THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.
The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka.—The Value
and Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska.—The Old “Redoubt” or
Russian Jail.—The Treadwell Mine.—Futility of Predicting what may,
or what will not Happen in Mining Discovery.—Goal of Alaska not
fit for Steaming Purposes.—Salmon Canneries.—The Great “Whaling
Ground” of Fairweather.—Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One
Hundred and Thirty-five Miles Distant.—Mount Fairweather so
named as the Whalemen’s Barometer.—The Storm here in 1741 which
Separated Bering and his Lieutenant.—The Grandeur of Mount St.
Elias, Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred Feet.—A Tempestuous and
Forbidding Coast to the Mariner.—The Brawling Copper River.—Mount
Wrangel, Twenty Thousand Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North
American Continent.—In the Forks of this Stream.—Exaggerated
Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the Natives.—Frigid, Gloomy
Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William Sound.—The First Vessel
ever built by White Men on the Northwest Coast, Constructed here
in 1794.—The Brig _Phœnix_, One Hundred and Eighty Tons, No Paint
or Tar.—Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum, Ochre, and Whale-oil,
Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Deacons of the Greek Church
on Board.—Every Soul Lost.—Love of the Natives for their Rugged,
Storm-beaten Homes.
A bronzed humming-bird[30] lies upon the author’s table, that once
hovered and darted over the waters of Sitka Sound. Its torn and
rudely stuffed skin was given to him at Fort Simpson with the remark
that it came from the hot springs just below New Archangel; and that
nowhere else in all of a vast wilderness, outside of the immediate
vicinity of these springs, ever did or could a humming-bird be
found. Should, therefore, a visitor to this Alaskan solitude chance
to travel within it during the months of April and May, if he will
but follow the path of that wee brave bird, he will be led into a
veritable green and fragrant oasis, encircled all round about with
savage icy mountains and snowy forests.
Twenty miles south of Sitka, on the same island, in a pretty little
bay sheltered by a score of tiny islets, there—from the sloping
face of a verdant bank, the finest hot springs known to Alaska
flow up and out to the sea. Fleecy clouds of steamy moisture rise
over all to betray from a distance this delightful retreat; the
luxuriant vegetation, the variety of shrubs in full blossom here,
when all botanical life about them is as dead as cold can make it,
create thereon a spot in the early spring where all the senses of a
traveller can rest with exquisite pleasure—the waters of the bay in
front are covered with geese and ducks, while the rugged mountains
that rise as a wall behind are teeming with deer and bear and grouse,
secluded in the jungle.
The Indians, from time immemorial, have resorted to these hot waters
of Baranov Island; four distinct and freely flowing springs take
their origin in those crevices and fissures of the feldspathic
granite foundation of the earth hereabouts; the temperature of the
largest spring, at its source, is 150° to 160° Fah.; the waters
are charged with sulphur to a very great extent. So jealous were
the savages of any attempt among themselves which might savor of
a monopoly of the use of these healing, beneficent warm streams,
that no one tribe ever dared to build a village upon the site; but,
by tacit consent, all were allowed to camp thereon. Some Indians
often came from a distance of three hundred miles away to enjoy the
sanitary result of bathing here, a few days or a few weeks, as their
troubles might warrant.
Naturally the Russians, burdened at Sitka with all diseases which
flesh is heir to, turned their attention very promptly to this
sanitarium; they erected a small hospital and two spacious bathhouses
over the springs, keeping everything in the strictest order and
cleanliness, without and within doors. A sad change confronts us
to-day—in so far as care of human hands; but the savage Sitkan is
here, exulting in his renewed supremacy.
The occurrence, however, of hot springs is quite frequent everywhere
in this archipelago; yet their extent and volume of outflow is not so
great as evidenced by those we have just noticed of Baranov Island.
