Alaska Part 25

I wondered what he meant, but before I could ask him, before he could close my cabin door, a great sea towered and poised for an instant behind him, then bowed over him and carried him into the room. It drenched the whole room and everything and everybody in it; then swept out again as the ship rolled to starboard.

My travelling companion in the middle berth uttered such sounds as I had never heard before in my life, and will probably never hear again unless it be in the North Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of Yakutat or Katalla.

She made one attempt to descend to the floor; but at sight of the captain who was struggling to take a polite departure after his anything but polite entrance, she uttered the most dreadful sound of all and fell back into her berth.

I have never seen any intoxicated man teeter and lurch as he did, trying to get out of our cabin. I sat upon the stool where I had been washed and dashed by the sea, and laughed.

He made it at last. He uttered no apologies and no adieux; and never have I seen a man so openly relieved to escape from the presence of ladies.

I closed the window. Disrobing was out of the question. I could neither stand nor sit without holding tightly to something with both hands for support; and when I had lain down, I found that I must hold to both sides of the berth to keep myself in.

"Serves you right," complained the occupant of the middle berth, "for staying up on the texas until such an unearthly hour. I'm glad you can't undress. Maybe you'll come in at a decent hour after this!"

It is small wonder that Behring and Chirikoff disagreed and drifted apart in the North Pacific Ocean. It is my belief that two angels would quarrel if shut up in a stateroom in a "Yakutat blow"--than which only a "Yakataga blow" is worse; and it comes later.

I am convinced, after three summers spent in voyaging along the Alaskan coast to Nome and down the Yukon, that quarrelling with one's room-mate on a long voyage aids digestion. My room-mate and I have never agreed upon any other subject; but upon this, we are as one.

Neither effort nor exertion is required to begin a quarrel. It is only necessary to ask with some querulousness, "Are you going to stand before that mirror _all day?_" and hey, presto! we are instantly at it with hammer and tongs.

Toward daylight the storm grew too terrible for further quarrelling; too big for all little petty human pa.s.sions. A coward would have become a man in the face of such a conflict. I have never understood how one can commit a cowardly act during a storm at sea. One may dance a hornpipe of terror on a public street when a man thrusts a revolver into one's face and demands one's money. That is a little thing, and inspires to little sensations and little actions. But when a ship goes down into a black hollow of the sea, down, down, so low that it seems as though she must go on to the lowest, deepest depth of all--and then lies still, shudders, and begins to mount, higher, higher, higher, to the very crest of a mountainous wave; if G.o.d put anything at all of courage and of bravery into the soul of the human being that experiences this, it comes to the front now, if ever.

In that most needlessly cruel of all the ocean disasters of the Pacific Coast, the wreck of the _Valencia_ on Seabird Reef of the rock-ribbed coast of Vancouver Island, more than a hundred people clung to the decks and rigging in a freezing storm for thirty-six hours. There was a young girl on the ship who was travelling alone. A young man, an athlete, of Victoria, who had never met her before, a.s.sisted her into the rigging when the decks were all awash, and protected her there. On the last day before the ship went to pieces, two life-rafts were successfully launched. Only a few could go, and strong men were desired to manage the rafts. The young man in the rigging might have been saved, for the ones who did go on the raft were the only ones rescued. But when summoned, he made simple answer:--

"No; I have some one here to care for. I will stay."

Better to be that brave man's wave-battered and fish-eaten corpse, than any living coward who sailed away and left those desperate, struggling wretches to their awful fate.

The storm died slowly with the night; and at last we could sleep.

It was noon when we once more got ourselves up on deck. The sun shone like gold upon the sea, which stretched, dimpling, away for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, to the south and west. I stood looking across it for some time, lost in thought, but at last something led me to the other side of the ship.

All unprepared, I lifted my eyes--and beheld before me the glory and the marvel of G.o.d. In all the splendor of the drenched sunlight, straight out of the violet, sparkling sea, rose the magnificent peaks of the Fairweather Range and towered against the sky. No great snow mountains rising from the land have ever affected me as did that long and n.o.ble chain glistening out of the sea. They seemed fairly to thunder their beauty to the sky.

From Mount Edgec.u.mbe there is no significant break in the mountain range for more than a thousand miles; it is a stretch of sublime beauty that has no parallel. The Fairweather Range merges into the St. Elias Alps; the Alps are followed successively by the Chugach Alps, the Kenai and Alaskan ranges,--the latter of which holds the loftiest of them all, the superb Mount McKinley,--and the Aleutian Range, which extends to the end of the Aliaska Peninsula. The volcanoes on the Aleutian and Kurile islands complete the ring of snow and fire that circles around the Pacific Ocean.

CHAPTER XX

Our ship having been delayed by the storm, it was mid-afternoon when we reached Yakutat. A vast plateau borders the ocean from Cross Sound, north of Baranoff and Chicagoff islands, to Yakutat; and out of this plateau rise four great snow peaks--Mount La Perouse, Mount Crillon, Mount Lituya, and Mount Fairweather--ranging in height from ten thousand to fifteen thousand nine hundred feet.

In all this stretch there are but two bays of any size, Lituya and Dry, and they have only historical importance.

Lituya Bay was described minutely by La Perouse, who spent some time there in 1786 in his two vessels, the _Astrolabe_ and _Boussole_.

The entrance to this bay is exceedingly dangerous; the tide enters in a bore, which can only be run at slack tide. La Perouse lost two boatloads of men in this bore, on the eve of his departure,--a loss which he describes at length and with much feeling.

