Alaska Part 28

His description of Miles Glacier was the first to be printed. This glacier fronts for a distance of six miles in splendid palisades on Copper River. This and Childs Glacier afford the chief obstacles to navigation on this river, and Mr. A. H. Brooks reports their rapid recession.

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

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

LAKE BENNETT IN 1898]

The river is regarded as exceedingly dangerous for steamers, but may, with caution, be navigated with small boats. Between the mouth of the Chitina and the head of the broad delta of the Copper River, is the only canyon. It is the famous Wood Canyon, several miles in length and in many places only forty yards wide, with the water roaring through perpendicular stone walls. The Tiekel, Tasnuna, and other streams tributary to this part of the Copper also flow through narrow valleys with precipitous slopes.

The Copper River has its source in the mountains east of its great plateau, whose eastern margin it traverses, and then, pa.s.sing through the Chugach Mountains, debouches across a wide delta into the North Pacific Ocean between Katalla and Cordova. It rises close to Mount Wrangell, flows northward for forty miles, south and southwest for fifty more, when the Chitina joins it from the east and swells its flood for the remaining one hundred and fifty miles to the coast.

The Copper is a silt-laden, turbulent stream from its source to the sea.

Its average fall is about twelve feet to the mile. From the Chitina to its mouth, it is steep-sided and rock-bound; for its entire length, it is weird and impressive.

By land, the distance from Katalla to Cordova is insignificant. It is a distance, however, that cannot as yet be traversed, on account of the delta and other impa.s.sable topographic features, which only a railroad can overcome. The distance by water is about one hundred and fifty miles.

In the entrance to Cordova Bay is Hawkins Island, and to the southwest of this island lies Hinchingbroke Island, whose southern extremity, at the entrance to Prince William Sound, was named Cape Hinchingbroke by Cook in 1778. At a point named Snug Corner Bay Cook keeled and mended his ships.

This peerless sound itself--brilliantly blue, greenly islanded, and set round with snow peaks and glaciers, including among the latter the most beautiful one of Alaska, if not the most beautiful of the world, the Columbia--was known as Chugach Gulf--a name to which I hope it may some day return,--until Cook renamed it.

A boat sent out by Cook was pursued by natives in canoes. They seemed afraid to approach the ship; but at a distance sang, stood up in the canoes, extending their arms and holding out white garments of peace.

One man stood up, entirely nude, with his arms stretched out like a cross, motionless, for a quarter of an hour.

The following night a few natives came out in the skin-boats of the Eskimos. These boats are still used from this point westward and northward to Nome and up the Yukon as far as the Eskimos have settlements. They are of three kinds. One is a large, open, flat-bottomed boat. It is made of a wooden frame, covered with walrus skin or sealskin, held in place by thongs of the former. This is called an oomiak by the Innuits or Eskimos, and a bidarra by the Russians. It is used by women, or by large parties of men.

A boat for one man is made in the same fashion, but covered completely over, with the exception of one hole in which the occupant sits, and around which is an upright rim. When at sea he wears a walrus-gut coat, completely waterproof, which he ties around the outside of the rim. The coat is securely tied around the wrists, and the hood is drawn tightly around the face; so that no water can possibly enter the boat in the most severe storm. This boat is called a bidarka.

The third, called a kayak, differs from the bidarka only in being longer and having two or three holes.

The walrus-gut coats are called kamelinkas or kamelaykas. They may be purchased in curio stores, and at Seldovia and other places on Cook Inlet. They are now gayly decorated with bits of colored wool and range in price from ten to twenty dollars, according to the amount of work upon them.

There is a difference of opinion regarding the names of the boats. Dall claims that the one-holed boat was called a kayak by the natives, and by the Russians a bidarka; and that the others were simply known as two or three holed bidarkas. The other opinion, which I have given, is that of people living in the vicinity at present.

Each of the men who came out in the bidarkas to visit Cook had a stick about three feet long, the end of which was decorated with large tufts of feathers. Behring's men were received in precisely the same manner at the Shumagin Islands, far to westward, in 1741; their sticks, according to Muller, being decorated with hawks' wings.

These natives were found to be thievish and treacherous, attempting to capture a boat under the ship's very guns and in the face of a hundred men.

Cook then sailed southward and discovered the largest island in the sound, the Sukluk of the natives, which he named Montagu.

Nutchek, or Port Etches, as it was named by Portlock, is just inside the entrance to the sound on the western sh.o.r.e of the island that is now known as Hinchingbroke, but which was formerly called Nutchek.

Here Baranoff, several years later, built the ships that bore his first expedition to Sitka. The Russian trading post was called the Redoubt Constantine and Elena. It was a strong, stockaded fort with two bastions.

There is a salmon cannery at Nutchek, and the furs of the Copper River country were brought here for many years for barter.

Orca is situated about three miles north of Cordova, in Cordova Bay.

There is a large salmon cannery at Orca; and the number of sea-birds to be seen in this small bay, filling the air in snowy clouds and covering the precipitous cliffs facing the wharf, is surpa.s.sed in only one place on the Alaskan coast--Karluk Bay.

