USA > Alaska > Our northern domain: Alaska, picturesque, historic and commercial > Part 8
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Prince Frederick Sound, into which the steamer emerges, was so named from having been the meeting place of two of Vancouver's lieu-
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tenants on the birthday of the Duke of York in 1794. They landed on Kupreanof Island and there decided that the search for the passage from the Pacific into the Atlantic was mythical, all the stories of pre- vious navigators to the contrary. Mrs. Scidmore says: " With no small portion of facetious mirth they remembered that they had sailed from England on the first day of April to find the Northwest Passage. These lieutenants made plain to their chief the ' uncommonly awful ' and ' horribly magnificent ' character of the scenery along the Prince Frederick shore, and Vancouver began the lavish use of adjectives which is in vogue in Alaskan narrative to-day."
This refers to a passage in which Lieutenant Whidbey, describing the mountains to the south that " rose to a prodigious height," said : " A part of them presented an uncommonly awful appearance, rising with an inclination toward the water to a vast height, loaded with an immense quantity of ice and snow, and overhanging their base, which seemed to be insufficient to bear the ponderous fabric it sustained, and rendered the view of the passage beneath horribly magnificent."
As the vessel approaches the sound the eye is attracted by a dark spire-shaped peak which rises nearly two thousand feet from the rim of a mountain amphitheater on the mainland. It has been called the Devil's Thumb with that generosity toward the Powers of Darkness which scatters testimonials to their presence all along the coasts of the world. The mountains rise to a height of seven thousand feet and as one sails to the north crossing the sound, the first coast glaciers are encountered. Patterson glacier pours down over a long slope and con- tributes a fine waterfall. In Vancouver's time it approached near enough to the shore for icebergs to tumble off into the water. He describes the weird effect of the thunderous crash heard at a distance of several miles.
This phenomenon is first observed at the present time at the inlet poetically named by the Indians Hutli or Thunder Bay, but, with fatal banality, Le Conte Bay and Glacier Bay, by the Coast Survey. The clear blue ice which comes gliding and sliding down through a steep
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canon forested to its very edge is about half a mile wide, and the enor- mous cakes of cleavage breaking off fall crashing into the water, caus- ing the superstitious natives to believe that the bay was the home of the thunder-birds, whose flapping pinions caused the echoes to roll from the cliffs.
The finest views of the glaciers are obtained from Thomas Bay and the most noticeable feature of the sound is Cape Fanshaw, fronting the southwest and exposed to the fierce winds that sweep that re- gion.
Beyond lies Mount Windham, which is twenty-five hundred feet high and looks down upon the exhausted gold fields of the seventies. The meadows on the shoulders of the high hills here are famous for their display of beautiful flowers - dwarf laurel, violets, daisies, anemones and the black Kamchatka lily. When they were explored by John Muir in 1879 they were the haunt of the mountain goat and mountain sheep.
In the vicinity of Sumdum Bay is the mining town of the same name. The Indian word is said to represent or express the thunder of the falling ice. There is a fine glacier sliding down from the mountains beyond. The bay divides into two arms, each marked by glaciers, and aggregating a length of nearly fifty miles. It is a deep marine cañon, soundings having reached two hundred fathoms. Captain White of the U. S. S. ship Wayanda steered his gig into the arched grotto of one of those glaciers and penetrated more than a hundred feet " down a crystalline corridor " of marvellous colors. His crew poured out libations to the ice-spirits, the Sitt tu yekh, whose chill breath is death and who resent interference with his subjects, the icebergs. The sap- phire eyed divinity accepted the libations graciously; had he been angry he would have ruthlessly shaken down the crystalline arch and overwhelmed the audacious mortals.
Muir regarded Sumdum Bay as the most interesting of all the Alas- kan fjords. He says: " A hundred or more glaciers of the second and third class may be seen along the walls, and about as many snow
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cataracts, which, with the plunging bergs, keep all the fjord in a roar. The scenery in both the long arms of the bay and their side branches is of the wildest description, especially in the upper reaches, where the granite walls, streaked with waterfalls, rise in sheer massive preci- pices, like those of Yosemite Valley, to a height of three thousand and even over four thousand feet."
