ON THE WAY TO NOME
"WELL, boys, we're off for a long sail, and I'm afraid you will be
rather tired with the steamer before you are done with her," said Mr.
Strong. They had boarded the mail-steamer late the night before, and,
going right to bed, had wakened early next day and rushed on deck to
find the August sun shining in brilliant beauty, the islands quite out
of sight, and nought but sea and sky around and above them.
"Oh, I don't know; we'll find something to do," said Teddy. "You'll have
to tell us lots about the places we pass, and, if there aren't any other
boys on board, Kalitan and I will be together. What's the first place we
stop?"
"We passed the Kenai Peninsula in the night. I wish you could have
caught a glimpse of some of the waterfalls, volcanoes, and glaciers.
They are as fine as any in Alaska," said Mr. Strong. "Our next stop will
be Kadiak Island."
"Kadiak Island was once near the mainland," said Kalitan. "There was
only the narrowest passage of water, but a great Kenai otter tried to
swim the pass, and was caught fast. He struggled so that he made it
wider and wider, and at last pushed Kadiak way out to sea."
"He must have been a whopper," said Ted, "to push it so far away. Is
that the island?"
"Yes," said his father. "There are no splendid forests on the island as
there are on the mainland, but the grasses are superb, for the fog and
rain here keeps them green as emerald."
"What a queer canoe that Indian has!" exclaimed Ted. "It isn't a bit
like yours, Kalitan."
"It is _bidarka_," said Kalitan. "Kadiak people make canoe out of walrus
hide. They stretch it over frames of driftwood. It holds two people.
They sit in small hatch with apron all around their bodies, and the
_bidarka_ goes over the roughest sea and floats like a bladder. Big
_bidarka_ called an _oomiak_, and holds whole family."
"Some one has called the _bidarkas_ the 'Cossacks of the sea,'" said Mr.
Strong. "They skim along like swallows, and are as perfectly built as
any vessel I ever saw."
"What are those huge buildings on the small island?" asked Ted, as the
steamer wound through the shallows.
"Ice-houses," said his father. "Before people learned to manufacture
ice, immense cargoes were shipped from here to as far south as San
Francisco."
"It was fun to see them go fishing for ice from the steamer when we came
up to Skaguay," said Ted. "The sailors went out in a boat, slipped a
net around a block of ice and towed it to the side of the ship, then it
was hitched to a derrick and swung on deck."
"Huh!" said Kalitan. "What people want ice for stored up? Think they'd
store sunshine!"
"If you could invent a way to do that, you could make a fortune, my
boy," said Mr. Strong, laughing. "The next place of any interest is
Karluk. It's around on the other side of the island in Shelikoff Strait,
and is famous for its salmon canneries. Nearly half of the entire salmon
pack of Alaska comes from Kadiak Island, most of the fish coming from
the Karluk River."
"Very bad for Indians," said Kalitan. "Used to have plenty fish. Tyee
Klake said salmon used to come up this river in shoal sixteen miles
long, and now Boston men take them all."
"It does seem a pity that the Indians don't even have a chance to earn
their living in the canneries," said Mr. Strong. "The largest cannery in
the world is at Karluk. There are thousands of men employed, and in one
year over three million salmon were packed, yet with all this work for
busy hands to do, the canneries employ Chinese, Greek, Portuguese, and
American workmen in preference to the Indians, bringing them by the
shipload from San Francisco."
"What other places do we pass?" asked Ted.
"A lot of very interesting ones, and I wish we could coast along,
stopping wherever we felt like it," said Mr. Strong. "The Shumagin
Islands are where Bering, the great discoverer and explorer, landed in
1741 to bury one of his crew. Codfish were found there, and Captain
Cook, in his 'Voyages and Discoveries,' speaks of the same fish. There
is a famous fishery there now called the Davidson Banks, and the
codfishing fleet has its headquarters on Popoff Island. Millions of
codfish are caught here every year. These islands are also a favourite
haunt of the sea otter. Belofsky, at the foot of Mt. Pavloff, is the
centre of the trade."
[Illustration: MOUNT SHISHALDIN.]
"What kind of fur is otter?" asked Ted, whose mind was so inquiring that
his father often called him the "living catechism."
"It is the court fur of China and Russia, and at one time the common
people were forbidden by law to wear it," said Mr. Strong. "It is a
rich, purplish brown sprinkled with silver-tipped hairs, and the skins
are very costly."
"At one time any one could have otter," said Kalitan. "We hunted them
with spears and bows and arrows. Now they are very few, and we find them
only in dangerous spots, hiding on rocks or floating kelp. Sometimes the
hunters have to lie in hiding for days watching them. Only Indians can
kill the otter. Boston men can if they marry Indian women. That makes
them Indian."
"Rather puts otter at a discount and women at a premium," laughed Mr.
Strong. "Now we pass along near the Alaska peninsula, past countless
isles and islets, through the Fox Islands to Unalaska, and then into the
Bering Sea. One of the most interesting things in this region is called
the 'Pacific Ring of Fire,' a chain of volcanoes which stretches along
the coast. Often the passengers can see from the ships at night a
strange red glow over the sky, and know that the fire mountains are
burning. The most beautiful of these volcanoes is Mt. Shishaldin, nearly
nine thousand feet high, and almost as perfect a cone in shape as Fuji
Yama, which the Japanese love so much and call 'the Honourable
Mountain.' At Unalaska or Ilinlink, the 'curving beach,' we stop. If we
could stay over for awhile, there are a great many interesting things we
could see; an old Greek church and the government school are in the
town, and Bogoslov's volcano and the sea-lion rookeries are on the
island of St. John, which rose right up out of the sea in 1796 after a
day's roaring and rumbling and thundering. In 1815 there was a similar
performance, and from time to time the island has grown larger ever
since. One fine day in 1883 there was a great shower of ashes, and, when
the clouds had rolled away, two peaks were seen where only one had been,
separated by a sandy isthmus. This last was reduced to a fine thread by
the earthquake of 1891, and I don't know what new freaks it may have
developed by now. I know some friends of mine landed there not long ago
and cooked eggs over the jets of steam which gush out of the
mountainside. Did you ever hear of using a volcano for a cook-stove?"
