USA > Alaska > Our Arctic province, Alaska and the Seal islands > Part 8
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In 1841-42 the best understanding of the Russian and English traders agreed in reporting a population of over twenty thousand Indians within the limits of the Alexander archipelago; to-day the same country can show no more than a scant seven thousand. The inroads that small-pox and measles have made, by which these savages were destroyed even as fire sweeps through and burns drought-withered thickets, leave little doubt as to the great numer- ical superiority of earlier days as compared with the present. This decay and abandonment is everywhere exhibited now even in the per- manent villages, where houses have been deserted completely : some are shut up, mouldering, and rotting away upon their foundations ; others, large and fit for the shelter of fifty or sixty natives, will be found tenanted by only two or three Siwashes. All the standing carved posts in this entire region, with rare exceptions, are, as a rule, more or less advanced into decay. A rank growth of weeds, dark and undisturbed in some cases, presses up close to inhabited houses, the traffic not being sufficient to keep them down. The original features of these settlements, in a few years more of this unchecked neglect and decay, will have entirely disappeared as they have already at Sitka. At the present hour, however, we can go among them, and readily call up to our minds what they once were when they were swarming with occupants who were dressed in tanned- leather shirts and sea-otter cloaks, as they thronged about the ships of Cook and Vancouver.
Slavery, which was originally firmly interwoven with the social fabric of these people, has been about abolished-slaves themselves to-day are very scarce, and are not much more so than in name. They were the captives taken in savage warfare between opposing clans, and were most horribly tortured and cruelly treated by their masters.
As a rule the young people marry young, after the stolid fashion of Indians. They approve of polygamy, but seldom do you find a man with more than one squaw, simply because the women do not contribute materially and primarily to the support of the family,
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ABORIGINAL LIFE OF THE SITKANS.
and attend only to the accessory duties of it ; thus it becomes an increased tax upon the dull energies of the savage whenever he adds an extra woman to his household. The squaws are all well treated everywhere up here ; they have just as much to say as their lords and masters whenever the occasion of buying, selling, or lir- ing arises ; as to the children (we will not see many of them to- day), they are always kindly cared for by both parents, and the whole tribe is as indulgent, since they are constantly roaming about the village, after the custom of youngsters universally.
A candid verdiet will result, in view of the surroundings of the Koloshian, that the only vice which can be legitimately charged up against him, or his kind, is the sin of gambling. To this dissipa- tion the Alaskan savage is desperately prone ; the monotonous chant of the stick-shuffling players is ever on the air in the villages. These worthies sit on the ground, in a circle usually, in the centre of which a mat is spread ; six or seven small wooden pins about as large as the little finger of your hand, upon which various values are marked or carved, are taken into the hands of the first gambler, who thrusts them into a ball of soft teased cedar bark, or holds them under his blanket, then shuffles them rapidly, meanwhile shouting a deep guttural hah-hah-ee-nah-hah ! the others watch him with lynx-like eyes for a few moments, when one of the players suddenly orders the shuffler to show his hands, in which the sticks are firmly clinched, and at the same time endeavors to guess the value of these sticks in either one hand or the other, which have been held up-he pauses a moment, then makes his decision, the clinched hand designated is opened, the little sticks fall to the mat, and the caller wins or loses just as he happens to hit the value expressed by the markings on these pins : if he guesses correctly he wins everything in the pot or pool, and takes up the wooden dice in turn, to shuffle, shout, and repeat for the rest of the circle. This game is usually sustained night and day, until some one of the party remains the winner of everything that the others started in with.
That wretched debauchery which an introduction of rum into the rancheries of these natives has caused, cannot be justly laid at the Indian's door ; this intense morbid eraving for liquor among the Alaskan savages of this region is most likely due to the climate -it is not near so strong in the appetite of the natives who live east of the coast range. Although Congress has legislated, and
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
our officials have endeavored to carry out the prohibition statutes, yet the matter thus far is wholly beyond control-the savage can- not only smuggle successfully within these intricate watery chan- nels, but he now thoroughly understands the distillation of rum it- self from sugar and molasses.