The great Admiralty Island, one of the largest of the group, lies to the west of Stephens Passage. Like all the rest it is deeply indented with inlets, many of which are deep and characterized by swift and dangerous tidal currents. There are mountains that rise to a height of three and four thousand feet. The cliffs along the coast are rugged and wild. In the interior, which has not as yet been thoroughly ex- plored, are many lakes. Gold abounds and there are mines of coal and quarries of fine marble. The timber, especially the yellow cedar, is among the best in Alaska. For many years this region was the centre of the whaling industry, and was the haunt of the most blood-thirsty of the native tribes. The annals are full of exciting tales of their incursions along the coast. Thus in 1857 a party of about a thousand sailed on to Puget Sound, shot Colonel Eby, the Collector of Customs, on Whidbey Island, and several other men, mounted their heads on poles and paddled away in triumph. They were emboldened by their impunity and a few years later they seized and scuttled the schooner Royal Charlie, and murdered the crew. A Sitka sentry shot one of them in 1869 and in revenge they killed two Sitka traders. Then the Saginaw appeared and destroyed three of their villages on the upper end of the island of Kupreanof.
In 1880 the Northwest Trading Company established a whaling station at Killionu, at the entrance of the remarkable Kutznahu Inlet. A bomb harpoon exploded in 1882 and killed a great shaman or medi- cine man. The Kutznahus demanded an indemnity of two hundred blankets. When it was refused they captured a white man as ransom. He proved to be blind in one eye and was returned with a message that they would exterminate the whites at the settlement unless their de-
NATIVE ALASKAN IVORY WORKER.
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mand was satisfied. Word was sent to Captain Merriman at Sitka; he took the revenue cutter and bombarded the Indian village of An- gun. Mrs. Scidmore relating the occurrence says: " Much indig- nation was vented by eastern editors at the occurrence, and sad pic- tures were drawn of the natives left shelterless among ' the eternal ice and snow of an arctic winter.' The mercury stood twenty degrees higher for the month than in New York and Boston and the Kootz- nahoos, securing front seats on the opposite shore, watched the bom- bardment and cheered the nearest shots. The tribe saved their winter provisions and all their belongings save what pilferers took during the bombardment. They paid a fine of four hundred blankets and have since kept the peace."
Their Chief Kitchnatti, known to tourists as Saginaw Jake, because of his year's imprisonment on the steamship as a ransom, used to swell around in a gay uniform and announce his greatness by a doggerel placard placed over his log cabin at Killionu.
These Indians are now insignificant in numbers.
Another much dreaded tribe of natives were the Takus, whose name is commemorated in a mountain two thousand feet high, symmetrical in shape and densely wooded, and also in an inlet and a glacier. The Takus have been called " the Alaska Jews," so keen and mercenary were they. They drove away the garrison from the Hudson Bay Com- pany's Fort Durham and looted more than one of their fur ships.
The Taku Inlet extends for about eighteen miles and ends in a mag- nificent glacier called by the natives Sitth Klunu Gutta, " the Spirits' home." The natives believed that the monstrous man-faced seals dwelt in its crystal grottoes. The ice-stream is about a mile wide and rises several hundred feet above the water. The ice is of remarkable purity and serves to supply the refrigerators of visiting ships. Mrs. Higginson describes it with her usual brilliancy of impressionistic col- oring :
" The splendid front drops down sheer to the water, from a height of probably three hundred feet.
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" A sapphire mist drifts over it, without obscuring the exquisite tint- ings of rose, azure, purple and green that flash out from the glistening spires and columns. The crumpled mass pushing down from the moun- tains strains against the front and sends towered bulks plunging head- long into the sea, with a roar that echoes from peak to peak in a kind of ' linked sweetness long drawn out ' and ever diminishing."
The report of a cannon or the vibration of a steamer's whistle will dislodge enormous masses of the disintegrating ice, making the passage into the bay almost impossible for large vessels and dangerous for small ones.
Mrs. Higginson cannot forgive early discoverer Whidbey's insular blindness to beauty. " He found ' a compact body of ice extending some distance nearly all around.' He found ' frozen mountains,'' rock sides,' ' dwarf pine trees ' and ' undissolving frost and snow.' He lamented the lack of a suitable landing place for boats, and reported the aspect in general to be ' as dreary and inhospitable as the imagina- tion can possibly suggest.' Alas for the poor chilly Englishman," continues his critic, " he doubtless expected silvery-gowned ice maidens to come sliding out from under the glacier in pearly boats, to bear him back into their deep blue grottoes and dells of ice, and refresh him with Russian tea from old brass samovars; he expected these maidens to be girdled and crowned with carnations and poppies, and to pluck winy grapes - with dust clinging to their bloomy roundness - from living vines for him to eat; and most of all he expected to find in some remote corner of the clear and sparkling cavern a big fireplace, ' which would remind him pleasantly of England,' and a brilliant fire on a well-swept hearth, with the smoke and sparks going up through a melted hole in the glacier."
