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ALASKA ELLA HIGGINSON
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALASKA THE GREAT COUNTRY
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON . BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO
Завоеватель Ситкции укротитель воинственными индианских плементь, проживающие Na campsbass .44. Аляски; главный Управитель (до 1818 года) делами Русско- Американ Компанію
Память его „между дикции держится и до сей поры. За его неустрашенность
1907- 15 enbagno 2. i
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Photo by E. W. Merrill, Sitka
Courtesy of G. Kostrometinoff
ALEXANDER BARANOFF
ALASKA
THE GREAT COUNTRY
BY ELLA HIGGINSON
AUTHOR OF "MARIELLA, OF OUT-WEST," "WHEN THE BIRDS GO NORTH AGAIN," "FROM THE LAND OF THE SNOW-PEARLS," ETC.
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1908. Reprinted February, 1909; March, 1910.
Norwood press J. S. Cushing Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
3041418
Co MR. AND MRS. HENRY ELLIOTT HOLMES
$ 5.00-C-L-Robeson. 1 7, 24 1-1979 PO 10710
FOREWORD
WHEN the Russians first came to the island of Un- alaska, they were told that a vast country lay to the eastward and that its name was Al-ay-ek-sa. Their own island the Aleuts called Nagun-Alayeksa, meaning "the land lying near Alayeksa."
The Russians in time came to call the country itself Alashka; the peninsula, Aliaska; and the island, Un- alashka. Alaska is an English corruption of the original name.
A great Russian moved under inspiration when he sent Vitus Behring out to discover and explore the continent lying to the eastward; two great Americans -Seward and Sumner - were inspired when, nearly a century and a half later, they saved for us, in the face of the bitterest opposition, scorn, and ridicule, the country that Behring discovered and which is now coming to be recognized as the most glorious possession of any people; but, first of all, were the gentle, dark-eyed Aleuts inspired when they bestowed upon this same country - with the simplicity and dignified repression for which their character is notcd - the beautiful and poetic name which means " the great country."
vii
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ALEXANDER BARANOFF
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
ALASKA (colored map) .
1
COPPER SMELTER IN SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA .
.
2
KASA-AN
9
HOWKAN
· 16
DISTANT VIEW OF DAVIDSON GLACIER
21
DAVIDSON GLACIER
36
A PHANTOM SHIP . 41
ROAD THROUGH CUT-OFF CANYON
48
SCENE ON THE WHITE PASS
53
STEEL CANTILEVER BRIDGE, NEAR SUMMIT OF WHITE PASS
68
OLD RUSSIAN BUILDING, SITKA
73
GREEK-RUSSIAN CHURCH AT SITKA .
80
ESKIMO IN WALRUS-SKIN KAMELAYKA 101
ESKIMO IN BIDARKA 116
RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION, EYAK LAKE
121
EYAK LAKE, NEAR CORDOVA 128
INDIAN HOUSES, CORDOVA .
133
VALDEZ 148
AN ALASKAN ROAD HOUSE
153
Kow-EAR-NUK AND HIS DRYING SALMON . 160
STEAMER " RESOLUTE" 165
"OBLEUK," AN ESKIMO GIRL IN PARKA 180
A NORTHERN MADONNA 185
ESKIMO LAD IN PARKA AND MUKLUKS 192
SCALES AND SUMMIT OF CHILKOOT PASS IN 1898 ·
. 197
ix
Y
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
SUMMIT OF CHILKOOT PASS IN 1898 .
212
PINE FALLS, ATLIN
. 229
LAKE BENNETT IN 1898 . 244
WHITE HORSE, YUKON TERRITORY 249
GRAND CANYON OF THE YUKON
. 256
WHITE HORSE RAPIDS
. 261
WHITE HORSE RAPIDS IN WINTER
. 276
STEAMER "WHITE HORSE" IN FIVE-FINGER RAPIDS 293
A YUKON SNOW SCENE NEAR WHITE HORSE 308
A HOME IN THE YUKON
325
ONE AND A HALF MILLIONS OF KLONDIKE GOLD . 340
A FAMOUS TEAM OF HUSKIES . 357
CLOUD EFFECT ON THE YUKON . . 372
" WOLF "
389
DOG-TEAM EXPRESS, NOME . 404
FOUR BEAUTIES OF CAPE PRINCE OF WALES WITH SLED
REINDEER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY HERD .
