A Summer's Outing Part 5

We tied to the pier at Port Townsend for a couple of hours. We had time for a hasty run over the town and to measure the march of its improvement during the past three years. It has grown very considerably and improved much. Its people make huge calculations as to its future, but have no expectation of their town being a rival of the other two cities. It has been the port of entry for the Sound, which has given it considerable advantages. This exclusive privilege it will hereafter have to share with one or both of the others. Back of it lies the unexplored Olympian mountains, in which many think rich gold mines will be found. If this should be the case, then Port Townsend will forge ahead.

Our far northern excursion is now coming to a close. We have done Alaska and are again sailing through British waters. Vancouver Isle stretches to our right. We can easily imagine that a turn of a headland may reveal the Warspite, with her guns, throwing 300-pound shot, ready to knock us into pi should our Yankee inclinations tempt us to give a too short twist on the lion's tail. By the way, the ironclad bearer of the Admiral's broad pennant, is a ferocious looking monster.

Having three hours at our command before dark on our arrival at Victoria the first of the month, we drove about the staid and orderly town, drinking in air laden with the breath of honeysuckle embowering lattice and cottage; exclaiming in delight at sight of roses hanging in mighty cl.u.s.ters and festooning porches and verandas, or lifting their faces six inches from out to out on strong stems in the gardens; and having our eyes refreshed by parterres of dahlias, nasturtiums, feverfews, and many delicate flowers in white or of every tint. This town was evidently settled directly from England. The love evinced for cottage adornment would have been lost in a pa.s.sage through the Canuck settlements of the East. The sweet embowered cottage is an English inst.i.tution, as thoroughly as is "magna charta." Wherever either exists we know it to be a heritage from the seagirt isle.

THE FAIRY-LIKE HARBOR OF THE BRITISH FLEET.

Our drive brought us about six o'clock to Esquimault, the fairy-like harbor of the British fleet of the North Pacific. What a little gem it is! A rounded patch of sea, a few hundred yards in diameter, lifted up and dropped thirty fathoms deep among well-wooded, sloping hills and connected by a short, deep channel less than a hundred feet wide, with the mighty ocean. This channel is in fact a gateway with smooth granite b.u.t.tresses, of bowlder-like surface, lifting a few feet above high tide. These b.u.t.tresses were built by no human hand, but were born of the molten ma.s.s poured up from the earth's fiery center. The very globe shook and reeled in volcanic spasms at their birth. Here, in this quiet little harbor, thoroughly protected from the outer sea, lay the fearful man of war Warspite, a sleeping t.i.tan, surrounded by several others less formidable, but yet of ugly dimensions. Close by the entrance of the harbor is a great dry dock, in which American vessels have been courteously repaired. Near this is a little hamlet where one can get a fair meal and can take rowing boat to visit the great ships.

The drive from town to the harbor is very charming; through pretty woods, on good roads, overlooking green arms of the sea which run back into the hills, in crystal clearness. One can well say these sea-creeks run back into the hills, for the incoming tides send currents up them of great strength. Pretty villas are built along the well kept roads, and acres of wild roses scent the air, while the red barked Arbutis leans over the cool streams with knarled bronze like arms and branches. The excursion steamers all anchor at Victoria long enough to permit tourists to take this and other drives.

When we reached the neighborhood of the man-of-war, it was so late that we had no expectation of going aboard, but our hackman desirous of putting in as much time as possible, and a boatsman in want of a job a.s.sured us we would be received aboard the Warspite. A large number of her 600 complement were leaning over the bulwarks, and gold lace and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons shone upon the eyes of our two young girls.

Their little hearts fluttered as no glacier of the Arctic zone could have made them do. Ah! what a wondrous spell the glitter on the shoulders of soldier or sailor works upon the female heart! Even the married woman of our party had a heightened color as we approached the gangway of the mighty ship. Fancy the two broken hearts of the girls and the composed, sad face of the matron when a sailor came down the gangway to inform us the hour for visitors was past, that no one was received after five o'clock. One of the men of our party told him the next time we came we would board his ship from the deck of the "Chicago." He laughed. There is no taint of a quarrel between the brave tars of an English and an American man-of-war. We rowed slowly away. The music from the band poured down upon us from the decks and was caught in sweet echo by the hills around. How I pitied the girls!

They are just on the edge of society, and what tales they could have told their schoolmates! Chicago's late representative at the Court of the Shah of Persia smiled as only one who had been at a court could smile. But the girls uttered sighs which smote the writer's too sympathetic soul.

