USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 15
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
" It is a land of magnificent rugged mountains, and of beautiful rolling meadow lands; a land of eternal fields of glistening snow and ice, and of everlasting fires of burning lignite; of frozen moss and lichen-covered plains and of vegetation that is tropical in its luxuriance ;
207
A SOUND OF GLACIERS.
a land of extensive coal fields, smoking volcanoes, and of earthquakes so frequent as to fail to excite comment among its natural residents ; of charming quiet bays and harbors, and of tides and tide-rips among the greatest in the world; of almost endless days in summer, and of gray dismal winter nights; of an abundant animal life both in the water and on the land. Nowhere else in the world does nature exert herself in so many ways as in the Kenai Peninsula. The waters, the mountains, the great rivers of ice, the vegetable and animal life all vie with each other in the production of something unusual and won- derful."
The principal town on the peninsula is Seward, situated on Resur- rection Bay and designed as the terminus of the Alaska Central Rail- way. The town site was purchased of a pioneer family for four thou- sand dollars. It has all the aspect of a frontier lumber town. The business streets have a picturesque mélange of un-uprooted stumps, cabins made of birch logs, and more permanent edifices, such as churches, banks, a library and a hospital. There is a good wharf and a sufficient harborage which is open all winter. Here Baránof is said to have built his famous ship the Feniks.
The Alaskan Central Railway was projected to penetrate the rich mining region of the Tanana Valley and it was estimated that it would cost twenty-five million dollars. The route was to strike Turnagain Arm, where there are profitable gold mines, and then to follow up the valley of the Susitna. Passengers by this line would get a magnificent view of the Alaskan Range of mountains and particularly of Mt. Mc- Kinley, which lifts its snow-crowned head to a height of more than twenty thousand feet, being now recognized as the monarch of all Amer- ican mountains, though not much higher than its neighbor Mt. Foster.
Dr. Cook describes the view from the top of Mckinley, which he claims to have reached in company with Edward Barille.
" It was September sixteenth, the temperature sixteen degrees below zero, the altitude twenty thousand three hundred and sixty feet. The Arctic Circle was in sight; so was the Pacific Ocean. We were inter-
.
208
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
ested mostly, not in the distant scenes, but in the very strange anomaly of our immediate surroundings. It was ten o'clock in the morning, the sky was as black as that of midnight. At our feet the snow glittered with a ghastly light. As the eye ran down we saw the upper clouds drawn out in loose strings, and still farther down the big cumulus forms, and through the gap far below, seemingly in the interior of the earth, bits of rugged landscape. The frightful, uncanny aspect of the outlook made us dizzy. Fifty thousand square miles of our arctic won- derland was spread out under our enlarged horizon, but we could see it only in sections. Various trains of morning clouds screened the lowlands and eastward the lesser peaks. We could see the narrow silvery bands marking the course of the Yukon and the Tanana, while to the south, looking over nearby clouds, we had an unobstructed view. Mt. Susitna, one hundred miles away in a great green expanse was but a step in the run of distance. The icy cones of the burning vol- canoes, Redoubt, Iliamna and Chirabora, the last two hundred miles away, were clearly visible with their rising vapors. Still farther the point of Kenai Peninsula, and beyond the broad sweep of the Pacific, two hundred and fifty miles away."
The railway has fallen into financial difficulties and beyond a dis- tance of fifty-three miles exists only on paper. It is only a question of time when the great interests involved will necessitate its extension to Fairbanks. It would tap splendid spruce forests, the fine coals of the Matanuska, rich mines of gold and copper and serve an agricultural population that is certain to fill the fertile valleys under the Govern- ment homestead act which grants settlers farms of three hundred and twenty acres.
CHAPTER XIX.
SUMMERLAND.
