our voyage into Glacier Bay. We were not to attempt the head of the bay
this time, but to confine our exploration to Muir Glacier, which we had
only touched upon the previous fall. Pleasant Island was the scene of
one of Stickeen's many escapades. The little island fairly teemed with
big field mice and pine squirrels, and Stickeen went wild. We could hear
his shrill bark, now here, now there, from all parts of the island. When
we were ready to leave the next morning he was not to be seen. We got
aboard as usual, thinking that he would follow. A quarter of a mile's
paddling and still no little black head could be discovered in our wake.
Muir, who was becoming very much attached to the little dog, was plainly
worried.
"Row back," he said.
So we rowed back and called, but no Stickeen. Around the next point we
rowed and whistled; still no Stickeen. At last, discouraged, I gave the
signal to move off. So we rounded the curving shore and pushed towards
Glacier Bay. At the far point of the island, a mile from our camping
place, we suddenly discovered Stickeen away out in the water, paddling
calmly and confidently towards our canoe. How he had ever got there I
cannot imagine. I think he must have been taking a long swim out on the
bay for the mere pleasure of it. Muir always insisted that he had
listened to our discussion of the route to be taken, and, with an
uncanny intuition that approached clairvoyance, knew just where to head
us off.
When we took him aboard he went through his usual performance, making
his way, the whole length of the canoe, until he got under Muir's legs,
before shaking himself. No protests or discipline availed, for Muir's
kicks always failed of their pretended mark. To the end of his
acquaintance with Muir, he always chose the vicinity of Muir's legs as
the place to shake himself after a swim.
At Muir Glacier we spent a week this time, making long trips up the
mountains that overlooked the glacier and across its surface. On one
occasion Muir, with the little dog at his heels, crossed entirely in a
diagonal direction the great glacial lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
starting before daylight in the morning and not appearing at camp until
long after dark. Muir always carried several handkerchiefs in his
pockets, but this time he returned without any, having used them all up
making moccasins for Stickeen, whose feet were cut and bleeding from the
sharp honeycomb ice of the glacial surface. This mass of ice is so vast
and so comparatively still that it has but few crevasses, and Muir's day
for traversing it was a perfect one--warm and sunny.
[Illustration: THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER
We could understand the constant breaking off and leaping up and
smashing down of the ice, and the formation of the great mass of bergs]
Another day he and I climbed the mountain that overlooked it and
skirted the mighty ice-field for some distance, then walked across the
face of the glacier just back of the rapids, keeping away from the deep
crevasses. We drove a straight line of stakes across the glacial stream
and visited them each day to watch the deflection and curves of the
stakes, and thus arrive at some conception of the rate at which the ice
mass was moving. In some parts of the glacial stream this ice current
flowed as fast as fifty or sixty feet a day, and we could understand the
constant breaking off and leaping up and smashing down of the ice and
the formation of that great mass of bergs.
Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the
first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day
after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes,
bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green
of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "Go up and
get us a kid. It will be a great addition to our larder."
He took my breech-loading rifle and went. In the afternoon he returned
with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining it he
said:
"I picked the fattest and most tender of those that I killed."
"What!" I exclaimed, "did you kill more than this one?"
He put up both hands with fingers extended and then one finger:
"_Tatlum-pe-ict_ (eleven)," he replied.
Muir's face flushed red, and with an exclamation that was as near to an
oath as he ever came, he started for Joe. Luckily for that Indian he saw
Muir and fled like a deer up the rocks, and would not come down until he
was assured that he would not be hurt. I shared Muir's indignation and
would have enjoyed seeing him administer the richly deserved thrashing.
Muir had a strong aversion to taking the life of any animal; although he
would eat meat when prepared, he never killed a wild animal; even the
rattlesnakes he did not molest during his rambles in California. Often
his softness of heart was a source of some annoyance and a great deal of
astonishment to our natives; for he would take pleasure in rocking the
canoe when they were trying to get a bead on a flock of ducks or a deer
standing on the shore.