Indians love to immerse their entire bodies in pools and eddies of
these hot rivulets, which are cooled sufficiently by flowing a dozen
or fifty yards from their origin over pebbly bottoms; Siwashes will
soak themselves in this manner for hours at a time, with nothing
but their heads visible. Though the Koloshian, like all others of
his kind, never verbally complains, yet he is subject to acute
rheumatism, to fevers, and to divers malignant cutaneous diseases;
these springs, wherever known to him, are always well regarded as
his happy relief and hope. Certain it is that when you behold the
parboiled skin of a native, after bathing here, the fair almost white
complexion really startles, for, prior to the immersion, he was a
coppery brown or black.
Midway between these thermal fountains and Sitka is the site of an
old Russian jail or prison; in a deep inlet, with no land in sight,
but lofty mountains rising abruptly from the water’s edge, is the
“Redoubt.” Here a small alpine lake empties itself in a foaming
cascade channel of a few yards in width, that quickly plunges into
a cañon, the perpendicular walls of which are a full thousand feet
in mural height. The Russians erected mills of various kinds along
the rapids to avail themselves of such abundant water-power; the
buildings stood upon a bare rocky portion of the channel, and were
kept in order by an old veteran in command; a squad of soldiers aided
him; the fish, dried and salted salmon, which were required for the
use of the company, were annually caught here as they swarmed up the
cascade from the sea, into Gloobaukie Lake.
The great facility of travel afforded by these sheltered canals
of the Alexander archipelago, has enabled and facilitated a most
energetic and persistent search for gold and silver by our miners,
but the rugged features of the country and its dense timber and
jungle have rendered the progress of such investigation slow, and
one of great physical difficulty. In the sands of every stream
flowing between California and Cook’s Inlet the “color” of gold can
be found, but the paying quantities therein seldom warrant a mining
camp or settlement. To-day the only mining rendezvous which we find
in Alaska is a little village of rough cabins called “Juneau City,”
located on the north side of Gastineaux Channel, at a point near the
upper end of that passage; near by, and adjacent, is established a
large gold-quartz stamp-mill[31] on Douglas Island, where the mining
experts feel justified in predicting a steady and inexhaustible yield
of paying ore—it is paying handsomely at present.
This subject of what is, or what is not, a good mining region or
investment is one to which no rational man can well afford to commit
himself. Those who have had extended experience in these matters know
that it is a topic which baffles the best investigator, and returns
no safe answer to the most intelligent cross-examination. The true
advice which can be honestly given is that which prompts every man
interested to look and resolve wholly for himself, for he, in fact,
knows just as much as anybody else. At the most, the finding of a
rich or desirable lead of gold or silver in a new country is an
accident or sheer opportunity of chance. Whether it will hold out,
or end in a “pocket,” is also only to be determined by working it
for all it is worth. Once in a while a man makes a rich find, and
is rewarded; but an overwhelming majority of prospectors are ever
wandering in fruitless, restless, tireless search for those golden
ingots which are still hidden in the recesses of mountain ledges, or
buried in the alluvium of river bottoms. The miners in Alaska embrace
various nationalities—Australians and Canadians, Cornishmen and
Californians, Oregonians and British Columbians predominate—but the
number aggregated is not large.[32]
If gold or silver-quartz mines of free-milling ore (no matter how low
the grade) can be located anywhere on the shores of these mountainous
fiörds of the Alexander archipelago, their wealth will be great,
because the transportation to them and from them is practically
without cost. The expense of working such valuable quartz mines up
a hundred or more miles from the sea, will result in abandonment,
where reaching them involves frequent transfers of supplies, and the
working season is cut by the rigor of winter to less than half or
one-third of every year. The same mines, down within the dockage of
an ocean-steamer in the Sitkan district would be a steady source of
wealth and industry all the year round.
The coal which is found here is not satisfactory for steamers’
use—too heavily charged with sulphur. Copper ore is well-known, but
not worked in competition with the Lake Superior and Arizona cheap
outputs. At the present writing there are no active industries
whatsoever in the Sitkan archipelago beyond the energetic stamp-mill
of the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island, and the limited placer
diggings of Juneau City. Until a market is created for its large
natural resources of food-fishes, the little canneries which our
people have started here will not develop; nor will the timber be
of much commercial importance until the great reservoirs of the
lower coast are exhausted. Statisticians and political economists
can easily figure out the time when a population of twenty-five or
thirty millions of our own people will be living upon the Pacific
coast alone; then the real value of those latent resources[33] of
the Sitkan watery wilderness must be patent to a most indifferent
calculator.
