USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 14
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migratory and anadromous, run up their channels to spawn, just as they do in the Canadian Atlantic.
For other varieties of trout than this, Indian River and Saw Mill Creek, near Sitka, the Lake Loring outlet at Naha Bay, and other streams, afford good rod-fishing. Sport with the artificial fly is by no means as satisfying as it is in the East, or even in Oregon and Washington Territory, al- though at certain times it is fair. It may be said that, owing to the condition of water as affected by the melting snows in spring, and the subsequent superabundance of salmon roe with which every crevice is crammed after those fish begin to spawn, even bait-fishing can hardly be en- joyed except at certain periods. No fly will tempt the trout, nothing in fact but a chunk of nasty sticky spawn, which they will approach leisurely and feed on as daintily as a full fed kitten on a bit of meat. You must sink your weighted hook to the bottom, and keep up a series of little jerks as though you were bobbing for eels, and by and by you strike one ; once hooked they are quite gamy.
The Salmo iridea is found here both in the lakes and streams, but there is another trout which differs much in appearance from varieties which I am familiar with. A spec- imen ten inches long, called "mountain trout " by the In- dians, had a body covered with black spots, from one-six- teenth to one-eighth inch in diameter. These extend con- siderably below the medial line and cover the tail and the dorsal fins ; the second dorsal is adipose, but slightly less so than that of a fontinalis, having a slight show of mem- brane on which there are four spots. The ventral and anal fins are yellowish in center, bordered with red, the tail is square, the belly a dull white.
That the spawning seasons of families of fish similar to those of the Atlantic should be different on the Pacific, is easily accounted for by the warmer temperature of the water. It would seem that the laws of heat and cold have the same effect upon fish as they do upon vegetation, order- ing the seasons accordingly ; and the spawning of fish, like the budding of trees, may be advanced or retarded by mild or inclement weather ; stated visitations of pelagic or anad- romous fish may be postponed or even prevented by cold weather ; but the Pacific is less subject to these vicissi- tudes than the Atlantic.
In Alaska there are few sandy beaches or gravelly shores. The margins of the mainlands and islands drop plump into many fathoms of water, so that the tide never goes out-it merely recedes, and when it is lowest it exposes the rank
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yellow and green weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery masses of rock, and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. In some places there are little bights, a few yards wide, between the rocks, where there is a sort of beach formed entirely of comminuted shells ; and one can pick up cockles, round hard-shell clams and abelones by the peck-clams of all sizes, some large and tough, and some small and very sweet. Exceptionally there are areas of mud, where the gigantic geoduck, a soft-shell clam which sometimes weighs 8 lbs., vegetates in oozy retirement a foot beneath the surface, squirting aloft its tremendous jets, four feet high, whenever a passing foot chances to disturb its shellfish privacy, and there are also flats near the mouths of rivers which, on gala days when the festive clam luxuriates, seem to be filled with miniature fountains, squirting. As for the luscious and toothsome oyster, the abrupt conformation of the coast, with its rocky shores and almost fathomless waters, explains why there are none. I can not learn that any person has ever seen a native Alaskan oyster ; but there are a good many beds further south, in British Columbia, and I have eaten lots of the bivalves with genuine gusto. However, along side of a regulation "Saddle-rock" they look insignificant, inasmuch as seven stewed oysters go to the teaspoonful, by actual count !
To me it is a great pleasure to see what the ebb-tide un- covers, and to watch the career of the counter currents as they surge to and fro in the narrow channels betwixt sunken rocks-visible now at low water, and eloquent with the dan- gers of Peril strait or Seymour rapids-which are invisible when the flood is full. At flood or slack water the surface is as placid as the moon, but whenever the tide turns and the ebb or flood begins, it is strange to observe the tide-rips in what seems to be an interior land-locked lake. If one were to unexpectedly behold a surging commotion in the placid basins of the Adirondacks, he would scarcely be more startled. It is hard to grapple with the phenomenon. Immediately on the flood, all the trash and floating trees, chunks of ice, dead fish, loose seaweed, and what not, which have been floating about on the slack, begin to set in with the tide ; giant kelps with stems 20 fathoms long and broad streamers spreading in all directions and half under water, like the hair of a drowned woman, lift their weird forms as they drift by ; jelly-fish and medusæ, almost translucent, with delicate tints of pearl, lavender, mauve, and brown, come in countless myriads, contracting and expanding like
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a living pulse, and with streaming filaments like threads of glass steadfastly follow the inexorable stream of fate, as if striving to overtake the lead ; schools of herring and small fish of all sorts swarm in all directions, skurrying onward and fretting the surface like flaws of wind ; and last of all, pre- datory and with fell intent, follow the whales and porpoises and thresher sharks, tumbling, sporting, diving and feasting with appetites never cloyed by repletion. Here and there along the shore, where some little bight makes into the land, herds of seals bob up serenely out of the water and gaze with large and solemn eyes. All the atmosphere is filled with the softened light of a summer haze, and the air aloft and roundabout is noisy with the scream of gulls and terns quartering the azure fields on the wings of the warm southwest winds. This is a summer picture of Alaska.
