USA > Alaska > Alaska, the great country > Part 3
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exercised in securing them. They tremble for an instant between the tongue and the palate, and are gone, leaving a sensation as of dewdrops flavored with wine ; a memory as haunting and elusive as an exquisite desire known once and never known again.
In Dean Canal, Vancouver found the water almost fresh at low tide, on account of the streams and cascades pouring into it.
There he found, also, a remarkable Indian habitation ; a square, large platform built in a clearing, thirty feet above the ground. It was supported by several uprights and had no covering, but a fire was burning upon one end of it.
In Cascade Canal he visited an Indian village, and found the construction of the houses there very curious. They apparently backed straight into a high, perpendicu- lar rock cliff, which supported their rears; while the fronts and sides were sustained by slender poles about eighteen feet in height.
Vancouver leaves the method of reaching the entrances to these houses to the reader's imagination.
It was in this vicinity that Vancouver first encountered "split-lipped " ladies. Although he had grown accustomed to distortions and mutilations among the various tribes he had visited, he was quite unprepared for the repulsive style which now confronted him.
A horizontal incision was made about three-tenths of an inch below the upper part of the lower lip, extending from one corner of the month to the other, entirely through the flesh ; this orifice was then by degrees stretched sufficiently to admit an ornament made of wood, which was confined close to the gums of the lower jaws, and whose external surface projected horizontally.
These wooden ornaments were oval, and resembled a small platter, or dish, made concave on both sides ; they
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were of various lengths, the smallest about two inches and a half ; the largest more than three inches long, and an inch and a half broad.
They were about one-fifth of an inch thick, and had a groove along the middle of the outside edge to receive the lip.
These hideous things were made of fir, and were highly polished. Ladies of the greatest distinction wore the largest labrets. The size also increased with age. They have been described by Vancouver, Cook, Lisiansky, La Perouse, Dall, Schwatka, Emmans, and too many others to name here ; but no description can quite picture them to the liveliest imagination. When the " wooden trough " was removed, the incision gave the appearance of two mouths.
All chroniclers unite as to the hideousness and repulsive- ness of the practice.
Of the Indians in the vicinity of Fisher Channel, Van- couver remarks, without a glimmer of humor himself, that the vivacity of their countenance indicated a lively genius ; and that, from their frequent bursts of laughter, it would appear that they were great humorists, for their mirth was not confined to their own people, but was fre- quently at the expense of his party. They seemed a happy, cheerful people. This is an inimitable English touch ; a thing that no American would have written, save with a laugh at himself.
Poison Cove in Mussel Canal, or Portlock Canal, was so named by Vancouver, whose men ate roasted mussels there. Several were soon seized with numbness of the faces and extremities. In spite of all that was done to relieve their sufferings, one - John Carter -died and was buried in a quiet bay which was named for him.
Millbank Sound, named by Mr. Duncan before Van- couver's arrival, is open to the ocean, but there is only
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an hour's run before the shelter of the islands is regained ; so that, even when the weather is rough, but slight dis- comfort is experienced by the most susceptible passengers. The finest scenery on the regular steamer route, until the great snow fields and glaciers are reached, is considered by many well acquainted with the route, to lie from Mill- bank on to Dixon Entrance. The days are not long enough now for all the beauty that weighs upon the senses
like caresses. At evening, the sunset, blooming like a rose upon these splendid reaches, seems to drop perfumed petals of color, until the still air is pink with them, and the steamer pushes them aside as it glides through with faint throbbings that one feels rather than hears.
Through Finlayson Channel, Heikish Narrows, Graham, Fraser, and Mckay reaches, Grenville Channel, -through all these enchanting water avenues one drifts for two hundred miles, passing from one reach to another without suspecting the change, unless familiar with the route, and so close to the wooded shores that one is tormented with the desire to reach out one's hand and strip the cool green spruce and cedar needles from the drooping branches.
Each water-way has its own distinctive features. In Finlayson Channel the forestation is a solid mountain of green on each side, growing down to the water and ex- tending over it in feathery, flat sprays. Here the reflec- tions are so brilliant and so true on clear days, that the dividing line is not perceptible to the vision. The moun- tains rise sheer from the water to a great height, with snow upon their crests and occasional cataracts foaming musically down their fissures. Helmet Mountain stands on the port side of the channel, at the entrance.
