USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 16
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" The sunset trembled upon the North Pacific Ocean, changing hourly as the evening wore on. Through scarlet and purple and gold, the mountain shone; through lavender, pearl, and rose; growing ever more distant and more dim, but not less beautiful. At last it could barely be seen, in a flood of rich violet mist, just touched with rose. . . . The sea breaks into surf upon Shishaldin's base, and snow covers the slender cone from summit to sea-level, save for a month or two in sum- mer when it melts around the base. Owing to the mists, it is almost impossible to obtain a sharp negative of Shishaldin from the water.
" They played with it constantly. They wrapped soft-colored scarfs about its crest; they wound girdles of purple and gold and pearl about its middle; they set rayed gold upon it, like a crown. Now and then, for a few seconds at a time, they drew away completely, as if to con- template its loveliness; and then, as if overcome and compelled by its dazzling brilliance, they flung themselves back upon it impetuously, and crushed it for several moments completely from our view."
Ships from Nome have to go to the westward of Unimak Island by a broad pass separating it from Akun Island. Still another frequently used is Akutan pass which separates Akutan from Unalaska, the largest
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of the hundred Aleutian Islands. Unalaska, which is spelled in a dozen different ways, and was originally Iliuliuk, means " curving beach." Unalaska belongs to the Lisui or Fox Islands. Its harbor is regarded as one of the finest in the world, being completely surrounded by lofty mountains and affording anchorage for the largest ships. The site of the Russian church is beautiful. Above it towers the mountain Maku- shin, with its flag of white steaming smoke. The bay contracts and then spreads out into an inland sea filling a deep valley in the island. Mrs. Higginson calls it " one great sparkling sapphire, set deep in solid emerald and pearl." In the vicinity of the volcano is a sulphur hot spring from which loud cannon-like reports are frequently heard, causing the natives to believe that the mountains were engaged in a dreadful war. Chirikof first discovered Unalaska in September, 1744. Stepan Glottof traded with the natives and found them friendly; he procured some black foxes and carried them to Kamchatka; but an- other Promuishlenik named Korovin, on attempting to settle there, was driven away. Glottof came to his assistance, but not until Soloviof appeared and massacred them mercilessly were they reduced to passive submission.
Captain Cook in 1778 visited Unalaska and exchanged courtesies with the Russian commander. The Russian settlement was at Iliuliuk and consisted of thirty Russians. They had a dwelling-house and two storehouses. Cook gave a good account of the natives, regarding them as the gentlest and most inoffensive people he had ever met with and patterns of honesty. He described them as of low stature, plump, and well formed, dark-eyed, and dark-haired. The women wore a single loose-fitting sealskin garment and deformed their lips with bone labrets. The men wore a garment made of bird-skins, feathers turned inward, and over this a translucent garment made of walrus gut. On their heads they wore " oval-snouted " caps, dyed in colors and decorated with glass beads. The natives lived in barábaras made of earth and stones filled into a frame-work of drift-wood or whale ribs, the whole covered with sods. The smoke escaped and the people entered
A NEW CAMP AFTER A GOLD DISCOVERY.
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through a square opening in the roof, which was reached by means of a ladder or from the inside by a notched pole. Around the walls were low shelves covered with mats or skins and here the inhabitants sat or slept. Sometimes several of these barábaras were connected to- gether and as they were occupied by a number of people and were warmed by rude oil lamps with grass for wicks, or by a smoking fire, the atmosphere may be imagined as beyond description. Their only tools were a knife and hatchet; their meagre household furniture consisted of a few bowls, spoons, cans, and baskets, and possibly a Russian pot or two.
They had not regular chiefs but their best huntsmen had the most influence and the greatest number of wives. The saintly Veniaminof charged them with an inclination toward sensuality which he confessed was increased by the bad example and worse teachings of the early Russian settlers who taught them to indulge in drunkenness. He recog- nized their good qualities, their patience under injury or offence, their honesty, their inward sensitiveness, their tenderness to their children, their truthfulness and simplicity, their hospitality and generosity.