There is something in this atmosphere which enables a white man to drink a great deal more with impunity than he can in any other section of the United States or Territories-the quantities of strong tea, the nips of brandy, wine, and cordials which he will swallow with perfect physical indifference, in the course of every day of his life, at Sitka for instance, would drive him to delirium in an exceedingly short time if repeated at San Francisco. Naturally enough, we find that the same craving for stimulants is reflected by Indian stomachs ; and now that they have fully grasped the understanding of how to successfully satisfy that aching, no valid reason can be presented why the Thlinket will not continue to gratify a burning desire in this fatal direction to the ultimate ex- tinction of his race. This fault of our civilization is far more potent to effect his worldly degeneration, than any one or all of our com- bined virtues are to regenerate his earthly existence.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.
The Hot Spring Oasis and the Humming-bird near Sitka .- The Value and Pleasure of Warm Springs in Alaska. - The Old "Redoubt " or Russian Jail. - The Treadwell Mine .- Futility of Predicting what may, or what will not Happen in Mining Discovery .- Coal of Alaska not fit for Steam- ing Purposes .- Salmon Canneries. - The Great "Whaling Ground " of Fairweather. - Superb and Lofty Peaks seen at Sea One Hundred and Thirty-five Miles Distant. - Mount Fairweather so named as the Whale- men's Barometer .- The Storm here in 1741 which Separated Bering and his Lieutenant .- The Grandeur of Mount St. Elias, Nineteen Thousand Five Hundred Feet .- A Tempestuous and Forbidding Coast to the Mariner. -The Brawling Copper River .- Mount Wrangel, Twenty Thousand Feet, the Loftiest Peak on the North American Continent. - In the Forks of this Stream .- Exaggerated Fables of the Number and Ferocity of the Natives .- Frigid, Gloomy Grandeur of the Scenery in Prince William Sound. - The First Vessel ever built by White Men on the Northwest Coast, Constructed here in 1794 .- The Brig Phoenix, One Hundred and Eighty Tons, No Paint or Tar .- Covered with a Coat of Spruce-Gum, Ochre, and Whale-oil, Wrecked in 1799 with Twenty Priests and Dea- cons of the Greek Church on Board .- Every Sonl Lost .- Love of the Natives for their Rugged, Storm-beaten Homes.
A BRONZED humming-bird* lies upon the author's table, that once hovered and darted over the waters of Sitka Sound. Its torn and rudely stuffed skin was given to him at Fort Simpson with the re- mark that it came from the hot springs just below New Archangel ; and that nowhere else in all of a vast wilderness, outside of the immediate vicinity of these springs, ever did or could a humming- bird be found. Should, therefore, a visitor to this Alaskan solitude chance to travel within it during the months of April and May, if
* Selasphorus rufus-it is common in California, Oregon, aud parts of Washington Territory, and Southern British Columbia-never found north of Victoria on the coast, except as above stated ; it winters in Central America.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
he will but follow the path of that wee brave bird, he will be led into a veritable green and fragrant oasis, encircled all round about with savage icy mountains and snowy forests.
Twenty miles south of Sitka, on the same island, in a pretty little bay sheltered by a score of tiny islets, there-from the slop- ing face of a verdant bank, the finest hot springs known to Alaska flow up and out to the sea. Fleecy clouds of steamy moisture rise over all to betray from a distance this delightful retreat ; the lux- uriant vegetation, the variety of shrubs in full blossom here, when all botanical life about them is as dead as cold can make it, create thereon a spot in the early spring where all the senses of a traveller can rest with exquisite pleasure-the waters of the bay in front are covered with geese and ducks, while the rugged mountains that rise as a wall behind are teeming with deer and bear and grouse, secluded in the jungle.
The Indians, from time immemorial, have resorted to these hot waters of Baranov Island ; four distinct and freely flowing springs take their origin in those crevices and fissures of the feld- spathic granite foundation of the earth hereabouts ; the tempera- ture of the largest spring, at its source, is 150° to 160° Fah .; the waters are charged with sulphur to a very great extent. So jealous were the savages of any attempt among themselves which might savor of a monopoly of the use of these healing, beneficent warm streams, that no one tribe ever dared to build a village upon the site ; but, by tacit consent, all were allowed to camp thereon. Some Indians often came from a distance of three hundred miles away to enjoy the sanitary result of bathing here, a few days or a few weeks, as their troubles might warrant.