.
421
COUNCIL CITY AND SOLOMON RIVER RAILROAD - A CHAR- ACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE OF SEWARD PENINSULA . 436
TELLER .
. 453
FAMILY OF KING'S ISLAND ESKIMOS LIVING UNDER SKIN BOAT, NOME . 468
WRECK OF "JESSIE," NOME BEACH . 485
SUNRISE ON BEHRING SEA .
. 500
. 505 SURF AT NOME
MOONLIGHT ON BEHRING SEA
. 512
ALASKA THE GREAT COUNTRY
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ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
EVERY year, from June to September, thousands of people " go to Alaska." This means that they take pas- sage at Seattle on the most luxurious steamers that run up the famed "inside passage " to Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell, and Skaguay. Formerly this voyage included a visit to Muir Glacier; but because of the ruin wrought by a re- cent earthquake, this once beautiful and marvellous thing is no longer included in the tourist trip.
This ten-day voyage is unquestionably a delightful one; every imaginable comfort is provided, and the excursion rate is reasonable. However, the person who contents himself with this will know as little about Alaska as a foreigner who landed in New York, went straight to Niagara Falls and returned at once to his own country, would know about America.
Enchanting though this brief cruise may be when the weather is favorable, the real splendor, the marvellous beauty, the poetic and haunting charm of Alaska, lie west of Sitka. "To Westward " is called this dream-voyage past a thousand miles of snow-mountains rising straight from the purple sea and wrapped in coloring that makes it seem as though all the roses, lilies, and violets of heaven had been pounded to a fine dust and sifted over them; past green islands and safe harbors; past the Malaspina and the Columbia glaciers; past Yakutat, Kyak, Cordova, Valdez, Seward, and Cook Inlet; and then, still on "to Westward " - past Kodiak Island, where the Russians
1
B
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ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
made their first permanent settlement in America in 1784 and whose sylvan and idyllic charm won the heart of the great naturalist, John Burroughs ; past the Aliaska Penin- sula, with its smoking Mount Pavloff; past Unimak Island, one of whose active volcanoes, Shishaldin, is the most per- fect and symmetrical cone on the Pacific Coast, not even excepting Hood - and on and in among the divinely pale green Aleutian Islands to Unalaska, where enchantment broods in a mist of rose and lavender and where one may scarcely step without crushing violets and bluebells.
The spell of Alaska falls upon every lover of beauty who has voyaged along those far northern snow-pearled shores with the violet waves of the North Pacific Ocean breaking splendidly upon them; or who has drifted down the mighty rivers of the interior which flow, bell-toned and lonely, to the sea.
I know not how the spell is wrought; nor have I ever met one who could put the miracle of its working into words. No writer has ever described Alaska; no one writer ever will; but each must do his share, according to the spell that the country casts upon him.
Some parts of Alaska lull the senses drowsily by their languorous charm; under their influence one sinks to a passive delight and drifts unresistingly on through a maze of tender loveliness. Nothing irritates. All is soft, velvety, soothing. Wordless lullabies are played by dif- ferent shades of blue, rose, amber, and green; by the curl of the satin waves and the musical kiss of their cool and faltering lips; by the mists, light as thistle-down and delicately tinted as wild-rose petals, into which the steamer pushes leisurely; by the dreamy poise of seabirds on white or lavender wings high in the golden atmosphere; by the undulating flight of purple Shadow, tiptoe, through the dim fiords; by the lap of waves on shingle, the song of birds along the wooded shore, the pressure of soft winds
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
COPPER SMELTER IN SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA
3
ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
on the temples and hair, the sparkle of the sea weighing the eyelids down. The magic of it all gets into the blood.