This generosity seems to be characteristic of most of the Alaskans. Judge Mckenzie tells a story which seems to illustrate it. At a settle- ment on the Koyukuk, nearly a hundred miles beyond the Arctic Circle, a poor old Kobulk called Peter saw a cartoon in which Uncle Sam was represented as barefooted. When he learned that it was a picture of the " great White Father " at Washington, he pointed to the bare feet and said: -
" No moccasins ? "
" No," said the trader in whose store the cartoon was displayed, " Uncle Sam hasn't moccasins."
Peter looked distressed and went away without saying anything. A few days later he came back bringing a pair of moccasins and pointing to the cartoon said : -
" Moccasins : send Uncle Sam."
Unalaska was formerly a port of entry for all vessels entering or
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leaving Bering Bay, the rendezvous for the Arctic whaling fleet and the anchorage for the American and British gunboats that were after illicit sealers. During the early days of the Klondike excitement hun- dreds of miners landed there while waiting for transportation to the Yukon. There is a large Russian church with which a successful parish school is connected. The only white women resident in the village are at the Jessie Lee Home, a Methodist mission which has accomplished much in training the young people for useful work.
Unalaska furnishes excursions of unusual interest. About two miles away, reached by a fascinating walk, is Dutch Harbor, formerly called Lincoln Harbor, where the North American Company has a station with framed cottages, all painted white with red roofs, neat and pros- perous and prosaic! Only a few miles away is the neat little village of Blorka on the shores of Samganuda or English Harbor, where Cap- tain Cook anchored and repaired his ships. On the western coast, thirty miles away, is Makushin Harbor, where Glottof first landed. The view from the summit of the volcano is magnificent. It is not a difficult climb.
CHAPTER XXI.
A MOUNTAIN OF FIRE.
D IRECTLY west of Unalaska, directly north of the neighboring island of Umnak, is the marvellous and ever changing ocean volcano named after Saint John the Evangelist - Ioann Bo- goslof. It was originally an isolated rock famous among the Aleuts as a populous resort for seals and sea-lions. In 1795 a peculiar fog seemed to hang over this rock and filled the natives with a vague alarm. A bold seal hunter approached the rock with the design of catching some sea-lions. He returned in haste, reporting that the sea around the rock was boiling hot and the supposed fog was steam. No one any longer dared go there for fear of spirits. After a long time the fog cleared away and a high peak was discovered with smoking top. In 1806 natives so far conquered their terror as to approach it in their bidarkas and they reported that melted stone was running down the sides.
The resident agent of the Russian-American Company witnessed the first eruption from the northern shore of Umnak. A storm occurred, but when the weather moderated a column of fine rock dust rose high in the offing. At night there appeared such a bright glow or incandes- cence that it was almost as light as day. Stones were hurled into the air and some fell on Umnak. At sunrise the cause of the disturbance was seen : - a new black island which looked like a cap.
Four years later it had ceased smoking but eight years after that the ground was still so hot that the sea-lions could not walk on it. In 1817 it was estimated to have attained a circumference of two miles and a half and a height of three hundred and fifty feet. The natives called it Agashagok.
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In 1820 smoke but no fire was seen; it was haunted by sea-lions. The circumference was about four miles; its height five hundred feet. Others gave its height as twenty-five hundred feet. Tebrakof (in 1832) thought its altitude was fifteen hundred feet. Dall in 1873 set its height at eight hundred and fifty feet. It was rapidly disin- tegrating.