T HE scenery of Cook's Inlet is almost as magnificent and varied as that of the Chugach Gulf. Cape Douglas is a most imposing promontory thrusting into the sea for several miles and then opposing a sheer bluff for a thousand feet. Between Cape Elizabeth and Cape Douglas the entrance is fifty miles wide. As it were guard- ing the bay stands the dead volcano of St. Augustine, a perfectly sym- metrical cone, which rises to a height of three thousand feet, glittering with snow packed into every seam. Along the western shore is a chain of active volcanoes, the loftiest of which is Iliamna Peak, whose smok- ing crest rises to a height of twelve thousand and sixty-six feet. It is snow-clad to the top. It was last in eruption in 1854 but the evanescent smoke-wreaths curling around the steep summit make it evident that the internal fires are only slumbering. At its foot lies Iliamna Lake, the second largest body of fresh water in Alaska. It is perhaps sev- enty-five miles long and from fifteen to twenty-five miles wide. It drains into Bristol Bay on Bering Sea by the Kuichak River, and the salmon which seek its waters furnish material for one of the largest canneries in Alaska. Northeast from Iliamna is another volcano called by the Russians the Burning Mountain. It is mapped now as Redoubt. It rises to a height of eleven thousand two hundred and seventy feet and constantly sends up clouds of smoke. At its last eruption in 1867 the gray ashes were drifted over to islands more than one hundred and fifty miles distant. In 1902 it was pouring forth dense black smoke and vivid sheets of flame. Redoubt too has its lake. It bears the com- mon name of Clarke and is long, though not so wide as Iliamna with
209
210
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
which it is connected by the Nogheling River. It is a paradise for hunters. On the Kenai Peninsula and along the Alaskan Range roam the fierce Kenai grizzlies. One may sometimes fall in with the fierce Kadiak brown bear which equals the grizzlies in ferocity and is the largest carnivorous animal known, often attaining a length of ten or twelve feet. There are also black and cinnamon bears. The stringent and excellent game laws 1 require a permit for hunters to kill them. The moose here attains the enormous weight of sixteen hundred pounds and with a spread of antlers of five or six feet. They are numerous in the wooded valleys of the Kenai Peninsula and on the sides of the Alaskan range. Deer, mountain goats and mountain sheep, wolves, foxes, caribou, and many other kinds of game abound. Colonel Caine declares this region one of the finest natural hunting grounds in the world.
A tremendous tide runs up Cook Inlet. As it narrows it rises and falls from twenty to twenty-seven feet and the natives, " the Cossacks of the sea " who are skilful in the use of their walrus-hide bidarkas, sometimes use the bore as a sort of marine toboggan slide. Big steam- ers touch only at Seldovia, which has no wharf, and at Homer, on the northern side of Kachemak Bay, where there is a good wharf. The town is practically deserted owing to the setback which coal mining received a few years ago. This subsidiary bay has coal mines and glaciers. Burroughs says of it : - " Grandeur looked down on it from the mountains around, especially from the great volcanic peaks, Iliamna and Redoubt, sixty miles across the inlet to the west."
To reach the upper end of the inlet and its finger-stretching arms one has to wait the pleasure of some small steamer which makes the trip at irregular intervals. Cook supposed the inlet that bears his name was a big river and when he found that the eastern branch was only a cul de sac he called it Turnagain. It is about thirty miles in length. The great river Susitna, which drains a region of eight thousand square
1 Mr. McLain calls the game laws of Alaska cruel because they rob the Indians of a market for their furs during the season when they are most available.
211
SUMMERLAND.
miles and is navigable almost up to the flanks of Mt. Mckinley, flows into the inlet two hundred and sixty miles from the entrance.
Vancouver describes the region bordering on the bays that variegate this great inland sea as " low, wooded, and rising with a gradual as- cent, until at the inner point of the entrance when the shores suddenly rise to lofty eminences in nearly perpendicular cliffs, and compose stu- pendous mountains that are broken into chasms and deep gullies. Down these," he continues, " rushed immense torrents of water, ren- dering the naked sides of these precipices awfully grand; on their tops grew a few stunted pine trees, but they were nearly destitute of every other vegetable production."
The climate of this region is so balmy that the Russians called it Summerland. Fruits, vegetables and grain come to maturity and are delicious in flavor. Cows and hens flourish and one can always have good butter and eggs. The ultimate exploitation of the coal fields which will suffice for centuries for the whole Pacific Coast will assure the future of this wonderful Aleutian country. The opinion held by the Interior Department that all of these natural monopolies in coal should be retained by the Government for the benefit of the whole people is one that will assuredly commend itself to the judgment of our descend- ants who will have cause enough to regret the undemocratic concen- tration of these enormous treasures in the hands of a comparatively small part of the population. The oldest coal mine in Alaska is situated on the western shore of the inlet. It was worked by the Russians under the direction of German miners who ran a drift into the vein for seventeen hundred feet, but though they took out nearly three thou- sand tons the venture was not profitable, as the coal proved to be of too poor a quality for steamships.
