USA > Alaska > Alaska, the great country > Part 30
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These waters are now patrolled by vessels of both na- tions ; but Japanese vessels are frequently transgressors, the Japanese claiming that they are not bound by the regulations of the Paris Tribunal. Both British and Ameri- can sealers have been known to fly the Japanese flag when engaged in pelagic sealing in forbidden waters. Trouble of a serious nature with Japan may yet arise over this matter.
The habits and the life of the seal are exceedingly interest- ing. In many ways these graceful creatures are startlingly human-like, particularly in their appealing, reproachful looks when a death-dealing blow is about to be struck. Some, it is true, yield to a violent, fighting rage, - grow- ing more furious as their helplessness is realized, - and at such times the eyes flame with the green and red fire of hate and passion, and resemble the eyes of a human being possessed with rage and terror.
The bull seals have been called "beach-masters," " polygamists," and "harem-lords."
These old bulls, then, are the first to return to the breeding-grounds in the spring. They begin to " haul out " upon the rocks during the first week in May. Each lo- cates upon his chosen " ground," and awaits the arrival of the females, which does not occur until the last of June. While awaiting their arrival, incessant and terrible fight- ing takes place among the bulls, frequently to the death - so stubbornly and so ferociously does each struggle to
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retain the place he has selected in which to receive the females of his harem. The older the bull the more suc- cessful is he both in love and in war; and woe betide any young and bold bachelor who dares to pause for but an instant and cast tempting glances at a gay and coquettish young favorite under an old bull's protection. There is instant battle -in which the festive bachelor invariably goes down.
When the females arrive, a very orgy of fighting takes place. An old bull swaggers down to the water, receives a graceful and beautiful female, and beguiles her to his harem. If he but turn his back upon her for an instant another bull seizes her and bears her bodily to his harem ; the first bull returns, and the fight is on -the female sometimes being torn to pieces between them, because neither will give her up. The bulls do not mind a small matter like that, however, there being so many females ; and it is never the desire for a special female that impels to the fray, but the human-like lust to triumph over one who dares to set himself up as a rival.
The old bulls take possession of the lower rocks, and these they hold from all comers, yet fighting, fighting, fighting, till they are frequently but half-alive masses of torn flesh and fur.
The bachelors are at last forced, foot by foot, past the harems to the higher grounds, where they herd alone. As they are supposed to be the only seals killed for their skin, they are forced by the drivers away from the vicin- ity of the rookeries, to the higher slopes.
These graceful creatures drag themselves on shore with pitiable awkwardness and helplessness. They proceed painfully, with a kind of rolling movement, uttering plaintive sounds that are neither barks nor bleats. They easily become heated to exhaustion, and pause at every opportunity to rest. When they sink down for this pur-
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pose, they either separate their hind flippers, or draw them both to one side.
They are driven carefully and are permitted frequent rests, as heating ruins the fur. They usually rest and cool off, after reaching the killing grounds, while the men are eating breakfast. By seven o'clock the butchery begins.
The seals are still brutally clubbed to death. The killers are spattered with blood and bloody tufts of hair ; and by-standers are said to have been horribly pelted by eyeballs bursting like bullets from the sockets, at the force of the blows. The killers aim to stun at the first blow ; but the poor things are often literally beaten to death. In either event a sharp stabbing-knife is in- stantly run to its heart, to bleed it. The crimson life- stream gushes forth, there is a violent quivering of the great, jelly-like bulk ; then, all is still. It is no longer a living, beautiful, pleading-eyed animal, but only a portion of some dainty gentlewoman's cloak. I have not seen it with my own eyes, but I have heard, in ways which make me refuse to discredit it, that sometimes the skinning is begun before the seal is dead ; that sometimes the razor- like knife is run down the belly before it is run to the heart - not in useless cruelty, but because of the great need of haste. The tender, beseeching eyes, touching cries, and unavailing attempts to escape, of the seal that is being clubbed to death, are things to remember for the rest of one's life. Strong men, unused to the horrible sight, flee from it, sick and tortured with the pity of it ; and surely no woman who has ever beheld it could be tempted to buy sealskin.
