USA > Alaska > Peerless Alaska, our cache near the pole > Part 4
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Points and curves, headlands, fiords and bays, sea-worn rocks and wooded islets, rocks and reefs awash at low water, narrow channels and precipitous heights, towering peaks and shadowy valleys, luxuriant forests and kelp-covered shores, waterfalls projected from dizzy heights, glaciers pressing toward the sea, and splitting off with thunder tones and roaring splash-these characterize the scenery and the landscape throughout the entire voyage. Occasion- ally an Indian village of huts or tents is seen on shore, or a canoe load of natives sweeps by under pressure of blanket- sail and paddle. Of course, throughout this extended coast-line, there are many islands of many different phases-some of them mere rocks, to which the kelps cling for dear life, like stranded sailors in a storm ; while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with fir ; and others still, precipitous cliffs standing breast deep in the waves. Steaming through the labyrinths of straits and channels which seem to have no outlets ; straining the neck to scan the tops of snow-capped peaks which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor ; watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and
38
PEERLESS ALASKA.
herds of sea-lions, which seem as if penned up in an aquarium, so completely are they inclosed by the shadowy hills-one watches the strange forms around him with an in- tensity of interest which almost amounts to awe.
In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no sand beaches or gravelly shores. All the margins of main- land and islands drop down plump into inky fathoms of water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. When the tide sets in, great rafts of algæ, with stems 300 feet long, career along the sur- face ; millions of jelly fish and anemones crowded as closely as the stars in the firmament ; great air bulbs, with streamers floating like the long hair of female corpses ; schools of por- poises and fin-back whales rolling and plunging headlong through the boiling foam ; all sorts of marine and mediter- ranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible army. Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the ledges, where they squat content or run about feeding ; ducks and sandpeeps, eagles, ospreys, fish-crows and king- fishers, the leaping salmon and the spouting whales, fill up the foreground with animated life. Here and there along the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the melting snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy waterfalls. From the cañons which divide the foot-hills, cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I could catch them with my hands as long as my strength en- dured, so helpless and infatuated are these creatures of pre- destination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson spots as large as a pea; and young salmon-parr and smolt, barr- ed, crimson spotted and iridescent and the 'cut-throat trout,' slashed with carmine under the gills. And there is another trout, most familiar to the eye in eastern waters, and doubly welcome to the sight in this far-off region-the Salvelinus Canadensis or 'sea trout,' which I have recognized these many years as a separate species. Here he is in his gar- niture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up stream neighbors of New England and the Provinces, only here he is no " brook trout run to sea," for all the denizens of Alaska brooks are the Salmo Mykiss, and not at all like him! and no naturalist claims that these last two are identical.
Sometimes we cross the mouth of a sound open to the sea, where the full force of the Pacific waves rolls in to swell
39
AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT.
the symphony of the inshore surf. There is a stretch of thirty miles across Queen Charlotte's sound, and of fifteen miles at Millbank, where even in ordinary weather passen- gers show the effects of the motion ; but these disagree- ments are brief. Some of the cloud effects are very grand, stretching, as they do, for scores of miles half-way up the mountain sides, overhanging the peaks or piled on top. Sometimes a blue pyramid or cone will be seen projected above a mass of clouds which has obscured the whole land- scape, just as the glory appeared to Jacob when he slept. Fogs are of almost daily occurrence. In the chilly mornings the hills are wrapped in a thick mantle, and all the little foot- hills are cuddled like bantlings in the fleecy vapors ; but when the warm sun mounts, the fogs disappear and the day comes out almost cloudless.
After all one can not epitomize Alaska in a brief synopsis or resumé. There it stands before you in its inimitable wilderness of forest-clad mountains, eternal and snow- capped, outlined by the clouds and circumscribed by the sea : and one scarcely knows more of what lies on the sur- face of the one than under the billows of the other. The marvelous and the amazing are combined with startling effect wherever we go. Many of the wonders of the Yellowstone country are reduplicated here. We have in Alaska hot springs, lava beds and volcanoes as well; a volcano on Chernabura island, Cook's inlet, is said to be in active and sulphurous operation ; and these together with the unique interest of Russian and Indian life added, and the appar- ently incongruous juxtaposition of arctic and tropical fea- tures, which are continually presented, render the experi- ences of the tourist so delightful, and so novel withal, that it needs no artificial adjuncts to give them expression, and no new lights and shades in the coloring to make them at- tractive. The answering mirror held up to nature reflects on every side a goodly picture. One does not gaze into it darkly.
