USA > Alaska > Trailing and camping in Alaska > Part 8
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I was persuaded by an enemy in the disguise of a friend, to take a Russian bath as administered in Sitka. If you are convinced that your sins have found you out, and are sufficiently desperate to risk the punishment, take this advice: Leave your hope with your clothes in the little hell adjoining. When you enter that place of torment, you realize that the breathing element is pure steam, caused by hot rock placed in a barrel of water. You observe next that water is running from every part of your body, and
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feebly you grope in that vaporous atmosphere to a bunk, hayrack or guillotine, where you proceed to lay yourself out in as becoming an attitude as pos- sible, to await the end that you feel has overtaken you. As you observe two rawhide strings which once served you as legs, you begin to make a mental calculation of how long it will require for you to shrink up so that you can roll off that place of tor- ture and drop through a crack in the floor; or, if you should remain, how soon you will be able to float away, as a ghostly apparition.
This thought may arouse you to make a last des- perate effort, and in the struggle you may float to a barrel of cold water, where you pour a bucketful on what is left of your person, and then escape into the ante-room. There, when drying yourself, you will realize the need of a magnifying glass with which to make an inspection of what is left of your anatomy.
After I had indulged in this bath, my expression must have exposed my reflections, for they asked me, at the boarding-house, if I had not taken a Russian bath. I then proceeded to take on another load of sins by declaring it was simply delightful and by ad- vising my interrogator to try it. I generally bathe in the ocean or the river in the springtime of the year, and once took a foot-bath in Copper River that extended several feet above my head, but one Rus- sian bath is sufficient for a lifetime.
I spent three weeks in getting tired of Sitka scen-
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ery, of tumbled-down log structures, blockhouses of untold history, and the old graveyard on the hill where are headboards on which are inscribed death- dates that have been dimmed by more than a hundred winters.
In Baranoff's historical works (see Vol. 33, page 705), he says of the old church at Sitka : "The Sitka Cathedral contains altars, which were separated from the body of the church by a partition, the doors of which are gilt, and the pilasters mounted with gold capitals. There were eight silver candle- sticks, more than eight feet in length, and a silver chandelier hanging from the center of the dome which was supported by a number of columns of the Byzantine order. On the altar was a miniature tomb of the Saviour in gold and silver. The vestments and implements were also rich in gold and jewels. The books were bound in gold and crimson velvet, and adorned with miniatures of the evangelists set in diamonds. The communion was a cup of gold similarly embellished; the miter was covered with pearls, rubies, emeralds and diamonds."
It does not astonish me that some United States soldiers, in 1869, were drummed out of the service for attempting to rob that church. I had long de- sired to inspect the interior, and the opportunity now was presented. I entered the church to see it, as well as to pay my respects to the dead. A funeral was be- ing conducted there according to the orthodox cere-
PEDWARD
SITKA TRADING CO.
E
E
Sitka, Indian Avenue, Greck Church.
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monies of the Greek Church. The blue-domed building with its minaret surmounted by a triple barred cross gave it a mosque-like appearance. As there were no seats, everybody knelt and listened to the solemn chant led by a long-bearded, long-haired and long-robed Muscovite priest, while the choir of little boys creditably rendered their part.
The priest constantly swung his censer. It was a kind of covered saucer that hung from his arm, and emitted a cloudlet of smoke. It could smoke but you could not, unless you were willing to be consigned to a place where smoking is said to be a continuous performance. One man attempted to smoke a ciga- rette in that church, but was at once escorted to the door by an observant worshiper. Arriving outside, however, the stern censor of decorum and morality asked the offender if he possessed another cigarette that he could spare.
I came away from that funeral with the consoling thought that if a good man took the Copper River route, he would, even through that side entrance, find eternal rest. Of course many would be jealous, be- cause he did not follow their particular trail, but he would be there anyway.
There was one beautiful painting of the Madonna which has left an indelible impression. I failed to find any one who knew when it had been painted, as they said it had been done by some old Greek master, hundreds of years ago, but that there was no positive
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record of it known. I was also informed that a noted American heiress had offered $50,000 for it, and her offer had been refused; also that $100,000 had been offered as security for its safe return, if the church would allow it to be placed on exhibition at the Chicago Fair, but that, too, had been refused.