Naturally the Russians, burdened at Sitka with all diseases which flesh is heir to, turned their attention very promptly to this sanitarium ; they erected a small hospital and two spacious bath- houses over the springs, keeping everything in the strictest order and cleanliness, without and within doors. A sad change con- fronts us to-day-in so far as care of human hands ; but the savage Sitkan is here, exulting in his renewed supremacy.
The occurrence, however, of hot springs is quite frequent every- where in this archipelago ; yet their extent and volume of outflow is not so great as evidenced by those we have just noticed of Baranov Island. Indians love to immerse their entire bodies in pools and eddies of these hot rivulets, which are cooled suffi-
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THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.
ciently by flowing a dozen or fifty yards from their origin over peb- bly bottoms ; Siwashes will soak themselves in this manner for hours at a time, with nothing but their heads visible. Though the Koloshian, like all others of his kind, never verbally complains, vet he is subject to acute rheumatism, to fevers, and to divers malig- nant cutaneous diseases ; these springs, wherever known to him, are always well regarded as his happy relief and hope. Certain it is that when you behold the parboiled skin of a native, after bathing here, the fair almost white complexion really startles, for, prior to the immersion, he was a coppery brown or black.
Midway between these thermal fountains and Sitka is the site of an old Russian jail or prison ; in a deep inlet, with no land in sight, but lofty mountains rising abruptly from the water's edge, is the "Redoubt." Here a small alpine lake empties itself in a foaming cascade channel of a few yards in width, that quickly plunges into a cañon, the perpendicular walls of which are a full thousand feet in mural height. The Russians erected mills of various kinds along the rapids to avail themselves of such abundant water-power ; the buildings stood upon a bare rocky portion of the channel, and were kept in order by an old veteran in command ; a squad of soldiers aided him; the fish, dried and salted salmon, which were required for the use of the company, were annually caught here as they swarmed up the cascade from the sea, into Gloobaukie Lake.
The great facility of travel afforded by these sheltered canals of the Alexander archipelago, has enabled and facilitated a most energetic and persistent search for gold and silver by our miners, but the rugged features of the country and its dense timber and jungle have rendered the progress of such investigation slow, and one of great physical difficulty. In the sands of every stream flow- ing between California and Cook's Inlet the " color " of gold can be found, but the paying quantities therein seldom warrant a mining camp or settlement. To-day the only mining rendezvous which we find in Alaska is a little village of rough cabins called " Juneau City," located on the north side of Gastineaux Channel, at a point near the upper end of that passage; near by, and adjacent, is established a large gold-quartz stamp-mill * on Douglas Island,
* The Treadwell Mine-free-milling gold ore; 120 stamps; employs 150 to 250 men-situated right at the tide-level.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
where the mining experts feel justified in predicting a steady and inexhaustible yield of paying ore-it is paying handsomely at present.
This subject of what is, or what is not, a good mining region or investment is one to which no rational man can well afford to com- mit himself. Those who have had extended experience in these matters know that it is a topic which baffles the best investigator, and returns no safe answer to the most intelligent cross-examina- tion. The true advice which can be honestly given is that which prompts every man interested to look and resolve wholly for him- self, for he, in fact, knows just as much as anybody else. At the most, the finding of a rich or desirable lead of gold or silver in a new country is an accident or sheer opportunity of chance. Whether it will hold out, or end in a "pocket," is also only to be determined by working it for all it is worth. Once in a while a man makes a rich find, and is rewarded ; but an overwhelming majority of prospect- ors are ever wandering in fruitless, restless, tireless search for those golden ingots which are still hidden in the recesses of mountain ledges, or buried in the alluvium of river bottoms. The miners in Alaska embrace various nationalities-Australians and Canadians, Cornishmen and Californians, Oregonians and British Columbians predominate-but the number aggregated is not large .*
If gold or silver-quartz mines of free-milling ore (no matter how low the grade) can be located anywhere on the shores of these mountainous fiords of the Alexander archipelago, their wealth will be great, because the transportation to them and from them is prac- tically without cost. The expense of working such valuable quartz mines up a hundred or more miles from the sea, will result in aban- donment, where reaching them involves frequent transfers of sup- plies, and the working season is cut by the rigor of winter to less than half or one-third of every year. The same mines, down within the dockage of an ocean-steamer in the Sitkan district would be a steady source of wealth and industry all the year round.