[I went out with the first passenger load and territorial officers. No one then seemed to have any idea of the bo- nanza which was aligned along the coast which they skirted en voyage. They dabbed and dabbled like ducks along the golden shore, plucking the lotos plants and toying with trifles. C. H.]
ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.
But what of Alaska that is practical ? Is it frigid ? sterile ? God-forsaken ? a land of perpetual ice ? Will any thing grow there ? Can any considerable population, apart from the coast, subsist on the country ? Are the natives any less savage than the seals and bears they hunt? Are the traces of Russian occupation Siberian or barbarian ? Did the Muscovites leave any thing at all which Uncle Samuel wants ? Is there any gold or other mineral there ? Any thing which the Creator does not regret having made ? In a word, is our new possession good for any thing at all, except for another " National Park ?" a resort for tourists and mid-summer ramblers? Let the contents of this vol- ume answer. Much of it was gathered more than twenty years ago. There is nothing now to abrogate or change.
Years ago, when we gathered in the Louisiana purchase for the sum of $15,000,000-a tract in itself nearly as large as Europe-there were immense areas of it which were deemed absolutely worthless ; and these were set off, in the transaction, against the more fertile tracts, with their diver- sity of climate, soil and vegetation. Especially, that very considerable portion of it which is now known as the Ter- ritory of Dakota-although a population of more than half a million have made it the peer of any state in every thing but privilege-was disregarded ; it "didn't count." On the maps it was marked " American Desert." At the best, in the opinion of merely superficial observers, it was only an illimitable buffalo range, rainless and treeless, whose russet- colored grass dried up in June for lack of moisture, and was worthless. Now it is the most valuable and productive portion of the entire Louisiana purchase; capable of feeding the world with grain ; subsisting domestic herds as countless as the buffalo which once grazed over its broad expanse ; munificent in its out-put of precious metals ; underlaid with coal measures which form the subsidiary reserves of the region lying west of the Mississippi River ; seamed and interspersed with out-croppings of the finest building stone yet discovered ; flowing with milk and the
41
ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.
richness of its dairy products. Even the " Bad Lands " which were designated pre-eminently so, in contradistinction from others esteemed not quite so bad, have become the chosen grazing ground of herds which supply the East with beef, and of horses which bid fair to rival the swiftest and sturdiest stock of Kentucky and Vermont. So far from being sterile, the soil of the " Bad Lands " has been proved actually better for general farming than the heavy tenacious loam of the Red River Valley, just because it is lighter.
Not less erroneously regarded was the illimitable territory of the British Northwest, whose agricultural possibilities are now ascertained to be co-extensive with her boundaries. This impression of incapacity was founded on its hyper- borean situation. But practical men who had to deal with · practical measures, upon which the very life and perpetuity of the Canadian Dominion depended, went forward in advance of the projected railroad through the country, and ploughed and planted at intervals of every twenty miles, to test the quality of soil and climate; and when without tillage or protection, the answering grain came up in bounteous profusion and ripened before the autumn frost, no better assurance of the future was desired ; and now the directors of the Canadian Pacific Railroad confidently pre- dict that the new Northwest will have fifty millions of people a century hence, with capacity to feed themselves and the rest of the world, if need be. Indeed, it seems incredible, and altogether unaccountable, to those who put no value on isothermal lines, and infer that the climates of all high latitudes are rigorous and inhospitable, to read in the cur- rent newspaper telegrams of the day that spring wheat- sowing commences in April at Maple Creek, in Atha- basca, fully six hundred miles west of hyperborean Win- nipeg, on the same parallel of latitude; that the tempera- ture ranged from fifty-four to fifty-seven degrees at Fort McLeod during the corresponding period ; that the trains of the Canadian Pacific Railroad usually run on time through the snowdrifts of the mountain division.
