USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 14
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SITKA.
among lofty mountains is regarded by those who have seen it - and they are few - as offering the most magnificent scenery on the coast. Lofty mountains rise on both sides and cascades come dashing down their precipitous cliffs.
Mr. Muir writes of the scenery there that it is " gloriously wild and sublime, majestic mountains and glaciers, barren moraines, bloom-cov- ered islands amid icy, swirling waters, enlivened by screaming gulls, hair-seals and roaring bergs. On the other hand, the beauty of the southern extension of the bay is tranquil and restful and perfectly enchanting. Its shores, especially on the east side, are flowery and finely sculptured, and the mountains, of moderate height, are charm- ingly combined and reflected in the quiet waters."
The town of Yakutat has been rendered prosperous by the lumber trade. A railway climbs up into the interior for several miles. On the wharf are a saw mill and cannery. On the plateau above are stores and a few residences. Not far away is the village inhabited by the Thlinkits. There is a forest walk to the old Thlinkit village where the natives weave their beautiful baskets and carve their curious trinkets which they offer to the interested tourist. They still keep up their reputation as light-fingered gentry which Puget discovered to his cost a hundred years ago.
On the north side of the bay begins the greatest known glacier of the world, the Malaspina. It is not less than sixty miles in length and extends back into the country fully twenty miles. Most of the way it is separated from the sea by a forested moraine six miles in width. It pours over into the waves at Icy Cape. All day long as the steamer ploughs to the northwest one sees floating above the wonderful sweep of the dazzling glacier the cloudlike heights of the mountains - Cook, thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven feet high, and Mt. St. Elias, which the United States Coast Survey reckoned to be more than nineteen thousand feet high but has since been found to be a thousand feet lower than that. It is visible one hundred and fifty miles out at sea. It is the dominating peak of the range and gives its name to it, though
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Logan, which can not be seen from the sea, is fifteen hundred feet higher. Professor I. C. Russell, who was sent by the National Geo- graphic Society to explore it, and who reached an elevation of fourteen thousand five hundred feet, says of the peak which Bering called the bolshaya shapka or great cap: " At length the great pyramid form- ing the culminating point of all the region burst into full view. What a glorious sight ! The great mountain seemed higher and grander and more regularly proportioned than any peak I had ever beheld before. The white plain formed by the Seward Glacier made an even fore- ground, which gave distance to the foothills forming the western margin of the glacier. Far above the angular crest of the Samovar Hills in the middle distance towered St. Elias, sharp and clear against the evening sky. So majestic was St. Elias that other magnificent peaks scarcely received a second glance."
Mrs. Higginson says: - " For one whole day the majestic mountain and its beautiful companion peaks were in sight of the steamer before the next range came into view. The sea breaks sheer upon the ice- palisades of the glacier. Icebergs, pale green, pale blue, and rose-col- ored, march out to meet, and bowing, pass the ship. . .. On one side are miles and miles of violet ocean sweeping away into limitless space, a fleck of sunlight flashing like a firefly in every hollowed wave; on the other, miles on miles of glistening ice, crowned by peaks of softest snow. At sunset warm purple mists drift in and settle over the gla- cier; above these float banks of deepest rose; through both, and above them, glimmer the mountains pearlily, in a remote loveliness that seems not of earth."
In the St. Elias group there are nine mountains, the altitude of which exceed ten thousand feet - magnificent giant brothers of the North, offering the mountain climber opportunities enough to display skill and courage.
It was nearly a century and a half after Bering discovered Mt. St. Elias, before any attempt was made to ascend it. Frederick Schwatka and a party supported by the New York Times, tried it in 1886 but
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failed to reach the base. In 1888 a party of four, three Englishmen and an American, attained an altitude of eleven thousand four hundred feet. In 1890 I. C. Russell and Mark B. Karr would have reached the top had it not been for a severe storm. Russell reached an altitude of fourteen thousand five hundred feet. In 1897 the Duke of the Abruzzi with a berg expedition succeeded in attaining the summit. This was determined by the Coast Survey as eighteen thousand and twenty-four feet. The chief difficulty consists in the great distance from any source of supplies. From St. Elias the boundary line of Alaska runs due north to Demarcation Point on the Arctic Ocean.