The steamer slides through green and echoing reaches; past groups of totems standing like ghosts of the past among the dark spruce or cedar trees; through stone- walled canyons where the waters move dark and still; into open, sunlit seas.
But it is not until one sails on "to Westward " that the spell of Alaska falls upon one; sails out into the wild and splendid North Pacific Ocean. Here are the majesty, the sublimity, that enthrall; here are the noble spaces, the Titanic forces, the untrodden heights, that thrill and inspire.
The marvels here are not the marvels of men. They are wrought of fire and stone and snow by the tireless hand that has worked through centuries unnumbered and unknown.
He that would fall under the spell of Alaska, will sail on "to Westward," on to Unalaska; or he will go North- ward and drift down the Yukon -that splendid, lonely river that has its birth within a few miles of the sea, yet flows twenty-three hundred miles to find it.
Alaskan steamers usually sail between eight o'clock in the evening and midnight, and throngs of people congre- gate upon the piers of Seattle to watch their departure. The rosy purples and violets of sunset mix with the mists and settle upon the city, climbing white over its hills; as hours go by, its lights sparkle brilliantly through them, yet still the crowds sway upon the piers and wait for the first still motion of the ship as it slides into the night and heads for the far, enchanted land -the land whose sweet, insistent calling never ceases for the one who has once heard it.
Passengers who stay on deck late will be rewarded by the witchery of night on Puget Sound - the soft fragrance
4
ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
of the air, the scarlet, blue, and green lights wavering across the water, the glistening wake of the ship, the city glimmering faintly as it is left behind, the dim shores of islands, and the dark shadows of bays.
One by one the lighthouses at West Point on the star- board side, and at Point-No-Point, Marrowstone, and Point Wilson, on the port, flash their golden messages through the dusk. One by one rise, linger, and fade the dark out- lines of Magnolia Bluff, Skagit Head, Double Bluff, and Liplip Point. If the sailing be early in the evening, mid- night is saluted by the lights of Port Townsend, than which no city on the Pacific Coast has a bolder or more beautiful situation.
The splendid water avenue - the burning "Opal-Way" - that leads the ocean into these inland seas was named in 1788 by John Meares, a retired lieutenant of the British navy, for Juan de Fuca (whose real name was Apostolos Valerianos), a Greek pilot who, in 1592, was sent out in a small " caravela " by the Viceroy of Mexico in search of the fabled "Strait of Anian," or "Northwest Passage"- supposed to lead from the Pacific to the Atlantic north of forty degrees of latitude. 1
As early as the year 1500 this strait was supposed to have been discovered by a Portuguese navigator named Cortereal, and to have been named by him for one of his brothers who accompanied him.
The names of certain other early navigators are men- tioned in connection with the "Strait of Anian." Cabot is reported vaguely as having located it " neere the 318 merid- ian, between 61 and 64 degrees in the eleuation, continuing the same bredth about 10 degrees West, where it openeth Southerly more and more, until it come under the tropicke of Cancer, and so runneth into Mar del Zur, at least 18 degrees more in bredth there than where it began; " Fro- bisher ; Urdaneta, "a Fryer of Mexico, who came out of
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ALASKA : THE GREAT COUNTRY
Mar del Zur this way into Germanie ;" and several others whose stories of having sailed the dream-strait that was then supposed to lead from ocean to ocean are not now considered seriously until we come to Juan de Fuca, who claimed that in his "caravela " he followed the coast "vntill hee came to the latitude of fortie seuen degrees, and that there finding that the land trended North and North-cast, with a broad Inlet of Sea between 47 and 48 degrees of Latitude, hce entered thereinto, sayling therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime Northwest and North-east and North, and also East and Southeastward, and very much broader sea then was at said entrance, and that hee passed by diuers Ilands in that sayling. And that at the entrance of this said Strait, there is on the North-west coast thereof, a great Hedland or Iland, with an exceeding high pinacle or spired Rocke, like a pillar, thereupon."
He landed and saw people clothed in the skins of beasts; and he reported the land fruitful, and rich in gold, silver, and pearl.