With this survey of the Alexander archipelago fixed on our minds,
we pass from it through the bold Cross Sound headlands that loom
above those storm-churned swells of an open ocean, which break here
in unceasing turmoil, and we sail out into an area that charts
tell us is the “Fairweather ground,” over which that superb peak
itself and sister, Crillon, stand like vast sentinel-towers, rearing
their immense bulk into many successive strata of clouds, until the
elevation of thirteen thousand and fourteen thousand feet is reached,
sheer and bold above the sea. This great expanse of the Pacific Ocean
between us and Kadiak Island, five hundred and sixty miles to the
west, and again down to Victoria, nine hundred miles farther to the
south, was the rendezvous of the most successful and numerous whaling
fleet that the history of the business records. In these waters
the large “right” whale did most congregate, and the capture of it
between 1846 and 1851 drew not less than three and four hundred ships
with their hardy crews to this area backed by the Alaskan coast.
They never landed, however, unless shipwrecked, which was a rare
occurrence, but cruised “off and on” with the majestic head of Mount
Fairweather as their point of arrival and departure.
When the whalemen saw the summit of that snow-clad peak unveiled by
clouds they were sure of fair weather for several consecutive days
afterward, hence the name. Early one June morning Captain Baker,
of the _Reliance_, called the author up to see a mountain which
was sharply defined in the warm, hazy glow of the dawning sunrise
on the horizon—there, bearing N.N.E.,[34] was the image of Mount
Fairweather, just as clear cut as a cameo, and lofty as the ship’s
spars, though one hundred and thirty-five miles distant! Closely
associated and fully as impressive and quite as high, was the heavier
form of the snowy Crillon.
That long stretch of more than four hundred miles of bare Alaskan
coast, between Prince William’s Sound and Cape Spencer, which stands
at the northern entrance to the Sitkan waters, is one that sustains
very little human or animal life, and is so rough and is so bleak,
that from September until May it is feared and avoided by the
hardiest navigator. The flanks of Mounts Fairweather and Crillon rise
boldly from the ocean at their western feet, and this sheerness of
elevation undoubtedly gives them that effect of cloud-compelling,
which does not lose its awe-inspiring power even when a hundred miles
away. To the northward and westward of Fairweather, however, the
alpine range which it dominates abruptly sets back from the coast
some forty or fifty miles, then turns about and faces the sea in
an irregular, lofty half-moon of more than three hundred miles in
length. A low table-land, or rolling shelf, is extended at its base,
intervening between the mountains and the wash of the Pacific. It is
timbered with spruce quite thickly, and reported by the Indians to be
the best berrying ground in all Alaska.
The Fairweather shore is a steep, woody one, much indented with
roadstead coves or bays; the coast line is hilly and uneven, with
some rocks and rocky islets scattered along not far out from the
surf. The sand-beaches which extend from Fairweather toward the feet
of those under St. Elias are remarkably broad and extensive; so much
so that, from the ship’s mast-head, large lagoons within the outer
swell of the open ocean are frequently seen. These beach-locked
estuaries communicate with the ocean by shallow breaks in the
outer beach-wall of sand and gravel, across all of which the sea
rolls with great violence.
[Illustration: MT. SAINT ELIAS: 19,500 FEET
Under the shadow of this great mountain. Bering’s crew landed in
July, 1741; they were the first white men to behold its sullen
grandeur, and it fitly stands as the initial point of that early
recognition of Russian America. In clear weather it is distinctly
seen by mariners, 150 miles at sea; usually, however, it is wrapped
in clouds]
Right under the towering slopes of Fairweather, as at St Elias, is
a large area of upland entirely destitute of verdure of any kind,
except the brown and russet mosses and lichens; huge, rugged masses
of naked rocks are strewn about in every direction—an old prehistoric
lava-flood, perhaps.