At the entrance of Controller Bay, across from Cape Suckling, is the large Island of Kayak, which is notable for the splendid headland called Cape St. Elias, which juts out into the stormy waters of the Pacific and is beaten by terrific surf. The town of Kayak is on Wing- ham Island, where Bering landed in 1741, and which was named Kaye Island by Cook thirty-seven years later. This was in honor of an other- wise unknown clergyman who happened to have given Captain Cook two silver coins buried in a bottle containing the date of the discovery and the names of his ships.
Controller is notable for its oil wells, which have been bored here and there over a distance of two or three thousand square miles. Ka- talla, on the mainland at the head of the bay, sprang into sudden im- portance, and most of the business of Kayak was transferred to the mushroom town. It was founded in 1904 and immediately became the terminus of a proposed railway. Unfortunately Katalla had no good harbor, only an open roadstead, and on many occasions visiting steam- ships had been unable to land their freight and passengers. The story is told of a portable bank that was brought there three times and had finally to be transported back to Seattle. Beyond the delta mouth of the great Copper River, across the peninsula, on the shore of Prince William Sound lies the new town of Cordova, which has a good harbor.
It was a question for a time which would be the terminus of the rail- way communicating with the rich regions of the upper Copper Valley.
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Rival companies engaged in almost medieval warfare. Rights of way crossed, and tracks were laid by one company only to be torn up by the other. Fortifications were thrown up and armed men were sta- tioned ready to fight with their lives. In the same way the right of way through the narrow Keystone Canon was assailed and defended. A pitched battle took place; one man was killed and three were wounded. Both companies were backed by millions and the interests were enormous.
The distance from Katalla to Cordova in a straight line is only about fifty miles, around by sea it is three times as far. Between them flows the Copper River. It was called Atnah by the natives, who prevented Serebrennikof from exploring its recesses and killed him and his men. It was first successfully ascended by Lieutenant H. T. Allen, who, having reached its head waters, crossed the divide and sailed down the Tanana to the Yukon. It is the master river of that region. It rises on the eastern slope of Mt. Wrangel and after flowing north for forty miles turns southwest for fifty miles. At a distance of one hundred and fifty miles it is joined by the Chitina River and having half circled the vast group of mountains dominated by Wrangel it turns to the south and cuts its way through the Chugatch Range and reaches the Pacific one hundred and fifty miles west of St. Elias. The river is a typical glacial stream, very muddy and turbulent, flowing swiftly through tremendous cañons and in places faced by por- tentous glaciers. The Miles Glacier lifts ice cliffs for six miles just below the Abercrombie Rapids, at the head of which is the terminus of the Copper River Railway. In summer steamboats ply the upper reaches of the Copper River and the Chitina. The whole region is marvellously rich in metals. It is confidently expected that it will rival all others in the production of copper. The Bonanza Mine, which was purchased for seventy-two thousand dollars in 1900, was sold eight years later for more than a million. This is only one of dozens of other claims, all promising enormous returns.
The whole region is wildly mountainous and evidently of volcanic
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origin. There are not less than a dozen peaks of twelve thousand feet altitude rising from that one valley. Mr. Robert Dun in the summer of 1908 succeeded in climbing to the top of Mt. Wrangel, " the whitest, widest dome shaped pile on earth." Some of his experiences were blood curdling. Once, at a height of ten thousand one hundred and fifteen feet, as he was trying to get some photographs, he slumped through the snow into a crevasse. " Legs and body," he says, " were dangling into nothingness, elbows spread and clutching on the yielding snow. During that shred of a second's fall, all substance inside my head, all the air outside, thickened into something dense and leaden. All the blood surged outward to surfaces and extremities, but with no flush of warmth. I hung there looking down at the two slithery green walls converging into doom." With the aid of his one companion he managed to wriggle back into safety.