No effort is made to dispose of the dead bodies of the seals. They are left where they are killed, and the stench arising therefrom is not surpassed even in Belkoffski. It nauseates the white inhabitants of the islands, and drifts out to sea for miles to meet and salute the visitor. It is, however, caviar to the native nostril.
CHAPTER XL
AUTHORITIES differ as to the proper boundaries of Bristol Bay, but it may be said to be the vast indentation of Behring Sea lying east of a line drawn from Unimak Island to the mouth of the Kuskokwim River ; or, pos- sibly, from Scotch Cap to Cape Newenham would be better. The commercial salmon fisheries of this district are on the Ugashik, Egegak, Naknek, Kvichak, Nushagak, and Wood rivers and the sea-waters leading to them.
Nushagak Bay is about fifteen miles long and ten wide. It is exceedingly shallow, and is obstructed by sand-bars and shoals. The Redoubt-Alexandra was established at the mouth of the river in 1834 by Kolmakoff.
The rivers are all large and, with one exception, - Wood River, - drain the western slope of the Aleutian Chain which, beginning on the western shore of Cook Inlet, extends down the Aliaska Peninsula, crowning it with fire and snow.
There are several breaks in the range which afford easy portages from Bristol Bay to the North Pacific. The rivers flowing into Bristol Bay have lake sources and have been remarkably rich spawning-streams for salmon.
The present chain of islands known as the Aleutians is supposed to have once belonged to the peninsula and to have been separated by volcanic disturbances which are so common in the region.
The interior of the Bristol Bay country has not been explored. It is sparsely populated by Innuit, or Eskimo,
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Copyright by F. II. Nowell, Seattle
FOUR BEAUTIES OF CAPE PRINCE OF WALES WITH SLED REINDEER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY HERD
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who live in primitive fashion in small settlements, - usu- ally on high bluffs near a river. They make a poor living by hunting and fishing. Their food is largely salmon, fresh and dried; game, seal, and walrus are delicacies. The " higher " the food the greater delicacy is it con- sidered. Decayed salmon-heads and the decaying carcass of a whale that has been cast upon the beach, by their own abominable odors summon the natives for miles to a feast. Their food is all cooked with rancid oil.
Their dwellings are more primitive than those of the island natives, for they have clung to the barabaras and other ancient structures that were in use among the Aleutians when the Russians first discovered them. Near these dwellings are the drying-frames - so familiar along the Yukon - from which hang thousands of red-fleshed salmon drying in the sun. Little houses are erected on rude pole scaffoldings, high out of the reach of dogs, for the storing of this fish when it has become " ukala " and for other provisions. These are everywhere known as " caches."
The Innuit's summer home is very different from his winter home. It is erected above ground, of small pole frames, roofed with skins and open in front - somewhat like an Indian tepee. There is no opening in the roof, all cooking being done in the open air in summer.
These natives were once thrifty hunters and trappers of wild animals, from the reindeer down to the beaver and marten, but the cannery life has so debauched them that they have no strength left for this energetic work.
Formerly every Innuit settlement contained a " kashga," or town hall, which was built after the fashion of all winter houses, only larger. There the men gathered to talk and manage the affairs of their small world. It was a kind of " corner grocery " or " back-room " of a village drug store. The men usually slept there, and in the
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mornings their wives arose, cooked their breakfast, and carried it to them in the kashga, turning their backs while their husbands ate -it being considered exceed- ingly bad form for a woman to look at a man when he is eating in public, although they think nothing of bathing together. The habits of the people are nauseatingly filthy, and the interiors of their dwellings must be seen to be appreciated.
Near the canneries the natives obtain work during the summer, but soon squander their wages in debauches and are left, when winter arrives, in a starving condition.
The season is very short in Bristol Bay, but the "run " of salmon is enormous. When this district is operating thirteen canneries, it packs each day two hundred and fifty thousand fish. In Nushagak Bay the fish frequently run so heavily that they catch in the propellers of launches and stop the engines.
Bristol Bay has always been a dangerous locality to navigate. It is only by the greatest vigilance and the most careful use of the lead, upon approaching the shore, that disaster can be averted.
Nearly all the canneries in this region are operated by the Alaska Packers Association, which also operates the greater number of canneries in Alaska.
