USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 3
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Now, if the reader will mark it, right at this time and at this juncture, arose the opportunity which was quickly used by Seward, as Secretary of State, to the ultimate and speedy acquisition of Russian America by the American Union. Those difficulties which the situation revealed in respect to the affairs of the Russian Com- pany conflicting with the desire of the Imperial Government, made much stir in all interested financial circles. A small number of San Francisco capitalists had been for many years passive stock- holders in what was termed by courtesy the American Russian Ice Company-it being nothing more than a name really, inasmuch as very little ever was or has been done in the way of shipping ice to California from Alaska. Nevertheless these gentlemen quickly con-
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
ceived the idea of taking the charter of the Russian Company them- selves, and offered a sum far in excess of what had accrued to the Imperial treasury at any time during the last forty years' tenure of the old contract. The negotiations were briskly proceeding, and were in a fair way to a successful ending, when it informally be- came known to Secretary Seward, who at once had his interest ex- cited in the subject, and speedily arrived at the conclusion that if it was worth paying $5,000,000 by a handful of American merchants for a twenty years' lease of Alaska, it was well worthy the cost of buying it out and out in behalf of the United States ; inasmuch as leasing it, as the Russians intended to, was a virtual surrender of it absolutely for the period named. In this spirit the politic Seward approached the Russian Government, and the final consummation of Alaska's purchase was easily effected,* May, 1867, and formally transferred to our flag on the 18th of October following.
If the Russian Government had not been in an exceedingly friendly state of mind with regard to the American Union, this some- what abrupt determination on its part to make such a virtual gift of its vast Alaskan domain would never have been thought of in St. Petersburg for a moment. Still, it should be well understood from the Muscovitic view, that in presenting Russian America to us, no loss to the glory or the power of the Czar's Crown resulted ; no sur- render of smiling hamlets, towns or cities, no mines or mining, no fish or fishing, no mills, factories or commerce-nothing but her good will and title to a few thousand poor and simple natives, and a large wilderness of mountain, tundra-moor and island-archipelago wholly untouched, unreclaimed by the hand of civilized man. Rus- sia then, as now, suffered and still suffers, from an embarrassment of just such natural wealth as that which we so hopefully claim as our own Alaska.
* $7,200,000 gold was paid by the United States into the Imperial treasury of Russia for the Territory of Alaska ; it is said that most of this was used in St. Petersburg to satisfy old debts and obligations incurred by Alaskan enter- prises, attorneys' fees, etc. So, in short, Russia really gave her American pos- sessions to the American people, reaping no direct emolument or profit whatso- ever from the transfer.
CHAPTER II.
FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
The Vast Area of Alaska .- Difficulty of Comparison, and Access to her Shores save in the Small Area of the Sitkan Region .- Many Americans as Officers of the Government, Merchants, Traders Miners, etc., who have Visited Alaska during the last Eighteen Years. - Full Understanding of Alaskan Life and Resources now on Record .- Beautiful and Extraordinary Features of the Sitkan Archipelago .- The Decaying Town of Wrangel .- The Wonderful Glaciers of this Region .- The Tides. Currents and Winds .- The Forests and Vegetation Omnipresent in this Land-locked Archipelago. -Indigenous Berries .- Gloomy Grandeur of the Canons .- The Sitkan Climate .- Neither Cold nor Warm .- Excessive Humidity .- Stickeen Gold Excitement of 1862 and 1875 .- The Decay of Cassiar .- The Picturesque Bay of Sitka. - The Romance and Terror of Baranov's Establishment there in 1800-1805 .- The Russian Life and Industries at Sitka .- The Contrast between Russian Sitka and American Sitka a Striking One.
" For hot, cold, moist and dry, four champions fierce Strive here for mastery."-MILTON.