After a desperate climb of four thousand feet more, prodding for every step till their arms ached, they got near the crater. " I crackled over the last snow," he says, " and leaped upon that ash, in that damp and tarnishing breath of the earth's bowels, with a mingled thrill of victory and apprehension that was glorious ... ran up the ridge of fumaroles and came out. It was two o'clock. Beyond, on the far side, was snow, snow everywhere. A plain, two, three miles across - you could not tell through the refractive haze. The vast dead chasm was filled chuck-a-block, a brimming bowl of ice. Think of it !- thirteen thousand feet and more above the sea, all but tangent to the Arctic Circle, immutable in the swing of seasons - the world knows no desert like it." He thus describes the living crater : -
" A curtain of fog was snatched away. A tooth - a gigantic incisor pointing upward - appeared on the southwest rim of the snow desert. To the right, on a fragment of outer slope, ran black ribs, creeping with slow vapors, downward into the névé. But except for this the cone was all an oval of darkness. A great cavity was blazoned there, yawn- ing upward to its tip. Streaked and crumbling cliffs wavered behind the concealing steam. In a momentary stillness of the air the shreds
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of vapor thinned and hovered and drooped along the rims. Then they arose at the centre in hairlike spires, as from a simmering vat. Clink- ery cave and corrugation sprang forth in horrid reticulation. The thing seemed to suspend its breath like a living being."
A storm came on suddenly and they retreated while still they could make out their tracks. After terrible hours, it cleared again and once more they mounted toward the crater. More than once they caved into the " ash-tained and heat-riddled névé " to climb out dripping with muddy water that froze instantly. "Thus," he says, " we climbed, slipped back, climbed up that transient traitorous wall, as it bulged out here in a glossy mud spring, there was caverned with un- knowable dread; toiled like beings in a tread-mill - one that might explode or crumble in a jiffy into the soul and centre of the earth's secret being; and over us the tented smoke rolling, rolling, all but touched our eyelids."
At last they reached the very top and had forty minutes to see the marvellous panorama, to locate peaks, to take notes and photographs " all in a frenzied rush." This was a bit of the view: -
" A dappled floor of white and blue opal cloud hid all the world. Miles sheer down, Chetudina Glacier, a very Gehenna of crevasses, plunged under it. We got not a glimpse of the Copper valley, nor at the two-mile-high crest of Mount Drum. Anyhow, what mattered panoramas? North all was clearer, by the twin hazy nubs and the thumb of Mount Zanetti, and Mount Sanford raised by mirage in an orange mist and tilted toward us like a reflection in a concave mirror. And - blessed that we had eyes to see it !- the broad shoulders of McKinley (magnetic west, exactly), like one lighted window of an invisible house of splendor on the uttermost horizon."
The Wrangel Mountains are regarded as separate from the Coast Range.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A SOUND OF GLACIERS.
P RINCE WILLIAM SOUND, or more properly Archipelago, covers twenty-five hundred square miles. It contains about fifty islands, most of which rise abruptly out of the water and attain heights varying from a thousand to three thousand feet. Montague, or Sukluk, Hinchinbrook, or Nutchek, and Hawkins Islands cut off the gulf from the Northern Pacific. Montague Island is forty-five miles long and six or seven miles wide. Its mountains like all the rest give evidence of glacial action. There are six long fjords separating tongues of mountainous land from the mainland with which they are generally connected by a narrow neck. Here the heights reach an elevation of five or six thousand feet and offer a wonderful variety of beautiful scenery. The sediment brought down by the various mouths or sloughs of the Copper River have made an area of mud flats in some places fifteen miles wide. The sail through the archipelago is most en- trancing. Mr. Muir thought the view to the west one of the most enchanting he had ever seen: " Peak over peak, dipping deep into the sky, a thousand of them, icy and shining, rising higher, higher, beyond and yet beyond another burning bright in the afternoon light, purple cloud bars above them, purple shadows in the hollows and great breadths of sun-spangled, ice-dotted waters in front."
There are views of distant snow-capped mountains; the channel runs close to wooded shores with glimpses of meadows and glorious glades. Sometimes the abrupt shore towers almost overhead. Many of the fjords are filled with living glaciers; of the eleven principal ones the most remarkable is the Columbia, which is four miles wide
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and three hundred feet high, situated on the western side of the en- trance to Valdez.