No artist living at the present day could have painted a more beautiful and harmonious expression of countenance. That alone, of all the sights of Sitka, was to me the most impressive, and, in leav- ing, the one I wished ever to retain.
CHAPTER X
One Coast Siwash tribe's genealogy goes back to the raven, and those birds have gone into mourning ever since the hatching of that particular nest of eggs.
THERE are Indians in Alaska who trace their origin to the beaver, and most of those tribes make totem poles by cutting large images of their supposed ancestors in trees. The bark is peeled from the tree, and then they carve upon it unsightly pictures of their assumed ancestors, one above another, until they use up about all of their tree and exhaust their fund of fantastic delusions. These poles are erected in front of their dwellings, so that all may read their illus- trated book of genealogy. During my stay at Sitka, one family entered into a dispute with another over the heritage of a totem pole, and Judge Tuttle was appealed to for a decision. It is to the credit of the Indians of the interior of Alaska, that they have no totem poles, and laugh at the ridiculous superstition of the " Fish-eaters," as they call them.
Occasionally these poles are worth more than a passing notice, for sometimes they disclose tribal his- tory. The chief of the Bear tribe became chief by a succession of personal efforts and his merit, and did not inherit his position from an ancestry of chiefs.
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Like self-made men of all colors, he was justly proud of the result. In erecting his totem pole, he carved on it the tracks of a bear ascending to the top, and on the throne he carved the image of a bear, repre- senting Chief Bear, of the Bear tribe. However, he should have placed a notice thereon, saying, " This is a bear!" I have heard other legends relating to that same pole, for almost every Indian one meets in Alaska is carrying a liberal supply of legends around in his head.
There are many different kinds of pride existing among the human races. I have known educated white persons who took a pride in writing so that no one else could read it. They scratched in their names as if they desired to conceal their identity from any one who should attempt to decipher the chirog- raphy.
I have known a man to be proud of the fact that he owned a bulldog and could lead him around by a string; this appeared to give him a feeling of supe- riority over others who had no bulldogs, as if he thought they could not afford such a luxury. It was a very appropriate combination, as the bulldog added dignity and brains to his owner.
By the term tribe, as used in relation to those In- dians-and to most other Indians, for that matter- is meant families that have intermarried until great numbers are blood relations. There are but two dis- tinct classifications of the Alaskan Indians; those of
Totem Poles at Wrangell.
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the interior, and the fish-eating Siwash of the coast. It is doubtful if any scientist could determine the dividing line between the mythical Esquimos and their southern neighbors. Certain tribes of Indians are short, rotund and fleshy, being made so by their blubber-eating and sedentary habits. It is plainly evident, however, that all the Esquimo Indians are not as they were represented in the old school geog- raphies.
Captain Roald Amundsen, in the report of his trip through the Northwest Passage, and of the Esqui- mos he then encountered, said: " They were fine men, these Esquimos, tall and strongly built. They were, moreover, slim, and as I said before, tall." The time has arrived when we must refer to the Esquimos as Esquimo Indians, and discontinue the deception that they are a separate class of human beings.
I remember having seen a sawmill at Sitka, which was run by Indians, and there are Indian carpenters who have built their own neat cottages. They have many symmetrically hewn canoes; one of those that I examined measured eight feet in beam and was forty-five feet long. They said they had much larger ones.
In company with a friend I took a stroll out to Indian Creek. We passed a church where we were told that the minister's sentences were repeated by an interpreter. We passed also an industrial school, then a museum; the former with animate,
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and the latter with inanimate, curiosities. We left the town and walked along a highway that had been cut before our fathers were born, and found Indian Creek to be a beautiful clear stream, with a suspen- sion foot-bridge across it.
The road wound back from here, through ever- green, hemlock, spruce and cedar trees, overshadow- ing a dense undergrowth. There was an occasional cleared spot where benches were placed for the con- venience of lovers, poets and other moony mortals. It is an idyllic spot. No wonder that the Sitka pa- pers have contained numerous marriage notices and original poems. Among the soul-stirring, heart-rend- ing and love-sighing poems that the emotional na- tures of Sitka have blasted out, one ends each stanza with the euphonious expression thus :
" Let her go, Gallagher ! Let her go!"