THE general contour of Alaska is correctly rendered on any and all charts published to-day ; but it is usually drawn to a very much reduced scale and tucked away into a corner of a large conven- tional map of the United States and Territories, so that it fails, in this manner, to give an adequate idea of its real proportion- and does not commonly impress the eye and mind, as it ought to, at first sight. But a moment's thoughtful observation shows the vast landed extent between that extreme western point of Attoo Island in the occident, and the boundary near Fort Simpson in the orient, to be over 2,000 miles ; while from this Alaskan initial post at Simpson to Point Barrow, in the arctic, it covers the limit of 1,200 geographical miles .* The superficial magnitude of this region
* The superficial area of Alaska is 512,000 square miles; or, in round numbers, just one sixth of the entire extent of the United States and Terri- tories. Population in 1880: Whites, 430; Creole, 1,756 ; Eskimo, 17,617; Alent, 2,145; Athabascan, 3,927; Thlinket, 6,763-total, 33,426.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
is at once well appreciated when the largest States or Territories are each held up in contrast.
The bewildering indentation and endless length of the coast, the thousands of islands and islets, the numerous volcanoes and tower- ing peaks, and the maze of large and small rivers, make a com- parison of Alaska, in any other respect than that of mere super- ficial area, wholly futile when brought into contrast with the rest of the North American continent. Barred out as she is from close communion with her new relationship and sisterhood in the Ameri- can Union by her remote situation, and still more so by the un- happiness of her climate, she is not going to be inspected from the platforms of flying express trains ; and, save the little sheltered jaunt by steamer from Puget Sound to Sitka and immediate vicin- ity, no ocean-tourists are at all likely to pry into the lonely nooks and harbors of her extended coasts, surf-beaten and tempest-swept as they are every month in the year.
But, in the discharge of official duty, in the search for precious metals, coal and copper, in the desire to locate profitable fishing ventures, and in the interests of natural science, hundreds of ener- getic, quick-witted Americans have been giving Alaska a very keen examination during the last eighteen years. The sum of their knowledge throws full understanding over the subject of Alaskan life and resources, as viewed and appreciated from the American basis ; there is no difficulty in now making a fair picture of any section, no matter how remote, or of conducting the reader into the very presence of Alaska's unique inhabitants, anywhere they may be sought, and just as they live between Point Barrow and Cape Fox, or Attoo and the Kinik mouth.
In going to Alaska to-day, the traveller is invariably taken into the Sitkan district, and no farther ; naturally he goes there and no- where beyond, for the best of all reasons : he can find no means of transportation at all proper as regards his safety and comfort which will convey him outside of the Alexander archipelago. To this southeastern region of Alaska, however, one may journey every month in the year from the waters of the Columbia River and Puget Sound, in positive pleasure, on a seaworthy steamer fitted with every marine adjunct conducive to the passenger's comfortable existence in transit ; it is a landlocked sea-trip of over eighteen hundred miles, made often to and from Sitka without tremor enough on the part of the vessel even to spill a brimming glass of
15
FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
water upon the cabin table. If fortunate enough to make this trip of eight or nine hundred miles up, and then down again, when the fog is not omnipotent and rain not incessant, the tourist will record a vision of earthly scenery grander than the most vivid imagination can devise, and the recollection of its glories will never fade from his delighted mind.
If, however, you desire to visit that great country to the west- ward and the northwest, no approach can be made via Sitka-no communication between that region and this portion of Alaska ever takes place, except accidentally ; the traveller starts from San Fran- cisco either in a codfishing schooner, a fur-trader's sloop, or steamer, and sails out into the vast Pacific on a bee-line for Kadiak or Oonalashka ; and, from these two chief ports of arrival and depart- ure, he laboriously works his way, if bent upon seeing the country, constantly interrupted and continually beset with all manner of hindrances to the progress of his journey by land and sea. These physical obstructions in the path of travel to all points of interest in Alaska, save those embraced in the Sitkan district, will bar out and deprive thousands from ever beholding the striking natural characteristics of a wonderful volcanic region in Cook's Inlet and the Aleutian chain of islands. When that time shall arrive in the dim future which will order and sustain the sailing of steamers in regular rotation of transit throughout the waters of this most in- teresting section, then, indeed, will a source of infinite satisfaction be afforded to those who love to contemplate the weird and the sublime in nature ; meanwhile, visits to that region in small sailing- craft are highly risky and unpleasant-boisterous winds are chronic and howling gales are frequent.