" In ordinary light," says Mrs. Higginson, " the front of the glacier is beautifully blue. It is a blue that is never seen in anything save a glacier or a floating iceberg - a pale, pale blue that seems to flash out fire with every movement. At sunset its beauty holds one spellbound. It sweeps down magnificently from the snow-peaks which form its fit setting and pushes out into the sea in a solid wall of spired and pin- nacled opal which, ever and anon breaking off, flings over it clouds of color which dazzle the eyes. At times there is a display of prismatic colors across the front, which grow, fade, and grow again, the most beautiful rainbow shadings. They come and go swiftly and noiselessly, affecting one somewhat like Northern Lights - so still, so brilliant, so mysterious."
All of the region of Prince William Sound is now a national forest preserve.
The town of Valdez was founded in 1898 and owed its prosperity to the traffic attendant on the Klondike hejira. That first year three thou- sand people sailed up through the exquisite Puerto de Valdes, at the upper end of the Sound and climbed along the glacier through the fast- nesses of the cañon-streaked Chugatch to that enticing realm of gold. The canvas town was speedily replaced by one more substantial. Val- dez has now a population of twenty-five hundred. The houses are small but comfortable and in some cases the old Russian's advice about artistic surroundings seems to have been followed. The climate is not more severe than that of Washington, D. C., and in summer there is a profusion of flowers. Though it is four hundred and fifty miles farther north than Sitka, its winter climate is only ten degrees colder and its harbor is open all the year. Strongly constructed piers are built out into deep water, the electric light is in universal use as well as the telephone. The town boasts of schools, churches and a hospital, two newspapers, hotels and restaurants, excellent shops, a brewery and factories, saw-mills and saloons, and many other adjuncts to civiliza-
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tion. There are almost as many dogs as in Constantinople. The vis- itor first sees them waiting on the wharf. They know when the steamer comes, and hasten down to do the honors.
Valdez is situated on a level plain between two glacial streams that flow down lined with alders, cottonwoods, willows and other trees. Back of the city rises the dead glacier, slowly wearing away in its grave, sweeping down between glittering mountains. With plenty of time to spare one may take horses and follow the famous trail into the Tanana country. Ten miles out after an enchanting view of the Lowe River valley winding in its reaches of silvery stream a thousand feet below, one comes to Camp Comfort, where in the early days as many as sev- enty miners returning with gunny sacks filled with gold have slept at one time. Not all were so fortunate.
Beyond a goodly stretch of primeval forest the trail strikes the famous Keystone Cañon, the walls of which rise from twelve to fifteen hundred feet above the roaring river, and follows along on such a narrow ledge that a single misstep would precipitate horse and rider into dizzy depths. The men returning with empty pockets probably cared little to stop and contemplate the Bridal Veil Fall which leaps off into the cañon from a height of six hundred feet. From Wortman's roadhouse to the summit of Thompson Pass is a seven miles' jaunt and it is the proper thing to see the sun rise from that precipice. Unnamed and unnumbered peaks rise into the blue, all crowned with snow which takes on the most exquisite tints of pearly blue or pink. In every direction are valleys eaten out by dashing streams whose musical voices fill the silences. In summer there are vast reaches covered with vivid- hued flowers - violets, harebells, wild geraniums, anemones and but- tercups.
Occasionally the trail dips into a level valley and then one has views of sweeping mountains from below. Heights of two miles perpendic- ular are not uncommon. One of the most impressive mountains thus seen from below is Mt. Drum, which is twelve thousand feet above the valley. The view from the summit of Sour-Dough Hill is claimed by
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some to be unsurpassed in Alaska. From here one sees the majestic peaks of the Castle Mountains, rivers dashing thunderously down wild and sombre cañons, valleys filled to the brim with living glaciers, tre- mendous cascades taking their leap down into the polished sides of dark rock. Here one can see the whole length of the Kennicott glacier sweeping down for forty miles through the Kennicott Valley from Mt. Wrangel and Mt. Regal. Far to the south, dim in the distance, rise the peaks of the Coast Range - a marvellous wilderness of petrified billows.
The valley of the Copper River and its tributaries has been pretty thoroughly examined by the Government geologists, and it is believed that it is rich not only in metals but in possibilities for thousands of small farmers who will raise all kinds of vegetables as well as rye and barley. Only a hundred and sixty miles from Valdez Daniel Kain with only a shovel took out in two days five ounces of coarse gold on the headwaters of Dan Creek which runs into the Nizina. It is noticeable that most of the rivers that flow into the Copper and into the Tanana bear their Indian names in contradistinction to the bays and sounds that were named by the early navigators.
