puppyhood he never cared to play with the Indian dogs, and I was often
amused to see the dignified but decided way in which he repulsed all
attempts at familiarity on the part of the Indian children. He admitted
to his friendship only a few of the natives, choosing those who had
adopted the white man's dress and mode of living, and were devoid of the
rank native odors. His likes and dislikes were very strong and always
evident from the moment of his meeting with a stranger. There was
something almost uncanny about the accuracy of his judgment when "sizing
up" a man.
It was Stickeen himself who really decided the question whether we
should take him with us on this trip. He listened to the discussion, pro
and con, as he stood with me on the wharf, turning his sharp, expressive
eyes and sensitive ears up to me or down to Muir in the canoe. When the
argument seemed to be going against the dog he suddenly turned,
deliberately walked down the gang-plank to the canoe, picked his steps
carefully to the bow, where my seat with Muir was arranged, and curled
himself down on my coat. The discussion ended abruptly in a general
laugh, and Stickeen went along.
Then the acute little fellow set about, in the wisest possible way, to
conquer Muir. He was not obtrusive, never "butted in"; never offended by
a too affectionate tongue. He listened silently to discussions on his
merits, those first days; but when Muir's comparisons of the brilliant
dogs of his acquaintance with Stickeen grew too "odious" Stickeen would
rise, yawn openly and retire to a distance, not slinkingly, but with
tail up, and lie down again out of earshot of such calumnies. When we
landed after a day's journey Stickeen was always the first ashore,
exploring for field mice and squirrels; but when we would start to the
woods, the mountains or the glaciers the dog would join us, coming
mysteriously from the forest. When our paths separated, Stickeen,
looking to me for permission, would follow Muir, trotting at first
behind him, but gradually ranging alongside.
After a few days Muir changed his tone, saying, "There's more in that
wee beastie than I thought"; and before a week passed Stickeen's victory
was complete; he slept at Muir's feet, went with him on all his rambles;
and even among dangerous crevasses or far up the steep slopes of granite
mountains the little dog's splendid tail would be seen ahead of Muir,
waving cheery signals to his new-found human companion.
Our canoe was light and easily propelled. Our outfit was very simple,
for this was to be a quick voyage and there were not to be so many
missionary visits this time. It was principally a voyage of discovery;
we were in search of the glacier that we had lost. Perched in the high
stern sat our captain, Lot Tyeen, massive and capable, handling his
broad steering paddle with power and skill. In front of him Joe and
Billy pulled oars, Joe, a strong young man, our cook, hunter and best
oarsman; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our interpreter and Joe's assistant.
Towards the bow, just behind the mast, sat Muir and I, each with a
paddle in his hands. Stickeen slumbered at our feet or gazed into our
faces when our conversation interested him. When we began to discuss a
landing place he would climb the high bow and brace himself on the top
of the beak, an animated figure-head, ready to jump into the water when
we were about to camp.
Our route was different from that of '79. Now we struck through Wrangell
Narrows, that tortuous and narrow passage between Mitkof and Kupreanof
Islands, past Norris Glacier with its far-flung shaft of ice appearing
above the forests as if suspended in air; past the bold Pt. Windham with
its bluff of three thousand feet frowning upon the waters of Prince
Frederick Sound; across Port Houghton, whose deep fiord had no ice in it
and, therefore, was not worthy of an extended visit. We made all haste,
for Muir was, as the Indians said, "always hungry for ice," and this was
more especially his expedition. He was the commander now, as I had been
the year before. He had set for himself the limit of a month and must
return by the October boat. Often we ran until late at night against the
protests of our Indians, whose life of infinite leisure was not
accustomed to such rude interruption. They could not understand Muir at
all, nor in the least comprehend his object in visiting icy bays where
there was no chance of finding gold and nothing to hunt.
The vision rises before me, as my mind harks back to this second trip of
seven hundred miles, of cold, rainy nights, when, urged by Muir to make
one more point, the natives passed the last favorable camping place and
we blindly groped for hours in pitchy darkness, trying to find a
friendly beach. The intensely phosphorescent water flashed about us, the
only relief to the inky blackness of the night. Occasionally a salmon or
a big halibut, disturbed by our canoe, went streaming like a meteor
through the water, throwing off coruscations of light. As we neared the
shore, the waves breaking upon the rocks furnished us the only
illumination. Sometimes their black tops with waving seaweed, surrounded
by phosphorescent breakers, would have the appearance of mouths set
with gleaming teeth rushing at us out of the dark as if to devour us.