In September, 1883, Captain Anderson of the schooner Matthew Turner passing saw the new volcano in active eruption throwing out heated rock, smoke, steam, and ashes, some of them from fissures be- neath the level of the sea. A month later the schooner Dora was pass- ing and her captain, whose name was Hague, approached within a mile, noting the black smoke as if from burning tar mixed with flames and red hot rocks. That same month volcanic dust fell heavily at Una- laska. The new volcano proved to be a larger island than Bogoslof. Mr. Dall named it Grewingk after the Russian explorer. Its steep cone rose to a height of perhaps twelve hundred feet. In 1884 the revenue steamer Corwin reached the vicinity and four men were detailed to go ashore and investigate. They put the height of the new volcano at five hundred feet or less. They found it impossible to climb the peak owing to the heat and the sulphurous fumes. The cone was covered with a thin layer of ashes crusted by rain. The explorers sank ankle deep through the crust and were choked by the impalpable dust. The tem- perature half way to the top was one hundred and ninety degrees. A thermometer made to register two hundred and sixty degrees exploded when put into a crevice. The two islands were connected by a spit from which rose a tower-like rock eighty-seven feet high. Barnacles on its side showed that it had been recently elevated.
A week later Lieutenant M. Stoney of the United States Navy spent several days in the vicinity taking soundings and making observations. He recorded many earthquake shocks, as well as rumbling sounds and a roar like distant cannon. The summit was hidden by masses of black and whitish smoke and the sea seemed to be boiling.
In 1885 Captain Healy of the Corwin reported that the summit from
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the north end was enveloped in a bright sulphurous light which shone out against the sky and made a wonderfully impressive spectacle.
Prof. C. Hart Merriam saw it in 1891 from the Albatross. He says : -
" The night was densely foggy, as usual in Bering Sea in summer, and the early morning brought no change. The ship was feeling her way cautiously with no land in sight, when suddenly, about seven o'clock, the fog lifted and we saw, directly ahead and hardly a mile away, the bold front of the new volcano. We felt a thrill of excitement, as the precipitous cliffs of the northern end broke through the fog, fol- lowed by a fierce rush of escaping steam, whose roar, when the engines stopped, drowned all other noises, not excepting the cries of the myriads of seabirds which swarmed about the rocks like bees about a hive." The steamship ran aground on a reef which rose precipitately out of twenty fathoms of water, but backing off successfully anchored in the bay on the east side. Prof. Merriam thought the island did not in any way suggest a volcano, there being no cone and no true crater. But there were cracks and crannies and great fissures from which sulphur- ous steam was issuing with a deafening roar. In 1895, the island had decreased in height, its top had become greatly flattened and the spit connecting the two had disappeared. This rock, whose history has been known for one hundred and twenty years since it was first described in 1768 as a huge rock, fell in 1888 or 1889 and in 1890 its site was marked by a cluster of small islands or shoals.
The changes that take place at Bogoslof are so bewildering that it is safe to say no two visitors ever see it alike. By the end of the last century the island had so cooled that animal life was again abundant there. The cliffs were filled with the black-headed, white-bellied murres laying their eggs in every cranny. Professor C. Hart Merriam gives an animated description of the visit which he and some of his crew made to the eastern spit in July, 1899. A large number of sea-lions had congregated there. As the boat drew near the shore they grew restless and alarmed. The cows took to the water; the bulls roared and moved
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down to the beach. Several big yellow bulls, " big as oxen and much longer " came toward the boat, bellowing fearfully. Others stood and roared, surging their huge heads. "Most of the young, accompanied by more than one hundred cows and as many bulls, took refuge in the pond near the shore. They were now thoroughly frightened and rushed through the shallow pool in wild confusion, making the water surge and boil and throwing the spray high in the air. Finally, as if by concerted action, all of the old sea-lions made a break for the far side of the pond and stampeded for the sea, where another absorbing scene was being enacted.
" Dozens of adults, apparently cows and middle aged males, were sporting like porpoises in the breakers, moving side by side in schools of six or eight, and shooting completely out of the water. These small squads behaved like well-drilled soldiers, keeping abreast, breaking water simultaneously, making their flying leap in the air side by side, and taking the next water together. This they repeated again and again, evidently finding it great sport. It was a marvellous sight and one to be long remembered."
In 1907 the two peaks had become four and in August a violent earth- quake was followed by an eruption which was so violent that ashes fell as far north as Nome, and covered the decks of passing vessels to the depth of several inches. The whaler Herman was passing the Bogoslof Islands on September first and the captain and crew saw the third peak disappear before their very eyes, while vast columns of steam ascended miles into the air and the water boiled like a tea-kettle. Earthquake shocks were felt as far as Sitka and new rocks came to the surface all along the Aleutian coast.
