FURTHER ADVANCE AND MY RETREAT
_Thursday, the 26th._—A beautiful sunrise ushered in a splendid day,
and we turned out at four o’clock. At 5.30 Ed., with Matthew and Mike,
started down to bring up the stores left in the cache by the Guyot
Glacier, and half-an-hour later the rest of us descended the slopes
to the Guyot, as a long lake cut us off from going directly on to the
Tyndall Glacier. Once on the ice, we curved round to the north, making
for the north-east extremity of the opposite hills. The glacier was
fairly flat and not much broken, though there were a good many small
crevasses in the white ice as we approached the hills. All these glaciers
are shrinking so rapidly that crevasses, generally of considerable size,
are always to be found anywhere near their edges, and as these are
naturally nearly always parallel to their direction, they are some times
a great nuisance.
We got on to the green hills at 9.30; Gums showed us Schwatka’s last
camping place, and, after rummaging about a bit in the bushes, produced
the Niagara crampons brought by Professor Libbey. The last hill, which
rose about two hundred feet above the glacier, was almost isolated from
the rest, and we pushed on over the low col between it and the main mass,
putting up several coveys of ptarmigan as we went over the grass and
through patches of alder-scrub. In a few minutes we came to the glacier
again; between it and the land was another small lake on which were
numerous geese, but we made no attempt at the time to molest them. Two
fair-sized streams ran into this, and as Gums declared, wrongly as usual,
that we should find no firewood further on, we halted directly after
crossing the first of these.
The men then returned, except Jimmy and Billy, who were to stay with us
as before. Shorty and Harry were to remain at Camp G, and the rest to go
down to the beach and return in about ten days, by which time we expected
to have done our possible, though our hopes of getting to the top were
very faint by this time. As they departed along the edge of the lake we
saw them waving and pointing, but could not make out what it was all
about. After resting a little, H. and W. went off to explore, while E.
stewed a goose and I made bread and pitched the tent. Our camp was on the
edge of a low cliff above the stream, and at the extreme verge of this a
bear had been squatting in the long grass. The Indians utilised this spot
as their camping-place. H. and W. did not return till half-past eight,
decidedly despondent. They found a relic of Seton-Karr on the Tyndall
Glacier in the shape of an empty tomato-can. We came to the conclusion
that we should have to go a good deal nearer the foot of the mountain
before establishing a base camp, and that we must get hold of Lyons and
Shorty.
_Friday, the 27th._—We spent a quiet morning looking over our stores, and
made the painful discovery that a large portion of the oatmeal biscuits,
which had not before been unpacked, had gone mouldy, so we spread them in
the sun to dry. Directly after lunch W. went off to sleep at G and bring
the men back next day, and H. and E. took the Indians with light loads
to the proposed site for the new camp, the disadvantage of which was the
apparent absence of fuel. I followed up the course of our camp stream,
finding fresh and large bear-tracks, to a curious cirque. A promising
couloir filled with hard snow presenting itself, I worked up to a height
of perhaps two thousand feet, when there came a break in my gully. I
tried to turn it, but the rock was of the same rotten clayey consistency
that I had before encountered, and I had to give it up, so glissaded down
my couloir and returned to camp, where I had got supper ready by the time
the others came back.
_Saturday, the 28th._—The nights were now very cold, but the weather
continued glorious. The Indians got off at 7.30, and we followed them in
a few minutes. About a hundred yards beyond our camp the second stream
had cut a deep, precipitous gully, but we had found a good place to cross
this, just opposite to where a small stream came in on the other side,
and we then followed up this stream, flushing sundry ptarmigan. There
was very little scrub here, our route lying over what were apparently
grassy uplands. In reality there was little or no grass, the vegetation
consisting of willow-herbs, veratrum, ranunculus, mallow, violas, and
many others, some of which were strange to us but doubtless common enough
in America. I noticed a scarlet flower which I had seen in abundance on
the Pacific slope of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is, I believe,
known to botanists as _Castilleja miniata_. It is something like a
rattle, but the calyx is scarlet and the real flower green, or at least
it looks as if it was. Just as we were getting on to the glacier, which
has here a slight outflow from which the stream that we were following
up emerges, we saw a brown bear about half-a-mile ahead on a green knoll
which was nearly surrounded by ice. E. said, ‘How easily we could cut
that fellow off if we only had our rifles,’ and we sighed in chorus. A
little later we found that, had we been able to attempt such a manœuvre,
it would only have ended in gnashing of teeth, for our furry friend on
seeing us had gone straight down on to the glacier, and we now saw him a
mile away, going straight for St. Elias, and steeplechasing gaily over
the intervening crevasses. We had rather a bad bit of ice here, and in
future the men always went over the hill where his bearship had been,
which was fearfully steep but saved a good piece.