Then would come the landing on a sandy beach, the march through the
seaweed up to the wet woods, a fusillade of exploding fucus pods
accompanying us as if the outraged fairies were bombarding us with tiny
guns. Then would ensue a tedious groping with the lantern for a camping
place and for some dry, fat spruce wood from which to coax a fire; then
the big camp-fire, the bean-pot and coffee-pot, the cheerful song and
story, and the deep, dreamless sleep that only the weary voyageur or
hunter can know.
Four or five days sufficed to bring us to our first objective--Sumdum or
Holkham Bay, with its three wonderful arms. Here we were to find the
lost glacier. This deep fiord has two great prongs. Neither of them
figured in Vancouver's chart, and so far as records go we were the first
to enter and follow to its end the longest of these, Endicott Arm. We
entered the bay at night, caught again by the darkness, and groped our
way uncertainly. We probably would have spent most of the night trying
to find a landing place had not the gleam of a fire greeted us, flashing
through the trees, disappearing as an island intervened, and again
opening up with its fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling
brought us to the camp of some Cassiar miners--my friends. They were
here at the foot of a glacier stream, from the bed of which they had
been sluicing gold. Just now they were in hard luck, as the constant
rains had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the summer.
Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not discouraged,
but were discussing plans for prospecting new places and trying it again
here next summer. Hot coffee and fried venison emphasized their welcome,
and we in return could give them a little news from the outside world,
from which they had been shut off completely for months.
Muir called us before daylight the next morning. He had been up since
two or three o'clock, "studying the night effects," he said, listening
to the roaring and crunching of the charging ice as it came out of
Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish line of an army and
grinding against the rocky point just below us. He had even attempted a
moonlight climb up the sloping face of a high promontory with Stickeen
as his companion, but was unable to get to the top, owing to the
smoothness of the granite rock. It was newly glaciated--this whole
region--and the hard rubbing ice-tools had polished the granite like a
monument. A hasty meal and we were off.
"We'll find it this time," said Muir.
A miner crawled out of his blankets and came to see us start. "If it's
scenery you're after," he said, "ten miles up the bay there's the nicest
canyon you ever saw. It has no name that I know of, but it is sure some
scenery."
The long, straight fiord stretched southeast into the heart of the
granite range, its funnel shape producing tremendous tides. When the
tide was ebbing that charging phalanx of ice was irresistible, storming
down the canyon with race-horse speed; no canoe could stem that current.
We waited until the turn, then getting inside the outer fleet of
icebergs we paddled up with the flood tide. Mile after mile we raced
past those smooth mountain shoulders; higher and higher they towered,
and the ice, closing in upon us, threatened a trap. The only way to
navigate safely that dangerous fiord was to keep ahead of the charging
ice. As we came up towards the end of the bay the narrowing walls of the
fiord compressed the ice until it crowded dangerously around us. Our
captain, Lot, had taken the precaution to put a false bow and stern on
his canoe, cunningly fashioned out of curved branches of trees and
hollowed with his hand-adz to fit the ends of the canoe. These were
lashed to the bow and stern by thongs of deer sinew. They were needed.
It was like penetrating an arctic ice-floe. Sometimes we would have to
skirt the granite rock and with our poles shove out the ice-cakes to
secure a passage. It was fully thirty miles to the head of the bay, but
we made it in half a day, so strong was the current of the rising tide.
I shall never forget the view that burst upon us as we rounded the last
point. The face of the glacier where it discharged its icebergs was very
narrow in comparison with the giants of Glacier Bay, but the ice cliff
was higher than even the face of Muir Glacier. The narrow canyon of hard
granite had compressed the ice of the great glacier until it had the
appearance of a frozen torrent broken into innumerable crevasses, the
great masses of ice tumbling over one another and bulging out for a few
moments before they came crashing and splashing down into the deep water
of the bay. The fiord was simply a cleft in high mountains, and the
depth of the water could only be conjectured. It must have been hundreds
of feet, perhaps thousands, from the surface of the water to the bottom
of that fissure. Smooth, polished, shining breasts of bright gray
granite crowded above the glacier on every side, seeming to overhang the
ice and the bay. Struggling clumps of evergreens clung to the mountain
sides below the glacier, and up, away up, dizzily to the sky towered the
walls of the canyon. Hundreds of other Alaskan glaciers excel this in
masses of ice and in grandeur of front, but none that I have seen
condense beauty and grandeur to finer results.