WHEN WE GOBBLE UP CANADA.

The Warspite lies at Esquimault (up here called Squimal) ready to shake the icebergs of Behring Sea. A word to President Harrison and Secretary Blaine: Don't tell England that our blood is up to fighting heat, until we are ready to gobble down Canada and the Canadian Pacific railway at a mouthful. It can be done and not at the expense of a very wry face. Then let England roam about the oceans to her hearts content, while we Yankees will play base-ball with a continent for our grounds, with bas.e.m.e.n and shortstops between the two oceans, and out-fielders on the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic seas.

SAILING THROUGH THE ISLES OF THE PACIFIC.

We are now on our tenth day from Tacoma. The ship will reach her home Tuesday, the twelfth day, having sailed over 2,100 miles; some ten hours of this was in the open Pacific, from Glacier Bay to Sitka, and then from that port south to Clarence Strait. The remainder of the distance was in the interior channels, and across perhaps a half-dozen short openings into the sea. The several channels have fixed names and are of various breadths, from 200 or 300 yards to four or five miles.

Sometimes we were next the broad continent, but often small islands lay between the straits and the mainland, with large islands or smaller ones several deep, towards the sea. The sailing along the watery road was plain and easy except in two narrow straits, where the ship had to slow up frequently, while she bent in and out to avoid rocks. These are taken partly as cut-offs and partly for the beauty of the scenery. The islands are all mountains lifted from the water; all are more or less tree-clad, with peaks on the tallest, rocky, jagged, and oftentimes with streamers of snow stretching downward in their upper gorges.

Vancouver Island is 300 miles long, covered by a broad, lofty range of mountains in pile behind pile, broken and in some instances with heads wrapped in perpetual snow. North of this along the way are four irregularly shaped long islands, around each of which a good steamer would require nearly a day to sail. These, too, are a ma.s.s of rugged, jagged, sharply pointed and peaked mountains in very confused ma.s.s, with no valleys, but with narrow gorges and small flats, along many of which pour pellucid streams from snowy heights. Seen from the south, the mountains are green up to a height of two or more thousand feet, with rocky summits flecked with snow or banded in the long downward gorges. Viewed from the north, the snow often lies in broad fields and always is in greater profusion then when seen from other points of the compa.s.s. The smaller island mountains are not so lofty, but are beyond the dignity of hills, being from 1,500 to 2,000 and some of them 3,000 feet high.

AWE-INSPIRING MOUNTAINS.

To the eastward the mainland presents one continuous ma.s.s of mountains; never in even ranges, but all broken, toothed and needled, with foothills next the water green and rounded. The loftier ma.s.ses behind shoot their rocky height into the blue sky from 3,000 to nearly 5,000 feet above the sea. Flecks and bands of snow are never absent from these, and often the smooth upper heights are wrapped in pure mantles of white.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND CANYON FROM THE BRINK. YELLOWSTONE CANYON.

(SEE PAGE 77.)]

Into the mainland enter many crooked, deep inlets antlered in form, the counterparts of the fiords of Norway with this difference, those of Norway have generally lofty precipices lifting directly from the water; here there are fewer precipices. The mountains, however, lift up very steep, with wooded slopes, but permitting their pinnacles to be seen. Some prospectors abroad told us that the scenery on these fiords was majestic in the extreme. And well it may be, for nearly all of the inlets are flanked by notched and peaked mountains, shooting into the sky with shoulders and necks wrapped in eternal frosts. When our great Republic shall have its boundary lines marked only by oceans and seas, then these bold highlands should be set apart as a continental park for the free people of the Western hemisphere.

The mountains of both mainland and islands are thoroughly picturesque, with rugged upper members topped out in sharp points and rocky pinnacles, such as are seen nowhere in the old states of our country and but rarely in the new ones or in any of the old Territories. There are no deciduous or hardwood trees, and but few hardwood shrubs. Firs, balsams, and hemlocks cover the mountain sides, and cedars sometimes are seen in the small flats next the sea or up the gullies. The forests on mountains slopes are of small trees, and no track of the fire fiend is ever seen. The air is so humid along the entire outer sea coast from the mouth of the Columbia to Behring Strait that one cannot avail himself of forest fires to help clear the land. Should the trees be deadened and fall, they would lie sodden and wet until destroyed by sluggish rot, while tangled undergrowth and young forests would spring up in almost impenetrable maze. On many mountain slopes more than half of the trees are dead but still standing, while often are seen great belts of bare, dead trunks, with not a single live one, but a green carpet of fresh after-growth spreading over the ground.