A white man who was so poetical as to marry a dusky maiden of the forest, known by the name of Anna Hootz, was evidently in a poetical mood when his squaw eloped with a pig-eyed Chinaman. A few explanations are necessary for the reader to fully appreciate his poetical effort. He should understand that the Coast Indians grow up in canoes, and con- sequently are crooked of limb, and more or less crippled, and that all Indians, like Japs, are " pigeon- toed "; also, there is no perfume so attractive to a squaw-man as the scent of old dried salmon. This poem was published in a pamphlet, entitled " Poems
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on Alaska, by Alaskans." Two blocks of it are submitted as samples from the ledge :
" And the scent of the salmon lingers yet In the place where she used to be, And while life lasts I shall never forget How sweet its perfume to me. And the blear-eyed children on her knee, With legs adapted to crooked boots, --- The patentee sign of Anna Hootz.
And now I sit by the smoky fire Through the day and twilight's dim, Cherishing only a wild desire To build an elaborate funeral pyre And get one chance at Jim; I'd mangle and tear him limb from limb And boil him well in a copper pot In a place where Anna Hootz is not."
We returned to town over that picturesque high- way, and, as many have done before, gazed long to the northward upon the interesting scene of Mt. Edgecomb, an extinct volcano resembling a carbuncle that had lost its heart.
CHAPTER XI
Nature sometimes gives us the impression that she is not always just. A scientist found a bug on the Malispina glacier upon which he inflicted the name of Malanenchy- tracus Solifigus, and the bug died, but the scientist lived!
As it was nearing the time for explorations in the Alaskan Range, I left Sitka, the place of seven feet of annual rainfall, and government officials who have been too prominent in politics at some time or another.
It was during this summer that E. H. Harriman chartered a steamer and, accompanied by a select number of scientists, spent some time in Yakutat Bay and various other places along the Alaska Coast. It is probable that it was the greatest coterie of wise- acres that ever visited the North, and it is vastly to their credit that they refrained from renaming and rediscovering everything they saw. They attempted, however, to change an arm of Yakutat Bay, known as Disenchantment Bay, to Russell Fiord. They did not see all of the glaciers in Alaska, but on beholding a few of them they inflicted upon them the college names of Harvard, Yale, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, ,Wellesley, Wells and Amherst. They did give a few glaciers the appropriate and original names of Stair-
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way and Serpentine; but other scientists may come along and change them.
Just think how the American zoologists have abused the poor little white-tailed deer! Bodheart, as far back as 1785, inflicted on it the name of Cervus virginianus. Every time a scientist caught one of the species during the next hundred years, evidently he turned it loose to drag another name after it. In 1884 they started in on another century of names by calling that deer Cariacus virginianus; in 1895, Dor- celaphus virginianus; in 1897, Dorcelaphus ameri- canus; in 1898, Mazama americanus, and in 1902, Dama virginiana. Why not insert White-tail-deer for iana and say Dama Virgin White-tail-deer ?
It does not surprise me in the least that this deer is so wild and timid. He generally runs when fright- ened, and unlike the Blacktail deer, does not stop to gaze at a hunter, but when last seen is always try- ing to uphold his true name by flying his white flag. It is a crime against Nature for scientists to twist that deer's tail into so dangerously unmanageable names.
When we left Yakutat our boat lowered and rose with the sea-swells as her engines drove us westward at a twelve-knot gait. We looked up twenty thou- sand feet at the top of Mt. St. Elias, and also saw the great Malispina glacier that rested at its base. This glacier was discovered by Alejandro Malis- pina, a scientist, who accompanied a Spanish expedi- tion along that coast in 1791.
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We crossed in front of the Copper River delta, sixty-five miles in width, over which the wintry blasts are hurled from the interior. This river was first located by Caudra, second in command under Artega.
We steamed around by Nutchek Bay, where on May 12, 1778, Captain Cook cast anchor to repair a leakage in his ship. There was then and is now an Indian village at that place. No doubt there are old wrinkled natives there who could tell their grandchil- dren of their battle with the whites, whom they re- pulsed so long ago when Baranoff was the White Chieftain.