"What a plucky little giant!" was Muir's exclamation as we stood on a
rock-mound in front of this glacier. "To think of his shouldering his
way through the mountain range like this! Samson, pushing down the
pillars of the temple at Gaza, was nothing to this fellow. Hear him roar
and laugh!"
Without consulting me Muir named this "Young Glacier," and right proud
was I to see that name on the charts for the next ten years or more, for
we mapped Endicott Arm and the other arm of Sumdum Bay as we had Glacier
Bay; but later maps have a different name. Some ambitious young ensign
on a surveying vessel, perhaps, stole my glacier, and later charts give
it the name of Dawes. I have not found in the Alaskan statute books any
penalty attached to the crime of stealing a glacier, but certainly it
ought to be ranked as a felony of the first magnitude, the grandest of
grand larcenies.
A couple of days and nights spent in the vicinity of Young Glacier were
a period of unmixed pleasure. Muir spent all of these days and part of
the nights climbing the pinnacled mountains to this and that viewpoint,
crossing the deep, narrow and dangerous glacier five thousand feet above
the level of the sea, exploring its tributaries and their side canyons,
making sketches in his note-book for future elaboration. Stickeen by
this time constantly followed Muir, exciting my jealousy by his plainly
expressed preference. Because of my bad shoulder the higher and steeper
ascents of this very rugged region were impossible to me, and I must
content myself with two thousand feet and even lesser climbs. My
favorite perch was on the summit of a sugar-loaf rock which formed the
point of a promontory jutting into the bay directly in front of my
glacier, and distant from its face less than a quarter of a mile. It was
a granite fragment which had evidently been broken off from the
mountain; indeed, there was a niche five thousand feet above into which
it would exactly fit. The sturdy evergreens struggled half-way up its
sides, but the top was bare.
On this splendid pillar I spent many hours. Generally I could see Muir,
fortunate in having sound arms and legs, scaling the high rock-faces,
now coming out on a jutting spur, now spread like a spider against the
mountain wall. Here he would be botanizing in a patch of green that
relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in and out of the
blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls. Darting before him or
creeping behind was a little black speck which I made out to be
Stickeen, climbing steeps up which a fox would hardly venture.
Occasionally I would see him dancing about at the base of a cliff too
steep for him, up which Muir was climbing, and his piercing howls of
protest at being left behind would come echoing down to me.
But chiefly I was engrossed in the great drama which was being acted
before me by the glacier itself. It was the battle of gravity with
flinty hardness and strong cohesion. The stage setting was perfect; the
great hall formed by encircling mountains; the side curtains of
dark-green forest, fold on fold; the gray and brown top-curtains of the
mountain heights stretching clear across the glacier, relieved by vivid
moss and flower patches of yellow, magenta, violet and crimson. But the
face of the glacier was so high and rugged and the ice so pure that it
showed a variety of blue and purple tints I have never seen
surpassed--baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, cobalt, indigo,
peacock, ultra-marine, shading at the top into lilac and amethyst. The
base of the glacier-face, next to the dark-green water of the bay,
resembled a great mass of vitriol, while the top, where it swept out of
the canyon, had the curves and tints and delicate lines of the iris.
[Illustration: TAKU GLACIER
There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier
Bay, with its three living glaciers]
But the glacier front was not still; in form and color it was changing
every minute. The descent was so steep that the glacial rapids above the
bay must have flowed forward eighty or a hundred feet a day. The ice
cliff, towering a thousand feet over the water, would present a slight
incline from the perpendicular inwards toward the canyon, the face being
white from powdered ice, the result of the grinding descent of the ice
masses. Here and there would be little cascades of this fine ice
spraying out as they fell, with glints of prismatic colors when the
sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could see the whole upper part of the
cliff slowly moving forward until the ice-face was vertical. Then, foot
by foot it would be pushed out until the upper edge overhung the water.