This year very great changes were reported; the water around the islands was so hot as to be unbearable. The rise and transformation of these volcanic islands is thought to throw a bright light on the for- mation of the whole Aleutian group of islands and mountains. They are evidently all volcanic and have been thrown up within recent geo- logic periods. Certainly nothing since the eruption of Krakatoa and
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the destruction of Pélée has been more instructive as regards the build- ing of the world than the birth of Bogoslof and Grewingk. Beyond Umnak the Aleutian Islands in three groups - the Andreanof, the Is- lands of the Four Mountains, and the Rat Islands - still stretch out into the Northern Pacific. The very last in the group is called Attu. Here, and at Atka, largest of the Andreanof group, are made the bas- kets most prized by connoisseurs. Attu was discovered in 1745 by a reckless sea-otter huntsman, Mikhail Novidskof, who, in a small open boat, made his way across those dangerous seas from the next Kam- chatkan group. The next step was the longest - the wide passage from the Blizhni or Near Islands of which Attu is the largest across to the Rat Islands. From there the course eastward was compara- tively simple, one island being easily visible from the other.
In those early days it was estimated that the Aleutian Islands had a population of perhaps thirty thousand. At the beginning of this century it is regarded as doubtful if there are fifteen hundred all told. In 1865 there were known to be in the eighteen hundred miles between Unalaska and Attu only three small native settlements aggregating less than five hundred natives with six or seven white men. As the Kuro Siwo, called the Black Current, because it is darker than the ocean through which it flows, reaches these groups of islands it greatly modi- fies the climate. Part of it turns to the eastward and carries with it the warm moist atmosphere which makes the climate of Alaska so foggy and favorable to green vegetation, at the same time condens- ing on the mountains forms the tremendous snowfall so favorable for the growth of glaciers; the other part passes northward into the Bering Sea, often carrying with it large icebergs. The average winter climate of the Aleutian Islands, though it corresponds to the latitude of Labrador, is above freezing. For the six colder months, from Oc- tober to March, the mean temperature at Unalaska is slightly above thirty-four. On the other hand the July temperature at the same place averages only fifty. It is quite within the bounds of possibility that in the days to come the former haunts of this peaceable, patient race
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will be again populous, that the thousands of miles of coast, so free from ice-blockade, may be lined with prosperous cities and towns, and that a new civilization may be built up, conditioned by the soft atmos- phere of the misty Aleutian chain.
Mr. N. H. Castle who has lived in Alaska for many years has this to say of its climate : -
" With the lengthening of the days, the sun's visible journey be- comes longer and longer until it reaches its maximum; the winter's snow melts fast before its ever and rapidly increasing intensity. The willows, tentatively, thrust forth delicate foliage. Clear water appears in the streams between the disrupted surfaces of the ice and rivulets of melted snow add their quota toward its ultimate effacement. Life and motion seem to affect even inanimate bodies. Around the bends of the larger watercourses, slowly, almost majestically, turning, twist- ing, upheaving, rending, grinding one upon the other, floe after fioe, floe over floe, floe under floe, covering the entire width from bank to bank, the masses above meet the masses below, the irresistible impact of millions of tons carries everything before it to the open sea. Per- haps the ice gorges in the river; the tremendous weight meets a for- midable but temporary obstruction and surge follows surge, heaping up a seemingly impenetrable wall; hnge blocks are tossed far up on the shore, discolored masses rent from the river's bed mingle with the clear ice that has suffered no contamination with earth, the water backs behind the surging, unquiet barrier and overruns its ordinary limits, until, bursting with a roar, the magnificent array again proceeds upon its course with its toll of uprooted trees and crumbled banks.
" Such is the break-up, the great spectacular feature of the North- land. Yet season after season the ice may melt where it forms, or pass quietly away in small floes and disappoint the expectant sightseer by its lack of ostentatious display. Soon the only snow visible will be the scattered patches upon the hillsides and these may remain until the intervening spaces are filled by a fresh downfall. The stretches of tundra are dotted with miniature lakes and in places have the appear-
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HYDRAULIC MINING IN ALASKA.