The soil is so thin upon the rocky ma.s.s of the mountain that sustenance is not afforded for any but young and vigorous forests.

After a few years' growth the living die to make a soil for larger ones to come. Thus ever do the young feed upon the old. A man works, acc.u.mulates and dies, for his children to feed upon his h.o.a.rded fat, perhaps to squander it in riotous living. One frequently sees here the footprints of avalanches which have swept the acc.u.mulations of long years, trees and soil, into the sea or gorges, leaving the rock bare as it was in its primal upheaval. So, too, misfortunes and unavoidable shocks sweep away the heritage of worthy sons from worthy sires.

THE RUINS OF MIGHTY FORESTS.

On the more gentle slopes and in the small valleys of Alaska, fallen timber builds up a rich soil. The trees, however, lie for many years piled one upon another, the newer upon the older, and all heavily covered with moss and yielding to slow decay. When decayed, they make a soil so uneven in surface that a walk over it is an arduous task.

When a tree falls it lies and moulders for long years; heavy, rich moss wraps it as in thick blankets. In this way the ground becomes covered by hummocks several feet high. These hummocks are as thick as graves in an old cemetery. We saw an upturned tree back of Sitka ten to twelve feet in diameter some distance from its roots. Saplings ten inches in diameter were growing among its upturned roots fifteen feet from the ground. Moss six inches thick lay like a winding sheet about the trunk. Half of the lower trunk had been slabbed off, I suspect by natives for material for their carved wood work, for it was perfectly sound.

Another large tree lay p.r.o.ne at great length. A fir over three feet in diameter was sitting astride it, sending its roots down to the ground on either side. A trail running across it made it necessary to cut down into the old trunk. The wood left at the bottom was perfectly sound. Again I saw a large tree perched some feet up upon an old stump, its roots having found the ground down in the hollow. The majority of the large trees on the flats have grotesque trunks for several feet from the ground, showing that they had been distorted by old trunks, in whose moss-covered sides the seed from which they sprang had germinated. The air is so full of moisture that moss soon covers a fallen tree and furnishes the best bed for sprouting the delicate seed of coniferae. The expense of clearing such land as might be fitted for cultivation will r.e.t.a.r.d for a long time any agricultural pursuits in Alaska. A well-posted man a.s.sured me it would cost $600 per acre.

Live stock would thrive here if lands could be opened. Gra.s.ses are rich and luxuriant, and the few horses and cows seen were sleek and fat. But I do not think from what we saw and heard that either as an agricultural or as a grazing country Alaska ever will or can be a success. Cauliflowers, lettuce, potatoes, and several other garden vegetables looked well at Sitka and Fort Wrangel but in small patches.

A few beds of poppies and daisies were very fine, and several other flowers were brightly yellow in the little gardens.

"THERE SHE BLOWS!"

We have had charming weather--the Captain says the best trip of the season. Several of our pa.s.sengers give your correspondent credit for being the mascot of the party--a compliment very complacently accepted. The good, sunny days have not only enabled us to enjoy hugely the beautiful and often sublime scenery, but have given us many opportunities for studying some of the mannerisms of the leviathans of the deep. We have seen many whales, several times ten to twenty at once, and at close range. They rolled themselves in grand dignity up out of the water a few hundred yards from us, and, slowly bending, threw their flukes several feet into the air. Then they would spurt great geysers ten or more feet high, making a noise not unlike that made by elephants when blowing dust over themselves, but far louder.

Indeed, when some blew a hundred yards away from us, it sounded like a somewhat continuous emission from a steam stack.

To-day several fine fellows were very near us, and one apparently young one threw himself several feet entirely into the air. He seemed from twelve to eighteen feet long. The pa.s.sengers thought it a baby whale sporting for the amus.e.m.e.nt of its dam. But a gla.s.s happening to catch him on the fly it was discovered he had a decided snout. Some of us then decided it to be a Greenland shark, which has an underjaw provided with very sharp, rather protruding teeth, with which it scoops out of a whale great chunks of blubber. Close by where it leaped a large whale lifted its fluke almost perpendicularly out of the water and thrashed it into foam. This was kept up for several hundred yards till we got too far away to see it well. This we are told is sometimes done in a kind of wanton sport, but I suspect in this instance the monster was trying to defend itself from one of its inveterate enemies. At any rate our pa.s.sengers were afforded a very unusual sight.

THE NATIVE ALASKANS.