In 1907 the value of food fishes taken from Alaskan waters was nearly ten millions of dollars ; in the forty years since the purchase of that country, one hundred millions, although up to 1885 the pack was insignificant. At the present time it exceeds by more than half a million cases the entire pack of British Columbia, Puget Sound, Columbia River, and the Oregon and Washington coasts.
In 1907 forty-four canneries packed salmon in Alaska, and those on Bristol Bay were of the most importance.
The Nushagak River rivals the Karluk as a salmon stream, but not in picturesque beauty. The Nushagak
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and Wood rivers were both closed during the past season by order of the President, to protect the salmon industry of the future.
Cod is abundant in Behring Sea, Bristol Bay, and south of the Aleutian, Shumagin, and Kadiak islands, covering an area of thirty thousand miles. Halibut is plentiful in all the waters of southeastern Alaska. This stupid-look- ing fish is wiser than it appears, and declines to swim into the parlor of a net. It is still caught by hook and line, is packed in ice, and sent, by regular steamer, to Seattle- whence it goes in refrigerator cars to the markets of the east.
Herring, black cod, candle-fish, smelt, tom-cod, white- fish, black bass, flounders, clams, crabs, mussels, shrimp, and five species of trout-steelhead, Dolly Varden, cut- throat, rainbow, and lake-are all found in abundance in Alaska.
Cook, entering Bristol Bay in 1778, named it for the Earl of Bristol, with difficulty avoiding its shoals. He saw the shoaled entrance to a river which he called Bristol River, but which must have been the Nushagak. He saw many salmon leaping, and found them in the maws of cod.
The following day, seeing a high promontory, he sent Lieutenant Williamson ashore. Possession of the country in his Majesty's name was taken, and a bottle was left containing the names of Cook's ships and the date of dis- covery. To the promontory was given the name which it retains of Cape Newenham.
Proceeding up the coast Cook met natives who were of a friendly disposition, but who seemed unfamiliar with the sight of white men and vessels ; they were dressed somewhat like Aleutians, wearing, also, skin hoods and wooden bonnets.
The ships were caught in the shoals of Kuskokwim Bay, but Cook does not appear to have discovered this great
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river, which is the second in size of Alaskan rivers and whose length is nine hundred miles. In the bay the tides have a fifty-foot rise and fall, entering in a tremendous bore. This vicinity formerly furnished exceedingly fine black bear skins.
Cook's surgeon died of consumption and was buried on an island which was named Anderson, in his memory. Upon an island about four leagues in circuit a rude sledge was found, and the name of Sledge Island was bestowed upon it. He entered Norton Sound, but only " suspected " the existence of a mighty river, completely missing the Yukon.
He named the extreme western point of North America, which plunges out into Behring Sea, almost meeting the East Cape of Siberia, Cape Prince of Wales. In the centre of the strait are the two Diomede Islands, between which the boundary line runs, one belonging to Russia, the other to the United States.
Cook sailed up into the Frozen Ocean and named Icy Cape, narrowly missing disaster in the ice pack. There he saw many herds of sea-horses, or walrus, lying upon the ice in companies numbering many hundreds. They huddled over one another like swine, roaring and braying ; so that in the night or in a fog they gave warning of the nearness of ice. Some members of the herd kept watch ; they aroused those nearest to them and warned them of the approach of enemies. Those, in turn, warned others, and so the word was passed along in a kind of ripple until the entire herd was awake. When fired upon, they tumbled one over another into the sea, in the utmost confu- sion. The female defends her young to the very last, and at the sacrifice of her own life, if necessary, fighting fero- ciously.
The walrus does not in the least resemble a horse, and it is difficult to understand whence the name arose. It is
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somewhat like a seal, only much larger. Those found by Cook in the Arctic were from nine to twelve feet in length and weighed about a thousand pounds. Their tusks have always been valuable, and have greatly increased in value of recent years, as the walrus diminish in number.
Cook named Cape Denbigh and Cape Darby on either side of Norton Bay ; and Besborough Island south of Cape Denbigh.