The coast, from the head of Cross Sound to Fairweather, is not sandy,
but may be well described as the surf-beaten base of a frozen range
of magnificent Alpine peaks.
In the centre of the arc of this grand crescent-range is the superb
body and hoary crest of Mount St Elias, which is, save Mount Wrangel,
now known to be the loftiest peak on the North American coast; the
latter is slightly higher. Triangulated from a base line in Yakootat,
in 1874, by one[35] of the most accomplished mathematicians of the U.
S. Coast Survey, the summit of that royal mountain was determined to
be more than nineteen thousand feet above the level of the tide at
the observer’s feet. It was under the shadow of this “bolshoi sopka”
that Bering first saw the Continent of North America on the 18th of
July, 1741, and undoubtedly he discerned it from a long distance, ere
his boat landed. Two days before anchoring, he records the fact that
“the country had terrible high mountains, which were covered with
snow.”
When he finally landed (it was St. Elias’ day), near a point that
he named as he named the lofty central peak, Cape St. Elias, he
found the temporary summer-houses of a band of natives; those
people themselves had fled in terror from an unwonted invasion,
but the Russians soon had reason to regret their subsequent better
understanding.
After the storm which parted Bering, early in June, from the company
of the second vessel of his expedition, he had hoped to fall in with
her ever afterward, and while eagerly scanning the coast and horizon
about him for some sign of his lost comrades, the hand of fate caused
him to turn to the northward, when, had his helm been set south, he
would have met the object of his search. For the other vessel, the
_St. Paul_, had proceeded on its solitary course, and anxiously
sought the commander, until it, too, had sighted this same coast,
three days earlier than had its storm-separated consort. Tschericov
came to anchor off some distance from “steep and rocky cliffs”[36]
in “lat. 56°,” July 15. Weary and expectant, the captain sent his
mate with the long-boat and a crew of ten or twelve of his best men
away to the shore for the purpose of inquiry and for a fresh supply
of water. The ship’s boat disappeared behind the point sheltering a
small wooded inlet; it and its men were never seen again by their
shipmates. Troubled in mind, but thinking that the surf, perhaps,
had stove the boat in landing, the captain sent his boatswain in
the dingy with five men and two carpenters, all well armed, to
furnish the necessary assistance. The small boat disappeared also,
and it, too, was never seen again. At the same time a great smoke
was constantly ascending from the shore. Shortly afterward two huge
canoes, filled with painted, yelling savages, paddled out from the
recesses of the bay, and lying at some distance from the ship, all
howled, in standing chorus, “Agai—agai!” then, flourishing their rude
arms, they rapidly returned to the shore. Sorrowfully the disturbed
and distressed Tschericov turned his ship’s course about and hurried
home,[37] not knowing the fate of his men, unable to help them, and,
to this day, no authentic inkling of what became of these Slavonian
seamen has ever been produced. Unquestionably, they were tortured and
destroyed.
The rains caught in the ship’s sails filled the casks of the _Saint
Paul_, since Tschericov, deprived of his boats and thoroughly
alarmed, made no further attempts to land; but he had not the
faintest idea of the presence, at that moment, of his superior
officer in the same waters, and only a few leagues to the northward,
who also, like himself was eagerly looking for his storm-parted
consort. What a most remarkable voyage, this voyage of the discovery
of the Alaskan region—what a chapter of disappointment, of hardship,
and of death!
That bluffy sea-wall which forms a face to the low coast plateau
at the feet of the St Elias Alps is cut by no great river, nor
indented by any noteworthy gulf or inlet, except at Yakootat Bay.
Here a succession of precipitous glaciers sweep down from the lofty
cradles of their birth to the waters of the sea, making an icy cliff
of more than fifteen miles in breadth, where it breaks in constant
reverberation and repetition. At the mouth of Copper River all
silt carried down from old eroded glacial paths has been deposited
for thousands and thousands of years, until a big deltoid chart of
sea-water channels in muddy relief of bank and shoal has been formed,
and through which the flood of an ice-chilled river takes its rapid
course.