Of the animated nature, however, exhibited for our amus.e.m.e.nt and study, the native Alaskans were the most interesting part. They are very improperly called Indians, being of a distinct race from the American red men. I went into several shacks or native houses. They are built by the natives, and under no outside advice or architectural interference. I saw the manner of arrangement of their little stock of furniture. I saw them preparing their food and eating their meals; heard them talk, and watched the play of their features when trading and when having some sport. I thought I saw cropping out everywhere decided j.a.panese characteristics. It is difficult to name or enumerate the points of resemblance. But they exist, and are to me far more marked than any resemblance between the j.a.panese and the Chinese, who are supposed by most ethnologists to be of cognate families. These people are to me degraded descendants of the land of the rising sun who entered America through the Aleutian Isles.

The Alaskan shacks are generally located near the water, in somewhat orderly rows, one behind the other. They usually, as far as I could see, consist of a single room occupying the entire house. At or near the center of the building is a square, covered with dirt when the house is raised up, or if the house be low down, then on the ground, whereon the fire burns. Around this square is a somewhat raised platform, as in a j.a.panese house; on this, the different members of the family, or the several families have their separate locations, with their boxes, beds and other individual property. Frequently the room is thirty to forty feet square, and houses ten, twenty, and often forty or more people. These are members of a large family or of a sub-tribe. By the way a woman is frequently chief of a tribe, and one reads over the door in large letters the name of "Blank (a woman) chief." The Indians seem to evince a sort of boastfulness in the numberings on their houses, which at Sitka run from 3,000 or 4,000 up to five and six. It is barely possible this may be a part of a system of enumeration running through several colonies or tribes, and throughout the land wherever such tribes live. But a white man living in the territory told us it arose from the native desire to look big and to appear as one of a great mult.i.tude.

The individual possessions of the different members of a family, are kept in boxes and piled upon them. I looked into several of these boxes. Every thing was thrown in pell-mell--shoes, skins, scarfs, tools, pails and even iron pots and axes. The packing of a box looked as if it had been done in a hurry. The women and children when indoors were found, except at meal time, squatted about the several platforms.

When at meals they were huddled on their haunches on the earthen square about the open fire. There are no chimneys to the houses. The fire being built in the center of the squares, the smoke goes out as in j.a.pan through openings in the center of the roof, and to a considerable extent through the doors. About and above the openings in the roof are a sort of screen which may be shifted according to the direction of the wind.

In several small shacks at Juneau, old fashioned iron stoves were seen, with stove pipes leading above the roof. The inside of a shack is an omnium gatherum, not only of people of both s.e.xes and of all ages, but of fishing nets, axes and saws, boat paddles, and blocks on which wooden work was being done. Dried fish and pelts stretched are on the walls and hanging from the roof poles.

The natives are very dark and swarthy, and have rather a yellow tinge in their complexions than red; have large heads and huge, broad, flat, stolid faces, long bodies, short, ill-shaped legs, and ungainly gaits.

The habit of squatting when at rest, and when propelling their canoes and fishing, has developed unduly the upper body at the great expense of the lower limbs. They obtain their livelihood from the sea, and spend much more than half of their waking hours in their dugouts. They have no thwarts in their canoes to sit upon, but squat down upon the bottom, or bend on their knees. This causes the legs to dwindle when young and to become decidedly crooked. This, too, is the cause of their decidedly shambling gait when walking. They do not look bright, but are skilled in all things they understand, and learn with great rapidity, not by imitation as the Chinese do, but from inborn apt.i.tude like that of the j.a.panese. Their blankets, made of the wool of the mountain goat, are marvels of closely woven fabrics, and their baskets of a kind of tough gra.s.s are as close as the finest Panama hats and very harmoniously colored. They carve fairly in wood, their totems and small ware being quite artistic. In silver ornamentation they excel.

Blankets are the medium of exchange; not the native ornamental blankets, but those introduced by the Hudson Bay people. The old traders bought furs, and pelts, paying for them in woolen blankets. A pile of furs was worth so many blankets. From what I can learn the skill of a native trader has always been in his ability to demand a large number of blankets for his goods, and then to maintain as long as possible the stolidity of his countenance, during the higgling necessary to meet the views of the shrewd Hudson Bay fellow. About the places we visited only silver coin is taken in trade, and a native man or woman rarely drops a peg from the price first demanded.

THE HOME AT SITKA.