We passed Fidalgo Bay, named after Lieutenant Salvador Fidalgo, of the same expedition that dis- covered Valdez Bay in 1790. At Valdez we found squalor and misery, many of the half-starved pros- pectors being afflicted with scurvy. Charley Brown had condemned a government mule, and it had been gladly eaten by the inhabitants. A whale had drifted in to shore, and a portion of it had been eaten. Many had come over the glacier, and others had lost their lives in the attempt, and the little grave- yard had been enlarged. Here is an incident worthy of detail :
A dog-team galloped up and stopped in front of the only pretense of a hotel in Valdez. The night was dark, as the northern winter nights always are, when the moon is not shining. The dogs immedi- ately lay down, almost exhausted from their long
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trip, and the two men soon were surrounded by in- quiring friends. One of the two said:
" What do you think, fellows? We passed a woman, just this side of Saw-Mill Camp, who was pulling a sled on which was her sick husband. We remonstrated against the undertaking of crossing the glacier, but she replied that they might as well die up there as anywhere else, as it meant certain death to stop. Our dogs could only pull our oufit, and there wasn't grub enough for all, so we were com- pelled to leave them. They will be at the last timber to-night and if somebody doesn't go to their rescue, they will be dead by this time to-morrow."
A man stepped out from the crowd and said :
" I'll go for one! Now who else has a good dog- team to splice in with mine?"
" I'm your huckleberry!" announced another.
It was three o'clock in the morning before they had made their selection of dogs and were ready to start on that hazardous trip.
" We'll be on the first bench by daylight, and have them here before to-morrow's midnight," said one, as he straightened out the team. "That dog Rex will be pulling against the collar when we return, and Sport will get us back if he barks every jump for the whole of that sixty miles !"
" Yea, Boys! Stand in there, Leader! Mush, mush on, mush !" and with a yelp the dogs galloped away, as if aware of the urgency of their mission.
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" Haw, Leader!" was heard, as they turned the corner, and then they were gone.
" There goes the best dog-team in Alaska, and driven by the best two men on earth!" exclaimed a man as he re-entered the house.
The trail was easily followed, and soon the nine miles of level bench were passed. The speed slack- ened only when they were ascending the summit, which they reached by eleven that morning, and there it was seen that the sharp peaks were curling fine snow high in the air.
" They are beginning to smoke!" remarked one of the men.
" Yes, and we must get back here before night, or it's all off !" replied the other.
Down, down the steep descent they plunged, and by one o'clock they were off the glacier and skipping over level ground. The poor woman had pulled the sled until she had become exhausted and had sat down beside her husband. She was weeping bitterly when a noise startled her, and listening, she plainly heard the yell of a driver and the barking of dogs. With tears dimming her eyes she discovered them rapidly approaching, and as the team galloped in a circle and stopped beside her with the dogs' heads pointed back towards the glacier, she clapped her hands with joy, for they had come to her rescue !
The dogs lay down, and with their lolling tongues lapped the snow, while the drivers ate some crack-
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ers and jokingly encouraged the sick man and help- less woman. She was bidden to seat herself com- fortably, while they fastened the two sleds together. Soon they were bounding away at such a rapid rate of speed, that the woman again wept, but for joy. When they recrossed the summit the whole range was " smoking " and the wind was sending the fine snow along the crust. It whipped their faces with a warn- ing of what was coming; but the driver said:
.
" Twenty miles to town and it can never catch us ! "
Townsmen anxiously waited and looked up the trail, and many exclaimed, " They can't possibly be here before midnight," but they were. As they rushed up to the crowd with a yell, and a glad bark from the noble dogs, they were surrounded by eager, helping hands. The dogs acted as if they understood why they were being petted so. Again the woman wept for joy. Yes, they were saved-not by men of good intentions only, but by men of instant action.
The rescued are now living at Valdez. The snow disappeared, the scurvyites recovered, flowers bloomed, birds sang and the nights rapidly dis- solved into continuous daylight. I was eager to explore where,
" Away from the dwellings of care-worn men, The waters are sparkling in grove and glen."