On leaving the mouth of Glacier Bay we spent a week or more exploring
the inlets and glaciers to the west. These days were rainy and cold. We
groped blindly into unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fiords and bayous,
exploring them to their ends and often making excursions to the glaciers
above them.
The climax of the trip, however, was the last glacier we visited, Taylor
Glacier, the scene of Muir's great adventure with Stickeen. We reached
this fine glacier in the afternoon of a very stormy day. We were
approaching the open Pacific, and the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind,
was howling through the narrow entrance into Cross Sound. For twenty
miles we had been facing strong head winds and tidal waves as we crept
around rocky points and along the bases of dizzy cliffs and
glacier-scored rock-shoulders. We were drenched to the skin; indeed, our
clothing and blankets had been soaking wet for days. For two hours
before we turned the point into the cozy harbor in front of the glacier
we had been exerting every ounce of our strength; Lot in the stern
wielding his big steering paddle, now on this side, now on that,
grunting with each mighty stroke, calling encouragement to his crew,
"_Ut-ha, ut-ha! hlitsin! hlitsin-tin!_ (pull, pull, strong, with
strength!)"; Joe and Billy rising from their seats with every stroke and
throwing their whole weight and force savagely into their oars; Muir and
I in the bow bent forward with heads down, butting into the slashing
rain, paddling for dear life; Stickeen, the only idle one, looking over
the side of the boat as though searching the channel and then around at
us as if he would like to help. All except the dog were exhausted when
we turned into the sheltered cove.
While the men pitched the tents and made camp Muir and I walked through
the thick grass to the front of the large glacier, which front stretched
from a high, perpendicular rock wall about three miles to a narrow
promontory of moraine boulders next to the ocean.
"Now, here is something new," exclaimed Muir, as we stood close to the
edge of the ice. "This glacier is the great exception. All the others of
this region are receding; this has been coming forward. See the mighty
ploughshare and its furrow!"
For the icy mass was heaving up the ground clear across its front, and,
on the side where we stood, had evidently found a softer stratum under
a forest-covered hill, and inserted its shovel point under the hill,
heaved it upon the ice, cracking the rocks into a thousand fragments;
and was carrying the whole hill upon its back towards the sea. The large
trees were leaning at all angles, some of them submerged, splintered and
ground by the crystal torrent, some of the shattered trunks sticking out
of the ice. It was one of the most tremendous examples of glacial power
I have ever seen.
"I must climb this glacier to-morrow," said Muir. "I shall have a great
day of it; I wish you could come along."
I sighed, not with resignation, but with a grief that was akin to
despair. The condition of my shoulders was such that it would be madness
to attempt to join Muir on his longer and more perilous climbs. I
should only spoil his day and endanger his life as well as my own.
That night I baked a good batch of camp bread, boiled a fresh kettle of
beans and roasted a leg of venison ready for Muir's breakfast, fixed the
coffee-pot and prepared dry kindling for the fire. I knew he would be up
and off at daybreak, perhaps long before.
"Wake me up," I admonished him, "or at least take time to make hot
coffee before you start." For the wind was rising and the rain pouring,
and I knew how imperative the call of such a morning as was promised
would be to him. To traverse a great, new, living, rapidly moving
glacier would be high joy; but to have a tremendous storm added to this
would simply drive Muir wild with desire to be himself a part of the
great drama played on the glacier-stage.
Several times during the night I was awakened by the flapping of the
tent, the shrieking of the wind in the spruce-tops and the thundering of
the ocean surf on the outer barrier of rocks. The tremulous howling of a
persistent wolf across the bay soothed me to sleep again, and I did not
wake when Muir arose. As I had feared, he was in too big a hurry to take
time for breakfast, but pocketed a small cake of camp bread and hastened
out into the storm-swept woods. I was aroused, however, by the
controversy between him and Stickeen outside of the tent. The little
dog, who always slept with one eye and ear alert for Muir's movements,
had, as usual, quietly left his warm nest and followed his adopted
master. Muir was scolding and expostulating with him as if he were a
boy. I chuckled to myself at the futility of Muir's efforts; Stickeen
would now, as always, do just as he pleased--and he would please to go
along.