The beautiful and extraordinary features of preliminary travel up the British Columbia coast will have prepared the mind for a full enjoyment and comprehension of your first sight of Alaska. If you are alert, you will be on deck and on good terms with the officer in charge when the line is crossed on Dixon Sound, and the low wooded crowns of Zayas and Dundas Islands, now close at hand, are speedily left in the wake as the last landmarks of foreign soil. To the left, as the steamer enters the beautiful water of Clarence Straits, the abrupt, irregular, densely wooded shores of Prince of Wales Island rise as lofty walls of timber and of rock, mossy and sphagnous, shutting out completely a hasty glimpse of the great Pacific rollers afforded in the Sound ; while on the right hand you
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
turn to a delighted contemplation of those snowy crests of the towering coast range which, though thirty and fifty miles distant, seem to fairly be in reach, just over and back of the rugged tree- clad elevations of mountainous islands that rise abruptly from the sea-canal in every direction. Not a gentle slope to the water can be seen on either side of the vessel as you glide rapidly ahead ; the passage is often so narrow that the wavelets from the steamer's
Lodges in a Vast Wilderness.
wheel break and echo back loudly on your ear from the various strips of ringing rocky shingle at the base of bluffy intersections.
If, by happy decree of fate, fog-banks do not shut suddenly down upon your pleased vision, a rapid succession of islands and myriads of islets, all springing out boldly from the cold blue-green and whitish-gray waters which encircle their bases, will soon tend to confuse and utterly destroy all sense of locality ; the steamer's path seems to be in a circle, to lead right back to where she started from, into another equally mysterious labyrinthine opening : then
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FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
the curious idiosyncrasy possesses you by which you seem to see in the scenery just ahead an exact resemblance to the bluffs, the sum- mits and the cascades which you have just left behind. Your em- phatic expression aloud of this belief will, most likely, arouse some fellow-passenger who is an old voyageur, and he will take a guiding oar : he will tell you that the numerous broad smooth tracks, cut through the densely wooded mountain slopes from the snow lines above abruptly down to the very sea below, are the paths of ava- lanches ; that if you will only crane your neck enough so as to look right aloft to a certain precipice now almost hanging 3,000 feet high and over the deck of the steamer, there you will see a few small white specks feebly outlined against the grayish-red back- ground of the rocks-these are mountain goats ; he tells you that those stolid human beings who are squatting in a large dug-out canoe are "Siwashes," halibut-fishing-and as these savages stu- pidly stare at the big " Boston " vessel swiftly passing, with uplifted paddles or keeping slight headway, you return their gaze with in- terest, and the next turn of the ship's rudder most likely throws into full view a "rancherie," in which these Indians permanently reside ; your kindly guide then eloquently describes the village and descants with much vehemence upon the frailties and short- comings of "Siwashes " in general-at least all old-stagers in this country agree in despising the aboriginal man. On the steamer forges through the still, unruffled waters of intricate passages, now almost scraping her yard-arms on the face of a precipitous headland-then rapidly shooting out into the heart of a lovely bay, broad and deep enough to float in room and safety a naval flotilla of the first class, until a long, unusually low, timbered point seems to run out ahead directly in the track, when your guide, giving a quick look of recognition, declares that Wrangel* town lies just
* When the Cassiar mines in British Columbia were prosperous, Wrangel was a very busy little transfer-station-the busiest spot in Alaska ; then be- tween four and five thousand miners passed through every spring and fall as they went up to and came down from the diggings on the Stickeen tributaries above ; they left a goodly share, if not most, of their earnings among the store and saloon keepers of Wrangel. The fort is now deserted-the town nearly so; the whole place is rapidly reverting to the Siwashes. Government buildings erected here by the U. S. military authorities, which cost the pub- lic treasury $150,000, were sold in 1877, when the troops were withdrawn, for a few hundreds. The main street is choked with decaying logs and stumps. A recent visitor declares, upon looking at the condition of this place 2
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
around it, and you speedily make your inspection of an Alaskan hamlet.
Owing to the dense forest-covering of the country, sections of those clays and sands which rest in most of the hollows are seldom seen, only here and there where the banks of a brook are cut out, or where an avalanche has stripped a clear track through the jungle, do you get a chance to see the soil in southeastern Alaska. There are frequent low points to the islands, composed, where beaten upon by the sea, of fine rocky shingle, which form a flat of greater or less width under the bluffs or steep mountain or hill slopes, about three to six feet above present high-water mark ; they become, in most cases, covered with a certain amount of good soil, upon which a rank growth of grass and shrubbery exists, and upon which the In- dians love to build their houses, camp out, etc. These small flats, so welcome and so rare in this pelagic wilderness, have evidently been produced by the waves acting at different times in opposing directions.