As I stroll along the seething shore, with all the bowlders and crags slippery and rank with a pervading odor from the uncovered repository of the sea, peering into clefts and crannies, opening out rough snarls of seaweed with my crooked stick, and lifting pendulous draperies of soggy kelp, uncouth creatures with horny claws and bristling spines stare at me with glassy eyes, clinging defiantly to the place of their exposure. If I poke at them, they rise up on edge and snap and dart and pinch the stick. Some pettishly withdraw, spitting spiteful jets of acrimony, while others attach themselves by insidious discs or suckers which no small force or shrewd device is able to unloose. The Spirit of Evil clings not more tenaciously to human nature. If it had been my hand, nothing but shreds of flesh and blood would satisfy the grudge. With their protecting element, the sea, withdrawn, they are practically hors du combat, yet repellant. When the tide comes in, they will be aggressive enough. It is not a nice place for a bath. Here are giant crabs. Close by, moving inexplicably over the rocks, there seems a pewter wash-basin, bottom up, dingy with use, but turn it over, and we find it filled with a tangle of legs, sprawling and kicking ; and it has a handle a foot long, three-sided like a bayonet, serrated on the edges. It is a horseshoe crab, more horrid than hurtful. All over the sodden premises, scattered among the party-colored kelp and seaweeds, are conchs, abelones, periwinkles, and spirals, with their protruding tenants gasping for the beneficent moisture of the tardy tide. Touch them ever so gently, and some will pull in their heads, and some thrust them out further. They have a bland, innocuous look, yet if one of them once shuts down its valve on a presumptuous hand,
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the creature will hold its grip until the tide comes in and drowns the man, for some of them are glued fast to the rocks so that no ordinary means will pry them off. In soft places sand-lances burrow deeply, leaving only their tails out ; and fiddler-crabs and craw-fish have burrows into which they dart when frightened. In some pockets of standing water left by the ebb, we will sometimes see a clam or scallop suddenly lift himself from the belittered bottom and go, by little convulsive jerks, to another place a few feet off. Yes, the object which seemed so helpless and inani- mate, almost like a stone, will actually rise up and swim. By opening and shutting his valves quickly, he inspires and expels the water from the membrane which joins the two, in such a way that he can propel himself through the water clear of the ground. I suppose he knows why he wishes to change his position, but how can he tell when and where to go with his shell shut ? or does he take the chances, happy- go-lucky, where he may land ?
One can not always tell for certain which are sentient liv- ing creatures, and which are inorganic and inanimate. Here, for instance, is a cluster of tubes like hollow stalks or reeds cut off six inches above the ground and filled with water. Keep quiet for awhile, and blossoms of exquisite purple will begin to protrude from every one, and finally mature into a perfect bloom. It is like magic so to see things grow apace ! We think they are natural flowers, but they are only sense- less and slimy mollusks, capital for fish-bait and agreeable for the table, and the purple fringes are their gills. So also one picks up rough substances like bits of rock, and lo ! they are coral insects in their cases soft and juicy ; or we find on strings of sea-weed little bulbs like berries, which perchance are eggs of fishes. In wet caves, arched and smoothed by churning waves, starfish of many patterns pave the bottom like cobblestones-starfish of five, eight, ten, eighteen and twenty-two fingers or points, and of bright crimson, green, purple, pink, dark-red, yellow, drab and gray hues, and all the crabs and prawns left by the ebb climb and skip over their motionless bodies, seldom provoking them to stir the least bit out of position. On the piles of all the wharves, and wherever there are sunken logs or trees, anemones of pink and purest white grow in clusters shaped like lilies, only more mysteriously beautiful in their composite char- acter and blending of animal and vegetable forms. And there are many kinds of the repulsive octopus, with deca- pods and cephalopods and all the tribes of sepia and cuttle- fish, growing sometimes to gigantic sizes ; creatures such as
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we used to think were mere fictions of gross fable, but are terrible realities, though seldom seen. And yet the little ones, only a few inches long, perhaps have all the villainous attributes of their superior kin-malicious eyes aflame, and yearning tentacles, which seem to shrink while momentarily alert to fling out their inexorable clasp upon the wrist or arm. And there are ink-fish, which in their natural clement eject a liquid cloud to befog their pursuers or blind their victims-double-dyed scamps, who advance backward by jerks, and look one way when they are going the opposite. And on every landwash, when the tide is out, are stranded jelly-fish, limp and flabby, which blister where they touch the flesh, and beautiful medusæ with stings like nettles, and great black sea-spiders, ugly but harmless, and shark's eggs which look like leather wallets. How strange the marvels which the ebbing tide reveals !