Going ashore, he encountered a family of natives which he and Captain King describe in such wise that no one, having read the description, can ever enter Norton Sound without recalling it. The family consisted of a man, his wife, and a child ; and a fourth person who bore the human shape, and that was all, for he was the most horribly, the most pitiably, deformed cripple ever seen, heard of, or im- agined. The husband was blind ; and all were extremely unpleasant in appearance. The underlips were bored.
These natives would have evidently sold their souls for iron. For four knives made out of old iron hoop, they traded four hundred pounds of fish -and Cook must have lost his conscience overboard with his anchor in Kuskokwim Bay. He recovered the anchor !
He gave the girl-child a few beads, "whereupon the mother burst into tears, then the father, then the cripple, and, at last, the girl herself."
Many different passages, or sentences, have been called " the most pathetic ever written "; but, myself, I confess that I have never been so powerfully or so lastingly moved by any sentence as I was when I first read that one of Cook's. Almost equalling it, however, in pathos is the simple account of Captain King's of his meeting with the same family. He was on shore with a party obtaining wood when these people approached in a canoc. He beck- oned to them to land, and the husband and wife came ashore. He gave the woman a knife, saying that he would
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give her a larger one for some fish. She made signs for him to follow them.
"I had proceeded with them about a mile, when the man, in crossing a stony beach, fell down and cut his foot very much. This made me stop, upon which the woman pointed to the man's eyes, which, I observed, were covered with a thick, white film. He afterward kept close to his wife, who apprised him of the obstacles in his way. The woman had a little child on her back, covered with a hood, and which I took for a bundle until I heard it cry. At about two miles distant we came upon their open skin-boat, which was turned on its side, the convex part toward the wind, and served for their house. I was now made to perform a singular operation upon the man's
eyes. First, I was directed to hold my breath ; afterward, to breathe on the diseased eyes ; and next, to spit on them. The woman then took both my hands and, pressing them to his stomach, held them there while she related some calamitous history of her family, pointing sometimes to her husband, sometimes to a frightful cripple belonging to the family, and sometimes to her child."
Berries, birch, willow, alders, broom, and spruce were found. Beer was brewed of the spruce.
Cook now sailed past that divinely beautiful shore upon which St. Michael's is situated, and named Stuart Island and Cape Stephens, but did not hear the Yukon calling him. He did find shoal water, very much discolored and muddy, and "inferred that a considerable river runs into the sea." If he had only guessed how considerable ! Passing south, he named Clerk's, Gore's, and Pinnacle Islands, and returned to Unalaska.
CHAPTER XLI
A FAMOUS engineering feat was the building of the White Pass and Yukon Railway from Skagnay to White Horse. Work was commeneed on this road in May, 1898, and finished in January, 1900.
Its completion opened the interior of Alaska and the Klondike to the world, and brought enduring fame to Mr. M. J. Heney, the builder, and Mr. E. C. Hawkins, the engineer.
In 1897 Mr. Heney went North to look for a pass through the Coast Range. Up to that time travel to the Klondike had been about equally divided between the Dyea, Skaguay, and Jack Dalton trails ; the route by way of the Stikine and Hootalinqua rivers ; and the one to St. Michael's by ocean steamers and thence up the Yu- kon by small and, at that time, inferior steamers.
Mr. Heney and his engineers at once grasped the pos- sibilities of the "Skaguay Trail." This pass was first explored and surveyed by Captain Moore, of Mr. Ogil- vie's survey of June, 1887, who named it White Pass, for Honorable Thomas White, Canadian Minister of the Interior. It could not have been more appropriately named, even though named for a man, as there is never a day in the warmest weather that snow-peaks are not in view to the traveller over this pass ; while from Sep- tember to June the trains wind through sparkling and unbroken whiteness.
Mr. Heney, coming out to finance the road, faced serious
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difficulties and discouragements in America. Owing to the enormous cost of this short piece of road, as planned, as well as the daring nature of its conception, the bold- est financiers of this country, upon investigation, declined to entertain the proposition.
Mr. Heney was a young man who, up to that time, although possessed of great ability, had made no marked success - his opportunity not having as yet presented itself.
Recovering from his first disappointment, he undaunt- edly voyaged to England, where some of the most conserva- tive capitalists, moved and convinced by his enthusiasm and his clear descriptions of the northern country and its future, freely financed the railroad whose successful build- ing was to become one of the most brilliant achievements of the century.