"Well, I should say not," said Ted, amused. "These Alaskan volcanoes are
great things."
"The one called Makushin has a crater filled with snow in a part of
which there is always a cloud of sulphurous smoke. That's making
extremes meet, isn't it?"
"Yehl[13] made many strange things," said Kalitan, who had been taking
in all this information even more eagerly than Teddy. "He first dwelt on
Nass River, and turned two blades of grass into the first man and woman.
Then the Thlinkits grew and prospered, till darkness fell upon the
earth. A Thlinkit stole the sun and hid it in a box, but Yehl found it
and set it so high in the heavens that none could touch it. Then the
Thlinkits grew and spread abroad. But a great flood came, and all were
swept away save two, who tossed long upon the flood on a raft of logs
until Yehl pitied, and carried them to Mt. Edgecomb, where they dwelt
until the waters fell."
"Old Kala-kash tells this story, and he says that one of these people,
when very old, went down through the crater of the mountain, and, given
long life by Yehl, stays there always to hold up the earth out of the
water. But the other lives in the crater as the Thunder Bird, Hahtla,
whose wing-flap is the thunder and whose glance is the lightning. The
osprey is his totem, and his face glares in our blankets and totems."
"I've wondered what that fierce bird was," said Teddy, who was always
quite carried away with Kalitan's strange legends.
"Well, what else do we see on the way to Nome, father?"
"The most remarkable thing happening in the Bering Sea is the seal
industry, but I do not think we pass near enough to the islands to see
any of that. You'd better run about and see the ship now," and the boys
needed no second permission.
It was not many days before they knew everybody on board, from captain
to deck hands, and were prime favourites with them all. Ted and Kalitan
enjoyed every moment. There was always something new to see or hear, and
ere they reached their journey's end, they had heard all about seals and
sealing, although the famous Pribylov Islands were too far to the west
of the vessel's route for them to see them. They sighted the United
States revenue cutter which plies about the seal islands to keep off
poachers, for no one is allowed to kill seals or to land on this
government reservation except from government vessels. The scent of the
rookeries, where millions of seals have been killed in the last hundred
years, is noticed far out at sea, and often the barking of the animals
can be heard by passing vessels.
"Why is sealskin so valuable, father?" asked Ted.
"It has always been admired because it is so warm and soft," replied Mr.
Strong. "All the ladies fancy it, and it never seems to go out of
fashion. There was a time, when the Pribylov Islands were first
discovered, that sealskins were so plentiful that they sold in Alaska
for a dollar apiece. Hunters killed so many, killing old and young, that
soon there were scarcely any left, so a law was passed by the Russian
government forbidding any killing for five years. Since the Americans
have owned Alaska they have protected the seals, allowing them to be
killed only at certain times, and only male seals from two to four years
old are killed. The Indians are always the killers, and are wonderfully
swift and clever, never missing a blow and always killing instantly, so
that there is almost no suffering."
"How do they know where to find the seals?" asked Ted.
"For half the year the seals swim about the sea, but in May they return
to their favourite haunts. In these rookeries families of them herd on
the rocks, the male staying at home with his funny little black
puppies, while the mother swims about seeking food. The seals are very
timid, and will rush into the water at the least strange noise. A story
is told that the barking of a little pet dog belonging to a Russian at
one of the rookeries lost him a hundred thousand dollars, for the seals
took fright and scurried away before any one could say 'Jack Robinson!'"
"Rather an expensive pup!" commented Ted. "But what about the seals,
daddy?"
"You seem to think I am an encyclopædia on the seal question," said his
father. "There is not much else to tell you."
"How can they manage always to kill the right ones?" demanded Ted.
"The gay bachelor seals herd together away from the rest and sleep at
night on the rocks. Early in the morning the Aleuts slip in between them
and the herd and drive them slowly to the killing-ground, where they are
quickly killed and skinned and the skins taken to the salting-house.
The Indians use the flesh and blubber, and the climate is such that
before another year the hollow bones are lost in the grass and earth."
"What becomes of the skins after they are salted?"
"They are usually sent to London, where they are prepared for market.
The work is all done by hand, which is one reason that they are so
expensive. They are first worked in sawdust, cleaned, scraped, washed,
shaved, plucked, dyed with a hand-brush from eight to twelve times,
washed again and freed from the least speck of grease by a last bath in
hot sawdust or sand."
"I don't wonder a sealskin coat costs so much," said Ted, "if they have
got to go through all that performance. I wish we could have seen the
islands, but I'd hate to see the seals killed. It doesn't seem like
hunting just to knock them on the head. It's too much like the
stock-yards at home."
"Yes, but it's a satisfaction to know that it's done in the easiest
possible way for the animals.
"What a lot you are learning way up here in Alaska, aren't you, son?
To-morrow we'll be at Nome, and then your head will be so stuffed with
mines and mining that you will forget all about everything else."
"I don't want to forget any of it," said Ted. "It's all bully."
FOOTNOTE:
[13] Yehl, embodied in the raven, is the Thlinkit Great Spirit.