Outside, along the shore, are large areas of amber-colored kelp, with intervals of open space, where there is splendid trolling with a spoon for a fish of the genus Sebastichthys (S. melanops) locally known as " kelp-fish " and " black sea- bass "; but they are not bass at all, although somewhat like the Micropterus of the East. Their play on the rod and line is not so vigorous, but upon the whole they answer very well as substitutes for the favorite game-fish of our eastern inland waters. Fishing for them after this method is better sport than hauling up their deep-sea kindred hand over hand, from hidden depths so many fathoms down that they come to the top drowned dead, with their eye-balls out of the sockets, and their air-bladders reversed and protruding from their gaping mouths. There are seven species of Chirida, the largest of which-the "kultus cod "-reaches sixty pounds' weight. Indians troll for them with a strip of halibut belly-skin wound on a single hook. In such hours of pastime, life afloat is enlivened by watching the bird-life along shore-the enormous flocks of fish-crows which hang around the islands and visit chosen places regularly to per- form their ablutions and await the ebbing tide ; the solitary sand-pipers which run about the rocks, and the wisps of beach-birds which continually flit from cove to cove; the black brant, which also have their stated feeding-places on the tidal flats, breeding here on the inshore lakes ; the bald eagles and ospreys, which sit in stately watch on the tallest firs or hover above the water spaces ; the big horned owls in the secluded shadows ; and the few little song birds which venture to lift their voices in this wilderness. Of the avifauna of Alaska the sea-fowl constitute by far the largest
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proportion, breeding on the rocks along the shore in count- less numbers, but other species find the coast too warm, and so prefer the wooded districts and moss "tundras " which lie between the Yukon and the Arctic Ocean. Of such are the snow goose, the white fronted goose, the painted goose or wavy, the blue brant, and a majority of the ducks found on the coast in the seasons of their northward and south- ward migrations, among which may be included mergansers, harlequins, brown ducks, widgeon, sprig-tails, surf-ducks, canvas-backs, golden-eyes, oldwives, scoters, grebes, shufflers, butter-balls, scaups, and lesser-scaups, all of which remain in the vicinity of Sitka all winter, and fly north to their nesting-places early in March. Canada geese and mallards breed about the mountain lakes around Sitka. Green-winged teal and blue-winged teal winter further south. They are the first to come and the first to go in the fall. Puffins, guilemots, coots, sea-pigeons, shags, terns, petrels, hagden, and gulls are found in the south of Alaska, but they all breed further north. There is a fine showing of beach birds for variety, the list including golden-plover, upland- plover, Wilson snipe, gray snipe, semi-palmated snipe, least sand-piper, Baird's sand-piper, jack curlew, black-bellied sand-piper, ring-necks, and a rare kind of four-toed plover, some of which are found in immense congregations, so that fifty brace to a gun is no bag to mention. The flights of wild fowl from North Alaska follow the coast down to San Francisco and below, where they are so numerous that farmers pay men to shoot them off their wheat fields. Those which tarry or remain on the Alaskan coast afford great sport among the islands in the narrow channels where the kelp grows upon which they feed. Landing on the side opposite to where they are feeding, parties send the boat to stir them up, and the gunners, who have taken position, shoot them as they rise through the openings between the islands.
Alaska is without doubt a fascinating field for the nat- uralist, as well as the fisherman, and also for summer vag- abondizing. I venture to say that in the near future it will become a favorite cruizing ground for steam yachts. Perhaps the American Canoe Association will like to make a trip to its land-locked waters in summers, and remain a month between steamers.