Maple Creek, lying at the east base of the rocky moun- tains, feels the influence of the Chinook winds which are wafted from the warm bosom of the Kuro Siwo, or Japan current, although they have to pass over four great moun- tain ranges-the Cascades, Gold, Selkirk and Rockies, each of which helps to cool and condense the atmosphere- whereas access to the interior of Alaska is obstructed only by the single barrier of the coast range.
I have traveled over a great part of the British Northwest and British Columbia, and have read the official reports of
42
SITKA SOMNOLENT.
their geological surveys, railway engineers, Hudson Bay officials and Indian inspectors ; I have gathered together all the facts I could find in books, and listened to the tales of miners and traders, and old settlers whose lives have been passed in the ultima thule ; and I have supplemented the whole with the observations photographed on the eye ; and having gotten together all this testimony, and dis- covered that the physical features of this vast region and Alaska are much alike with each one's advantages and objections reciprocally counterbalanced by the vagaries of isothermal lines, I am prepared to believe that Alaska is worth all that was paid for it, and to predict that in due course of time it will surpass the expectations of its pur- chasers more than despised Dakota or the Northwest has done. The elements of wealth pervade it; they are through, above and around it.
Misconceptions of the productive capabilities of a country spring from imperfect diagnosis. No mere superficial observation will suffice ; no hasty conclusions predicated upon general appearances. Nothing but a thorough examination of the soil, flora and fauna will furnish testimony of an absolute character that can be relied on. Dakota was condemned because her summer rain-fall was meager, and the dry and arid appearance of every thing contrasted most unfavorably with the verdant green of eastern localities. The Northwest was condemned for like reasons-with the inferential objection of high latitude added ; but there were hidden influences underneath the soil, begotten by the very conditions which seemed adverse, that served to counteract them. The book of nature was left wide open, but men neglected to turn its pages. A high latitude is very naturally suggestive of cold, but in the code of climatology latitude is less arbitrary than isothermal lines. Even in countries truly frigid there is a season of respite from inexorable congelation. Most people imagine Iceland to be ice-clad and ice-bound the whole year round, and yet its summer lawns are verdant with rich grass, and the meadows are spangled with buttercups and daisies ; pigeons congregate upon the house-roofs, and the cows come home from pasture with the same straggling gait as the kine of other lands. Nine-tenths of the children at school believe the Arctic zone to be a realm of perpetual darkness and intolerable frigidity without a break, and would hoot with incredulity if told that its inhabitants swelter in the heat of her mid-summer sun, and that nothing but its brief duration prevents a high development of ver-
43
ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.
dure. But, compared with Alaska, the blessings and fruition of other northern lands in either hemisphere are insignificant-British Columbia alone excepted.
Of course the modifying influence of the Japan Current, or Pacific Gulf Stream, which projects its vast volume of tepid water athwart the Aleutian Isles, is already well understood, but the results one sees there are hard to real- ize, and the reports we hear are listened to as mariners' tales. The effect of this warm current is equivalent to twenty degrees of latitude, that is to say, the same products which are found in latitude forty degrees on the Atlantic thrive in latitude sixty degrees on the Pacific, which is but little north of the location of Sitka, and on a scale far more generous. Fruits, vegetables, plants, and trees are not only of greater size, but their yield is manifold, though it is fair to say, that the quality of flavor is not always as good. Oranges, which do not mature in the East above the latitude of Port Royal, S. C., grow to perfection in Shasta, California, in latitude forty-one degrees, which is a little higher than the latitude of New York City. Shasta also produces cotton, limes, soft-sheli almonds, and superb prunes. By the same ratio of climatic progression, tomatoes, musk-melons and grapes ripen in the latitude of Victoria, but better back of the coast-range than on the seaboard, because of the higher temperature and immunity from exces- sive fogs and rain.
