulty,
I discovered a spot where the cliffs gave way to a steep slope covered
with débris, down which we wound our weary way, and then waded the
inevitable river which always sent us wet to bed. On the other side
we found a charming camping-place on a sort of raised beach, marking,
presumably, the height of the river in some former flood, but now covered
with flowers, among which I recognised a large blue lupin, mimulus, two
kinds of spiræa, and three of willow-herb. Mosquitoes were also abundant.
After supper we held a consultation and decided to keep Billy and Jimmy
with us while the rest of the men were to return to the beach for another
load, and in the meantime we would coast along the east side of the Chaix
Hills.
[Illustration: THE SOUTHERN SLOPES OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.
From observations by the author, worked out by H. Broke, Lieut. R.E.
_Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York. F.S. Weller._]