THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD
Alaska is a land of scenic splendor. She has scenery as beautiful as
that of Switzerland or New Zealand. From my own cottage doorway I have
seen sunsets which equaled those of Mont Blanc, famed in song and
story, and I have traveled through valleys which in summer rivaled the
celebrated Vale of Chamounix. Whoever it was who selected the Seven
Wonders of the World of which we learned in our school days would have
had to add to the list if he had ever dwelt for any length of time
"north of fifty-three."
The country boasts some of the greatest wonders of Nature. The Calico
Bluffs on the Yukon are as high as the Washington monument and their
strata look much like agate formations. She has five thousand glaciers
which are giants in comparison with those of the Alps. The Childs
Glacier is as tall as the dome of the capital at Washington. Of the
hundreds of others there are many that are known as "first class"
glaciers. By this is meant that they discharge their contents into the
sea direct. Among them are the LeConte, Dawes, Brown, Sawyer and Taku.
It is the latter which furnishes the bergs that surround the ships
which carry travelers northward through the "Inside" route. From the
deck of the vessel, near Taku Inlet, forty-five glaciers may be
counted. Of these, as you face Taku, Norris glacier stands to the left.
It is unique in that it sends out two seemingly full-grown rivers, one
flowing to north and one to south. Flowers may be seen growing in the
forest glades nearby, and remnants of tree stumps two feet in diameter
reveal that the glacier must once have withdrawn long enough at least
to permit them to grow. Then a change of climate or other natural
action must have pushed the ice forward again to cut them off and grind
them into fragments,--making them a part of the glacial débris.
Mendenhall Glacier is near Juneau. It is easily reached by automobile
and a delightful experience it is to ride along the highway leading to
it. The road is fringed with masses of wild flowers. Imagine, if you
can, sitting in the shade of a gigantic cottonwood, or spruce, and
eating ice cream made from the milk of cows which now pasture upon the
grass where once the ice stood a thousand feet deep! Mendenhall,
according to the best authorities, is at least twenty-five miles
long,--almost twice the length of the largest glacier the Alps affords.
The highest mountain peak in Alaska was known to the Russians as
_Bulshaia_ and to the natives of Cook Inlet as _Traleyka_. Both words
signify the "great" or the "high" mountain. The natives of the interior
called it _Denali_, but in 1895 it was named Mt. McKinley. It is twenty
thousand three hundred feet high, exceeded in height only by Aconcogua
of South America and Mt. Everest in Indo-China. It was named by W. A.
Dickey, who saw it from the Susitna River. Later its position and
altitude were determined. Many have attempted to ascend it. In 1912
Prof. Herschel Parker of Columbia University and Mr. Belmore Browne of
Tacoma, Washington, got within three hundred feet of the summit, and in
1913, Rev. Hudson Stuck, Archdeacon of the Yukon and author of _Ten
Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled_ and _Voyages on the Yukon_, together
with three companions, reached the top.
Above the recently-created National Park Mt. McKinley towers in
majestic sublimity, the everlasting sentinel, the guardian, as it were,
of the last and loveliest spot on earth which remains as Nature
fashioned it, still untouched by human hands.
Mt. St. Elias is better known and has been much written about. Its
height is eighteen thousand and twenty-four feet. Mt. Logan is nineteen
thousand five hundred and forty feet. Of the two now-celebrated passes
in the mountains of the Yukon, the Chilkoot and White Pass, the former
is at a height of three thousand one hundred feet and the latter at a
height of twenty-eight hundred feet. It was over these passes that the
gold-seekers of 1898 stampeded into Klondike.
But the mountains of Alaska, glorious, majestic and awe-inspiring as
they are, are the losers when compared with the greatest of Alaskan
wonders, the volcanoes. Of these, Mt. Katmai, opposite the Island of
Kodiak, the terrific eruption of which in June, 1912, is well
remembered, is most celebrated. At that time a mass of ash and pummice,
the volume of which is estimated at _five cubic miles_, was thrown into
the air. It buried an area about the size of the State of Connecticut
to a depth varying from ten inches to ten feet and smaller amounts of
the ash fell as far as nine hundred miles away. Unquestionably, the
notoriously cold, wet summer which followed the eruption was due to the
fine dust which was thrown into the higher regions of the atmosphere
to such an extent as to have a profound effect upon the weather. At the
time of the eruption I was at sea, on my way from St. Michael to the
States. It was not long until the ash began falling over us, filling
the air and seemingly trying to cover the face of the waters. It got
into our lungs and made them ache. It was not until some time later
that I heard that it was Mt. Katmai which had exploded and that the
eruption was one which would go down in history. There was not, of
course, the enormous loss of life which followed the eruptions of
Vesuvius, Stromboli and Mt. Pélee. But in other respects the explosion
of Mt. Katmai was unique. Kodiak, the town which was buried, was a
hundred miles away. Ash fell as far away as Juneau, Ketchikan and the
Yukon valley, distant respectively six hundred, seven hundred and fifty
and nine hundred miles.