In all of those channels penetrating the mainland and intervening between the numerous islands from the head of Glacier Bay and Lynn Canal down to the north end of Vancouver's Island, marks, or glacial scratchings, indicative of the sliding of a great ice-sheet, are to be found, generally in strict conformity with the trend of the passages, wherever the rocks were well suited for their preserva- tion ; and it is probable that the ice of the coast range, at one time, reached out as far west as the outer islands which fringe the entire Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Many of the boulders on the beaches are plainly glaciated ; and, as they are often bunched in piles upon the places where found, they seem to have not been disturbed since they were dropped there. The shores are
in the summer of 1883 : "Fort Wrangel is a fit introduction to Alaska. It is most weird and wild of aspect. It is the key-note to the sublime and lonely scenery of the north. It is situated at the foot of conical hills, at the head of a gloomy harbor, filled with gloomy islands. Frowning cliffs, beetling crags, stretch away on all sides surrounding it. Lofty promontories guard it, backed by range after range of sharp, volcanic peaks, which in turn are lost against lines of snowy mountains. It is the home of storms. You see that in the broken pines on the cliff-sides, in the fine wave-swept rocks, in the lowering mountains. There is not a bright touch in it-not in its straggling lines of native huts, each with a demon-like totem beside it, nor in the fort, for that is dilapidated and fast sinking into decay."
3
GRAND GLACIER: ICY BAY
View looking across a profile of its sea-wall face, two and a half miles : ice cliffs from one hundred and fifty to three hundred feet high above the water ; depth of sca from sixty to eighty fathoms where it is sounded under the steamer's keel. An October picture, when all its surface cavitics and pinnacles are conccaled by snow and smoothed by frozen sleet
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FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
everywhere abrupt and the water deep. The entire front of this lofty coast-range chain, that forms the eastern Alaskan boundary from the summit of Mt. St. Elias to the mouth of Portland Canal, is glacier-bearing to-day, and you can scarcely push your way to the head of any cañon, great or small, without finding an eternal ice- sheet anchored there : careful estimation places the astonishing ag- gregate of over 5,000 living glaciers, of greater or less degree, that are silently but forever travelling down to the sea, in this region.
Those congealed rivers which take their origin in the flanks of Mt. Fairweather * and Mt. Crillont are simply unrivalled in frigid grandeur by anything that is lauded in Switzerland or the Hima- layas, though the vast bulk of the Greenland ice-sheets is, of course, not even feebly approximated by them ; the waters of the channels which lead up from the ocean to the feet of these large glaciers of Cross Sound and Lynn Canal, are full of bobbing icebergs that have been detached from the main sheet, in every possible shape and size-a detachment which is taking place at intervals of every few moments, giving rise, in so doing, to a noise like parks of ar- tillery ; but, of course, these bergs are very, very small compared with those of Greenland, and only a few ever escape from the intri- cate labyrinth of förds which are so characteristic of this Sitkan district. An ice-sheet comes down the cañon, and as it slides into the water of the canal or bay, wherever it may be, the pressure ex- erted by the buoyancy of the partially submerged mass causes it to crack off in the wildest lines of cleavage, and rise to the surface in hundreds and thousands of glittering fragments ; or again, it may slide out over the water on a rocky bed, and, as it advances, break off and fall down in thundering salvos, that ring and echo in the gloomy cañons with awe-inspiring repetition. At the head and around the sides of a large indentation of Cross Sound there are no less than five immense, complete glaciers, which take their origin between Fairweather and Crillon Mountains, each one reaching and discharging into tide-water : here is a vast, a colossal glacier in full exhibition, and so easy of access that the most delicate woman could travel to, and view it, since an ocean-steamer can push to its very sea-walls, without a moment's serious interruption, where from her decks may be scanned the singular spectacle of an icy river from three to eight miles wide, fifty miles long, and varying in depth
* 14,708 feet.
