USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 13
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SEALS, SEA - LIONS AND WALRUS.
him for the chase, while he builds his summer shelter and rides upon the sea by virtue of its hide."
Elliott who tasted walrus meat on St. Lawrence Island declares it was worse than beaver's tail, or tough brown bear steak, in fact worse than any flesh he had ever eaten: - " It has a strong flavor of an indefinite acrid nature, which turned my palate and my stomach in- stantaneously and simultaneously, while the surprised natives stared in bewildered silence at their astonished and disgusted guest. They, however, put chunks two inches square, and even larger, of this flesh and blubber into their mouths as rapidly as the storage room there would permit - and with what grimy gusto - the corners of their large lips dripping with the fatness of their feeding! How little they thought then that in a few short seasons they would die of starvation sitting in those same 'igloos' - their caches empty and nothing but endless fields of barren ice where the life-giving sea should be. The winter of 1879 - 80 was one of exceptional rigor in the Arctic, although in the United States it was unusually mild and open. The ice closed in solid around St. Lawrence Island - so firm and unshaken by the giant leverage of wind and tide that the walruses were driven far to the southward and eastward beyond the reach of the unhappy inhab- itants of that island, who, thus unexpectedly deprived of their main- stay and support, seem to have miserably starved to death, with the exception of one small village on the north shore." In 1907 only nine- teen walrus hides were shipped out of Alaska.
The inhabitants of the Pribilof are Aleutians who were colonized there by the Russian fur-company and have ever since maintained a monopoly of killing and treating the seals. When they came into the hands of the United States the successors of the Russian Company, the so-called Alaska Commercial Company, pursued the same policy toward the natives, but seem to have treated the natives more gen- erously. In 1874 they paid the inhabitants forty cents a skin for taking and curing and in addition forty cents apiece for sea-lion skins, ten cents for their throats and five dollars a barrel for their intestines.
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They also furnished the natives with comfortable houses, with school instruction and medical attendance. Their earnings were so large as to make them the most prosperous of all the Aleutians, though as their work all came concentrated in two months and the rest of the year was practically spent in idleness, they vegetated, mentally and physi- cally, but as they cannot get liquor and are essentially law-abiding they are not unhappy. Card-playing, tea-drinking, attendance at the Russian church which is still maintained, the playing of musical instru- ments, and sleeping, were their chief occupation. Since the diminution of the rookeries and the reduction of the annual killing from a hundred thousand to only a few thousand they have suffered from actual pov- erty and the United States is likely to be called upon to support them.
Small and insignificant as are the Pribilof Islands in comparison with the rest of Alaska they certainly by reason of their inhabitants, marine and feathered, as well as human, and the enormous interests concentrated there, yield in no respect to any place in that whole vast territory.
CHAPTER XVII.
SITKA.
S INCE we are travelling by imagination we may have any kind of a conveyance and we may instantly transport ourselves back to Juneau and take another trip along the coast. This time we shall stop at Sitka, situated on the southwesterly side of Baránof Island, and about a hundred miles in a straight line from Juneau. It is reached by the inland passage and is enchantingly situated against a back- ground of beautiful wooded mountains with its harbor gleaming blue and purple amid a multitude of lovely islands. As the tourist ap- proaches the town by either of the three possible passages, threading these beautiful passages around rugged points, the eye catches sight of the Russo-Greek cathedral church of St. Michael, sacred to the mem- ory of the saintly Veniaminof. It stands in full sight from the sea and seems to give promise of a foreign city - with its green roof, its big clock, its peculiar balloon-shaped spire surmounted by the Greek cross, and its octagonal belfry with the six bells sent from Moscow hanging each in its arch.
On landing one is faced by the old Russian storehouse, an enormous log structure which stands between the wharf and the town. Along the interminable passage and at both ends squat the gray-blanketed Indian women offering all sorts of trinkets and curios. Some are beautiful and artistic, others are simply barbarous and crude. There are baskets brought from far Attu, a thousand miles to the westward where West has become East, great horn spoons carved by the Haidas from the antlers of mountain sheep or goats; gaudy bead moccasins, gayly painted cedar or pine canoes and paddles, miniature totem-poles, carved out of wood or jade, wooden lamps inlaid with shells and made
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to look like prehistoric beasts, all sorts of silver adornments, especially the Alaska totem-spoon designed by Lieutenant Schwatka and made by native jewellers, Chilkat blankets, carved and polished gambling imple- ments and ancestral weapons. They are shrewd dealers and the stranger is quite likely to be well taken in.