In the report of the leader of the National Geographic Society's Mt.
Katmai Expedition of 1915-'16, Robert F. Griggs, of the Ohio State
University, is the following paragraph which gives concisely a good
idea of the magnitude of the explosion:
"Such an eruption of Vesuvius would bury Naples under fifteen feet of
ash. Rome would be covered a foot deep. The sound would be heard at
Paris. Dust from the crater would fall in Brussels and Berlin and the
fumes would be noticeable far beyond Christiana, Norway."
Yet it was only a little over a year after this eruption that I myself
saw those ash-laden hills covered again with green verdure! The native
blue-top hay was growing right through the ash which had been washed
off the hills and was then covering the land a foot and a half deep. I
was deeply interested in the native method of harvesting this hay. In
the pursuit of agriculture as I understood it I had never encountered
this practice elsewhere. The hay was cut high up on the mountain. It
was done into bundles in fish nets and was then sent tumbling down the
mountain-side to the bottom. There it was picked up and carried off
homeward or else loaded on boats to be shipped elsewhere.
At the time of the eruption the natives, fortunately for them, were all
away fishing. They were never permitted to return to their mountain.
The government built them a new town and conveyed them thither in a
body, thus establishing them in it. The village was not near the
crater. It was about twenty-five miles away. This is five times as far
distant from the volcano as Pompeii was from Vesuvius or St. Pièrre
from Mt. Pélee.
As has been said, the verdure has returned. Around Kodiak it is
vividly, beautifully green. But the Katmai Valley, once fertile and now
a barren waste, contains what the writer firmly believes to be the most
wonderful and awe-inspiring sight in the whole world. On the second
visit of the Expedition of the National Geographic Society, the
following year, Prof. Griggs explored and named it. He called it "The
Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes"--than which there could be no better
name!
There are no words in the language capable of giving any definite
impression of the scene. Stretching away as far as the eye can see,
until the valley is lost in the far-distant mountains, lie literally
thousands of small volcanos, replicas in miniature of Katmai, the
Great! From almost every one of them shoots a slender column of steam
which rises steadily and gracefully, sometimes to a height of a
thousand feet before it breaks or even wavers! Words become futile. One
could not exaggerate it if he tried. There would not be an adjective
left in the language when he finished!
My own view of the valley was hasty, superficial and from a respectful
distance! I can well appreciate, however, what the Expedition endured
in order to give to the world knowledge of this wondrous spot. I
heartily commend to the readers of this volume the report of Prof.
Griggs in the National Geographic Magazine for May, 1917, in which he
relates the experience of himself and his party as they made their way
back and forth, plunging through suffocating vapors, trapping gases for
chemical analysis, making soundings, mapping the course of the valley
and studying the geology of what he calls "the most amazing example of
her processes which Nature has yet revealed to twentieth century
man,--one of Vulcan's melting pots from which the earth was created."
In a tent less than two miles from one of the huge clouds of steam he
slept at night and on one of the large flat stones outside, so hot that
it was a natural stove, the members of the Expedition cooked their
food.
One gets the best idea of the magnitude of the valley by comparing it
with our Yellowstone Park. The Katmai valley is thirty-two miles long,
about two miles wide and seventy square miles in area. In the
Yellowstone are four thousand hot springs and a hundred geysers
scattered over three thousand square miles. The geysers occur in
isolated basins the total area of which is hardly twenty miles. The
largest one, and it plays but seldom, shoots up a column about three
hundred feet high. Old Faithful, which is the only one the tourist can
ever be sure of seeing in action, is only a hundred feet high. In the
Alaskan valley, however, observe the contrast. _There are thousands of
vents in constant action._ Some of these ascend more than five thousand
feet into the air when conditions are good and when the valley is
wind-swept they creep along the ground for two or three miles! These
vents are not geysers. They are hot springs. Geysers can exist only
when the rock through which they break is sufficiently cool to permit
water to form. It is unlikely therefore that there will ever be geysers
here,--at least not for many centuries. The valley may gradually cool
so as to permit their formation. But it will be ages hence.
Prof. Griggs is emphatic in his belief that there is nothing known to
mankind with which "The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes" can be compared.
I agree with him. Would that it were more accessible to the traveler
and that no tourist would return from a sojourn in Alaska without
seeing it! I shall never cease to be grateful that a fortunate
circumstance permitted me to obtain even so small a peep at it. Surely
nothing approaching it has been seen by man upon this earth. The
Expedition report states, among other interesting things, that the
water is so hot that the thermometer would not register it and that the
heat from the stones would char a piece of wood instantly!