Before finally departing, he caused to be erected a monument to the memory of the lost officers and crew on a small island which he named Cenotaphe, or Monument, Isle. A bottle containing a full account of the disaster and the names of the twenty-one men was buried at the foot of the monument.

La Perouse named this bay Port des Francais.

The chronicles of this modest French navigator seem, somehow, to stand apart from those of the other early voyagers. There is an appearance of truth and of fine feeling in them that does not appear in all.

He at first attempted to enter Yakutat Bay, which he called the Bay of Monti, in honor of the commandant of an exploring expedition which he sent out in advance; but the sea was breaking with such violence upon the beach that he abandoned the attempt.

He described the savages of Lituya Bay as treacherous and thievish. They surrounded the ships in canoes, offering to exchange fresh fish and otter skins for iron, which seemed to be the only article desired, although gla.s.s beads found some small favor in the eyes of the women.

La Perouse supposed himself to be the first discoverer of this bay. The Russians, however, had been there years before.

The savages appeared to be worshippers of the sun. La Perouse p.r.o.nounced the bay itself to be the most extraordinary spot on the whole earth. It is a great basin, the middle of which is unfathomable, surrounded by snow peaks of great height. During all the time that he was there, he never saw a puff of wind ruffle the surface of the water, nor was it ever disturbed, save by the fall of ma.s.ses of ice which were discharged from five different glaciers with a thunderous noise which reechoed from the farthest recesses of the surrounding mountains. The air was so tranquil and the silence so undisturbed that the human voice and the cries of sea-birds lying among the rocks were heard at the distance of half a league.

The climate was found to be "infinitely milder" than that of Hudson Bay of the same lat.i.tude. Vegetation was extremely vigorous, pines measuring six feet in diameter and rising to a height of one hundred and forty feet.

Celery, sorrel, lupines, wild peas, yarrow, chicory, angelica, violets, and many varieties of gra.s.s were found in abundance, and were used in soups and salads, as remedies for scurvy.

Strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, the elder, the willow, and the broom were found then as they are to-day. Trout and salmon were taken in the streams, and in the bay, halibut.

It is to be feared that La Perouse was not strong on birds; for in the copses he heard singing "linnets, _nightingales_, blackbirds, and water quails," whose songs were very agreeable. It was July, which he called the "pairing-time." He found one very fine blue jay; and it is surprising that he did not hear it sing.

For the savages--especially the women--the fastidious Frenchman entertained feelings of disgust and horror. He could discover no virtues or traits in them to praise, conscientiously though he tried.

They lived in the same kind of habitations that all the early explorers found along the coast of Alaska: large buildings consisting of one room, twenty-five by twenty feet, or larger. Fire was kindled in the middle of these rooms on the earth floor. Over it was suspended fish of several kinds to be smoked. There was always a large hole in the roof--when there was a roof at all--to receive the smoke.

About twenty persons of both s.e.xes dwelt in each of these houses. Their habits, customs, and relations were indescribably disgusting and indecent.

Their houses were more loathsome and vile of odor than the den of any beast. Even at the present time in some of the native villages--notably Belkoffski on the Aliaskan Peninsula--all the most horrible odors ever experienced in civilization, distilled into one, could not equal the stench with which the natives and their habitations reek. As their customs are somewhat cleanlier now than they were a hundred and thirty years ago, and as upon this one point all the early navigators forcibly agree, we may well conclude that they did not exaggerate.

The one room was used for eating, sleeping, cooking, smoking fish, washing their clothes--in their cooking and eating wooden utensils, by the way, which are never cleansed--and for the habitation of their dogs.

The men pierced the cartilage of the nose and ears for the wearing of ornaments of sh.e.l.l, iron, or other material. They filed their teeth down even with the gums with a piece of rough stone. The men painted their faces and other parts of their bodies in a "frightful manner" with ochre, lamp-black, and black lead, mixed with the oil of the "sea-wolf."

Their hair was frequently greased and dressed with the down of sea-birds; the women's, also. A plain skin covered the shoulders of the men, while the rest of the body was left entirely naked.

The women filled the Frenchman with a lively horror. The labret in the lower lip, or ladle, as he termed it, wore unbearably upon his fine nerves. He considered that the whole world would not afford another custom equally revolting and disgusting. When the ornament was removed, the lower lip fell down upon the chin, and this second picture was more hideous than the first.

The gallant Captain Dixon, on his voyage a year later, was more favorably impressed with the women. He must have worn rose-colored gla.s.ses. He describes their habits and habitations almost as La Perouse did, but uses no expression of disgust or horror. He describes the women as being of medium size, having straight, well-shaped limbs. They painted their faces; but he prevailed upon one woman by persuasion and presents to wash her face and hands. Whereupon "her countenance had all the cheerful glow of an English milkmaid's; and the healthy red which suffused her cheeks was even beautifully contrasted with the white of her neck; her eyes were black and sparkling; her eyebrows of the same color _and most beautifully arched_; her forehead so remarkably clear that the translucent veins were seen meandering even in their minutest branches--in short, she would be considered handsome even in England."

The worst adjectives he applied to the labret were "singular" and "curious."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

PINE FALLS, ATLIN]

Don Maurello and other navigators found now and then a woman who might compete with the beauties of Spain and other lands; but none shared the transports of Dixon, who idealized their virtues and condoned their faults.

Tebenkof located two immense glaciers in the bay of Lituya, one in each arm, describing them briefly:--

"The icebergs fall from the mountains and float over the waters of the bay throughout the year. Nothing disturbs the deep silence of this _terribly grand_ gorge of the mountains but the thunder of the falling icebergs."