TO THE GLACIER
TED slept soundly all night, wrapped in the bearskins from the sledge,
in the little tent he shared with his father. When the morning broke, he
sprang to his feet and hurried out of doors, hopeful for the day's
pleasures. The snow had stopped, but the ground was covered with a thick
white pall, and the mountains were turned to rose colour in the morning
sun, which was rising in a blaze of glory.
"Good morning, Kalitan," shouted Ted to his Indian friend, whom he spied
heaping wood upon the camp-fire. "Isn't it dandy? What can we do
to-day?"
"Have breakfast," said Kalitan, briefly. "Then do what Tyee says."
"Well, I hope he'll say something exciting," said Ted.
"Think good day to hunt," said Kalitan, as he prepared things for the
morning meal.
"Where did you get the fish?" asked Ted.
"Broke ice-hole and fished when I got up," said the Thlinkit.
"You don't mean you have been fishing already," exclaimed the lazy Ted,
and Kalitan smiled as he said:
"White people like fish. Tyee said: 'Catch fish for Boston men's
breakfast,' and I go."
"Do you always mind him like that?" asked Ted. He generally obeyed his
father, but there were times when he wasn't anxious to and argued a
little about it. Kalitan looked at him in astonishment.
"He chief!" he said, simply.
"What will we do with the camp if we all go hunting?" asked Ted.
"Nothing," said Kalitan.
"Leave Chetwoof to watch, I suppose," continued Ted.
"Watch? Why?" asked Kalitan.
"Why, everything; some one will steal our things," said Ted.
"Thlinkits not steal," said Kalitan, with dignity. "Maybe white man come
along and steal from his brothers; Indians not. If we go away to long
hunt, we _cache_ blankets and no one would touch."
"What do you mean by _cache_?" asked Ted.
"We build a mound hut near the house, and put there the blankets and
stores. Sometime they stay there for years, but no one would take from a
_cache_. If one has plenty of wood by the seashore or in the forest, he
may cord it and go his way and no one will touch it. A deer hangs on a
tree where dogs may not reach it, but no stray hunter would slice even a
piece. We are not thieves."
"It is a pity you could not send missionaries to the States, you
Thlinkits, my boy," said Mr. Strong, who had come up in time to hear
Kalitan's words. "I'm afraid white people are less honest."
"Teddy, do you know we are to have some hunting to-day, and that you'll
get your first experience with a glacier."
"Hurrah," shouted Ted, dancing up and down in excitement.
"Tyee Klake says we can hunt toward the base of the glacier, and I shall
try to go a little ways upon it and see how the land lies, or, rather,
the ice. It is getting warmer, and, if it continues a few days, the snow
will melt enough to let us go over to that island you are so anxious to
see."
Ted's eyes shone, and the amount of breakfast he put away quite prepared
him for his day's work, which, pleasant though it might be, certainly
was hard work. The chief said they must seek the glacier first before
the sun got hot, for it was blinding on the snow. So they set out soon
after breakfast, leaving Chetwoof in charge of the camp, and with orders
to catch enough fish for dinner.
"We'll be ready to eat them, heads and tails," said Ted, and his father
added, laughingly:
"'Bible, bones, and hymn-book, too.'"
"What does that mean?" asked Ted, as Kalitan looked up inquiringly.
"Once a writer named Macaulay said he could make a rhyme for any word in
the English language, and a man replied, 'You can't rhyme Timbuctoo.'
But he answered without a pause:
"If I were a Cassowary
On the plains of Timbuctoo,
I'd eat up a missionary,
Bible, bones, and hymn-book, too."
Ted laughed, but Kalitan said, grimly:
"Not good to eat Boston missionary, he all skin and bone!"
"Where did they get the name Alaska?" asked Ted, as they tramped over
the snow toward the glacier.
"Al-ay-ck-sa--great country," said Kalitan.
"It certainly is," said Ted. "It's fine! I never saw anything like this
at home," pointing as he spoke to the scene in front of him.