Now the outer part, denuded of the ice powder, would present a face of
delicate blue with darker shades where the mountain peaks cast their
shadows. Suddenly from top to bottom of the ice cliff two deep lines of
prussian blue appeared. They were crevasses made by the ice current
flowing more rapidly in the center of the stream. Fascinated, I watched
this great pyramid of blue-veined onyx lean forward until it became a
tower of Pisa, with fragments falling thick and fast from its upper apex
and from the cliffs out of which it had been split. Breathless and
anxious, I awaited the final catastrophe, and its long delay became
almost a greater strain than I could bear. I jumped up and down and
waved my arms and shouted at the glacier to "hurry up."
Suddenly the climax came in a surprising way. The great tower of crystal
shot up into the air two hundred feet or more, impelled by the pressure
of a hundred fathoms of water, and then, toppling over, came crashing
into the water with a roar as of rending mountains. Its weight of
thousands of tons, falling from such a height, splashed great sheets of
water high into the air, and a rainbow of wondrous brilliance flashed
and vanished. A mighty wave swept majestically down the bay, rocking the
massive bergs like corks, and, breaking against my granite pillar,
tossed its spray half-way up to my lofty perch. Muir's shout of
applause and Stickeen's sharp bark came faintly to my ears when the deep
rumbling of the newly formed icebergs had subsided.
That night I waited supper long for Muir. It was a good supper--a
mulligan stew of mallard duck, with biscuits and coffee. Stickeen romped
into camp about ten o'clock and his new master soon followed.
"Ah!" sighed Muir between sips of coffee, "what a Lord's mercy it is
that we lost this glacier last fall, when we were pressed for time, to
find it again in these glorious days that have flashed out of the mists
for our special delectation. This has been a day of days. I have found
four new varieties of moss, and have learned many new and wonderful
facts about world-shaping. And then, the wonder and glory! Why, all the
values of beauty and sublimity--form, color, motion and sound--have
been present to-day at their very best. My friend, we are the richest
men in all the world to-night."
Charging down the canyon with the charging ice on our return, we kept to
the right-hand shore, on the watch for the mouth of the canyon of "some
scenery." We had not been able to discover it from the other side as we
ascended the fiord. We were almost swept past the mouth of it by the
force of the current. Paddling into an eddy, we were suddenly halted as
if by a strong hand pushed against the bow, for the current was flowing
like a cataract out of the narrow mouth of this side canyon. A rocky
shelf afforded us a landing place. We hastily unloaded the canoe and
pulled it up upon the beach out of reach of the floating ice, and there
we had to wait until the next morning before we could penetrate the
depths of this great canyon.
We shot through the mouth of the canyon at dangerous speed. Indeed, we
could not do otherwise; we were helpless in the grasp of the torrent. At
certain stages the surging tide forms an actual fall, for the entrance
is so narrow that the water heaps up and pours over. We took the
beginning of the flood tide, and so escaped that danger; but our speed
must have been, at the narrows, twenty miles an hour. Then, suddenly,
the bay widened out, the water ceased to swirl and boil and the current
became gentle.
When we could lay aside our paddles and look up, one of the most
glorious views of the whole world "smote us in the face," and Muir's
chant arose, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow."
Before entering this bay I had expressed a wish to see Yosemite Valley.
Now Muir said: "There is your Yosemite; only this one is on much the
grander scale. Yonder towers El Capitan, grown to twice his natural
size; there are the Sentinel, and the majestic Dome; and see all the
falls. Those three have some resemblance to Yosemite Falls, Nevada and
Bridal Veil; but the mountain breasts from which they leap are much
higher than in Yosemite, and the sheer drop much greater. And there are
so many more of these and they fall into the sea. We'll call this
Yosemite Bay--a bigger Yosemite, as Alaska is bigger than California."