I had informed a military officer of my intention to make an attempt to find Captain West's placers,
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and he had asked me to accept a proposition of act- ing as government scout which I accepted. That would take me right into the mountains, and while looking for passes through them, I could also keep my eye out for the location of the West discovery.
Fortunately, I had told him only about that part of the story West had told his men regarding its lo- cation on the headwaters of the Tanana, and had retained my own opinion about the gold really being on the headwaters of the Chistochina.
How I chafed to get away, but could not. I was retained as guide on the trail, while others were sent towards the headwaters of the Tanana. Oscar Rohn, the geologist, went into the Tanana, and Cooper, a former friend of that military officer, also left Cop- per Center with horses he had wintered inside; he was breaking strings to get on to the headwaters of the Tanana. There I was, without a horse, or the possibility of getting one, and compelled to play a waiting game while others wore themselves out nib- bling at the West bait.
True, I should have arranged to have gone in on my own account, and over the snow in the spring, but it was now too late. I was compelled to content my- self with blazing the trail along the precipitous walls of Keystone Canyon; there watching the silvery threads of water falling for five hundred feet or more, and spreading their spray in beautiful rain- bows.
Keystone Canyon.
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Surely no route exists that excels in grandeur the scenery between Valdez and the Yukon. It is a treat to the lover of sublimity, to hie away to the recesses of those coast mountains, on a warm, sunny day, and drink from the cool streams of the nectar " fit for the gods." Precipices, extending upwards to dizzy and astonishing heights, where the eaglet is taught his first lesson, loom up before one, who vainly en- deavors to comprehend the immensity of the sur- roundings. One cannot realize that the plainly seen volcanic smoke from Mt. Wrangell is probably one hundred miles away; nor that the waterfalls near by, that pour over bluffs with a continuous roar, are fed by melting snows and glaciers, thousands of feet above and miles beyond. This Coast Range is one vast collection of waterfalls, that roar you to sleep, then awaken you to make you feast your eyes on their spreading spray. Speechless with admira- tion you stand and gaze at the beautiful and varie- gated colors of their rainbows.
CHAPTER XII
An Indian said: " Indian shoot black bear, bear die; In- dian shoot glacier bear, may-be-so bear die; Indian shoot grizzly bear, Indian die."
ON May 8, I camped with Amy, Louvrous, Finch, Fish, Fitch, and others, who were sledding their out- fits over the divide. A little black bear came right into camp and I missed a butt-of-an-ear shot at no greater distance than 30 paces. I was shooting a Winchester cartridge with smokeless powder and a solid bullet from a Frontier revolver, and was con- fident of being able to hit a silver dollar at that dis- tance. As the shot was fired, he lowered his head, and then bounded away as a second bullet cut the bark of a tree behind him. I did not expect forgive- ness from those men for that careless sort of shooting and deserved the ridicule received for it.
One whole day was spent in crossing the divide, as the snow was soft and deep, and at night I threw my sleeping-bag down on some boughs on eight feet of snow, among the trees of the Tekeil River bottom. There were hundreds of ptarmigan cackling around camp the next morning, and it was amusing to hear them say, "O, come back! Come back!" Soon I had killed ten of them and we spent the whole of that
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day resting and eating ptarmigan stew. I explored to the source of that river, to determine if it were possible to construct a trail through by way of Ton- sina Lake. While up there, I shot a mountain goat that was wearing a very heavy coat of mohair. Those goats of the Coast Range are very large, but this one was so emaciated it could not be eaten; and be- cause of their poor condition I refrained from shoot- ing others on this trip. The old Alaska goats keep right in the fashion of their civilized brothers by wearing whiskers on their chin.
I returned to Dutch Flat and found that one of the Drase brothers had killed the little black bear which I had missed a few days before. This Dutch Flat ends in the upper gorge of Keystone Canyon, which is about three miles from end to end. Lieu- tenant Brookfield, Dr. Lewis, Mr. Gardner, Mr. Flemmings, and another man whose name is now for- gotten, attempted, in the spring of 1898, to float through that box canyon on a raft. They had climbed over the mountain and had descended into this place. They were tired and hungry, and, rather than spend a day or two in climbing back to get out, they decided to go through the canyon in a few minutes.
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