The Taku River has been navigated with canoes for sixty miles and from its head waters there is comparatively easy communication with affluents of the Yukon. But the valley swarms with mosquitoes.
The open space where Stephens Passage and Taku Inlet resolve into the long Gastineau Channel bears an evil name among sailors. "In
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winter," says Mrs. Scidmore, " fierce willawaws or ' woolies ' sweep from the heights, beat the water to foam, and drive the spray in dense, blinding sheets, but in summer it smiles and ripples in perfect peace, sparkles with little icebergs, and is a point of magnificent views." Mrs. Higginson evidently had the same experience with this place. She says :
" The stretch of water where Stephens Passage, Taku Inlet, Gasti- neau Channel, and the southeastern arm of Lynn Canal converge is in winter dreaded by pilots. A squall is liable to come tearing down Taku Inlet at any moment and meet one from some other direction, to the peril of navigation. At times a kind of fine frozen mist is driven across by the violent gales, making it difficult to see a ship's length ahead. At such times the expressive faces on the bridge of a steamer are psychological studies.
" In summer, however, no open stretch of water could be more in- viting. Clear, faintly rippled, deep sapphire, flecked with the first glittering bergs floating out of the inlet, it leads the way to the glorious presence that lies beyond."
CHAPTER XII.
JUNEAU AND SKAGUAY.
J UNEAU, the present capital of Alaska, is situated on the main- land, about ten miles above the entrance to Gastineau Channel. It is flanked by Mount Juneau rising sheer to a height of three thousand feet and glittering with patches of snow and airy waterfalls. The wharves line the beach; numbered avenues run parallel on ter- races, while extremely steep streets, intersecting, climb toward the top of " Chicken Ridge." Greely declares that there is not within the limits of the town a naturally level spot a hundred feet square. The court house stands out on the top of the hill. There are a number of churches, a hospital, an " opera house," and of course a rivalry of women's clubs. Two daily papers having the benefit of reduced tele- graph rates keep the inhabitants in touch with the great world. The water supply is abundant and good; the streets are brilliantly lighted with electricity.
Contrary to general belief the winter climate of Juneau is far milder than that of Boston. The mercury never goes much below zero. The average for January is about twenty-seven degrees and for February about twenty-five degrees. The precipitation is generally in the form of rain near the level of the sea. The mountains which rise to a height of not more than a mile are densely wooded for two-thirds of that elevation. Almost all the vegetables of the Temperate Zone grow abundantly in the vicinity of Juneau. Noticeable are " vine-clad or flower-embowered cottages reached by gray mossed stairways." The population of the town of Juneau varies from two to three thousand, being increased in winter by the influx of miners from the colder in- terior.
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General Greely says that in his ten visits to the town he has experi- enced no importunity by beggars or any affront from the mythical border ruffian, or witnessed any offensive drunken scenes or street disorders. "In short," he says, " Juneau is a well-governed, intelli- gent, thriving, self-respecting town."
Mrs. Higginson describes her first visit there :
" The unique situation of Juneau appeals powerfully to the lover of beauty. There is an unforgetable charm in its narrow crooked streets and winding mossed stairways; its picturesque shops - some with gorgeous totem-poles for signs - where a small fortune may be spent on a single Attu or Atka basket; the glitter and the music of its streets and its ' places,' the latter open all night; its people stand- ing in doorways and open corners, eager to talk to strangers and bid them welcome; and its gayly clad squaws, surrounded by fine baskets and other work of their brown hands. In the heart of the town is an old Presbyterian Mission church, built of logs, with an artistic square tower, also of logs, at one corner. This church is now used as a brewery and soda-bottling establishment."