Although I was forced to stay at the camp, this stormy day was a most
interesting one to me. There was an old Hoonah chief camped at the mouth
of the little river which flowed from under Taylor Glacier. He had with
him his three wives and a little company of children and grandchildren.
The many salmon weirs and summer houses at this point showed that it had
been at one time a very important fishing place.
But the advancing glacier had played havoc with the chief's salmon
stream. The icy mass had been for several years traveling towards the
sea at the rate of at least a mile every year. There were still silver
hordes of fine red salmon swimming in the sea outside of the river's
mouth. But the stream was now so short that the most of these salmon
swam a little ways into the mouth of the river and then out into the
salt water again, bewildered and circling about, doubtless wondering
what had become of their parent stream.
The old chief came to our camp early, followed by his squaws bearing
gifts of salmon, porpoise meat, clams and crabs; and at his command two
of the girls of his family picked me a basketful of delicious wild
strawberries. He sat motionless by my fire all the forenoon, smoking my
leaf tobacco and pondering deeply. After the noon meal, which I shared
with him, he called Billy, my interpreter, and asked for a big talk.
With all ceremony I made preparations, gave more presents of leaf
tobacco and hardtack and composed myself for the palaver. After the
usual preliminaries, in which he told me at great length what a great
man I was, how like a father to all the people, comparing me to sun,
moon, stars and all other great things; I broke in upon his stream of
compliments and asked what he wanted.
Recalled to earth he said: "I wish you to pray to your God."
"For what do you wish me to pray?" I asked.
The old man raised his blanketed form to its full height and waved his
hand with a magnificent gesture towards the glacier. "Do you see that
great ice mountain?"
"Yes."
"Once," he said, "I had the finest salmon stream upon the coast."
Pointing to a point of rock five or six miles beyond the mouth of the
glacier he continued: "Once the salmon stream extended far beyond that
point of rock. There was a great fall there and a deep pool below it,
and here for years great schools of king salmon came crowding up to the
foot of that fall. To spear them or net them was very easy; they were
the fattest and best salmon among all these islands. My household had
abundance of meat for the winter's need. But the cruel spirit of that
glacier grew angry with me, I know not why, and drove the ice mountain
down towards the sea and spoiled my salmon stream. A year or two more
and it will be blotted out entirely. I have done my best. I have prayed
to my gods. Last spring I sacrificed two of my slaves, members of my
household, my best slaves, a strong man and his wife, to the spirit of
that glacier to make the ice mountain stop; but it comes on, and now I
want you to pray to _your_ God, the God of the white man, to see if He
will make the glacier stop!"
I wish I could describe the pathetic earnestness of this old Indian,
the simplicity with which he told of the sacrifice of his slaves and the
eager look with which he awaited my answer. When I exclaimed in horror
at his deed of blood he was astonished; he could not understand.
"Why, they were _my_ slaves," he said, "and the man suggested it
himself. He was glad to go to death to help his chief."
A few years after this our missionary at Hoonah had the pleasure of
baptizing this old chief into the Christian faith. He had put away his
slaves and his plural wives, had surrendered the implements of his old
superstition, and as a child embraced the new gospel of peace and love.
He could not get rid of his superstition about the glacier, however, and
about eight years afterwards, visiting at Wrangell, he told me as an
item of news which he expected would greatly please me that, doubtless
as a result of my prayers, Taylor Glacier was receding again and the
salmon beginning to come into that stream.
At intervals during this eventful day I went to the face of the glacier
and even climbed the disintegrating hill that was riding on the
glacier's ploughshare, in an effort to see the bold wanderers; but the
jagged ice peaks of the high glacial rapids blocked my vision, and the
rain driving passionately in horizontal sheets shut out the mountains
and the upper plateau of ice. I could see that it was snowing on the
glacier, and imagined the weariness and peril of dog and man exposed to
the storm in that dangerous region. I could only hope that Muir had not
ventured to face the wind on the glacier, but had contented himself with
tracing its eastern side, and was somewhere in the woods bordering it,
beside a big fire, studying storm and glacier in comparative safety.