Bancroft and some other historians consider the story of Juan de Fuca's entrance to Puget Sound the purest fiction, claiming that his descriptions are inaccurate and that no pinnacled or spired rock is to be found in the vicinity mentioned.
Meares, however, and many people of intelligence gave it credence ; and when we consider the differences in the descriptions of other places by early navigators, it is not difficult to believe that Juan de Fuca really sailed into the strait that now bears his name. Schwatka speaks of him as, " An explorer - if such he may be called - who never entered this beautiful sheet of water, and who owes his immortality to an audacious guess, which came so near the truth as to deceive the scientific world for many a century."
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ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
The Strait of Juan de Fuca is more than eighty miles long and from ten to twelve wide, with a depth of about six hundred feet. At the eastern end it widens into an open sea or sound where beauty blooms like a rose, and from which forest-bordered water-ways wind slenderly in every direction.
From this vicinity, on clear days, may be seen the Olym- pic Mountains floating in the west; Mount Rainier, in the south; the lower peaks of the Crown Mountains in the north ; and Mount Baker - or Kulshan, as the Indians named it - in the east.
The Island of San Juan, lying east of the southern end of Vancouver Island, is perhaps the most famous, and cer- tainly the most historic, on the Pacific Coast. It is the island that barely escaped causing a declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States, over the international boundary, in the late fifties. For so small an island, - it is not more than fifteen miles long, by from six to eight wide, - it has figured importantly in large affairs.
The earliest trouble over the boundary between Van- couver Island and Washington arose in 1854. Both coun- tries claimed ownership of San Juan and other islands near by, the Oregon Treaty of 1846 having failed to make it clear whether the boundary was through the Canal de Haro or the Strait of Rosario.
I. N. Ebey, American Collector of Customs, learning that several thousand head of sheep, cattle, and hogs had been shipped to San Juan without compliance with customs regulations, visited the island and was promptly insulted by a British justice of the peace. The Otter made her appearance in the harbor, bearing James Douglas, gov- ernor of Vancouver Island and vice-admiral of the British navy; but nothing daunted, Mr. Ebey stationed In- spector Webber upon the island, declaring that he would
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ALASKA : THE GREAT COUNTRY
continue to discharge his official duties. The final trouble arose, however, in 1859, when an American resi- dent shot a British pig ; and serious trouble was precipi- tated as swiftly as when a United States warship was blown up in Havana Harbor. General Harney hastily established military quarters on one end of the island, known as the American Camp, Captain Pickett trans- ferring his company from Fort Bellingham for this pur- pose. English Camp was established on the northern
end. Warships kept guard in the harbors. Joint occu- pation was agreed upon, and until 1871 the two camps were maintained, the friendliest social relations existing between them. In that year the Emperor of Germany was chosen as arbitrator, and decided in favor of the United States, the British withdrawing the following year.
Until 1895 the British captain's house still stood upon its beautiful bluff, a thousand feet above the winding blue bay, the shore descending in steep, splendid terraces to the water, stairwayed in stone, and grown with old and noble trees. Macadam roads led several miles across the island ; the old block-house of pioneer days remained at the water's edge ; and clustered around the old parade ground - now, alas ! a meadow of hay - were the quar- ters of the officers, overgrown with English ivy. The captain's house, which has now been destroyed by fire, was a low, eight-roomed house with an immense fireplace in each room ; the old claret- and ivory-striped wall-paper - which had been brought "around the Horn " at immense cost - was still on the walls. Gay were the scenes and royal the hospitalities of this house in the good days of the sixties. Its site, commanding the straits, is one of the most effective on the Pacific Coast ; and at the present writing it is extremely probable that a captain's house may again rise among the old trees on the terraced bluff - but not for the occupancy of a British captain.
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ALASKA : THE GREAT COUNTRY
Every land may occasionally have a beautiful sunset, and many lands have gorgeous and brilliant ones ; but nowhere have they such softly burning, milky-rose, opaline effects as on this inland sea.