The coal which is found here is not satisfactory for steamers' use-too heavily charged with sulphur. Copper ore is well-known, but not worked in competition with the Lake Superior and Arizona cheap outputs. At the present writing there are no active indus-
* Eight hundred, or a thousand, perhaps. They come and go suddenly, alternating in travel as the rumors relative to their occupation circulate.
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THE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.
tries whatsoever in the Sitkan archipelago beyond the energetic stamp-mill of the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island, and the limited placer diggings of Juneau City. Until a market is created for its large natural resources of food-fishes, the little canneries which our people have started here will not develop ; nor will the timber be of much commercial importance until the great reser- voirs of the lower coast are exhausted. Statisticians and political economists can easily figure out the time when a population of twenty-five or thirty millions of our own people will be living upon the Pacific coast alone ; then the real value of those latent re- sources * of the Sitkan watery wilderness must be patent to a most indifferent calculator.
With this survey of the Alexander archipelago fixed on our minds, we pass from it through the bold Cross Sound headlands that loom above those storm-churned swells of an open ocean, which break here in unceasing turmoil, and we sail out into an area that charts tell us is the "Fairweather ground," over which that superb peak itself and sister, Crillon, stand like vast sentinel- towers, rearing their immense bulk into many successive strata of clouds, until the elevation of thirteen thousand and fourteen thou- sand feet is reached, sheer and bold above the sea. This great ex- panse of the Pacific Ocean between us and Kadiak Island, five hundred and sixty miles to the west, and again down to Victoria, nine hundred miles farther to the south, was the rendezvous of the most successful and numerous whaling fleet that the history of the business records. In these waters the large "right " whale did most congregate, and the capture of it between 1846 and 1851 drew not less than three and four hundred ships with their hardy crews to this area backed by the Alaskan coast. They never landed, how- ever, unless shipwrecked, which was a rare occurrence, but cruised " off and on " with the majestic head of Mount Fairweather as their point of arrival and departure.
* A few small saw-mills have been erected at several points in this Sitkan district to supply the local demand of trading-posts and mining-camps. With reference to quality or economic worth, the timber found herein may be classified as follows, in the order of its value : 1. Yellow cedar (Cupressus nutkaensis) and Thuja gigantea, the red variety. 2. Sitkan spruce (Abies sit- kensis). This is the most abundant. 3. Hemlock (Abies mertensiana). 4. Balsam fir (Abies canadensis). The finest growth of this timber is found upon Prince of Wales Island, Admiralty, and Kou Islands, within the Alaskan lines.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
When the whalemen saw the summit of that snow-clad peak un- veiled by clouds they were sure of fair weather for several consec- utive days afterward, hence the name. Early one June morning Captain Baker, of the Reliance, called the author up to see a moun- tain which was sharply defined in the warm, hazy glow of the dawn- ing sunrise on the horizon-there, bearing N.N.E.,* was the image of Mount Fairweather, just as clear cut as a cameo, and lofty as the ship's spars, though one hundred and thirty-five miles distant ! Closely associated and fully as impressive and quite as high, was the heavier form of the snowy Crillon.
That long stretch of more than four hundred miles of bare Alas- kan coast, between Prince William's Sound and Cape Spencer, which stands at the northern entrance to the Sitkan waters, is one that sustains very little human or animal life, and is so rough and is so bleak, that from September until May it is feared and avoided by the hardiest navigator. The flanks of Mounts Fairweather and Cril- lon rise boldly from the ocean at their western feet, and this sheer- ness of elevation undoubtedly gives them that effect of cloud-com- pelling, which does not lose its awe-inspiring power even when a hundred miles away. To the northward and westward of Fair- weather, however, the alpine range which it dominates abruptly sets back from the coast some forty or fifty miles, then turns about and faces the sea in an irregular, lofty half-moon of more than three hundred miles in length. A low table-land, or rolling shelf, is ex- tended at its base, intervening between the mountains and the wash of the Pacific. It is timbered with spruce quite thickly, and re- ported by the Indians to be the best berrying ground in all Alaska.