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ance of carpets of graduated shades of green, interspersed with blotches of purple, to the delight of the impressionist.
" Then the vegetation seems to spring up before one's very eyes, as if it must do its utmost in its short season of freedom after long imprisonment. Grasses appear spontaneously; snapdragons, the wild rose, columbines, buttercups, larkspur, violets blue and violets yellow, forget-me-nots, bluebells, marigolds and hundreds of other varieties of wild flowers mature in tropical luxuriance. Wild oats and barley give abundant promise of the day to come when we of the North shall raise our own cereals. Berries in profusion cover the ground. The deciduous trees assume a brilliant foliage and the sombre tints of the evergreens are tipped with brighter shades. Geese and crane, wild ducks and swans, snipe and plover, in countless thousands return from their winter wanderings and other feathered harbingers of spring glad- den the eye and ear, and themselves apparently rejoice to return to their chosen summer resort.
" As to heat, clear and foggy days, wind and other elemental char- acteristics, the Alaskan summers vary largely. In June, July and August the thermometer ranges between one hundred and the forties. The precipitation varies from year to year; sometimes the rain falling in cloudbursts, raising the creeks, destroying dams and works and in- flicting great damage, while in other seasons light rains may maintain a fair average of water for mining purposes; again, dry years may disappoint the miner no less than the agriculturist in other climes."
CHAPTER XXII.
OUR IMPERIAL DOMAIN.
T HE Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition which was held at Seattle during the summer of 1909 undoubtedly opened the eyes of thousands of people to the immense importance of our far north- western territory so long neglected and abused. General Greely calls attention to the fact that as lately as 1905 a foot note to an article in a prominent magazine stated that the vast region of Alaska " is in- habited by a few savages and is not likely ever to support a population enough to make its government a matter of practical consequence."
This utterly ridiculous statement apparently was allowed to pass un- protested. The ever-increasing tide of summer travel along the north- western coast where as Mr. John Burroughs says, " day after day a panorama unrolls before us with features that might have been gath- ered from the Highlands of the Hudson, from Lake George, from the Thousand Islands, the Saguenay, or the Rangeley Lakes in Maine, with the addition of towering snow-capped mountains thrown in for a back- ground," alone brings millions of dollars of traffic to the steamboat companies and the Alaskan towns. The compound interest on the cost of Alaska for twenty-five years was estimated by a treasury agent as twenty-three million seven hundred and one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two dollars. If to this be added the expense of the Army and Navy Department the total cost he reckoned as more than forty- three millions, and he advised abandoning the territory. General Greely prints an instructive table showing the aggregate value of furs, fish- eries and minerals between 1868 and 1908. The totals amounted to three hundred and twenty-seven million six hundred and fifty-one thou- sand one hundred and ninety-six dollars. Had not the selfish exploi-
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OUR IMPERIAL DOMAIN.
tation of the fur-bearing animals resulted in such ruin to this industry the amount would have been far greater. General Greely estimates that the possible gold output of the Seward Peninsula will reach a value of three hundred millions, of the Tanana water-shed a hundred millions, and other fields as yet untouched and unexplored will bring the mining districts up to a value of five hundred millions, while the coal-tonnage of the territory is estimated at fifteen thousand millions of short tons. And besides this there are possibilities of petroleum, lead, gypsum, marble, iron, quicksilver, graphite, and hosts of other natural products as yet scarcely touched by the prospector. Then there are the actual values of eleven incorporated cities, amounting to fifteen or twenty millions more. Railways, telegraphs and hydraulic ditches have cost up into the millions and the imports and exports represent also almost fabulous sums. When the mineral resources begin to dwindle probably Alaska will go through the same experience as did California : agriculture will be found to outweigh her gold production a score of times.