If they should happen upon some of those inlets, into which the salmon crowd, and where there is no presence of man to disturb, they will not fail to discover the bears fish- ing. It is not even sport to bruin, for the fish get jammed
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in so they can hardly move, and the bears have only to "scoop " them with their paws, and fill their bellies to satiety, after which, in berry time, they may take to the woods for their dessert. In some localities, close to the towns and villages, the bear-paths are plenty, and worn quite smooth, and I have been fooled more than once by following them to a terminus too abrupt to be pleasant. During the month of August the mosquitoes and flies are so blood-thirsty and persistent in the timber as to drive not only the deer, but the bears themselves to high altitudes. It is said that carcasses of dead bears have been found, that have manifestly perished by starvation, having been first blinded by the flies so that they could not forage. Once, in the province of New Brunswick, I remember to have seen a tame moose blinded in this way so that he was unable to find his way home, and only a timely rescue saved his life. In September the snow on the mountains drives the deer (black-tails) down to the water, and they swim con- stantly from the mainland to the islands, many of which are interspersed with grassy flats, where good grazing is found. They are then easily captured in transitu, often in pairs. Bears also are caught in the same way, the one on board the regular mail steamer having been picked up en voyage. Deer shooting was once fine about Wrangell, and some of the mission boys there once brought in forty as the result of a five days' hunt. A saddle of venison was then sold for a dollar. But it is different now.
The impenetrable jungle of the Alaskan forest, with its windfalls of timber and profusion of berries and succulent mosses, constitutes both a nursery and a protection for its fauna. It is a veritable paradise for bears, whom neither dogs nor men can reach, except at the very season when they " hole in " for the winter. The boldest and most practiced Indian is afraid to go into the woods for game, for fear of bears. There are bears enough in Alaska-grizzly,cinnamon, and black-to furnish every man on the Pacific with a cap and overcoat, and leave breeding stock enough for next year's supply. Besides, there is a small albino bear found on the coast, which is known as the coast bear. Being white, and a good deal about the ice in winter, some have supposed it to be a variety of polar bear, but the zoologists dispute it.
Blue grouse, ruffed grouse, spruce grouse, and ptarmigan are very abundant, but hard to shoot, and difficult to gather when shot, by reason of the forest jungle. I have heard from those who are familiar with them, their descriptions of the grand scenery among the mountains, where crags and
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rocky peaks were alternated with deep cañons in which were located many beautiful lakes, fed by everlasting brooks, which found their origin in great glaciers and immense banks of perpetual snow; of lofty barren plateaus, where, on the bare rocks, ptarmigan were in profusion and of sky-parlors high above the timber line, where the mountain goats and sheep make their aerial home; but, as I have never reached the higher altitudes, and my own experience in mountain-climbing has been chiefly confined to beaten trails, I feel privileged to copy from one of Capt. Beard- slee's letters the record of a characteristic trip accomplished by himself when he had his " land tacks" in proper trim ; and so I quote :
" Three-quarters of an hour carried us up a height of one thousand feet and a distance of three-quarters of a mile ; but we found, before the trip was finished, that three- quarters of an hour was, in some cases, a very moderate amount of time in which to advance a quarter of the dis- tance. When at each step the perpendicular gain is twenty, and the horizontal about three, inches, a mile is a long journey. The trail wound its way through a dense forest of great hemlocks and spruce trees, with a few yellow cedar. Many of the former were of such dimensions that a spot in the Adirondacks, so well covered, would, for its " bark " or " counts," prove very valuable. When we reached Bald Mountain, we had traveled three miles, and had ascended over three thousand feet.
After the first sharp rise of a thousand feet, we had but little ascent for a long distance, the trail leading along a sharp ridge, or " hog-back," which, on each side, was flanked by deep ravines, way down in whose depths we could hear the rushing of waterfalls, and occasionally the click of the miners' picks, for they are prospecting in all directions ; but we could see nothing, for a dense fog filled the ravine and hid from us the grand mountain scenery which at this part of our journey we knew still towered above us. An occasional momentary clearing away of a small bit of the curtain gave us provoking and tantalizing peeps, but for an instant. Once a glacier, not far from us, cast loose from its moorings and went crashing down with thunderous noise. We were far above the timber ; our trail was no trail, for we trod on the primitive rock ; but there was no danger of our getting off from it, for it we could see, and nothing else. Before we had got out of the timber ny siwash gave a low whistle and stopped. As I joined him he pointed to " chicken," and then, not forty feet away, I saw my first
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ptarmigan. There were four, and they ran behind a bus! of low hemlock, or ground pine. I advanced slowly, ready to take them as they rose; but they wouldn't rise, and dodged in and around that clump like a woodpecker around a tree. So at last, satisfying the sportsman part of my con- science by resolving to aim only at their heads, I let go at a couple, who were in line, and killed them, the other falling to my friend's shot, as he rose at last. The birds were simply beautiful ; their backs and tail feathers were like those of our ruffed grouse ; their wings and breasts pure white.