We then crossed two glaciers coming in from the west, which were
curiously different in appearance. The first, subsequently christened
the Daisy Glacier, was about a mile wide and six miles long, beautifully
smooth and white, with hardly a crevasse in it except at its junction
with the Tyndall, at which point it was lower than the glacier into
which it flowed. The other, which we called the Coal Glacier, was rather
smaller, say five miles long by twelve hundred yards wide, was a good
deal broken, and was covered with débris, among which we found lots of
coal which burnt fairly well in our camp fire. The mountains adjacent
were sandstone with great seams of coal plainly visible. The amount of
débris on the surface of the Coal Glacier protected it so much more from
waste than the Daisy Glacier, that its level was about the same as that
of the Tyndall. On the north side of this we put down our packs, and the
men returned to H for more, with instructions to bring up a load of
fuel as well. This proved to be unnecessary, as there was still enough
alder round Camp I to supply us with fire-wood. H., E., and I then went
on up the Tyndall Glacier. We had gone about a mile, and the others were
some little way ahead, when in jumping a crevasse the elastic of my
snow-spectacles gave way and one of the glasses got broken. As they were
my only pair and I am hopelessly short-sighted, so that ordinary ones are
no use, here was a fearful catastrophe! I shouted to the others that I
was going back, and returned shortly to camp. From previous experience in
Switzerland I knew I could use no makeshift without fearfully delaying
the others. The risk of ophthalmia too, from which I had once suffered,
was not lightly to be risked in these desert places, and I reluctantly
came to the conclusion that I must abandon all idea of climbing. It was
a fearful nuisance after coming so far, but was partly attributable to
my carelessness in not bringing two proper pairs, instead of these and
a ramshackle old pair which I found at Sitka to have come to grief on
the journey. This was due to the haste with which I had had to leave
England. My first idea was to return to the beach so as not to be
wasting the food we had brought up with so much labour, but no one could
be spared to go down with me, and the others were opposed to my going
alone, so I consented to wait for them.
I then pitched the tent, to do which I had to excavate part of the hill
and remove a good many boulders. About six o’clock the shrill whistles
of the marmots, which were very plentiful here, heralded some one’s
approach, and a few minutes later W. arrived, followed by the four men.
H. and E. came in ten minutes later, having had rather a bad time among
the big crevasses of the Tyndall Glacier, many of which were more than
partly covered with snow. Shorty said they were waving at the lake as
they went down to point out that the geese were leaving the water and
climbing on to the moraine, so that we might have cut them off, but we
had not understood.
_Sunday, the 29th._—A cool grey day with high clouds, the first break
in the brilliant weather which began on the 21st. The other three, with
Lyons and Shorty, left at 7 A.M. to make a high camp on the other side
of the Tyndall Glacier. They took the big white tent and the Edgington
ground-sheet, with provisions for about four days, their intention
being to try to reach at least the upper rim of the so-called ‘crater’
on the south arête. Soon afterwards I took Billy and Jimmy leisurely
down to Camp H for more stores, and, as Shorty had said, my going round
the lake sent the geese up the moraine. Billy and Jimmy lay in ambush
and succeeded in slaying four with ice-axes. I got back first to Camp
H, lit a fire, and had to make a damper, as there was no baking-powder
in the sack of flour there. By making it quite thin it turned out very
palatable, and, after lunching off this and some of the dried salmon,
which was a trifle high by this time, we set off home again, Billy
carrying the hams, fish, beans, and one goose, Jimmy a box of stores and
medicines and another goose, while I took the other two. We plucked,
singed, and cleaned them all, and then buried three in the snow on the
glacier. We had the fourth for supper, with an entrée of _foie gras_ (not
very _gras_) and bacon, and as I felt lazy I commanded Billy to make the
bread. The result was so excellent that he remained chief baker while I
was alone, and I fancy he washed his hands quite as often as I did.