There's something about "Sarah " Island! I don't know what it is, and none of the mariners with whom I discussed this famous island seems to know; but the fact remains that they are all attached to "Sarah."
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Down in Lama Pass, or possibly in Fitzhugh Sound, one hears casual mention of "Sarah" in the pilot-house or chart-room. Questioned, they do not seem to be able to name any particular feature that sets her apart from the other islands of this run.
" Well, there she is!" exclaimed the captain, at last. " Now, you'll see for yourself what there is about Sarah."
It is a long, narrow island, lying in the northern end of Finlayson Channel. Tolmie Channel lies between it and Princess Royal Island; Heikish Narrows - a quarter of a mile wide - between it and Roderick Island. Through Heikish the steamer passes into the increasing beauty of Graham Reach.
"Now, there!" said the captain. " If you can tell me what there is about that island, you can do more than any skipper I know can do; but just the same, there isn't one of us that doesn't look forward to passing Sarah, that doesn't give her particular attention while we are passing, and look back at her after we're in Graham Reach. She isn't so little . nor so big. . The Lord knows she isn't so pretty !" He was silent for a moment. Then he burst out suddenly: "I'm blamed if I know what it is! But it's just so with some women. There's something about a woman, now and then, and a man can't tell, to save his soul, what it is; only, he doesn't forget her. You see, a captain meets hundreds of women; and he has to be nice to every one. If he is smart, he can make every woman think she is just running the ship - but Lord! he wouldn't know one of them if he met her next week on the street . . . only now and then . . . in years and years . .. one! And that one he can't forget. He doesn't know what there is about her, any more than he knows what there is about 'Sarah.' Maybe he doesn't know the color of her eyes nor the color of her hair. Maybe she's married, and maybe she's single-for that
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isn't it. He isn't in love with her-at least I guess he isn't. It's just that she has a way of coming back to him. Say he sees the Northern Lights along about midnight - and that woman comes like a flash and stands there with him. After a while it gets to be a habit with him when he gets into a port, to kind of look over the crowds for some one. For a minute or two he feels almost as if he expected some one to meet him ; then he knows he's dis- appointed about somebody not being there. He asks himself right out who it is. And all at once he remem- bers. Then he calls himself an ass. If she was the kind of woman that runs to docks to see boats come in, he'd laugh and gas with her - but he wouldn't be thinking of her till she pushed herself on him again."
The captain sighed unconsciously, and taking down a chart from the ceiling, spread it out upon a shelf and bent over it. I looked at Sarah, with her two lacy cascades falling like veils from her crown of snow. Already she was fading in the distance -yet how distinguished was she! How set apart from all others!
Then I fell to thinking of the women. What kind are they -the ones that stay! The one that comes at mid- night and stands silent beside a man when he sees the Northern Lights, even though he is not in love with her -- what kind of woman is she ?
" Captain," I said, a little later, "I want to add some- thing to Sarah's name."
" What is it?" said he, scowling over the chart.
"I want to name her ' Sarah, the Remembered.'" He smiled.
" All right," said he, promptly. "I'll write that on the chart."
And what an epitaph that would be for a woman - " The Remembered!" If one only knew upon whose bit of marble to grave it.
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Fraser and McKay reaches follow Graham, and then is entered Wright Sound, a body of water of great, and practically unknown, depth. This small sound feeds six channels leading in different directions, one of which - Verney Pass - leads through Boxer Reach into the famed magnificence and splendor of Gardner Canal, whose waters push for fifty miles through dark and towering walls. An immense, glaciered mountain extends across the end of the canal.
Gardner Canal - named by Vancouver for Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, to whose friendship and recommendation he was indebted for the command of the expedition to Nootka and the Northwest Coast-is doubtless the grand- est of British Columbian inlets or fiords. At last, the favorite two adjectives of the Vancouver expedition - "tremendous " and "stupendous" -seem to have been most appropriately applied. Lieutenant Whidbey, explor- ing it in the summer of 1793, found that it " presented to the eye one rude mass of almost naked rocks, rising into rugged mountains, more lofty than he had before seen, whose towering summits, seeming to overhang their bases, gave them a tremendous appearance. The whole was cov- ered with perpetual ice and snow that reached, in the gullies formed between the mountains, close down to the high-water mark; and many waterfalls of various dimen- sions were seen to descend in every direction."