It is only a few steps from the wharf to the Russian church, and having paid the admission fee of fifty cents one is allowed to see its treasures : - the ikonostás adorned with its sacred pictures or images in costly frames of chased silver and gold. Above the magnificent cen- tral gate made of elaborate bronze is a beautifully painted represen- tation of the Ascension which was formerly in the Lutheran church built in 1840, but now torn down. The ikon of the patron saint was rescued from a Russian vessel wrecked just at the entrance of Sitka harbor. The vestments used by the clergy, many of them woven bro- cades of gold and silver, the gifts of old Baránof, are well worth in- specting. The ikon exhibited in the chapel dedicated to " our Lady of Kazan " is studded with jewels. An offer of fifteen thousand dol- lars has been refused for it. There are also fine baptismal bowls and ornate crowns used for weddings, censers of beautifully modelled sil- ver, missals with jewelled and enamelled covers. The Bible had silver covers weighing twenty-seven pounds. It was stolen by discharged United States soldiers together with other valuables, a part of which were afterwards recovered badly mutilated. The chapel of St. Mary is used for winter services: it is rendered notable by a wonderful ikon representing the Madonna and Child.
At the building occupied by the Russian Orthodox Mission may be seen interesting relies, Bishop Veniaminof's clock, his writing-desk, which he made with his own hands, and a beautiful ikon presented by the Princess Potemkin. Other buildings belonging to the Church are on the north side of the cathedral. On the south side is a ponderous log building occupied now as a general storehouse but formerly the head-offices of the Russian-American Fur Company. How many mil- lions' worth of precious furs have been stored there in the palmy days
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SITKA.
of that industry! A building at the corner of quadrangle was used successively as the club of the Russian officers and then for a similar purpose by the United States garrison.
There is a museum of Alaskan curiosities founded by Mr. Sheldon Jackson. The fees for admission help support it.
Before the days of the California gold-fever, the Sitka ship-yards and foundries were busy places, being the only industries of that sort on the Pacific coast. Many of the bells of the California missions were cast there. Here was built the famous pug-nosed side-wheeler, the Politkovsky, of solid cedar planking four inches thick hewed from immense logs and fastened with copper spikes beaten from virgin placer metal. She carried fourteen iron and two brass cannon and copper boilers three-fourths of an inch thick. The final ceremonies of the transfer of Alaska were consummated on board of the Politkovsky amid the impressive chanting and intoning of the Russian clergy dressed in their most gorgeous robes. Her brass cannon fired the last salute and the enormous dark bronze whistle, for years the largest on the Pacific coast, which is still preserved as a sacred relic, blew a long drawn blast. It was on exhibition at the Seattle exposition. This his- torie ship, passing through various hands and vicissitudes, but always in Alaskan waters, was finally wrecked in 1908 while doing service as a lighter.'
The rocky promontory where Baránof had his clash with the Thlin- kits is now occupied by the home of the director of the government agri- cultural department. It is reached by a long flight of wooden steps. On the hill is the Russian cemetery overlooking Swan Lake. Here are buried many pioneers. What life-tragedies here came to the same peaceful ending! In one corner rests the remains of Prince Matsu- kof's English wife, whose hospitalities were enjoyed by many Amer- ican aud English visitors.