The influence of ocean currents in distributing heat throughout the globe, and especially of the warm currents which modify the climate of the polar regions, is set forth very intelligibly in Croll's " Climate and Climatology," pub- lished by the Appletons. By that influence, places which are now buried under permanent snow and ice were once covered with luxurious vegetation, and arctic regions enjoyed a comparatively mild and equable climate ; and vice versa. Hitherto this influence seems to have been enormously underestimated. Really, the amount of heat borne north by the Gulf Stream, whose volume and temper- ature have been ascertained with an approach to certainty, is computed to be more than equal to all the heat received from the sun within a zone of the earth's surface extending thirty-two miles on each side of the equator. Or, in other words, as a little calculation will demonstrate, the amount of equatorial heat carried into temperate and polar regions by this stream alone is equal to one-fourth of all the heat received from the sun by the North Atlantic from the Tropic of Cancer up to the Arctic Circle; But there
44
PEERLESS ALASKA.
are other great oceanic currents, especially the Kuro-Siwo, which, though not yet subjected to as careful mensuration, are believed to convey as much heat poleward as the Gulf Stream. Evidently, then, comparatively slight changes in the oceanic circulation would increase or decrease glacial conditions. The severity of climate, in Mr. Croll's view, is about as much due to the cooling effect of the permanent snow and ice as to an actual want of heat. An increase in the amount of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean, just sufficient to prevent the formation of permanent ice, is all that is really necessary to make the summers of Greenland as warm as those of England." It is obvious that a large decrease in its temperature and volume would lead to a state of things in northwestern Europe approaching to that which now prevails in Greenland. The causes which he assigns for changes in the volume and temperature of ocean cur- rents, he declares are actual and explicable, and by no means based on mere hypotheses ; all of which are set forth in a most intelligible and interesting manner in the volume referred to. Briefly epitomized, they may be stated in Mr. Crolls own words, as follows :
" The causes of these changes may be found in physical agencies, stimulated or checked by changes in the eccen- tricity of the earth's orbit, provided the heat-transferring power of such agencies is suffered to be operative by such geographical conditions as now exist, and which there is not an atom of evidence for believing have been materially altered since the glacial epoch. It is unnecessary to postu- late the submergencies or the elevation of continents, or the existence of extra inter-continental channels, transporting northward additional heat currents, and thus contributing to ameliorate the climate of the pole. The geographical condi- tions and the physical agencies which actually exist are amply sufficient to account for all the facts. When the eccentricity of the earth's orbit is at a high value, and the northern win- ter solstice is in perihelion, agencies are brought into opera- tion which make the southeast trade-winds stronger than the northeast, and compel them to blow over upon the northern hemisphere as far probably as the Tropic of Can- cer. The result is that all the great equatorial currents of the ocean are impelled into the northern hemisphere, which thus, in consequence of the immense accumulation of warm water, has its temperature raised, and snow and ice to a great extent must then disappear from the Arctic regions. When, contrariwise, the precession of the equinoxes brings round the winter solstice to aphelion, the condition of
45
ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.
things on the two hemispheres is reversed, and the north- east trades then blow over upon the southern hemisphere, carrying the great equatorial currents along with them. The warm water being thus wholly withdrawn from the northern hemisphere, its temperature sinks enormously, and snow and ice begin to accumulate in temperate regions." *
Mr. Croll is also at pains to show that the mean interval between two consecutive interglacial periods (correspond- ing to the time required by the equinoctial point to pass from perihelion round to perihelion) is not, as is commonly assumed, 21,000, but 23,230 years. At intervals, therefore, of from 10,000 to 12,000 years the north pole will experi- ence the extreme of cold and the extreme of heat compat- ible with the coincident geographical conditions, and with the coincident eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the latter factor being ascertainable from Croll's tables.
The final result, therefore, to which Mr. Croll would lead us is that those warm and cold periods which have alter- nately prevailed during past ages are simply the great secu- lar summers and winters of our globe, depending as truly as the annual ones do upon planetary motions, and like them also fulfilling some important ends in the economy of nature.
It is needless to say that in a country as vast as Alaska the climate varies greatly ; but taken as a whole, it is more moderate and equable than that of any region of a corres- ponding latitude west of the Rocky Mountains-enjoying summers cooler, and winters much more mild. On its mountains there is perpetual snow, but not perpetual cold. There are large tracts of country where the mean yearly tem- perature is higher than that of Stockholm or Christiana of Europe, and where it is milder in winter, with a less fall of both rain and snow than in the southern portion of Sweden. Along the southern seaboard, which is the most habitable portion, the average temperature is forty-two degrees, with a common range between the zero point and a maximum of eighty degrees. Winter breaks up in March. Even in January, showers, such as we of the north have in April, alternate with the sunshine of May.