At this camp there were hardly any flies or mosquitoes, the former
of which plagues had been terrible down at H. After supper the men
went after marmots, but of course without getting any, and I saw them
clambering up and down the most break-neck-looking places behind the
camp. They showed no distaste for ice, but they were never on snow, and
we never had occasion to use the rope with them.
_Monday, the 30th._—In the morning there were light clouds, but the sun
was more or less visible, and from its position I judged that we got up
at about eight o’clock. (Finn and H. were the only two whose watches
were still going, and they didn’t agree particularly well.) I spent the
morning in camp, washing myself and my clothes, cleaning my revolver,
etc. In the afternoon I set out up the rocks behind camp; they were
very rotten, and I got into considerable difficulties, especially at
one point, where, my foothold having disappeared, I dangled for some
time by my fingers in imminent expectation of returning to camp in a
rather undignified, not to say disorderly, manner. At last I got a knee
up to the ledge, and soon stood on the ridge, in which was a large seam
of coal, six or eight feet wide. Along this crest, then over snow-beds,
and then up more rock, always more or less rotten, I reached a height
of between four and five thousand feet, from which I had a magnificent
view of the wide sweeps of the Tyndall Glacier below me, but to the north
and west I was cut off by the spurs of the peak I was on. It was very
thick in the south, and rain was evidently driving up, so I determined
to descend promptly, and, by making a detour to the right, found a much
easier way down, and got in just as the rain began. It was only slight,
and kindly left off during supper, but then went on all night.
_Tuesday, the 31st._—In the morning the camp was enveloped in thin
clouds. As the sun was quite invisible, we had no ideas of time; but
just after breakfast, while we were still sitting round the fire, the
rain having left off and the clouds dispersed a good deal, the men
suddenly said ‘(K)hoots’ (the guttural being the same as in the Arabic
_Khamsin_—something like the German _ich_), and looking up at once, I saw
two bears leisurely crossing the stones on the Coal Glacier, about three
hundred yards off, going diagonally across towards the point below us.
Hurriedly telling the Indians to keep quiet, I sneaked down to the tent,
got H.’s big telescope (how I longed for a rifle!) and had a splendid
view of them.
The first was the much-talked-of ‘blue’ bear at last. The body was
slate-colour, much lighter on the back, with a very well-marked white
crescent on the shoulders, while the head was nearly, if not quite,
black. He was decidedly smaller than the other, which was an undersized
cinnamon. The blue one was also much neater-looking and smarter in his
gait, the pair resembling a park-hack followed by a cart-horse. The brown
one had, I think, seen the tent, for he kept stopping and staring in our
direction, but the blue kept quietly on, and when he reached the point
at about two hundred yards from the camp, he lay down in the long grass.
The other came on after him, but, instead of lying down, wandered about
in a restless manner. After about five minutes, the blue one got up, and,
followed by the brown, came leisurely towards us along the slope. I
heard the men whispering nervously together behind my back, and when the
bears were about a hundred yards off they couldn’t stand it any longer,
but gave vent to a most fiendish yell, which made me nearly drop the
telescope, while the bears, puffing and snorting, rushed wildly up the
hill and disappeared over the ridge. I went down to inspect their tracks
at a place where they had crossed a small patch of snow at the edge of
the glacier, and found them to be totally different. The blue had gone
with his heel down the whole time, like the black bear, while the brown’s
tracks only showed the print of the fore-part of the foot. From this and
from the general appearance of the animal, I have but little doubt that
these blue ones are a variety of the black bear. No doubt, as in the case
of the black bear in other parts of America, they will breed with the
brown ones, and hence puzzling variations are met with, such as a skin I
afterwards saw at Yakutat, which had been obtained near Dry Bay, and was
of a uniform yellowish grey.
Halleck is the only author on Alaska in whose works I have found any
mention of this bear. He says (‘Our New Alaska,’ p. 166): ‘Up on the
ridges back of Mount St. Elias, which constitute a favourite (_sic_)
hunting-ground for goats, is found a bear similar to the roach-back or
silver-tip of the Rockies, but of a beautiful bluish undercolour, with
the tips of the long hairs silvery white. The traders call it the St.