The gloomy, savage wildness of this region of supreme mountainous
elevation, with its vast gelid sheets and precipitous cañons, its
sombre forests and eternal snows, all as yet wholly unexplored,
and only faintly appreciated as we can from the remote distance of
shipboard observation—this region cannot remain much longer untrodden
by the geologist and the naturalist, while the artist must accompany
them if an adequate presentation is ever to be given of its weird,
titanic realities.
The Mount St Elias shore-line is made up of small projecting
points, awash. These alternate with low cliffy or else white sandy
beaches, which border a flat, rolling woodland country that extends
back from the sea ten to thirty miles, where it suddenly laps and
rises upon the lofty flanks of the Elias Alps. Into the ocean many
rocky shoals and long sandy bars stretch for miles, and streams of
white muddy glacial or snow waters rush into the surf at frequent
intervals—hundreds of them.
There are sand-beaches and silt-shoals which extend from Cape
Suckling, up seventy-five miles to Hinchinbrook Island, that stands
as a gate-post to the entrance of Prince William’s Sound: here is a
long sand-ridge which is more than sixty miles in length and from
three to seven miles broad, lying between the ocean and the mainland,
which in turn is composed of low wooded uplands and of steep abrupt
cliffs and hills that are quickly lost in the lofty snowy range of
the Choogatch Alps. Through a section of this dreary sand-wall the
impetuous flood of the Copper or Atna River forces its way, carrying
its heavy load of glacial mud and silt far into the ocean. How the
winds do blow here! How the trader dreads to tarry “off and on” this
coast!
There are a few lonely places in this world, and the wastes of the
great Alaskan interior are the loneliest of them all. Those of
Siberia are traversed occasionally by wandering bands, but those of
Alaska, never. The severe exigencies of climate there are such as
to substantially eliminate savage life, and to rear an impregnable
barrier to that of civilization.
When Alaska was first transferred, an estimate of many thousands of
Indians inhabiting its vast interior was gravely made and as gravely
accepted by us; but a thorough investigation made by our traders
and officers of our Government during the last fifteen years has
exposed that error. Hundreds only live where thousands were declared
to exist. The Indians who live on the banks of the Copper River are,
perhaps, the most poverty-stricken of all their kind in Alaska. Their
shiftless spruce-bark rancheries and rude belongings are certainly
the most primitive of their race, and render that weird Russian
legend of the massacre of Seribniekov in 1848, which declared them so
numerous and savage, absolutely grotesque. They are perfectly safe as
they live in their wild habitat. The cupidity of savage or civilized
man never has and never will molest them. But if half is true as to
what they relate of huge glaciers which empty into their river, then
those that have been described in Cross Sound have formidable rivals,
which may yet prove to be superiors, perhaps, although it seems
incredible.
[Illustration: MT. WRANGEL: 20,000 FEET
In the Forks of Copper River: it is the loftiest Mountain on the
North American Continent]
The Suchnito or Copper River has long been a bugbear, for the
Russians[38] years ago have returned from several unsuccessful
attempts to ascend it, and gave the excuse of being driven out
of the valley by savage and warlike natives. Recently it has been
thoroughly explored, and the “savages” are found to be less than two
hundred inoffensive natives, who constitute the whole population
of this mysterious Atna or Maidnevskie region. But navigating the
river is terrific labor, inasmuch as it is a continuous, swift rapid
throughout its entire course.
This river is a short, turbulent, brawling stream, less than two
hundred and fifty miles in length, but rising in the heart of a
lofty and mighty mass of volcanic mountains. It receives a score
of imposing glaciers, which almost rival those of Icy Bay in Cross
Sound. The silt that these gelid rivers pour into its channel has
given it a deltoid mouth of extended and most intricate area.