A group of evergreen trees, firs and the Alaska spruce, so useful for
fires and torches, fringed the edge of the ice-field, green and verdant
in contrast to the gleaming snows of the mountain, which rose in a
gentle slope at first, then precipitously, in a dazzling and enchanting
combination of colour. It was as if some marble palace of old rose
before them against the heavens, for the ice was cut and serrated into
spires and gables, turrets and towers, all seeming to be ornamented with
fretwork where the sun's rays struck the peaks and turned them into
silver and gold. Lower down the ice looked like animals, so twisted was
it into fantastic shapes; fierce sea monsters with yawning mouths
seeming ready to devour; bears and wolves, whales, gigantic elephants,
and snowy tigers, tropic beasts looking strangely out of place in this
arctic clime.
Deep crevices cut the ice-fields, and in their green-blue depths lurked
death, for the least misstep would dash the traveller into an abyss
which had no bottom. Beyond the glacier itself, the snow-capped
mountains rose grand and serene, their glittering peaks clear against
the blue sky, which hue the glacier reflected and played with in a
thousand glinting shades, from purpling amethyst to lapis lazuli and
turquoise.
As they gazed spellbound, a strange thing occurred, a thing of such
wonder and beauty that Ted could but grasp his father's arm in silence.
Suddenly the peaks seemed to melt away, the white ice-pinnacles became
real turrets, houses and cathedrals appeared, and before them arose a
wonderful city of white marble, dream-like and shadowy, but beautiful as
Aladdin's palace in the "Arabian Nights." At last Ted could keep silent
no longer.
"What is it?" he cried, and the old chief answered, gravely:
"The City of the Dead," but his father said:
"A mirage, my boy. They are often seen in these regions, but you are
fortunate in seeing one of the finest I have ever witnessed."
"What is a mirage?" demanded Ted.
"An optical delusion," said his father, "and one I am sure I couldn't
explain so that you would understand it. The queer thing about a mirage
is that you usually see the very thing most unlikely to be found in that
particular locality. In the Sahara, men see flowers and trees and
fountains, and here on this glacier we see a splendid city."
"It certainly is queer. What makes glaciers, daddy?" Ted was even more
interested than usual in his father's talk because of Kalitan, whose
dark eyes never left Mr. Strong's face, and who seemed to drink in every
word of information as eagerly as a thirsty bird drinks water.
"The dictionaries tell you that glaciers are fields of ice, or snow and
ice, formed in the regions of perpetual snow, and moving slowly down the
mountain slopes or valleys. Many people say the glaciers are the fathers
of the icebergs which float at sea, and that these are broken off the
glacial stream, but others deny this. When the glacial ice and snow
reaches a point where the air is so warm that the ice melts as fast as
it is pushed down from above, the glacier ends and a river begins. These
are the finest glaciers in the world, except, perhaps, those of the
Himalayas.
"This bids fair to be a wonderfully interesting place for my work, Ted,
and I'm glad you're likely to be satisfied with your new friends, for I
shall have to go to many places and do a lot of things less interesting
than the things Kalitan can show you.
"See these blocks of fine marble and those superb masses of porphyry and
chalcedony,--but there's something which will interest you more. Take my
gun and see if you can't bring down a bird for supper."
Wild ducks were flying low across the edge of the glacier and quite near
to the boys, and Ted grasped his father's gun in wild excitement. He was
never allowed to touch a gun at home. Dearly as he loved his mother, it
had always seemed very strange to him that she should show such poor
taste about firearms, and refuse to let him have any; and now that he
had a gun really in his hands, he could hardly hold it, he was so
excited. Of course it was not the first time, for his father had allowed
him to practise shooting at a mark ever since they had reached Alaska,
but this was the first time he had tried to shoot a living target. He
selected his duck, aimed quickly, and fired. Bang! Off went the gun,
and, wonder of wonders! two ducks fell instead of one.
"Well done, Ted, that duck was twins," cried his father, laughing,
almost as excited as the boy himself, and they ran to pick up the birds.
Kalitan smiled, too, and quietly picked up one, saying:
"This one Kalitan's," showing, as he spoke, his arrow through the bird's
side, for he had discharged an arrow as Ted fired his gun.
"Too bad, Ted. I thought you were a mighty hunter, a Nimrod who killed
two birds with one stone," said Mr. Strong, but Ted laughed and said:
"So I got the one I shot at, I don't care."
They had wild duck at supper that night, for Chetwoof plucked the birds
and roasted them on a hot stone over the spruce logs, and Ted, tired and
wet and hungry, thought he had never tasted such a delicious meal in his
life.