Kilauea, in Hawaii, has always borne the reputation of being king of
volcanoes. It is now dethroned. Mention has already been made of Mt.
Shishaldin, on Unimak Island. As no geographer has ever visited it,
little is known about it. Katmai, however, is unquestionably the
monarch. Not so much in diameter, circumference or area does it exceed
Kilauea. It is in depth. Kilauea's greatest depth is five hundred feet.
Katmai's is thirty-seven hundred feet!
In an attempt to give some idea of the magnitude of Katmai, I quote
once more from Prof. Griggs' report:
"If every single structure in New York, Brooklyn, the Bronx and the
other boroughs of Greater New York were gathered together and deposited
in the crater of Mt. Katmai," he says, "the hole that remained would
still be _more than twice as large as that of Kilauea_." The king is
dead. Long live the king--of volcanoes!
From the glaciers and the mountains of Alaska to the rivers is but a
natural turn. One of the most important factors in the life and
commercial development of a country is, of course, her river
navigation. Alaska has two great gateways to Bering Strait,--the Yukon
and Kuskokwim rivers. Until recently only the Yukon was available for
commercial purposes, but the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
has announced that at last a channel has been charted through the delta
of the Kuskokwim. This means much. It means that a River of Doubt has
become a River of Promise!
Because of the latitude at which they enter Bering Sea the Yukon is
navigable for three and a half and the Kuskokwim for four months only.
The entrance of the Yukon is shallow, that of the Kuskokwim tortuous
and not well known. But once inside, an ordinary river boat can
navigate the Yukon to White Horse, in Canada, a distance of twenty-two
hundred miles. In spite of the short seasons the possibilities of using
the river in the development of the valley are apparent and will
suffice for some time to come. Navigation is also fairly good on the
lower Copper River, the Kobuk, and smaller streams. When it comes to
the most winding and tortuous watercourse I have ever encountered,
however,--respectfully I salute the Iditarod! One's supply of
adjectives, however ample under ordinary circumstances, fails him
completely when he attempts to do justice to the crookedness of this
river. It writhes and twists and turns like some huge serpent, and
when it can think of nothing else to do it doubles back on its own
track! To try to follow it would give a man delirium tremens, and like
Tennyson's brook it "goes on forever!"
The Pacific coast line, including the Aleutian Islands, has many
excellent harbors. With the exception of Cook Inlet, these are open to
navigation from November until June, but the ice pack does not extend
far south of St. Lawrence Island. This part of the coast is almost
without harbors. The Arctic Ocean is open from July to September,
permitting navigation to Alaskan ports.
There is cable communication between Seattle and certain parts of
southeastern Alaska,--Cordova, Valdez and Seward. Telegraph lines run
from Valdez to Fairbanks and down the Yukon to St. Michael from which
point there is wireless communication with Nome. These are all military
lines. The Navy Department maintains wireless stations at Kodiak and
Unalaska. The War Department has wireless stations at Sitka, Cordova,
Fairbanks, Circle, Eagle and Nulato. There are also private wireless
stations at Iditarod and on Bristol Bay and many of the mining
districts are now provided with telephone lines.
The United States Government is thoroughly awake to the necessity of
making safe the now-dangerous waters of southern Alaska. They are now
being charted and soon the old title "The Graveyard of the Pacific"
will no longer apply to them. Within the past sixty years three hundred
ships have gone down upon the rocks. Valuable cargoes amounting to
eight million dollars and lives to the number of five hundred have here
been lost. Both to southeast and southwest of Alaska lie many
mountainous islands, and ofttimes the lower half of the mountain will
be lost in the water. Like the submerged lower half of the iceberg
which wrecked the _Titanic_, they lie in wait, seemingly, for the
ignorant or the unwary and rip open the hulls of the ships that venture
too near.
The light-house service of Alaska leaves much to be desired. The first
buoy was floated in 1884. The first light was put up ten years later.
There are three hundred and twenty-nine aids to navigation now on the
whole Alaskan coast line. These include a hundred and forty lights of
which twenty-eight were placed in 1915. On the much-traveled route from
Icy Strait to Nome, a distance equal to that between New York and
London, there are but three lighthouses!
There are indications of improvement along this line, however. A first
class light is to be placed on Cape St. Elias. New vessels are being
built for light-house work and for the Coast Survey, but like all great
enterprises, things progress slowly. About one-half of the main
channels of southeastern Alaska have been explored by a wire drag and
as rapidly as the appropriations by Congress will permit the work will
be pushed forward.