This description is quoted in full because it is an excel- lent example of the descriptions given out by Vancouver and his associates, who, if they ever felt a quickening of the pulses in contemplation of these majestic scenes, were certainly successful in concealing such human emotions from the world. True, they did occasionally chronicle a "pleasant " breeze, a "pleasing" landscape which "re- minded them of England ; " and even, in the vicinity of Port Townsend, they were moved to enthusiasm over a
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" landscape almost as enchantingly beautiful as the most elegantly finished pleasure-grounds in Europe," which called to their remembrance "certain delightful and be- loved situations in Old England."
But apparently, having been familiar only with pleasing pastoral scenes, they were not able to rise to an apprecia- tion of the sublime in nature. "Elegant " is the mineing and amusing adjective applied frequently to snow moun- tains by Vancouver ; he mentions, also, "spacious mead- ows, elegantly adorned with trees ; " but when they arrive at the noble beauty which arouses in most beholders a feeling of exaltation and an appreciation of the marvellous handiwork of God, Vancouver and his associates, having never seen anything of the kind in England, find it only "tremendous," or " stupendous," or a "rude mass." They would have probably described the chaste, exquisite cone of Shishaldin on Unimak Island - as peerless and apart in its delicate beauty among mountains as Venice is among cities - as " a mountain covered with snow to the very sea and having a most elegant point."
There are many mountains more than twice the height of Shishaldin, but there is nowhere one so beautiful.
Great though our veneration must be for those brave mariners of early years, their apparent lack of appreciation of the scenery of Alaska is to be deplored. It has fastened upon the land an undeserved reputation for being "rugged" and "gloomy " - two more of their adjectives ; of being " ice-locked, ice-bound, and ice-bounded." We may par- don them much, but scarcely the adjective " grotesque," as applied to snow mountains.
Grenville Channel is a narrow, lovely reach, extending in a northwestward direction from Wright Sound for forty-five miles, when it merges into Arthur Passage. In its slender course it curves neither to the right nor to the left.
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In this reach, at one o'clock one June day, the thrilling cry of " man overboard" ran over the decks of the Santa Ana. There were more than two hundred passengers aboard, and instantly an excited and dangerous stampede to starboard and stern occurred; but the captain, cool and stern on the bridge, was equal to the perilous situa- tion. A life-boat was ordered lowered, and the steerage passengers were quietly forced to their quarters forward. Life-buoys, life-preservers, chairs, ropes, and other articles were flung overboard, until the water resembled a junk- shop. Through them all, the man's dark, closely shaven head could be seen, his face turned from the steamer, as he swam fiercely toward the shore against a strong cur- rent. The channel was too narrow for the steamer to turn, but a boat was soon in hot pursuit of the man who was struggling fearfully for the shore, and who was sup- posed to be too bewildered to realize that he was headed in the wrong direction. What was our amazement, when the boat finally reached him, to discover, by the aid of glasses, that he was resisting his rescuers. There was a long struggle in the water before he was overcome and dragged into the boat.
He was a pitiable sight when the boat came level with the hurricane deck; wild-eyed, gray-faced, shuddering like a dog; his shirt torn open at the throat and exposing its tragic emaciation; his glance flashing wildly from one face to another, as though in search of one to be trusted- he was an object to command the pity of the coldest heart. In his hand was still gripped his soft hat which he had taken from his head before jumping overboard.
" What is it, my man ?" asked the captain, kindly, ap- proaching him.
The man's wild gaze steadied upon the captain and seemed to recognize him as one in authority.
"They've been trying to kill me, sir, all the way up."
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" Who ?"
The poor fellow shuddered hard.
2041418
"They," he said. "They're on the boat. I had to watch them night and day. I didn't dast go to sleep. It got too much; I couldn't stand it. I had to get ashore. I'd been waiting for this channel because it was so nar- row. I thought the current 'u'd help me get away. I'm a good swimmer."