The Fairweather shore is a steep, woody one, much indented with roadstead coves or bays; the coast line is hilly and uneven, with some rocks and rocky islets scattered along not far out from the surf. The sand-beaches which extend from Fairweather toward the feet of those under St. Elias are remarkably broad and exten- sive ; so much so that, from the ship's mast-head, large lagoons within the outer swell of the open ocean are frequently seen. These beach-locked estuaries communicate with the ocean by shal-
* Tuesday, June 13, 1874. It did not seem possible at first that the officer's observations were accurate, but the captain verified the ship's position anew, and confirmed the correctness of Lieutenant Glover's entry and sights : " bear- ing N.N. E., 135 m."
MT. SAINT ELIAS: 19,500 FEET
Under the shadow of this great mountain, Bering's crew landed in July, 1741 ; they were the first white men to behold its sullen grandeur, and it fitly stands as the initial point of that early recognition of Russian America. In clear weather it is distinctly seen by mariners, 150 miles at sea ; usually, however, it is wrapped in clouds
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THIE ALPINE ZONE OF MOUNT ST. ELIAS.
low breaks in the outer beach-wall of sand and gravel, across all of .which the sea rolls with great violence.
Right under the towering slopes of Fairweather, as at St. Elias, is a large area of upland entirely destitute of verdure of any kind, except the brown and russet mosses and lichens ; huge, rugged masses of naked rocks are strewn about in every direction-an old prehistoric lava-flood, perhaps.
The coast, from the head of Cross Sound to Fairweather, is not sandy, but may be well described as the surf-beaten base of a frozen range of magnificent Alpine peaks.
In the centre of the arc of this grand crescent-range is the superb body and hoary crest of Mount St. Elias, which is, save Mount Wrangel, now known to be the loftiest peak on the North American coast ; the latter is slightly higher. Triangulated from a base line in Yakootat, in 1874, by one * of the most accomplished mathematicians of the U. S. Coast Survey, the summit of that royal mountain was determined to be more than nineteen thousand feet above the level of the tide at the observer's feet. It was under the shadow of this " bolshoi sopka " that Bering first saw the Continent of North America on the 18th of July, 1741, and undoubtedly he discerned it from a long distance, ere his boat landed. Two days before anchoring, he records the fact that " the country had ter- rible high mountains, which were covered with snow."
When he finally landed (it was St. Elias' day), near a point that he named as he named the lofty central peak, Cape St. Elias, he found the temporary summer-houses of a band of natives ; those people themselves had fled in terror from an unwonted invasion, but the Russians soon had reason to regret their subsequent better understanding.
After the storm which parted Bering, early in June, from the company of the second vessel of his expedition, he had hoped to fall in with her ever afterward, and while eagerly scanning the coast and horizon about him for some sign of his lost comrades, the hand of fate caused him to turn to the northward, when, had his helm been set south, he would have met the object of his search. For the other vessel, the St. Paul, had proceeded on its solitary
* Marcus Baker. Unfortunately no one connected with this Coast Sur- vey Party was able to make an adequate drawing of the mountains, and it was so enveloped in clouds as to be partially invisible when the author cruised un- der its lee.
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OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE.
course, and anxiously sought the commander, until it, too, had sighted this same coast, three days earlier than had its storm- separated consort. Tschericov came to anchor off some distance from " steep and rocky cliffs "" in "lat. 56°," July 15. Weary and expectant, the captain sent his mate with the long-boat and a crew of ten or twelve of his best men away to the shore for the purpose of inquiry and for a fresh supply of water. The ship's boat dis- appeared behind the point sheltering a small wooded inlet ; it and its men were never seen again by their shipmates. Troubled in mind, but thinking that the surf, perhaps, had stove the boat in landing, the captain sent his boatswain in the dingy with five men and two carpenters, all well armed, to furnish the necessary assist- ance. The small boat disappeared also, and it, too, was never seen again. At the same time a great smoke was constantly ascending from the shore. Shortly afterward two huge canoes, filled with painted, yelling savages, paddled out from the recesses of the bay, and lying at some distance from the ship, all howled, in standing chorus, " Agai-agai !" then, flourishing their rude arms, they rapidly returned to the shore. Sorrowfully the disturbed and dis- tressed Tschericov turned his ship's course about and hurried home, t not knowing the fate of his men, unable to help them, and, to this day, no authentic inkling of what became of these Slavonian sea- men has ever been produced. Unquestionably, they were tortured and destroyed.
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