Triangulations made by an officer of the Army last year declare that
Mount Wrangel is the loftiest peak on the North American continent.
The feet of this magnificent volcanic dome are washed by the forks
of Copper River, which is eighteen thousand six hundred and forty
feet below the apex of its smoking cap. Then the river at this point
is more than two thousand feet above sea-level, so the vast altitude
of more than twenty thousand feet for Mount Wrangel seems to be
truthfully claimed.
The soil which borders the abrupt banks of the Copper River is
entirely composed of glacial silt and gravel. It is moist and boggy
in the driest seasons, covered with rank growing grasses and dense
thickets of poplars, birches, and willows, that line the margins of
the stream. The higher lands, as they rise from the narrow valley,
are in turn clothed with a dense growth of spruce-forest, which
gradually fades out into russet-colored areas of rock-sphagnum as
the altitude increases to that point where nothing but the cold
and frost-defying lichen can cling alive to the weather-splintered
summits of alpine heights above.
Fish (salmon) are the chief reliance of these natives of Copper
River; they depend almost wholly upon the annual running of those
creatures. The difficulty of hunting is so great that the savage
is content with shooting a few mountain sheep, a wandering moose or
two, and, perhaps, a stray bear in the course of the year. Also,
huckleberries and salmon berries are abundant on the sunshiny slopes
of the high glacial river-terraces during August and September.
West of the Copper River mighty masses of the Choogatch Mountains
rise directly from the sea without any intervening lowland, save
at three tiny points upon which savage man has hastened to fix
his abode. Many crests to this range on the north side of Prince
William’s Sound must have a mean elevation of over ten thousand
feet, densely wooded with semper-virent coniferous forests up to
a height of one thousand feet above sea-level, and covered with
everlasting snowy blankets to within three or four thousand feet
of the ocean at their bases. The body of Prince William’s Sound is
so forbidding in its dark grandeur that even the stolid Russians
never tired of narrating its stirring impression upon their senses.
Although the interior of this gulf is completely land-locked, being
sheltered from the south by the islands of Noochek and Montague, yet
it is by no means a safe or pleasant sheet of water to navigate,
inasmuch as furious gales and “woollies” sweep down upon it from the
steep mountain sides and cañons, so that, without even a moment’s
warning, the traveller’s craft is suddenly stricken, and compelled to
instantly run for shelter under the lee of some one of the hundreds
of islands and capes which stud its waters or point its coast.
Immense glaciers are descending from the cavernous inlets of the
northern and eastern shores, and shedded fragments of ice, large and
small, are cemented by the tide into large sheets, which are finally
swept out and lost in the ocean.
[Illustration: VALDES GLACIER
View at the head of Valdes Inlet, Prince William’s Sound: typical
study of hundreds of such gelid rivers which discharge into the
waters of this gloomy sound. A September sketch, made at low-tide]
The shores of these canals are formed of high, stupendous mountains
that rise abruptly from the water’s edge perpendicularly, and often
overhanging. The dissolving snow upon their summits gives rise
to thousands upon thousands of little cataracts, which fall with
great impetuosity down their seamed sides and over sheer and rugged
precipices. This fresh water, clear as crystal and cold as winter,
thus descending into the green and blue salt sea, changes that tone
to one of a strange whitish hue in its vicinity, as it also does in
many fiörds of the Sitkan region. This peculiar flood always arrests
attention and excites the liveliest curiosity in the mind of him who
beholds it for the first time. Everywhere, save to the southward,
mountains can be seen looming up in the background with snowy
peaks and guttered ridges, and they attest the wild legends of their
sullen grandeur which the first white men related who ever beheld
them. These hardy sailors, when sent out in the ship _Three Saints_
from Kadiak, in 1788, arrived in the Gulf of Choogatch, or this Sound
of Prince William, during the month of May. They anchored in a little
bay of Noochek Island, and there established a trading-station. This
is the only post, Fort Constantine, or “Noochek,” that has ever been
located by our people in all this section of a vast wilderness;
to-day it is but little changed—a couple of trading-stores standing
on the foundations of Ismailov’s[39] erection, in which the only
three white men now known to reside in all that region of alpine
wonder are living, surrounded by a small village of sixty natives.