By an executive proclamation in 1890 a strip of land five hundred feet wide on the right bank and two hundred and fifty feet wide on the left bank of the Indian River, called by the Russians the Kolosh-
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chinkaya Retcha, has been forever reserved as a park. It extends from the picturesque falls to the mouth of the river. This and the public garden back of the cathedral and parade-ground sloping to the water give Sitka abundant outing-places. The park is universally admired. It abounds in splendid cedars, and other great Alaskan trees; near the falls formerly stood a cedar which was ten feet in diameter. There are thickets of salmon-berry and other delicious fruit bushes; the dev- il's club here attains a height of twenty feet; in the summer multitudes of beautiful flowers fill the air with fragrance. Enchanting paths, admirably kept, lead down to the river, and when one reaches the beach one suddenly comes upon a small grove of totems erected amid the green spruce trees. Here are the graves of Lisyansky's men who were mur- dered by the Indians in 1804. Baránof's favorite seat on the great stone near the beach is still pointed out. It is called the Blarney stone and people who kiss it are supposed to be granted persuasive eloquence. There is a Russian inscription carved upon it and many names of visit- ing ships have been there recorded. If stones had the eloquence ascribed to them by Shakespeare what fascinating tales that great boulder could relate of days long past !
Although Sitka has lost its importance since the seat of government was transferred to Juneau, it is still the most interesting town in Alaska and is fairly prosperous, though curiously enough its name is not given in the Governor's report for 1908 among the incorporated towns, and not a vessel of noticeable tonnage either entered or cleared in its har- bor during the two years previous. In 1908 there were sixty pupils in the Sitkan schools. One of the most useful of these institutions is the Industrial Training School, which was founded by the Missionary- Governor, John G. Brady, a third of a century ago. Both boys and girls of native stock attend and are educated to become self-supporting; the boys learn boat-building, carpentry, rope-making, agriculture and other useful trades. The girls are taught cooking, sewing, laundry- work and the like. The language spoken is English.
Though the climate of Sitka is mild and very equable, there is a great
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DAWSON, PANORAMIC VIEW.
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SITKA.
rainfall and the paucity of sunny days in summer tends to check the ripening of vegetables. Nevertheless, cabbage and cauliflower, pota- toes and the common " garden truck " generally do well. Mr. Brady in 1878 declared that probably there was not another spot on the globe where the same number of people did so little manual labor and were so well-fed as at Sitka. He pointed out that the Sitkan natives had good minds and were susceptible of a high state of culture. The pure Thlinkits formerly looked down upon the Sitkan Indians, who were of mixed stock. The Indian village has been of late years greatly trans- formed and as long ago as 1892 every one of the great communal lodges had been destroyed. The population is now comparatively small. The name Sitka is said to mean mountain-village and certainly that is ap- propriate. Mr. George Broke declares the view from the Sitka cita- del somewhat resembles that of the Bay of Naples, but with the addi- tional charm of snow mountains and small glaciers.
An interesting excursion from Sitka is to follow the old trail to the summit of Verstovoi, which from its height of three thousand two hun- dred and sixteen feet affords a magnificent view of the islands toward the Pacific, of the Baranof Mountains, Silver Bay, Sitka and even Mt. Fairweather, one hundred miles away. Above eight hundred feet the view is unobstructed by underbrush. The name Arrow Head, which is sometimes applied to the mountain, arises from a peculiar triangle of rock which lies on one side.
From that height one can get an idea of the variety of excursions possible from Sitka among the harbor islands. Opposite the Indian village is Japonsky, which is about a mile long and half a mile wide and originally the site of a large native village. Here in 1805 a Jap- anese junk was wrecked and hence the name. It is now used for coal- sheds and a powder magazine. Harbor Island is south of Japonsky and contains a number of Indian caches. On one side of the ship chan- nel is Kutkan, where lived an Indian chief who related to Bishop Veni- aminof many of the myths and legends which he chronicled.
Signal Island was utilized in Baránof's time for establishing the
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lighted bonfires announcing the arrival of a ship as a guidance for the pilot. The ship arriving would fire a gun and then would flash out the signals, answered by a bonfire on the citadel roof.
On the east side of Baránof Island are situated the White Sulphur Hot Springs, of which there are four, and it is an all day's canoe trip to go and return. The canoe threads its way through fascinating in- tricate passages. The water is impregnated with sulphur, chloride of iron and magnesia - not to say with heat! An egg may be boiled in the largest of the springs, which has a temperature of one hundred and fifty-five degrees. A second spring has a temperature of one hun- dred and twenty-two. The Indians knew of the virtues of these foun- tains and used to go there and soak for hours at a time in the water; the bay where they are situated was neutral ground. Lisyansky dis- covered them in 1805. Sir George Simpson visited them in 1842. In 1852 the natives, resenting the possession of the springs by any one, their own unwritten law forbidding settlements or claims, burnt all the buildings and drove the inmates into the woods. The invalids thus routed out in the middle of winter managed to cross the mountains to Sitka in safety. After the United States Government took posses- sion there was a stockaded post with hospital, chapel, residences, and gardens. The vegetation there is of exceptional luxuriance. After the withdrawal of the troops the natives again burnt the settlement. The baths are now come into possession of private persons and are accordingly exploited instead of being reserved for public use as should have been the case.