After the discovery made by Richard Harris and Joseph Juneau in October, 1880, there was a stampede to the Taku region. Many spent the winter at Miner's Cove so as to be on hand when spring broke. During the first year a guard of United States Marines pre- served order, but when it was withdrawn a reign of lawlessness ensued. The miners themselves instituted a vigilance committee, but the Govern- ment afforded no protection and refused even to pass any land laws. Even when they were passed the absurd regulation that all claims must be rectangular and drawn north and south made them impossible of application. The new settlement was first called Pilsbury, after the first assayer who arrived; then Fliptown by jocular miners; then Rockwell after the commander of Jamestown; then Harrisburg, and, at the meeting when in May, 1882, finally the name Juneau was adopted all the Chinese were driven from the camp. Four years later anti- Chinese riots resulted in grievous wrongs to the long-cued Celestials.
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The Chinese cabins were dynamited and the Chinese were all forcibly put aboard a schooner and set adrift without any provisions.
About five miles across the channel from Juneau on Douglas Island, which is twenty-five miles long and from five to eight miles wide, lie the famous Treadwell mines, which are regarded as the second largest in the world. The quartz has been excavated to a depth of one thousand feet and the tunnels run under the channel. The eight or nine hundred stamps drop continuously day and night with only two days of rest - Christmas and the glorious Fourth. And the net profits from the ore, though it is of low grade, are said to be six thousand dollars a day. The original cost to John Treadwell was less than five hundred dollars. At first he was obliged to remain on his property and drive away the lawless squatters against whom he had no other protection than force. Millions were spent on machinery and equipment; no expense has ever been spared for improvements and it is said that the treatment of the miners has been equitable and even generous. There are two towns aggregating three thousand inhabitants - Treadwell, where the miners live, and Douglas, mainly devoted to trading inter- ests. They stretch along the channel for a mile or more and are brilliantly lighted and provided with all the advantages of civiliza- tion.
From Juneau to Skaguay is one of the most fascinating trips in Southern Alaska. The ship retraces its course as far as the southern end of Douglas Island and passes into Lynn Canal or Channel, which is a continuation of Chatham Strait separating Admiralty from Chich- agof Islands, and making altogether a royal waterway averaging five miles in width for nearly two hundred miles. Before the Russians permitted their policy of extermination these waters were the haunts of countless sea-otters. Now they are rarely seen.
The Lynn Canal, which was named by Vancouver from his native town in Norfolk, is called the noblest and most majestic of the slender waterways of Alaska. It has been sounded to a depth of more than twenty-five hundred feet, and it is bounded by mountains rising more
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than a mile in height on both sides. Snow covered peaks and domes form a continuous panorama and the colors are gorgeous, especially at sunset, when the snows become rose, and the reaches grow purple and orange. Even the prosaic Vancouver's still more prosaic officer, Whid- bey, had to speak of this fjord as " bounded by lofty, stupendous mountains, ... forever doomed to support a burthen of undissolving ice and snow." The undissolving ice and snow caused by the tremen- dous precipitation fill the valleys and form the wonderful glaciers which line the canal. One discovered by the then Captain L. A. Beardsley in 1879 " is surmounted by a rocky crag, which resembles our national bird so much more than does the figure ou the new dollar that we chris- tened it the Eagle Glacier."
At Seduction Point the canal divides into two channels, Chilkat Inlet on the west and Chilkoot on the east. The point was so named by Vancouver because after Whidbey had explored the two inlets and discovered the Chilkat River, he was met by several canoe-loads of natives " of exceedingly artful character " led by a very dignified chief dressed in robes of state - the narkhin or native blanket - a blanket variegated with several colors and ornamented with little parti- colored tufts, a headdress made of wood resembling a crown and adorned with copper spangles attached to wool and fur streamers, each terminating in an ermine skin. He was suspicious of them and his suspicions seem to have been justified, but he escaped their treach- ery and withdrew to Point Retreat on the northern end of Admiralty Island.
At the head of Chilkat Inlet, on Pyramid Harbor, is a cannery which exploits the multitudinous salmon which run up the river. Back of it is Mount Labouchère which rises almost perpendicularly to a height of nearly two thousand feet. The woods with which it is crowned are infested with bears. Summer visitors here usually find a camp of Chil- kat Indians who sell blankets, baskets, spoons and curios, as well as wonderful bouquets of wild roses. The Chilkat blankets are among the most famous of all Indian manufactures. They were formerly dyed
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black, yellow and blue or red with a black border and of permanent colors, but the demand for them has induced their weavers to use tra- der's yarns in aniline dyes. They were woven of the finely spun wool of the mountain goat on a warp of fine cedar threads. Suspended from an upright loom the symbolism of the native heraldry is often per- petuated in their ornamentation : the full face with wide nostrils, tiny eyes and savage teeth represents the bear; the claws and inverted eye stand for the presence of the thunder-bird.