Elias silver bear.’ In another place (p. 160) he says: ‘Besides there is
a small albino bear found on the coast, which is known as the coast bear.
Being white and a good deal about the ice in winter, some have supposed
it to be a variety of polar bear, but the zoologists dispute it.’ My
own impression is that these bears are the same, the white variety not
being an albino, but the blue bear with his winter coat on. I could only
hear of two of these white bears having been killed—one at Chilcaht, the
other on the Taku Glacier, near Juneau, and this latter was described
as having been almost white. The blue skins are also very rare, as much
as seventy-five dollars being given for a good one. They seem to rather
prefer the company of their brown brethren, as Shorty a few days later
saw three bears on the glacier, of which one was brown and two blue; and
Anthony, the Sitka watchmaker, whom we first met at Yakutat, whither he
had come prospecting up the coast, met four near Dry Bay, some brown and
some blue, but I forget the exact proportion.
After lunch I set to work to prepare a sumptuous supper, as I expected
the others back that evening. I made a pudding by boiling rice and dried
peaches together, and even added some sugar, which had become a rare and
precious commodity, so that I did not use it while the others were away.
I then left the pot in the snow to cool, put a goose to stew on a slow
fire, and wandered up a little way beyond camp to make a sketch of the
glacier. About five o’clock the weather improved, the clouds gradually
disappearing and the sun being pleasantly warm. The others did not
return, and the pudding was so good that about half of it was eaten at
supper, but I put the rest by for next day. After supper I went out on to
the Tyndall Glacier and had a grand view of the mountain, though there
were still some clouds about. I could see no sign of the others, but took
a lot of bearings.
_Wednesday, August the 1st._—It was so cold in the night that I woke up
several times and got up pretty early. (Having the tent all to myself and
without the ground-sheet no doubt contributed to this.) Making bread for
breakfast exhausted the flour, so I started the men off to get some more
from Camp H, and went down with them as far as the Daisy Glacier. On the
way I had to pitch into Master Jimmy pretty severely; the crevasses at
the junction of the Coal and Tyndall Glaciers gave us some little trouble
from having kept too near to the latter, and one of these was spanned
by an exceedingly frail snow-bridge. Merely glancing at it, I went some
thirty yards lower down, and, looking back as I crossed, saw, to my
horror, that, though Billy was following me all right, Jimmy, who had
been a little behind, was crossing the rotten bridge, which he traversed
in safety, but two or three strokes from my ice-axe sent it tinkling into
the depths, and why it did not give way with him is a great mystery.
Jimmy looked rather awestruck, and I pointed out to him with some vigour
the necessity of following absolutely in my tracks.
The weather was again perfect, and on arriving at the Daisy Glacier I
let them go on, while I turned on to the glacier, up which I went for
nearly three miles, when my eyes began to ache a good deal, and, as some
_schrunds_ appeared which threatened to prove awkward for a solitary
climber, I returned. In the lower part of the Daisy there are hardly any
crevasses, and in consequence there are some very fine _moulins_, while
the surface was there in many parts very swampy, if such an expression
can be used, a thin crust of snow overlying the wet glacier. As I had
expected, it had a small outflow on its south side, about half a mile
from its junction with the Tyndall; and the stream from this, augmented
by another from the latter glacier, runs into the little lake by Camp H,
and so gets back to the glacier.
I made a slight sketch of Mount St. Elias from the terminal moraine, and
got back to camp about one o’clock (estimated), visiting on the way the
big blocks on the Coal Glacier, the biggest of which probably contained
about six thousand cubic feet. I found that the others had been over
for stores and the kerosene stove, and H. had left a note saying that
I could go down and wait for them at G, and that they would be back in
four days. Among other things they had carried off the small kettle with
the remains of the rice-pudding, and so got their share after all. They
left the skins of four young marmots to be stretched and dried. These
afterwards vanished when we were camped at Yakutat, presumably the prey
of some Indian dog. The men came back about two o’clock, and after lunch
we also went hunting marmots, which they called _tsahkh_; but though we
got pretty near one or two, and dug up a great deal of the hill-side, the
only results were the expenditure of a few revolver-cartridges and the
not uncommon one of smashing the stock of an ice-axe.