All voyageurs agree as to the splendor of the scenery throughout this region. Mr. R. H. Sargent of the United States Geological Survey thus describes the view of the Alaska range of Mountains as seen from an elevation of about twenty-five hundred feet on the western slope of the Talkitna group: --
212
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
" The day was perfect; not a clond could be seen in the heavens. Below lay the broad, level valley of the Susitna River, beautifully car- peted in the deep green of the coniferae, while here and there a shining patch of light, outlining a lake, broke the monotony, and through the centre of it all the Susitna wound like a silver trail.
" Across the valley, fifty miles away, the foothills of the Alaska Range rose, rugged, angular, and formidable, their cold, gray, serrated peaks often resembling clusters of spires; while back of them, dwarf- ing to the height of mere foothills in comparison, Mount Dall, Mount Russell and Mount Foraker stood like white-clad guardians to their chief. A sweep of the horizon from the south to the northeast, where the view was cut off by the adjacent mountains, gave the grandest pano- rama imaginable. Far away in the distance could be seen the volcanoes Iliamna and Redoubt, on the western shore of Cook Inlet, while at the other extremity Mount Hayes towered high above everything about it. Between these two the waving crest-line of the range was now painted in the green of a river valley, now cold, steel gray, as it outlined the lower peaks, gradually becoming whitened as it reached its crest, and then on through the same transition until lost to view."
Southwest from the Kenai Peninsula, and on the same parallel as Sitka and the Pribilof Islands, is Kadiak, or Kodiak, next to Prince of Wales Island the largest of all the Alaskan islands. It was dis- covered in 1763 by Stepan Glottof, whose ship was fiercely attacked by the natives. As usual gunpowder triumphed. In 1784 Shelikof established his first trading-post at Three-Saints Bay on the south- eastern shore. At that time he reported the natives as numbering fifty thousand. This was a gross exaggeration - probably there were not a tenth as many. They called themselves Kaniagmut. He de- scribed them as tall, healthy, and strong, generally round-faced, of light brown color, the hair black and prevalently bunched forward over the forehead and cut off at the eyebrows. Perhaps because of the delightful climate they were a braver, finer and more intelligent people than the other Aleuts. The Kadiak bears are also larger and fiercer
213
SUMMERLAND.
than any other of the Alaska flesh-eating mammals, and the moose grows there to colossal size. The island is a hundred miles long and about forty wide. Its mountains rise to a height of not more than five thousand feet and are smoothly rounded; the valleys are filled with luxuriant grass; there are no forests except on the Eastern end.
The tremendous convulsion of nature which separated Kadiak from the mainland seems to be turned into a myth by the native legend which relates how an immense otter trying to thread the waterways got caught and could not free himself. His struggles resulted in pushing the islands into the Pacific, leaving the straits that now bear the name of Shelikof.
Shelikof was obliged to subdue the natives by force. Great cruelty was practised in compelling them to hunt for the Russians. At the same time attempts were made to convert them. Here the first mis- sionary work on the northwest coast was carried on. This was sup- plemented in 1796 by a school, opened by Father Juvenal, who reported the natives as deeply impressed though they did not understand the language of the service.
Baránof transferred the settlement to the northern end of the island and there in 1796 the first " Orthodox " Greek church was built. It is still shown with pride. It is painted white and is surrounded with a white fence and, by trees. The steeple carries a chime of bells and is surmounted by the characteristic Russian cross with its three trans- verse bars, the lowest slanting. The interior is much less elaborate than the church in Sitka.
The great log warehouse in which the furs and stores of the Shelikof Company were kept is also a mute witness to the immensity of the transactions of those early days. The Northern Commercial Company still maintains one of its branches in the town and the residence which stands on a commanding eminence is a great centre of hospitality for visitors.
Visitors are always enthusiastic at the charm of Kadiak. John Burroughs calls it " bewitching " and breaks into a lyric strain in
214
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
praise of its emerald heights, flowery vales and vast green solitudes, " so secluded, so remote, so peaceful."