But even if these roseate visions of future wealth from the soil and the earth be not realized, Alaska is going to be more and more the playground of the world. Nowhere else is there such a voyage possible as from Seattle to Skaguay. It was made in the summer of 1909 by two professors and a student in a twenty-four foot naphtha launch uncovered. For two thousand miles, nearly all the way sheltered be- hind beautiful wooded islands and with marvellous vistas of beauty and magnificence unrolling before them they made their way into this region of enchantment.
As yet Alaska is practically an unknown country. Our imaginary voyage has only skimmed the edge as it were. At the present time the United States and Canada are engaged in the foolish and unfor- tunate business of marking an imaginary boundary between Alaska and the Dominion. As there is no material division between these two countries, as there is free trade between Maine and California, so there should always be free trade between the United States and its northern
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neighbor. What is to the interest and advantage of the one should be to the interest and advantage of the other. A good proof of this is given by Dr. J. H. Moore, chairman of the meeting of the Arctic Brotherhood in July, 1909, when a beautiful building was presented to the University at Seattle. The speaker, after giving a humorous account of the accidental formation of the Society in 1897, on a ship bound north, - a society which now numbers more than seven thou- sand members - said: -
" Our banner is a story in itself. We had all Americans for mem- bers at first, but soon we began to take in Canadians. We were all for having the American flag in the banner, but then, because of the Cana- dian members, we thought it only fair to have the Union Jack in also. Both flags are combined in the banner.
" All that time there was considerable friction over the boundary line. This dispute suggested the motto on our banner, 'No boundary line here.' "
As it is, however, a gallant company of skilled men are at the present time engaged in marking a boundary line twelve hundred miles long. First there are six hundred miles from the Portland Canal up the coast to Mt. St. Elias and then six hundred miles from there north to the Arctic Ocean. Mr. Thomas Riggs, Jr., the chief of this part of the United States Alaskan Boundary Survey, says : -
" All the land lying along the boundary must be mapped on an accu- rate scale and a strip of topography four miles wide must be run the entire length of the one hundred and forty-first meridian; peaks which cannot be climbed, or rather which would take too long and would be too expensive to scale, must be determined geodetically; vistas twenty feet in width must be cut through the timbered valleys; and monu- ments must be set up on the routes of travel and wherever a possible need for them may occur."
The labor thus involved is almost unimaginable. Rivers of icy water have to be crossed and mounted, vast glaciers have to be conquered, heavy instruments have to be carried, swamps and unbroken wilder-
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nesses swarming with bloodthirsty mosquitoes have to be penetrated, provisions have to be looked after. During one single season the two parties located main points on the boundary for eighty-five miles, com- pleted seventy-seven miles of triangulation, a topographical belt sixty- five miles long, cut forty miles of vista, ran two hundred and fifty miles of levels and established seventeen monuments of aluminum bronze, each five feet high and set in a concrete base weighing three quarters of a ton.
While this is going on along the inward boundary the Coast Survey has been awakened to the need of surveying the coast. Owing to its sinuosities, that signifies making careful maps of a coast line estimated at twenty-six thousand miles. The season is short, lasting only from May to October, and during this time there are always a great many annoying interruptions, the storms that suddenly come up, and the fogs that are so prevalent on the northwest coast.
As yet the charting of the bays and inlets is very imperfectly done; there is a great lack of suitable lighthouses and buoys; ships that nav- igate those waters run the risk of striking hidden rocks, rocks too that may have been recently thrown up by some subterranean convulsion. But the time is coming when this great and necessary work will be completed and the channels and bays from Seattle to Point Barrow will be as perfectly known as those of the Atlantic coast.
Each year a larger number will learn about this magical territory; each year new bands of tourists will seek its marvellous panorama of glittering mountains and its rivers of flexile ice. No one who ever goes to Alaska fails to be impressed with the majesty of nature there dis- played, and to rejoice that fifty years ago there were a few statesmen far-sighted enough to see the possibilities of that distant boreal land. All honor to Seward and Sumner and the rest of the devoted congress- men who put that splendid measure through in spite of the opposition of purblind, narrow-minded Ignorance !
THE END.
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