The large size of those spruce-trees on the southern slopes of
Kenai Peninsula, Montague, and Noochek Islands of Prince William’s
Sound, so impressed the Russians that they established a shipyard at
Resurrection Bay as early as 1794; by the close of that year they
actually built and launched a double-decker, 73 feet long by 23 feet
beam, of 180 tons burden—the first three-masted, full-rigged ship
ever constructed on the west coast of the North American continent;
she was named the _Phœnix_, and as she slid from her ways into the
unruffled waters of this far-away place the exultation and delighted
plaudits[40] of her builders echoed in strange discord with the wild
surrounding. Baranov had no paint or even tar, so that this pioneer
ship was covered with a coat of spruce-gum, ochre, and whale-oil.
A few small vessels only were built after this, inasmuch as the
company found it much more economical to purchase in European yards
the sailing-craft and steamers which it was obliged to employ:
but, to-day the traces of the Russian ship-carpenter’s axe can be
still plainly recognized at many points of the western coast of the
sound, and on Montague Island huge logs, as roughed out nearly a
full century ago, are lying now, as they lay then, slightly decayed
in many instances; the anticipation which felled them was never
realized, and they have never been disturbed consequently.
In these early colonial Alaskan days, Fort St. Constantine, or
Noochek Island, was a very important trading-centre; it was visited
by all the tribes living on the Mount St. Elias sea-wall to the
eastward as far as Yakootat, and also by the Copper Indians. Then
the sea-otter was abundant, and in its ardent chase those Choogatch
savages captured, incidentally, large numbers of black and brown
bears, marten, and mink. Now, with the practical extermination of
the sea-otter, we find a very poor lot of natives at this once
flourishing post; but, for the means of a simple physical existence,
they have no lack of an abundant supply of salmon, seal-blubber and
flesh—meat of the marmot, porcupine, and bear, varied by the frequent
killing of mountain sheep, which are found all over this alpine
range; fine foxes are plentiful too.
These Indians live in houses partly underground, which we shall
describe as we visit Kadiak, and in purely race-characteristics those
people also closely resemble the Kadiak Eskimo. From the north of the
Copper River, however, toward the Sitkan archipelago, the Koloshian
or Thlinket is dominant in the form and features of those savages
which we find in a few small and widely separated villages that exist
on the narrow table-land between the high mountains and the unbroken
swell of the ocean. These natives all, however, agree in describing
their country as an excellent hunting-ground, well timbered, and
traversed by numerous small streams which take their rise in the
glaciers and eternal snows of the St. Elias Alps.
By some happy dispensation of the Creator every savage is so
constituted that here in Alaska, at least, he believes in his own
particular area of existence as the very best realm of the earth—he
becomes homesick and refuses to be comforted if taken to California
or Oregon, enters into a slow decline, and soon dies if not returned
to the dreary spot of his birth—a sad illustration of fatal nostalgia.
An Alaskan Indian or Innuit has very little of what may be styled
true slavish superstition; certainly he is credulous, but he rather
encourages it for the sake of the romance. He gives slight attention
to augurs or omens; he ventures out in search of food alike under
all sorts of varying conditions of health and weather; he has a few
charms or amulets, but does not surrender to them by any means.
Shamans, or sorcerers, never have had the influence with him that
they have exerted in the barbarism of our own ancestry, and which
they possess among the savages of Central and South America and
Africa to-day. It is no solution of this difference in disposition to
call him stupid, for it is not true; he is far more alert, mentally,
than the ghost-ridden Australian, or fetich-slave of Africa; and,
again, the sun-worshipping and intensely superstitious Incas were far
superior, intellectually, to him.