When the shadows of evening were added to those of the storm I had my
men gather materials for a big bonfire, and kindle it well out on the
flat, where it could be seen from mountain and glacier. I placed dry
clothing and blankets in the fly tent facing the camp-fire, and got
ready the best supper at my command: clam chowder, fried porpoise, bacon
and beans, "savory meat" made of mountain kid with potatoes, onions,
rice and curry, camp biscuit and coffee, with dessert of wild
strawberries and condensed milk.
It grew pitch-dark before seven, and it was after ten when the dear
wanderers staggered into camp out of the dripping forest. Stickeen did
not bounce in ahead with a bark, as was his custom, but crept silently
to his piece of blanket and curled down, too tired to shake himself.
Billy and I laid hands on Muir without a word, and in a trice he was
stripped of his wet garments, rubbed dry, clothed in dry underwear,
wrapped in a blanket and set down on a bed of spruce twigs with a plate
of hot chowder before him. When the chowder disappeared the other hot
dishes followed in quick succession, without a question asked or a word
uttered. Lot kept the fire blazing just right, Joe kept the victuals hot
and baked fresh bread, while Billy and I waited on Muir.
Not till he came to the coffee and strawberries did Muir break the
silence. "Yon's a brave doggie," he said. Stickeen, who could not yet be
induced to eat, responded by a glance of one eye and a feeble pounding
of the blanket with his heavy tail.
Then Muir began to talk, and little by little, between sips of coffee,
the story of the day was unfolded. Soon memories crowded for utterance
and I listened till midnight, entranced by a succession of vivid
descriptions the like of which I have never heard before or since. The
fierce music and grandeur of the storm, the expanse of ice with its
bewildering crevasses, its mysterious contortions, its solemn voices
were made to live before me.
[Illustration: GLACIAL CREVASSES
"We had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of
tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses--beautiful and awful"]
When Muir described his marooning on the narrow island of ice
surrounded by fathomless crevasses, with a knife-edged sliver curving
deeply "like the cable of a suspension bridge" diagonally across it as
the only means of escape, I shuddered at his peril. I held my breath as
he told of the terrible risks he ran as he cut his steps down the wall
of ice to the bridge's end, knocked off the sharp edge of the sliver,
hitched across inch by inch and climbed the still more difficult ascent
on the other side. But when he told of Stickeen's cries of despair at
being left on the other side of the crevasse, of his heroic
determination at last to do or die, of his careful progress across the
sliver as he braced himself against the gusts and dug his little claws
into the ice, and of his passionate revulsion to the heights of
exultation when, intoxicated by his escape, he became a living whirlwind
of joy, flashing about in mad gyrations, shouting and screaming "Saved!
saved!" my tears streamed down my face. Before the close of the story
Stickeen arose, stepped slowly across to Muir and crouched down with his
head on Muir's foot, gazing into his face and murmuring soft canine
words of adoration to his god.
Not until 1897, seventeen years after the event, did Muir give to the
public his story of Stickeen. How many times he had written and
rewritten it I know not. He told me at the time of its first publication
that he had been thinking of the story all of these years and jotting
down paragraphs and sentences as they occurred to him. He was never
satisfied with a sentence until it balanced well. He had the keenest
sense of melody, as well as of harmony, in his sentence structure, and
this great dog-story of his is a remarkable instance of the growth to
perfection of the great production of a great master.
The wonderful power of endurance of this man, whom Theodore Roosevelt
has well called a "perfectly natural man," is instanced by the fact
that, although he was gone about seventeen hours on this day of his
adventure with Stickeen, with only a bite of bread to eat, and never
rested a minute of that time, but was battling with the storm all day
and often racing at full speed across the glacier, yet he got up at
daylight the next morning, breakfasted with me and was gone all day
again, with Stickeen at his heels, climbing a high mountain to get a
view of the snow fountains and upper reaches of the glacier; and when he
returned after nightfall he worked for two or three hours at his notes
and sketches.