Mrs. Higginson can scarcely find adjectives enough : - She describes the clouds " like broken columns of pearl " that " pushed languorously up through the misty gold of the atmosphere," the long slopes of the hill-side vividly green and the acres of brilliant bloom.
" To one climbing the hill behind the village," she says, "island beyond island drifted into view, with blue waterways winding through velvety labyrinths of green; and beyond all, the strong, limitless sweep of ocean. The winds were but the softest zephyrs, touching the face and hair like rose petals, or other delicate, visible things; and the air was fragrant with things that grow day and night and that fling their splendor forth in one riotous rush of bloom. Shaken through and through their perfume was that thrilling, indescribable sweetness which abides in vast spaces where snow mountains glimmer and the opaline palisades of glaciers shine."
A short distance across from the town of Kodiak is Wood Island, where were once stationed the head-quarters of the American-Russian Ice Company, the ruins of the big buildings being still visible. The manager of the company lived in luxurious style and is said to have constructed the first road in Alaska. It skirts the island and is about thirteen miles long. There is a remarkably successful Baptist Orphan- age for native children on this island. The girls are taught housework, the boys learn to do farming. The climate is such that although grain does not fill out, all vegetables thrive - potatoes averaging two hun- dred and fifty bushels to the acre - and it is a paradise for cattle. They raise angora goats and their dairy products are of the first quality. Wood Island has also a Greek Russian church and a mission.
At the mouth of the shallow Karluk River, which flows sixteen miles down into the Shelikof Strait, is one of the largest salmon canning fac- tories in Alaska. It is provided with every labor-saving device. The whole operation is very interesting, but is conducted on such an enor-
215
SUMMERLAND.
mous scale that it makes the judicious tremble for the fate of the salmon.
The fish which swarm into this little river by the millions, making an almost solid stream, are caught in a net nine or ten feet wide and almost half a mile long paid out by a tug. One end is made fast; the other is hauled in by a windlass. When it has narrowed the enclosed area to a few hundred square feet, barges eighteen or twenty feet long and half as wide are brought along side and filled with a squirming, struggling mass of big salmon. These are emptied into bins and the butchers take them out and cut off their heads, fins and tails. Human labor became so skilful that a single man would thus treat three hun- dred an hour; but a recently perfected machine works far more expe- ditiously and with vastly less waste. An endless belt carries them to another machine which removes the scales, cuts them open and removes the entrails while a strong stream of water washes each one thoroughly. They are then inspected and if suitable are laid crosswise on an ascend- ing series of parallel belts between which are placed rapidly revolving knives. These cut them into sections to fit the cans which are rammed full of fish, capped and soldered in one operation and at the rate of one a second. The cans are then heated to a temperature of two hundred and twelve degrees and kept so for about an hour. After this each can is punctured to allow the gases to escape and when it has been resoldered it is again heated for another hour at a temperature of two hundred and forty degrees. When it has cooled the Chinese expert tests it to see if it is air tight. He can tell by the sound. If the test is sat- isfactory the can is labelled and packed in cases. The value of the Alaskan salmon industry is not far from ten millions of dollars a year.
The law requires canneries to maintain salmon hatcheries. That at Karluk is regarded as one of the most successful and costs not far from twenty thousand dollars a year to support. It released one hundred and seventy-four millions of fry in 1906 and its output in 1908 was more than two hundred millions.
The hatchery consists of about a dozen ponds with a fall of from
216
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
four to six feet between them, fed by a small creek and by springs. The lower ponds are used for " ripening " the salmon. They are spawned by hand. Ten weeks after the fry are hatched they are fed with tinned salmon meat. When they are freed they make their way into salt water but do not travel far. At the end of the second year, if they survive their numerous enemies they are about eight inches long, take on bright scales, and are called " smolt." They pass out to sea between March and June and when they return in the autumn they are called " grilse " and weigh four or five pounds. The corrals in the lagoon of the Karluk River cover an area of about three acres. Here are taken the " stock-fish " for ripening. The hatching house contains a large number of troughs made of red-wood and treated so as to prevent all leakage. End to end they would extend nearly a thou- sand feet, and accommodate almost as many salmon. The view from the hatchery looking across Shelikof Strait to the snow-clad mountains of Alaska peninsula is particularly charming for those who like bold and wild scenery.
CHAPTER XX.