They were entirely unacquainted with Mr. Heney, and after this proof of confidence in him and his project, the word " fail " dropped out of the English language, so far as the intrepid young builder was concerned.
" After that," he said, " I could not fail."
He returned and work was at once begun. A man big of body, mind, and heart, he was specially fitted for the perilous and daring work. Calm, low-voiced, compelling in repressed power and unswerving courage and will, he was a harder worker than any of his men.
Associated with him was a man equally large and equally gifted. Mr. Hawkins is one of the most famous engineers of this country, if not of any country.
The difficult miles that these two men tramped; the long, long hours of each day that they worked; the hard- ships that they endured, unflinching ; the appalling ob- stacles that they overcame -are a part of Alaskan history.
The first twenty miles of this road from Skaguay cost
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two millions of dollars ; the average cost to the summit was a hundred thousand dollars a mile, and now and then a single mile cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The road is built on mountainsides so precipitous that men were suspended from the heights above by ropes, to prevent disaster while cutting grades. At one point a cliff a hundred and twenty feet high, eighty feet deep, and twenty feet in width was blasted entirely away for the road-bed.
Thirty-five hundred men in all were employed in con- structing the road, but thirty of whom died, of accident and disease, during the construction. Taking into con- sideration the perilous nature of the work, the rigors of the winter climate, and the fact that work did not cease during the worst weather, this is a remarkably small pro- portion.
A force of finer men never built a railroad. Many were prospectors, eager to work their way into the land of gold ; others were graduates of eastern colleges; all were self- respecting, energetic men.
Skaguay is a thousand miles from Seattle; and from the latter city and Vancouver, men, supplies, and all materials were shipped. This was not one of the least of the hin- drances to a rapid completion of the road. Rich strikes were common occurrences at that time. In one day, after the report of a new discovery in the Atlin country had reached headquarters, fifteen hundred men drew their pay and stampeded for the new gold fields.
But all obstacles to the building of the road were sur- mounted. Within eighteen months from the date of be- ginning work it was completed to White Horse, a distance of one hundred and eleven miles, and trains were running regularly.
A legend tells us that an old Indian chief saw the canoe
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of his son upset in the waves lashed by the terrific winds that blow down between the mountains. The lad was drowned before the helpless father's eyes, and in his sor- row the old chief named the place Shkag-ua, or " Home of the North Wind." It has been abbreviated to Skaguay; and has been even further disfigured by a w, in place of the u.
Between salt water and the foot of White Pass Trail, two miles up the canyon, in the winter of 1897-1898, ten thousand men were camped. Some were trying to get their outfits packed over the trail; others were impatiently waiting for the completion of the wagon road which George A. Brackett was building. This road was completed almost to the summit when the railroad overtook it and bought its right of way. It is not ten years old; yet it is always called "the old Brackett road."
At half-past nine of a July morning our train left Skaguay for White Horse. We traversed the entire length of the town before entering the canyon. There are low, brown flats at the mouth of the river, which spreads over them in shallow streams fringed with alders and cottonwoods.
Above, on both sides, rose the gray, stony cliffs. Here and there were wooded slopes ; others were rosy with fire- weed that moved softly, like clouds.
We soon passed the ruined bridge of the Brackett road, the water brawling noisily, gray-white, over the stones.
Our train was a long one drawn by four engines. There were a baggage-car, two passenger-cars, and twenty flat and freight cars loaded with boilers, machinery, cattle, chickens, merchandise, and food-stuffs of all kinds.
After crossing Skaguay River the train turns back, climbing rapidly, and Skaguay and Lynn Canal are seen shiningin the distance. . . . We turn again. The river foams between mountains of stone, hundreds of feet below
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- so far below that the trees growing sparsely along its banks seem as the tiniest shrubs.
The Brackett road winds along the bed of the river, while the old White Pass, or Heartbreak, Trail climbs and falls along the stone and crumbling shale of the opposite mountain - in many places rising to an altitude of several hundred feet, in others sinking to a level with the river.
The Brackett road ends at White Pass City, where, ten years ago, was the largest tent-city in the world ; and where now are only the crumbling ruins of a couple of log cabins, silence, and loneliness.
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