Most of the Innuits give hardly a thought to the subject, yet they
are exceedingly vivacious and social among themselves; much more so
than the Indians. They relate a great many supernatural stories,
but it is only in amusement, and it seldom ever provokes serious
attention.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] _Selasphorus rufus_—it is common in California, Oregon, and
parts of Washington Territory, and Southern British Columbia—never
found north of Victoria on the coast, except as above stated: it
winters in Central America.
[31] The Treadwell Mine—free-milling gold ore; 120 stamps; employs
150 to 250 men—situated right at the tide-level.
[32] Eight hundred, or a thousand, perhaps. They come and go
suddenly, alternating in travel as the rumors relative to their
occupation circulate.
[33] A few small saw-mills have been erected at several points in
this Sitkan district to supply the local demand of trading-posts and
mining-camps. With reference to quality or economic worth, the timber
found herein may be classified as follows, in the order of its value:
1. Yellow cedar (_Cupressus nutkaensis_) and _Thuja gigantea_, the
red variety. 2. Sitkan spruce (_Abies sitkensis_). This is the most
abundant. 3. Hemlock (_Abies mertensiana_). 4. Balsam fir (_Abies
canadensis_). The finest growth of this timber is found upon Prince
of Wales Island, Admiralty, and Kou Islands, within the Alaskan lines.
[34] Tuesday, June 13, 1874. It did not seem possible at first that
the officer’s observations were accurate, but the captain verified
the ship’s position anew, and confirmed the correctness of Lieutenant
Glover’s entry and sights: “bearing N.N.E., 135 m.”
[35] Marcus Baker. Unfortunately no one connected with this Coast
Survey Party was able to make an adequate drawing of the mountains,
and it was so enveloped in clouds as to be partially invisible when
the author cruised under its lee.
[36] That point, most likely, was Kruzov Island, and the bay into
which the unhappy Russians were decoyed was Klokachev Gulf. This
island forms the western shore of Sitka Sound.
[37] He reached Kamchatka on the 9th October following, with only
forty-nine survivors out of his original crew of seventy. Bering
never did; he was shipwrecked and died on a bleak island, of the
Commander group, December 8, 1741. They seem to have really sailed
over this course of six thousand miles almost together, anxiously
searching for each other, yet unconscious of their proximity.
[38] When the surveying parties of the War Department were ascending
Copper River last summer, certain Indians, who had been instrumental
in slaying the Russian party of Seribniekov in 1848, were very much
alarmed. They were sure that the fates had come for them at last.
One of these natives, an aged man, now wholly blind, was reported as
saying that he was ready to die, and knew what the white men wanted.
This old fellow, Lieutenant Allen says, was one of the finest-looking
savages that he ever saw. The face of the blind man was one of
remarkable character—a large, massive head, high aquiline nose, with
a full, thin-lipped mouth and broad forehead. He was totally blind
and his hair white as snow.
The Russian party were sleeping in their sledges, which they
compelled the natives to draw while ascending the river. At a
preconcerted signal the unwilling Indians turned and brained their
taskmasters with hatchets. These natives had welcomed the Russians;
but when they were made to perform the labor of dogs they turned
upon their white oppressors, naturally. The massacre of Seribniekov
and his party in this manner made the Indians very restless and
determined in their opposition to further intercourse with the
Russians. The memory of hostility has, however, died out, and nothing
of the kind was shown to our people last year as they charted the
valley and river.
Lieutenant H. T. Allen.
[39] Ivan Ismailov and Gayorgi Bochorov; they went in the dual
capacity of explorers and traders, lured into the undertaking by
rumors which had prevailed at Kadiak respecting great numbers of
sea-otters in this bay.
[40] Had these enthusiastic builders then been able to have foreseen
the tragedy which this vessel precipitated, five years later, they
would have scarcely thus expressed themselves, but rather have stood
in silence, with bowed heads, as the work of their hands swept into
the flood that embraced her. In 1799 she sailed from the Okotsk,
bound for Sitka, with the newly-ordained Bishop Joasaph and twenty
priests and deacons of the Greek Church; she was never seen or heard
of afterward, nor was anything seen or heard of her passengers and
crew—she took them with her to the bottom of the sea.