ROSARY EMERALDS.
T HE Aleutian Islands have been compared to " an emerald rosary on the blue breast of Bering Sea." Charles Sumner speaking of them in his great Alaska speech said that they stretched " far away to Japan as if America were extending a friendly hand to Asia." Kadiak has an attendant swarm of smaller islands, like a planet with moons. There are Afognak, Tugidak, Sitkinak, Malmot, Spruce, Chirikof and Semidi. Several of these islands have been pre- empted for the propagation of foxes. About the year 1894 the Semidi Propagation Company was organized to domesticate and raise foxes. The first fox farm was stocked from the Pribilof Islands. There are now between thirty and forty islands where this industry is carried on. The largest fox farm is on Long Island, one of the Kadiak group, where there are about a thousand blue foxes. It has been so far found impracticable to domesticate the larger and more valuable silver-gray fox. The islands utilized for this purpose are taken out from the pro- visions of the homestead laws. The industry is proving a godsend for the natives whose livelihood has been so injured by the ruin of the seal fisheries.
The steamboat that visits Kadiak strikes across southwest to the little canning town of Chignik on the mainland. The bay bearing the same name is defended by Tuliiumnit Point, sometimes called Castle Cape, from its resemblance to " turrets, towers and domes." Its enor- mous mass juts out into the sea, gray streaked with rose.
Still farther southwest are the Shumagin Islands, so named by Bering in honor of a Russian sailor who died and was buried on one of them. Five or six of them are quite large. Unga, which lies nearest the penin-
217
218
OUR NORTHERN DOMAIN.
sula, has several settlements and trading-posts. The cod-fisheries ex- tend from here in all directions. At Unga there is a Russian Greek church more interesting externally than within. At Apollo, three miles away, there is a productive mine owned by Californians. Sandy Point is notorious as the scene of a murder worthy of being told by Dosto- yevsky. In a lonely house lived a man who had bought a young Aleu- tian girl for ten dollars and some tobacco. When she grew older, he abused her as if she were his wife. A Russian half-breed, named Gerasimof, fell in love with her and urged her to run away with him. She had not the courage. Gerasimof, seeing how she was maltreated, killed the brutal man while he was asleep. He was arrested and sen- tenced for life to the penitentiary on McNeil's Island. The girl, freed from terrible slavery, showed her gratitude by marrying another man within a year. The lonely house where the murder was committed is deserted; the people believe it to be haunted.
Directly west of Unga is Pavlof Bay, on which is situated the town of Bielkovsky, which was for many years the centre of the sea-otter trade. The most dangerous of the enterprises of the Aleuts was to catch this valuable little beast, for they frequent the wildest shores, disporting in the roughest surf, clinging to the long whipping fronds of the " sea-otter's cabbage " or nursing their young on the surface of the water. They are the shyest of sea-creatures. The natives, dar- ingly approaching the shore in their bidarkas, used to spear them with ivory-headed spears. Sometimes a party of them would go out to- gether, and if an otter were discovered they would combine to keep it under the water until it was drowned. The sea-otter cannot remain under water without breathing for more than twenty minutes. The moment it would put its head out, the Aleut, on the watch, would shout and scare it under again before it had a chance to breathe. This op- eration might take several hours. But the value of the beautiful brown fur, especially silver-tipped fur of the deep-sea otter, justifies all risk and all expenditure of time and effort. The sea-otter sought for by the richest people of Russia and China is now almost exterminated.
219
ROSARY EMERALDS.
Bielkovsky has a Russian church and resident priest or pop. Its situation is delightful, the volcano not being too near, but it is said to need a Hercules to cleanse its Augean filth.
The long peninsula of Alaska, with its range of mountains and its serrated bays, its volcanoes and its numberless ponds draining into the icy waters of the northern seas, is separated by a very narrow pass from Unimak Island. On this are two active volcanoes, Shishaldin and Progomni. Mrs. Higginson goes into raptures over her first sight of Shishaldin as she saw it in the soft splendor of an Aleutian sunset : -
" In the absolute perfection of its conical form, its chaste and delicate beauty of outline, and the slender column of smoke pushing up from its finely pointed crest, Shishaldin stands alone. Its height is not great, only nine thousand feet; but in any company of loftier mountains it should shine out with a peerlessness that would set it apart.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.