John J. McLean, the U. S. Signal Officer at Sitka, has kindly furnished me the following synopsis of meteorological data for the winter of 1885-6.
*For effects of glacial dynamics, see pages 168-77.
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PEERLESS ALASKA.
Date.
Mean Temp.
Precipitation Max. Temp. Min. Temp. inches.
Nov. 1885.
40.2
9.65
50.
29.5
Dec.
36.8
11,70
50.5
30.5
Jan. 1886.
29.2
7.36
48.
4.
Feb.
37. I
18.84
52.5
24.
In the region fully subject to the influence of the equato- rial current, flowers bloom and vegetation remains green and bright the winter through, with only a temporary suspension for rest and recuperation, and there is little save the almanac to remind the stranger that winter is in transit, though the native knows it from the increased rainfall. The warm air coming off from the Gulf Stream meets the colder air from the north and evokes precipitation, more abundant on the main land coast than on the islands, or in the interior. And it is this steaming moisture which clothes the mountains to the height of more than a thousand feet with their dense growths of spruce, pine, alder, hemlock, and cedar. But it is not always calm and mild and delectable in that region ; for the Custom House officer who keeps his lonesome watch at the tumble-down post at Tongass, which is the southernmost limit of our possession, tells how the winds begin to blow about the Ist of November and sometimes hard enough to upset the crow's nest at the look-out, and whisk the shingles off the roof. Frequently he is weather-bound for weeks, and once he did not taste fresh meat for four months. In mid-winter snow sometimes falls as deep as four feet, an immense precipitation, but it seldom remains unmelted for more than a fortnight, and the temperature rarely falls to zero. In January, 1886, it reached five degrees, the coldest of the season for many years. Capt. L. A. Beardslee, com- manding the U. S. Steamer, Jamestown, on the Alaska Sta- tion, in his official report for 1879, made at Sitka, mentions the appearance of robins, sparrows and buntings in March, with ducks flying north. He gives four hundred and sixty- nine hours of blue sky out of a total of seven hundred and forty-four hours for the thirty-one days of the month. In April about one day in seven is cloudy. The summer up to September is uniformly dry, with an equable temperature. September temperature is sixty degrees in the shade, and seventy degrees in the sun, with a good deal of rain gener- ally. It is these early rains which prevent the ripening of grains on the coast. Cereals would do better in the interior despite the short summer. All kinds of vegetables mature
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ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED.
on the coast, and potatoes grow large and keep through the winter as seed for the next year's planting. As testimony to the dryness of the climate, the captain says : "Our guns (vessel of war) do not suffer as on our own coast." Hali- but and herring fishing occurs in April. Salmon fishing begins May I. Coots, teal, widgeon and sprigtail ducks arrive in September ; canvas-backs and mallards in October; geese fly in November.
A great deal more has been written about Alaska than the public imagines. A whole library of information is avail- able among the shelves of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, and all the traits and industries and social life and religious belief of its peculiar peoples are illustrated in the cabinets of the U. S. National Museum. The reports of Prof. Dall alone, whose research covers a period of seventeen seasons in Alaska, published under Government auspices, afford such explicit information that no one need be ignorant of its capabilities. But such valuable emana- tions as Government reports and "pub. docs." are usually consigned to the archives, to be presently forgotten, or per- haps exhumed in exigency for special reference, while the imperfect and baser effusions of irresponsible contributors find universal currency. Mr. Bancroft, in his exhaustive " History of Alaska," comprising seven hundred and fifty pages, has also given us all the information which research can unearth, from the earliest discovery of the country to the present day. The volume comprises a most valuable and authentic repertory of facts, geographical, historical and economical, coast-wise and in-board, all of which are sufficient to demonstrate and prove that the difficulty to be encountered in the agricultural development of Alaska, is not a climatic one. Samples of oats, rye, barley, hay, po- tatoes, onions, garden truck, and fresh beef from the 1,280-acre experiment farm in Copper River valley which were shown at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1903 prove what can be done in this line. Already the settlers and miners in that section are "living off the country." The Copper River valley basin is 140 miles long by 75 wide.
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