Their enchanting beauty is doubtless due to the many wooded islands which lift dark green forestated hills around open sweeps of water, whereon settle delicate mists. When the fires of sunrise or of sunset sink through these mists, the splendor of coloring is marvellous and not equalled anywhere. It is as though the whole sound were one great opal, which had broken apart and flung its escaping fires of rose, amethyst, amber, and green up through the maze of trembling pearl above it. The un- usual beauty of its sunsets long ago gave Puget Sound the poetic name of Opal-Sea or Sea of Opal.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
KASA-AN
CHAPTER II
AFTER passing the lighthouse on the eastern end of Vancouver Island, Alaskan steamers continue on a north- erly course and enter the Gulf of Georgia through Active Pass, between Mayne and Galiana islands. This pass is guarded by a light on Mayne Island, to the steamer's star- board, going north.
The Gulf of Georgia is a bold and sweeping body of water. It is usually of a deep violet or a warm purplish gray in tone. At its widest, it is fully sixty miles - al- though its average width is from twenty to thirty miles -and it rolls between the mainland and Vancouver Island for more than one hundred miles.
The real sea lover will find an indescribable charm in this gulf, and will not miss an hour of it. It has the boldness and the sweep of the ocean, but the setting, the coloring, and the fragrance of the forest-bordered, snow- peaked sea. A few miles above the boundary, the Fraser River pours its turbulent waters into the gulf, upon whose dark surface they wind and float for many miles, at sun- rise and at sunset resembling broad ribbons of palest old rose crinkled over waves of silvery amber silk. At times these narrow streaks widen into still pools of color that seem to float suspended over the heavier waters of the gulf. Other times they draw lines of different color everywhere, or drift solid banks of smoky pink out to meet others of clear blue, with only the faintest thread of pearl to separate them. These islands of color constitute
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ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
one of the charms of this part of the voyage to Alaska ; along with the velvety pressure of the winds ; the pic- turesque shores, high and wooded in places, and in others sloping down into the cool shadowy bays where the shingle is splashed by spent waves; and the snow-peaks linked above the clouds on either side of the steamer.
Splendid phosphorescent displays are sometimes wit- nessed in the gulf, but are more likely to occur farther north, in Grenville, or one of the other narrow channels, where their brilliancy is remarkable.
Tourists to whom a whale is a novelty will be gratified, without fail, in this vicinity. They are always seen sporting about the ships, -sometimes in deadly conflict with one another, - and now and then uncomfortably near.
In December, 1907, an exciting battle between a whale and a large buck was witnessed by the passengers and crew of the steamer Cassiar, in one of the bays north of Vancouver, on the vessel's regular run from that city to northern ports.
When the Cassiar appeared upon the scene, the whale was making furious and frequent attacks upon the buck. Racing through the water, which was lashed into foam on all sides by its efforts, it would approach close to its steadily swimming prey and then disappear, only to come to the surface almost under the deer. This was repeated a number of times, strangely enough without apparent injury to the deer. Again, the whale would make its appearance at the side of the deer and repeatedly endeavor to strike it with its enormous tail ; but the deer was suf- ficiently wise to keep so close to the whale that this could not be accomplished, notwithstanding the crushing blows dealt by the monster.
The humane passengers entreated the captain to go to the rescue of the exhausted buck and save it from inevi- table death. The captain ordered full speed ahead, and
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ALASKA: THE GREAT COUNTRY
at the approach of the steamer the whale curved up out of the water and dived gracefully into the sea, as though making a farewell, apologetic bow on its final dis- appearance.
Whereupon the humane passengers shot the helpless and worn-out buck at the side of the steamer, and he was hauled aboard.
It may not be out of place to devote a few pages to the average tourist. To the one who loves Alaska and the divinely blue, wooded, and snow-pearled ways that lead to its final and sublime beauty, it is an enduring mystery why certain persons - usually women - should make this voyage. Their minds and their desires never rise above a whale or an Indian basket; and unless the one is to be seen and the other to be priced, they spend their time in the cabin, reading, playing cards, or telling one another what they have at home.
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