The trail from Valdez leads to the richest copper mine so far dis- covered in Alaska. Reports of the presence of that metal had been brought in by Indians and others; but not until the summer of 1898 did any success attend the efforts of prospectors to locate it. Men who penetrated the Wrangel Mountains in 1899 by the route of the Kotsina River discovered the Nikolai mine in July, 1899, under the guidance of a native named Jack, who had a map made by Nikolai, chief of the Taral Indians. This mine came into the possession of the Chi- tina Exploration Company of San Francisco. That same autumn a party of ten men entered into an agreement to prospect in the interior, all property found to be held for their joint benefit. Among them was R. F. McClennan, who had discovered the Nikolai mine. All but two of the party separated for the winter. Two of them, Clarence Warner and Jack Smith, who remained in Valdez, started in March to climb
OLD RUSSIAN TRADING POST AT ALGANIK.
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the trail into the interior. The snow was from six to ten feet deep and they were not able to make more than five or six miles a day even after almost superhuman exertions. When they reached the so-called McCarthy cache about fifteen miles east of Copper River on the trail to the Nikolai mine, they found that Indians had broken into it and stolen nearly all the provisions, amounting to several thousand pounds.
During the winter McClennan had made an agreement with the Chi- tina Company to work during the summer on the Nikolai mine. When he, in company with a number of men and horses, reached the McCarthy cabin he found Smith and Warner there. A great dispute immediately ensued and McClennan packed in all Smith and Warner's provisions to the Nikolai mine, which is situated on Nikolai creek about a thousand feet above the timber line. These two men set out in July with packs on their backs to prospect. After wandering aimlessly for two days they camped one noon near a small stream that came tearing down from the mountains. Warner happened to glance upward and saw something green. It could not be grass. With great exertion the two men managed to clamber up a hundred and fifty feet to the western slope of the ridge and there they came across a mass of ore cutting across greenstone and limestone and exposed for about four feet. It proved to be pure chalcocite or copper glance. They found solid masses of the ore from two to four feet across and fifteen feet long here and there. They were experienced miners and they knew the value of their discovery. Several tons were in sight. When it was analyzed it gave more than seventy per cent. of pure copper and fourteen ounces of silver besides a trace of gold.
This was the origin of the great Bonanza mine, the richest copper mine so far discovered in the Northwest. They were not allowed to claim it without a bitter fight. The lawsuit lasted several years and was one of the most dramatic ever fought out in the courts. Charges of bribery and corruption were freely made. It was finally decided in favor of the discoverers. Smith located another claim across Mc-
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Carthy Creek and disposed of it for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The Government trail from the Copper River, indeed from Valdez, has been pretty carefully laid out and is not at all difficult in the sum- mer.
The Indians were accustomed to make use of a portage from their Chugach Bay to Cook Inlet, so close lie these two great bodies of in- land waters, though by ship it is a voyage of several hundred miles.
The ordinary tourist does not go beyond Valdez in a summer excur- sion to Alaska, but if he desires he can take a steamer which sails about the middle of each month and visits some of the settlements to the westward. Separating the great Chugach Gulf from historic Cook's Inlet is the remarkable Kenai Peninsula. This peninsula is heavily wooded, the forests climbing its mountains to a height of two thousand feet, the timber being principally spruce with large areas of hemlock, birch and other trees. The land is fertile and the climate suitable for many kinds of agriculture. Berries abound and the hay crop is fre- quently abundant. The surrounding waters swarm with fish and the rivers are the home of the multitudinous salmon. Col. Caine, speaking of the scenery of the Kenai Peninsula, says : -
" The view was sublime. To our right the enormous glacier from which this branch of the Indian River issues filled up the whole of the head of the deep valley, the precipitous sides of which fell almost per- pendicularly to its foot in cliffs a thousand feet high, till it met the sky line ten miles away. Beyond the gorge mountain after mountain stretched away as far as eye could reach with a glimpse between two peaks of another glacier."
Even more enthusiastic is the naturalist, A. J. Stone, who visited the region in the interests of science : -
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