There seems to be two varieties of this bird. Those found at this level are as I have described ; higher up they are nearly snow white, with black tail feathers bordered with white, and the dark feathers of the back, instead of as with those found lower down, being brown grouse-colored and predominating, are nearly black, and simply amount to spots, for each dark feather is surrounded with white. They may be the same bird, at different stages of transformation. They weigh about a pound each (six averaged fifteen and one-half ounces, the heaviest weighing eighteen), and are very delicious, especially at this season, when their food is almost altogether huckleberries ; later they feed on spruce and other bitter food, and their flavor suffers. They are very tender. No. 7 shot were very killing, and it was impossible to preserve a good specimen. The feathers came out in handsful, as they were gathered, and our dog's mouth looked as though he had the hydrophobia, so thoroughly blood-and-feathered was it. In skinning, the skin tore like wet blotting-paper, and an attempt to carry one by the leg involved a fracture of the same, if held at any angle. They are full-blooded, bleed a great deal, and, I should judge, very hot-blooded, for they spread themselves in great flocks on the surface of the snow patches, with wings extended, as hens when dusting themselves. They have a peculiar call, a grating sound, which often betrayed to us their vicinity when the fog was too dense for us to see them. As we got above the snow we could get a view of a portion of the banks nearest to us, and saw on it many birds, but we soon learned that it was mere slaughter to shoot them, or any flying over, for they would go sliding and plunging into the abyss below, and our siwashes could not be persuaded to trust themselves on to the snow, for they feared the starting of the glacier.
" We arrived at the summit of this part of the mountains at about 4:30, and it was clear erough for us to obtain a
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سمك
A MOUNTAIN HUNTING PARTY
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splendid view of Bald Mountain Peak, a few hundred feet above us, and at our feet, a thousand feet below, two beau- tiful lakes on terraces, connected by a stream, near which we saw the cabins of the Witch miners, their arastra and their mine some hundred feet up the opposite wall of the cañon. The second day the fog had turned into rain, but we were as determined as the youth who "bore, mid snow and ice," etc., and determined to go on and up, for beyond and above us were ledges and birds well worth going for."
A recital of the remainder of the ascent would be chiefly a repetition, but clambering among the rocks is far less severe than tracking through the woods. There are those who make it a business to hunt the wild goats in these rough and almost inaccessible regions, and the number of these animals killed must be very considerable to supply the quantity of wool used in making the native blankets and the horns for the manufacture of the many utensils and ornaments in common use. Their pelts handsomely dressed, are employed as floor rugs and bedding, and of late many entire specimens as well as heads, have been stuffed and mounted for museums and private collections. Until comparatively recent years, very little accurate knowledge of the habits of the mountain goat was possessed even by well informed naturalists. It was often confounded with the bighorn sheep, or when referred to, assumed to be identical with it. At present, however, little remains to discover, and it is, moreover, believed that in Alaska there are not only one but two distinct species. The maximum of the larger variety is fully 150 pounds. Its range is from Montana to the extreme limit of the Alaskan chains, though specimens are said to have been met with as far south as northern Colorado. These goats are still in con- siderable numbers in Washington Territory, no less than six of them having been shot on Mt. Ranier by a single party in the summer of 1884. In British Columbia they are abundant, even in the southern portion. I have before me the photographed result, taken in camp, of a single day's shoot, on the Coast Range in the district of New Westminster, which shows six goats to three guns, besides three black bears and one grizzly. It is a long-bodied, humpbacked animal, standing fully thirty inches high, not at all like the domestic sheep in shape or fleece, with very long hair, except on the face and legs, which is underlaid by a fine, soft, thick wool, the whole coat being of a snow- white color. The chin is ornamented with a beard-like tuft of long hair, as in the common goat. The horns are six
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