" A better one never breasted a wave! Take him below. Give him dry clothes and some whiskey, and set a watch over him."
The poor wretch was led away; the crowd drifted after him. Pale and quiet, the captain went back to the chart- room and resumed his slow pacing forth and back.
" I wish tragedies of body and soul would not occur in such beautiful lengths of water," he said at last. "I can never sail through Grenville Channel again without see- ing that poor fellow's haggard face and wild, appealing eyes. And after Gardner Canal, there is not another on the route more beautiful than this! "
Two inlets open into Grenville Channel on the starboard going north, Lowe and Klewnuggit, - both affording safe anchorage to vessels in trouble. Pitt Island forms almost the entire western shore -a beautifully wooded one - of the channel. There is a salmon cannery in Lowe Inlet, beside a clear stream which leaps down from a lake in the mountains. The waters and shores of Grenville have a clear, washed green, which is springlike. In many of the other narrow ways the waters are blue, or purple, or a pale blue-gray; but here they suddenly lead you along the palest of green, shimmering avenues, while mountains of many-shaded green rise steeply on both sides, glimmer- ing away into drifts of snow, which drop threads of silver down the sheer heights.
This shaded green of the mountains is a feature of Alas-
D
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kan landscapes. Great landslides and windfalls cleave their way from summit to sea, mowing down the forests in their path. In time the new growth springs up and streaks the mountain side with lighter green.
Probably one-half of the trees in southeastern Alaska are the Menzies spruce, or Sitka pine. Their needles are sharp and of a bluish green.
The Menzies spruce was named for the Scotch botanist who accompanied Vancouver.
The Alaska cedar is yellowish and lacy in appearance, with a graceful droop to the branches. It grows to an average height of one hundred and fifty feet. Its wood is very valuable.
Arbor-vitæ grows about the glaciers and in cool, dim fiords. Birch, alder, maple, cottonwood, broom, and hemlock-spruce are plentiful, but are of small value, save in the cause of beauty.
The Menzies spruce attains its largest growth in the Alexander Archipelago, but ranges as far south as Cali- fornia. The Douglas fir is not so abundant as it is farther south, nor does it grow to such great size.
The Alaska cedar is the most prized of all the cedars. It is in great demand for ship-building, interior finishing, cabinet-making, and other fine work, because of its close texture, durable quality, and aromatic odor, which some- what resembles that of sandalwood. In early years it was shipped to Japan, where it was made into fancy boxes and fans, which were sold under guise of that scented Oriental wood. Its lasting qualities are remarkable - sills having been found in perfect preservation after sixty years' use in a wet climate. Its pleasant odor is as endur- ing as the wood. The long, slender, pendulous fruits which hang from the branches in season, give the tree a peculiarly graceful and appealing appearance.
The western white pine is used for interior work. It
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is a magnificent tree, as seen in the forest, having bluish green fronds and cones a foot long.
The giant arbor-vitæ attains its greatest size close to the coast. The wood splits easily and makes durable shingles. It takes a brilliant polish and is popular for interior finishing. Its beauty of growth is well known.
Wherever there is sufficient rainfall, the fine-fronded hemlock may be found tracing its lacelike outlines upon the atmosphere. There is no evergreen so delicately lovely as the hemlock. It stands apart, with a little air of its own, as a fastidious small maid might draw her skirts about her when common ones pass by.
The spruces, firs, and cedars grow so closely together that at a distance they appear as a solid wall of shaded green, varying from the lightest beryl tints, on through bluish grays to the most vivid and dazzling emerald tones. At a distance canyons and vast gulches are filled so softly and so solidly that they can scarcely be detected, the trees on the crests of the nearer hills blending into those above, and concealing the deep spaces that sink between.
These forests have no tap-roots. Their roots spread widely upon a thin layer of soil covering solid stone in many cases, and more likely than not this soil is created in the first place by the accumulation of parent needles. Trees spring up in crevices of stone where a bit of sand has sifted, grow, fruit, and shed their needles, and thrive upon them. The undergrowth is so solid that one must cut one's way through it, and the progress of surveyors or prospectors is necessarily slow and difficult.