The Chilkats and Chilkoots, two branches of the great ethnographic division of the Alaska Indians called Tlingits or Thlinkits, a word meaning men, controlled the passes into the Yukon region. No mem- bers of other tribes dared cross their domain and for many years they were ready to attack any white prospectors or explorers. All the clans of this great tribe had similar customs and beliefs. They were like the primitive Scots in their heraldry. Each clan had its own totem or symbol, generally representing some bird, fish or animal. The two great divisions were the Raven Clan, including the Frog, the Goose, the Sea Lion, the Owl and the Salmon, who claimed to be descended from Yeshl, the great Creator, whose dwelling-place is where the East wind begins to blow; and the Wolf Clan, descended from Khenukh, guardian of the sacred well, and including the Bear, the Eagle, the Porpoise, the Shark and others. At dances and great ceremonies the people would frequently dress up to represent the clan totem; and easily recognized parts of it - a wing, or a tooth, or an eye - would be painted on canvas or shields or woven into blankets and baskets.
Men could not marry into their own clan and when they procured wives from a different clan the symbol of the new connection was trans- ferred to the heraldic totem-pole, which thus became, as it were, a family-tree. The unfortunate persuasions of the early missionaries which led many of the converts to destroy their wonderfully carved and colored poles can not be sufficiently regretted. Thousands of them have disappeared. The Harriman expedition visited several deserted
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villages along the coast where the poles were still standing - mute witnesses of a perished people.
The great Russian missionary, Veniaminof, made many interesting observations on their habits and customs. Their favorite medium of exchange was blankets, and they were sufficiently mercenary to be satisfied for any injury, even for a mortal one, with a payment in that commodity. This was not always reasonably reckoned. Thus it is said that when a Sitkan Thlinkit broke into the cabin of a white man and drank himself to death, his clan demanded and received compen- sation as if they had been to blame. On another occasion a trading schooner rescued two Thlinkit fishermen from a sinking canoe. The owners themselves cut the craft adrift, but when the humane captain went out of his way to land the two men at their village, the inhab- itants demanded payment for the lost canoe and threatened summary vengeance if it were not instantly paid.
In the olden days these tribes made themselves as hideous as pos- sible, especially when about to go into battle. Both men and women painted their faces black with soot and red with cinnabar, afterwards scratching horrible designs on them with wooden sticks. They wore silver rings or even feathers or other objects in the nose, the septum being pierced in childhood for this purpose. The women wore a huge labret in the lower lip. On reaching marriageable age the lip was pierced and a small round piece of bone or silver was inserted. This hole was enlarged gradually, in some cases the ornament being two inches in diameter, making the lip protrude and rendering it impos- sible to close. The old chieftainess who attacked Vancouver so fiercely was conspicuous by reason of this disgusting deformity. They also pierced their ears to commemorate some great exploit. Their war canoes were frequently carved out from a single log large enough to carry forty or fifty men, and were ornamented at bow and stern with gayly colored barbaric carvings, as were also the paddles and oars. They had the art of forging copper and they even carved jade. Eth- nologists have traced a connection between the language of the Thlin-
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kits and the Apaches as well as of the Aztecs. It is possible that the earliest immigrants came from Asia and descended toward the south. Their own legends indicate a contrary arrival.
Confined to a narrow belt of coast the Thlinkits were great fisher- men and hunters of sea-creatures. From superstition they refrained from killing birds and they did not like to interfere with bears, having been imbued by their shamans, or medicine men, with the notion that bears are human beings in animal shape. Their treatment of new- born children and of women just delivered was cruel in the extreme; it was a wonder that any survived. They burned their dead and ac- companied the ceremony with curious actions, sometimes the relatives putting their heads in the flames and burning off all the hair, or other- wise torturing their flesh. After the cremation the relatives indulged in a regular wake for four nights in succession, howling themselves hoarse. Sometimes if the deceased was wealthy a slave or two would be killed to give him service in another world. At the end of the period of mourning gifts were distributed and all present indulged in a feast. The heir was a sister's son, and he was compelled to marry the widow.
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