The mountains behind the bay are full of wild game - black-tailed bears and deer, and the streams abound in trout. The hunter is in turn hunted by the ever-ferocious mosquito, whose assaults justify the Thlinkit legend that it was originally a giant spider, which, when caught by an evil spirit and flung into the fire, escaped, though shrivelled in size, bearing in its month a coal to torment mankind with.
From the Hot Springs hillside is obtained a magnificent view of the volcanic Mount Edgecumbe. Mount Edgecumbe, called by the natives
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SITKA.
Tlugh or the Sleeper, is situated in Kruzof Island. It was first called San Jacinto or St. Hyacinth, but Cook renamed it. Crossing waters often rough and foggy one lands on the farther side of Sitka Sound, and then has a tramp through swamps and forest land for several miles to the base of the mountain. Two Kadiak hunters climbed it in 1804 and reported the crater filled with water. It is said to have been in eruption during that year. Since then it has been climbed many times, more than once by women. Steam and the smell of sulphur show that fires are not far below. On the Camel's Hump, of which Edgecumbe is only a parasitic cone, is a still larger crater, from the mouth of which not so many centuries ago poured the lavas which formed the island. Edgecumbe was the home of the famed Thunder Bird.
The voyage from Juneau or Sitka northwest to Prince William Sound is in some respects the crowning experience of Alaskan travel. From Juneau one passes the famous Glacier Bay which was for years the cynosure of all eyes. Into it poured nine living glaciers, of which the one named after Dr. John Muir and poetically described by him, was the greatest and most typical. It was about three miles wide and three hundred feet high, sweeping down from mountains rising to a height of fifteen thousand feet. The face of the glacier in the sun had the color of aquamarine and from its multitudinous crystal pinnacles were reflected all the hues of the rainbow. As the glacier moved sea- ward at the rate of more than sixty feet a day, from time to time enor- mous icebergs fell off into the water with a thundering crash which went echoing from one side of the bay to the other. Early in 1890 a great earthquake occurred, shattering its crystalline front and so cho- king the whole bay with its débris that no ship could approach within fifteen miles. In the year 1908 it was found to be once more accessible and since then steamships have approached as formerly. When Miss Seidmore saw it for the last time she said: - " The whole brow was transfigured with the fires of sunset; the blue and silvery pinnacles, the white and shining front floating dreamlike on a roseate and amber
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sea, and the range and circle of dull violet mountains lifting their glow- ing summits into a sky flecked with crimson and gold."
But the glaciers in this bay, enormous and wonderful as they are, do not begin to exhaust the possibilities of the phenomena in marvel- lous Alaska. There are no less than one hundred and seventy that are important enough to be named, and it is estimated that nine- tenths of the ice of this continent is contained in the region extending north to the Wrangel Range and west to the Kenai Peninsula, an area of fifty thousand square miles. Beginning at the Cross Sound, which separates Chitchgof Island from the mainland, begins the stupendous Coast Range of mountains from which most of these glaciers descend. Above Icy Point La Pérouse rises to a height of ten thousand seven hundred and forty feet. Then comes Lituya, whose dazzling top looks down from a height of eleven thousand eight hundred and thirty-two feet on the only bay on that long stretch of coast. Even that has a dangerous entrance as the tide sweeps in with a swift bore. Here in 1786 the French navigator lost two boat-loads of men, twenty-one in all, who were overturned in the icy waters and drowned. He erected a monument to their memory on a small island called Ile de Cénotaphe. Their names were enrolled and buried in a bottle with an account of the disaster. La Pérouse described the inhabitants of Lituya Bay as treacherous and thievish. They were crazy to obtain iron and were willing to barter furs and fish for the precious metal. He was scan- dalized at the filthy habits of the natives and especially disgusted at the ugliness of the women, enhanced by their mutilating themselves with labrets.