+ 13,400 feet.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
from fifty to five hundred feet. Between the west side of this frozen bay and the water, all the ground, high and low, is covered by a mantle of ice from one thousand to three thousand feet thick !
Here is an absolute realism of what once took place over the en- tire northern continent-a vivid picture of the actual process of degradation which the earth and its life were subjected to during that long glacial epoch which bound up in its iron embrace of death just about half of the globe .* This startling exhibition of a mighty glacier with its cold, multitudinous surroundings in Cross Sound, is alone well worth the time and cost of the voyage to be- hold it, and it alone. There is not room in this narrative for fur- ther dwelling upon that fascinating topic, for a full description of such a gelid outpouring would in itself constitute a volume.
Throughout this archipelago of the Sitkan district, the strongest tidal currents prevail : they flow at places like mill-races, and again they scarcely interfere with the ship or canoe. The flood-tides usu- ally run northward along the outer coasts, and eastward in Dixon's Entrance ; the weather, which is generally boisterous on the ocean side of the islands, and on which the swell of the Pacific never ceases to break with great fury, is very much subdued inside, and the best indication of these tidal currents is afforded by the stream- ing fronds of kelp that grow abundantly in all of these multitudi- nous fiörds, and which are anchored securely in all depths, from a few feet to that of seventy fathoms : when the tide is running through some of those narrow passages, especially at ebb, it forms, with the whip-like stems of seaweed, a true rapid with much white water, boiling and seething in its wild rushing ; these alternations between high and low water here are exceedingly variable-the spring-tides at some places are as great as eighteen feet of rise, and a few miles beyond, where the coast-expansion is great, it will not be more than three or four feet.
Those baffling tides and the currents they create, together with gusty squalls of rain or sleet, and irregular winds, render the navigation of this inside passage wholly impracticable for sailing- vessels-they gladly seek the open ocean where they can hanl and fill away to advantage even if it does blow "great guns ;" the high mural walls of the Alexander fiords on both sides, usually, of the
* I am aware that geologists do not all subscribe to this view, which was the doctrine of Agassiz.
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FEATURES OF THE SITKAN REGION.
channels, cause the wind to either blow up them, or down : it liter- ally funnels through with terrific velocity when the " southeasters " prevail, and nothing, not even the steamer, braves the fury of such a storm.
The great growth of trees everywhere here, and the practical impenetrability of these forests on foot, owing to brush and bushes, all green and growing in tangled jungle, is caused by the compara- tive immunity of this country from the scourge of forest fires : this is due to a phenomenal dampness of the climate-it rains, rains, and drizzles here two-thirds of the time. The heaviest rains are local, usually occurring on the western or ocean slopes of the islands where the sea-winds, surcharged with moisture, first meet a barrier to their flow and are thrown up into the cooler regions of the atmosphere. It will be often noticed, from the steamer, that while heavy rain is falling on the lofty hills and mountains of Prince of Wales Island, it is clear and bright directly over the Strait of Clarence to the eastward, and not far distant. June and July are the most agreeable seasons of the year in which to visit the Sitkan district, as a rule.
Many thoughtful observers have questioned the truth of the exuberant growth of forestry peculiar to this region, as being due to that incessant rainfall mentioned above ; no doubt, it is not wholly so; but yet, if the ravages of fire ran through the islets of the archipelago, as it does in the interior slightly to the east- ward, the same order of vegetation here would be soon noted as we note it there to-day ; everywhere that you ascend the inlets of the mainland, the shores become steep and rocky, with no beach, or very little ; the trees become scrubby in appearance, and are iningled with much dead wood (brulé). Scarcely any soil clothes the slopes, and extensive patches of bare rock crop out frequently everywhere.
Although the forest is omnipresent up to snow-line in this great land-locked Sitkan district, yet it differs much in rankness of growth and consequent value; it nowhere clothes the ridges or the summits, which are 1,500 to 2,000 feet above tide-level; these peaks and rocky elevations are usually bare, and show a characteristically green-gray tint due to the sphagnous mosses and dwarfed brier and bushes peculiar to this altitude, making an agreeable and sharp con- trast to that sombre and monotonous line of the conifers below. The variety is limited, being substantially confined to three evergreens,
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