At a school, "The Home," in Sitka, under the control of a church organization in the States, are a large number of girls and boys of all sizes. They are neat, intelligent in feature, recite fluently and feelingly simple speeches and verses, and sing sweetly and as if they felt not only the sense but the harmony of their hymns. A band of twenty youths plays bra.s.s instruments well and with great precision in time. They have all pleasant low voices and the girls exceedingly sweet ones. I noticed the same characteristics among some wholely uneducated and semi-savage women when singing to a wild uncouth dance of the men.

A party of about sixty of a certain family returned in canoes from berrying while we were in Sitka. They went through uncouth motions while in the boats and then danced in savage grotesqueness on the sh.o.r.e, where they were received by the men and women of other families in wild glee. It was a berry "potlach" or feast. The women's voices could be heard singing in low, weird but sweet monotone. After dancing and distributing pieces of calico among certain of the berrying people, a party of over a hundred entered a large shack, closing the door to us white outsiders. There they went through some long ceremonies. I managed to get inside and for a few minutes was not disturbed. All were squatted around the great room, in the center of which was a fire, the smoke going out of an aperature in the roof.

When I entered all were singing in so low a tone that it could almost be termed crooning. The whole thing was weird and wild, but the singing was not lacking in untutored melody. Some other tourists seeing me get in also entered, opening the door so widely that the wind drove the smoke back into the room. A sort of head man who was next the fire leading the song, got angry--gave the word, when all got up hurriedly, and each taking a large basket or bowl full of berries went off to their respective homes.

From what I could learn, a whole sub-tribe takes boats and visits some locality possibly a day or more's sail away, where the berry crop is known to be good. They remain until their canoes are well filled. When they return some of the men stand up in the canoes arrayed in showy colored calico or other bright stuff--and shout and sing and wildly gesticulate. By this, those in the village at once understand whether or not the excursion has been successful. In accordance therewith the returning party is met on the landing. If unsuccessful with dirges and lamentations. If successful with a "potlatch," a species of joyous fete.

The party we saw were in high feather. Bedizened fellows stood in the prows of the boats, going through gesticulations and contortions which, had they been white men, would have overturned the treacherous dugouts. They shouted and chanted in wild glee. Their songs were returned from the sh.o.r.e. There were forty to sixty in the returning party. As soon as their keels touched the strand, they poured out, a few in uncouth antics, but the bulk of them in solemn decorousness.

When landed one two or more sang in wild weird tones, the women joining in the chorus. After going through certain formalities, presents were given to members of the returning party, of coin, and of strips or pieces one or more yards long of calico in red or other bright colors. Then the singing was continued, and the berries were removed from the canoes and carried into a large shack where other ceremonies were gone through. No white people were allowed to enter. A couple of natives stood guard at the door, and grufly if not angrily turned off all who attempted to gain ingress. The ceremonies were continued within for two or three hours. It was at the later end of this that I gained admission, as above stated, while the attention of the guards was removed.

The whole thing seemed very ridiculous, especially when one remembered that at best only a few bushels of huckleberries were the occasion of the rejoicing. Our Grecco-maniacs, however, should not deem the thing small. For according to Homer, the immediate success of the demiG.o.ds of Greece--the heroes who gyrated in that wonderful tempest-in-a-tea-pot, the Trojan war, did quite as silly things over just as pitiful successes. After all, too, it is not the size of a thing which makes it valuable, but the size the possessor thinks it possesses. A bushel of huckleberries to an Alaskan is quite as large, as a schooner load of wheat would be to old Hutch, or a dozen car load of pigs would be to P.D.A.

THE DELICACIES OF THE TABLE.

I went into a house at Juneau; a woman and several children with one man were squatted around the fire taking their dinners. This consisted of a large dried salmon. A woman held it in her hand before the hot fire, screening her hand by a fold of the fish. When it was cooked on one side enough to burn her hand, she turned another fold and when satisfied with her culinary art, tore it apart in a large wooden bowl.

The fish was in fact scarcely at all cooked, but was simply made very hot. This, however, seemed satisfactory to the feasters. Each member of the family tore a piece off with fingers or teeth. The hands of the young girls were soaked with the oil exuding from the hot and fat salmon. They wiped them clean several times during the meal upon their luxuriant tresses, which hung down their backs in ma.s.sive braids. I think I must have a good-natured face, for I have never in any land offended when making such domiciliary visits. In this instance the woman wished me to join them in their feast, a.s.suring me it was good.

At least I so took the words with the expressions of face used. They had no bread of any sort. After they had sufficiently filled themselves, each took a long draught of water, from a native wooden pail.