These forests are constantly drenched in the warm mists precipitated by the Kuro Siwo striking upon the snow, and in this quickening moisture they reach a bril- liancy of coloring that is remarkable. At sunset, thread- ing these narrow channels, one may see mountain upon mountain climbing up to crests of snow, their lower
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wooded slopes covered with mists in palest blue and old rose tones, through which the tips of the trees, crowded close together, shine out in brilliant, many-shaded greens.
After Arthur Passage is that of Malacca, which is dotted by several islands. "Lawyer's," to starboard, bears a red light ; "Lucy," to port, farther north, a fixed white light. Directly opposite " Lucy " - who does not rival " Sarah," or who in the pilot's words " has nothing about her " -is old Metlakahtla.
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Copyright by E. A. Ilegg, Juneau
Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle
DAVIDSON GLACIER
一
CHAPTER III
THE famous ukase of 1821 was issued by the Russian Emperor on the expiration of the twenty-year charter of the Russian-American Company. It prohibited "to all foreign vessels not only to land on the coasts and islands belonging to Russia, as stated above" (including the whole of the northwest coast of America, beginning from Behring Strait to the fifty-first degree of northern lati- tude, also from the Aleutian Islands to the eastern coast of Siberia, as well as along the Kurile Islands from Behring Strait to the south cape of the Island of Urup) " but also to approach them within less than one hundred miles."
After the Nootka Convention in 1790, the Northwest Coast was open to free settlement and trade by the people of any country. It was claimed by the Russians to the Columbia, afterward to the northern end of Vancouver Island ; by the British, from the Columbia to the fifty- fifth degree; and by the United States, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, between Forty-two and Fifty- four, Forty. By the treaty of 1819, by which Florida was ceded to us by Spain, the United States acquired all of Spanish rights and claims on the coast north of the forty-second degree. By its trading posts and regular trad- ing vessels, the United States was actually in possession.
By treaty with the United States in 1824, and with Great Britain in 1825, Russia, realizing her mistake in issuing the ukase of 1821, agreed to Fifty-four, Forty as the limit of her possessions to southward. Of the interior
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regions, Russia claimed the Yukon region ; England, that of the Mackenzie and the country between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains ; the United States, all west of the Rockies, north of Forty-two.
The year previous to the one in which the United States acquired Florida and all Spanish rights on the Pacific Coast north of Forty-two, the United States and England had agreed to a joint occupation of the region. In 1828 this was indefinitely extended, but with the emigration to Oregon in the early forties, this country demanded a settlement of the boundary question.
President Tyler, in his message to Congress in 1843, declared that " the United States rights appertain to all between forty-two degrees and fifty-four degrees and forty minutes."
The leading Democrats of the South were at that time advocating the annexation of Texas. Mr. Calhoun was an ardent champion of the cause, and was endeavoring to effect a settlement with the British minister, offering the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise on the boundary dispute, in his eagerness to acquire Texas without danger of interference.
The compromise was declined by the British minister.
In 1844 slave interests defeated Mr. Van Buren in his aspirations to the presidency. Mr. Clay was nominated instead. The latter opposed the annexation of Texas and advised caution and compromise in the Oregon question ; but the Democrats nominated Polk and under the war-cry of "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight," bore him on to victory. The convention which nominated him advocated the reannexation of Texas and the reoccupation of Oregon ; the two significant words being used to make it clear that Texas had belonged to us before, through the Louisiana purchase ; and Oregon, before the treaty of joint occupa- tion with Great Britain.
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President Polk, in his message, declared that, " beyond all question, the protection of our laws and our jurisdic- tion, civil and criminal, ought to be immediately extended over our citizens in Oregon."
He quoted from the convention which had nominated him that "our title to the country of Oregon as far as Fifty-four, Forty, is clear and unquestionable ; " and he boldly declared "for all of Oregon or none."
John Quincy Adams eloquently supported our title to the country to the line of Fifty-four, Forty in a powerful speech in the House of Representatives.
Yet it soon became apparent that both the Texas policy and the Oregon question could not be successfully carried out during the administration. "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight " as a watchword in a presidential campaign was one thing, but as a challenge to fight flung in the face of Great Britain, it was quite another.
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