When Captain Dixon, whose harbor lies to the south of Icy Cape, was there a year later he did not find the women so very terrible. He gives a pleasant description of them and tells how he persuaded one of them to wash the paint from her face. He says that then " her countenance had all the cheerful glow of an English milkmaid's; and the healthy red which suffused her cheeks was even beautifully con- trasted with the white of her neck; her eyes were black and sparkling;
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SITKA.
her eyebrows of the same color and most beautifully arched; her fore- head so remarkably clear that the translucent veins were seen meander- ing even in their minutest branches - in short she would be consid- ered handsome even in England."
La Pérouse himself was upset in the bay by the tidal wave from an iceberg falling into the water. All the navigators who have visited the bay have remarked on the wonders of the glaciers, of which there are at least five active ones. Dr. Dall described the bay as " a sort of Yosemite Valley, retaining the glaciers and with its floor submerged six or eight hundred feet." The natives have a legend to the effect that two men in the shape of bears sit on either side of the entrance holding a sail cloth just below the surface and when a canoeman ap- pears toss him furiously into the air. About forty miles beyond Lituya Bay is Dry Bay, the shallow delta of the Alsek River, which rises near the source of the Chilkat and flows in a precipitous course behind Mt. Fairweather, crowded with salmon. It has been explored from mouth to source. Lieutenant Emmons made the crossing from bay to bay on land. Mt. Fairweather rises as it were perpendicularly from the sea to a height of fifteen thousand two hundred and ninety-two feet.
The next indentation is Yakutat Bay, two hundred and fifteen miles from Sitka. Cook and Vancouver called it Bering Bay; Dixon dubbed it Admiralty Bay and La Pérouse affixed to it the name of Monti. For- tunately the native name has been preserved. There are a number of islands on the eastern shore of the bay but the mouth is unobstructed and the full force of the Pacific, here hardly deserving of that name, is likely to sweep into it, rendering entrance difficult and dangerous, especially as it is likely to be more or less blocked by floating ice. At Port Mulgrave there is a good harbor with a Moravian Mission sup- ported by the Swedish Lutheran Church. Here Baranof endeavored to establish a convict colony. Shelikof, at whose instance he landed there, gave him some admirable instructions. He said: - " Use taste as well as practical judgment in locating the settlement. Look to beauty as well as to convenience of material and supplies. On the plan, as
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well as in reality, leave room for spacious squares for public assemblies. Make the streets not too long, but wide, and let them radiate from the squares. If the site is wooded, let trees enough stand to line the streets and to fill the gardens, in order to beautify the place and preserve a healthy atmosphere. Build the houses along the streets, but at some distance from one another, in order to increase the extent of the town. The roofs should be of equal height, and the architecture as uniform as possible. The gardens should be of equal size and provided with good fences along the streets."
A post and fortifications were erected and several ships were built, but the farming industry, which it was hoped to establish, was hardly suited to that locality. Many of the settlers died and the rest were massacred by the Thlinkits in 1805. In the old days, when there were a greater number of Indians, they used to come out in canoes, singing, and paddle ceremoniously round any visiting ship. They would bring their wares to exchange for articles of iron and for white men's ap- parel.
Gold was discovered along the beaches of Yakutat Bay in 1880 and the miners for a time were able to extract as much as forty dollars a day by the use of rotary hand amalgamators. But a big storm piled the beaches with dog-fish which decayed and soaked the sand with oil so that the mercury would not act. A tidal wave washed out a large part of the black sand and little has been done there since. The chief of the Yakutat Indians made the miners pay him tribute. The black sand contained platinum as well as gold. Good coal occurs a mile or two inland but it has not as yet been exploited owing to the difficulty of reaching it.
At the head of Yakutat Bay, which penetrates the land for sixty miles, there is a smaller bay, named by the Italian navigator Malaspina Disenchantment Bay. He supposed that tide water ended there. Since then it has been explored for sixty miles farther and found almost to reach the sea again toward the south. To the north of Disenchantment Bay lie the two glaciers, Dalton and Hubbard. The fjord running south
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