Two very beautiful glaciers lay at the head of this canyon. They did not
descend to the water, but the narrow strip of moraine matter without
vegetation upon it between the glaciers and the bay showed that it had
not been long since they were glaciers of the first class, sending out a
stream of icebergs to join those from the Young Glacier. These glaciers
stretched away miles and miles, like two great antennæ, from the head of
the bay to the top of the mountain range. But the most striking features
of this scene were the wonderfully rounded and polished granite breasts
of these great heights. In one stretch of about a mile on either side of
the narrow bay parallel mouldings, like massive cornices of gray
granite, five or six thousand feet high, overhung the water. These had
been fluted and rounded and polished by the glacier stream, until they
seemed like the upper walls and Corinthian capitals of a great temple.
The power of the ice stream could be seen in the striated shoulders of
these cliffs. What awful force that tool of steel-like ice must have
possessed, driven by millions of tons of weight, to mould and shape and
scoop out these flinty rock faces, as the carpenter's forming plane
flutes a board!
When we were half-way up this wonderful bay the sun burst through a rift
of cloud. "Look, look!" exclaimed Muir. "Nature is turning on the
colored lights in her great show house."
Instantly this severe, bare hall of polished rock was transformed into a
fairy palace. A score of cascades, the most of them invisible before,
leapt into view, falling from the dizzy mountain heights and spraying
into misty veils as they descended; and from all of them flashed
rainbows of marvelous distinctness and brilliance, waving and dancing--a
very riot of color. The tinkling water falling into the bay waked a
thousand echoes, weird, musical and sweet, a riot of sound. It was an
enchanted palace, and we left it with reluctance, remaining only six
hours and going out at the turn of the flood tide to escape the
dangerous rapids. Had there not been any so many things to see beyond,
and so little time in which to see them, I doubt if Muir would have quit
Yosemite Bay for days.
THE DOG AND THE MAN
MY FRIENDS
Two friends I have, and close akin are they.
For both are free
And wild and proud, full of the ecstasy
Of life untrammeled; living, day by day,
A law unto themselves; yet breaking none
Of Nature's perfect code.
And far afield, remote from man's abode,
They roam the wilds together, two as one.
Yet, one's a dog--a wisp of silky hair,
Two sharp black eyes,
A face alert, mysterious and wise,
A shadowy tail, a body lithe and fair.
And one's a man--of Nature's work the best,
A heart of gold,
A mind stored full of treasures new and old,
Of men the greatest, strongest, tenderest.
They love each other--these two friends of mine--
Yet both agree
In this--with that pure love that's half divine
They both love me.
VI
THE DOG AND THE MAN
There is no time to tell of all the bays we explored; of Holkham Bay,
Port Snettisham, Tahkou Harbor; all of which we rudely put on the map,
or at least extended the arms beyond what was previously known. Through
Gastineau Channel, now famous for some of the greatest quartz mines and
mills in the world, we pushed, camping on the site of what is now
Juneau, the capital city of Alaska.
An interesting bit of history is to be recorded here. Pushing across the
flats at the head of the bay at high tide the next morning (for the
narrow, grass-covered flat between Gastineau Channel and Stevens
Passage can only be crossed with canoes at flood tide), we met two old
gold prospectors whom I had frequently seen at Wrangell--Joe Harris and
Joe Juneau. Exchanging greetings and news, they told us they were out
from Sitka on a leisurely hunting and prospecting trip. Asking us about
our last camping place, Harris said to Juneau, "Suppose we camp there
and try the gravel of that creek."
These men found placer gold and rock "float" at our camp and made quite
a clean-up that fall, returning to Sitka with a "gold-poke" sufficiently
plethoric to start a stampede to the new diggings. Both placer and
quartz locations were made and a brisk "camp" was built the next summer.
This town was first called Harrisburg for one of the prospectors, and
afterwards Juneau for the other. The great Treadwell gold quartz mine
was located three miles from Juneau in 1881, and others subsequently.
The territorial capital was later removed from Sitka to Juneau, and the
city has grown in size and importance, until it is one of the great
mining and commercial centers of the Northwest.
Through Stevens Passage we paddled, stopping to preach to the Auk
Indians; then down Chatham Strait and into Icy Strait, where the crystal
masses of Muir and Pacific glaciers flashed a greeting from afar. We
needed no Hoonah guide this time, and it was well we did not, for both
Hoonah villages were deserted. The inhabitants had gone to their
hunting, fishing or berry-picking grounds.