The latter part of this voyage was hurried. Muir had a wife waiting for
him at home and he had promised to stay in Alaska only one month. He had
dallied so long with his icy loves, the glaciers, that we were obliged
to make all haste to Sitka, where he expected to take the return
steamer. To miss that would condemn him to Alaska and absence from his
wife for another month. Through a continually pouring rain we sailed by
the then deserted town of Hoonah, ascended with the rising tide a long,
narrow, shallow inlet, dragged our canoe a hundred yards over a little
hill and then descended with the receding tide another long, narrow
passage down to Chatham Strait; and so on to the mouth of Peril Strait
which divided Baranof from Chichagof Island.
On the other side of Chatham Strait, opposite the mouth of Peril, we
visited again Angoon, the village of the Hootz-noos. From this town the
painted and drunken warriors had come the winter before and attacked the
Stickeens, killing old Tow-a-att, Moses and another of our Christian
Indians. The trouble was not settled yet, and although the two tribes
had exchanged some pledges and promised to fight no more, I feared a
fresh outbreak, and so thought it wise to pay another visit to the
Hootz-noos. As we approached Angoon, however, I heard the war-drums
beating with their peculiar cadence, "tum-tum"--a beat off--"tum-tum,
tum-tum." As we came up to the beach I saw what was seemingly the whole
tribe dancing their war-dances, arrayed in their war-paint with their
fantastic war-gear on. So earnestly engaged were they in their dance
that they at first paid no attention whatever to me. My heart sank into
my boots. "They are going back to Wrangell to attack the Stickeens," I
thought, "and there will be another bloody war."
Driving our canoe ashore, we hurried up to the head chief of the
Hootz-noos, who was alternately haranguing his people and directing the
dances.
"Anatlask," I called, "what does this mean? You are going on the
warpath. Tell me what you are about. Are you going back to Stickeen?"
He looked at me vacantly a little while, and then a grin spread from ear
to ear. It was the same chief in whose house I had seen the idiot boy a
year before.
"Come with me," he said.
He led us into his house and across the room to where in state,
surrounded by all kinds of chieftain's gear, Chilcat blankets, totemic
carvings and paintings, chieftain's hats and cunningly woven baskets,
there lay the body of a stalwart young man wrapped in a
button-embroidered blanket. The chief silently removed the blanket from
the face of the dead. The skull was completely crushed on one side as
by a heavy blow. Then the story came out.
The hootz, or big brown bear of that country, is as large and savage as
the grizzly bear of the Rockies. At certain seasons he is, as the
natives say, "_quonsum-sollex_" (always mad). The natives seldom attack
these bears, confining their attention to the more timid and easily
killed black bears. But this young man with a companion, hunting on
Baranof Island across the Strait, found himself suddenly confronted by
an enormous hootz. The young man rashly shot him with his musket,
wounding him sufficiently to make him furious. The tremendous brute
hurled his thousand pounds of ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap
of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion
brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared
war on that bear, and all this dancing and painting and drumming was in
preparation for a war party, composed of all the men, dogs and guns in
the town. They were going on the warpath to get that bear. Greatly
relieved, I gave them my blessing and sped them on their way.
We had been rowing all night before this incident, and all the next
night we sailed up the tortuous Peril Strait, going upward with the
flood, one man steering while the other slept, to the meeting place of
the waters; then down with the receding tide through the islands, and so
on to Sitka. Here we met a warm reception from the missionaries, and
also from the captain and officers of the old man-of-war _Jamestown_,
afterwards used as a school ship for the navy in the harbor of San
Francisco.
Alaska at that time had no vestige of civil government, no means of
punishing crime, no civil officers except the customs collectors, no
magistrate or police,--everyone was a law to himself. The only sign of
authority was this cumbersome sailing vessel with its marines and
sailors. It could not move out of Sitka harbor without first sending by
the monthly mail steamer to San Francisco for a tug to come and tow it
through these intricate channels to the sea where the sails could be
spread. Of course, it was not of much use to this vast territory. The
officers of the _Jamestown_ were supposed to be doing some surveying,
but, lacking the means of travel, what they did amounted to very little.