For several years before the founding of Valdez, Orca was used as a port by the argonauts who crossed by way of Valdez Pa.s.s to the Copper River mining regions, and by way of the Tanana River to the Yukon.

Prince William Sound is one of the most n.o.bly beautiful bodies of water in Alaska. Its wide blue water-sweeps, its many mountainous, wooded, and snow-peaked islands, the magnificent glaciers which palisade its ice-inlets, and the chain of lofty, snowy mountains that float mistily, like linked pearls, around it through the amethystine clouds, give it a poetic and austere beauty of its own. Every slow turn of the prow brings forth some new delight to the eye. Never does one beautiful snow-dome fade lingeringly from the horizon, ere another pushes into the exquisitely colored atmosphere, in a chaste beauty that fairly thrills the heart of the beholder.

The sound, or gulf, extends winding blue arms in every direction,--into the mainland and into the many islands. It covers an extent of more than twenty-five hundred square miles. The entrance is about fifty miles wide, but is sheltered by countless islands. The largest and richest are Montagu, Hinchingbroke, La Touche, Knight's, and Hawkins. There are many excellent harbors on the sh.o.r.es of the gulf and on the islands, and the Russians built several ships here. In Chalmers Bay Vancouver discovered a remarkable point, which bore stumps of trees cut with an axe, but far below low-water mark at the time of his discovery. He named it Sinking Point.

There is a portage from the head of the gulf to Cook Inlet, which, the earliest Russians learned, had long been used by the natives, who are of the Innuit, or Eskimo, tribe, similar to those of the Inlet, and are called Chugaches. The northern sh.o.r.e of Kenai and the western coast of the Inlet are occupied by Indians of the Athabascan stock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo by Case and Draper

WHITE HORSE, YUKON TERRITORY]

Cook found the natives of the gulf of medium size, with square chests and large heads. The complexion of the children and some of the younger women was white; many of the latter having agreeable features and pleasing appearance. They were vivacious, good-natured, and of engaging frankness.

These people, of all ages and both s.e.xes, wore a close robe reaching to the ankles--sometimes only to the knees--made of the skins of sea-otter, seal, gray fox, racc.o.o.n, and pine-marten. These garments were worn with the fur outside. Now and then one was seen made of the down of sea-birds, which had been glued to some other substance. The seams were ornamented with thongs, or ta.s.sels, of the same skins.

In rain they wore kamelinkas over the fur robes. Cook's description of a kamelinka as resembling a "gold-beater's leaf" is a very good one.

His understanding of the custom of wearing the labret, however, differs from that of other early navigators. The incision in the lip, he states, was made even in the children at the breast; while La Perouse and others were of the impression that it was not made until a girl had arrived at a marriageable age.

It appears that the incision in time a.s.sumes the shape of real lips, through which the tongue may be thrust.

One of Cook's seamen, seeing for the first time a woman having the incision from which the labret had been removed, fell into a panic of horror and ran to his companions, crying that he "had seen a man with two mouths,"--evidently mistaking the woman for a man. Cook reported that both s.e.xes wore the labret; but this was doubtless an error. When they are clad in the fur garments, which are called parkas, it is difficult to distinguish one s.e.x from the other among the younger people.

I had a rather amusing experience myself at the small native settlement of Anvik on the Yukon. It was midnight, but broad daylight, as we were in the Arctic Circle. The natives were all clad in parkas. Two sitting side by side resembled each other closely. After buying some of their curios, I asked one, indicating the other, "Is she your sister?"

To my confusion, my question was received with a loud burst of laughter, in which a dozen natives, sitting around them, hoa.r.s.ely and hilariously joined.

They poked the unfortunate object of my curiosity in the ribs, pointed at him derisively, and kept crying--"She! She!" until at last the poor young fellow, not more embarra.s.sed than myself, sprang to his feet and ran away, with laughter and cries of "She! She!" following him.

I have frequently recalled the scene, and feared that the innocent dark-eyed and sweet-smiling youth may have retained the name which was so mirthfully bestowed upon him that summer night.

But since the mistake in s.e.x may be so easily made, I am inclined to the belief that Cook and his men were misled in this particular.

A most remarkable difference of opinion existed between Cook and other early explorers as to the cleanliness of the natives. He found their method of eating decent and cleanly, their persons neat, without grease or dirt, and their wooden dishes in excellent order.

The white-headed eagle was found here, as well as the s.h.a.g, the great kingfisher of brilliant coloring, the humming-bird, water-fowl, grouse, snipe, and plover. Many other species of water and land fowl have been added to these.

The flora of the islands is brilliant, varied, and luxuriant.

In 1786 John Meares--who is dear to my heart because of his confidence in Juan de Fuca--came to disaster in the Chugach Gulf. Overtaken by winter, he first tried the anchorage at Snug Corner Cove, in his ship, the _Nootka_, but later moved to a more sheltered nook closer to the mainland, in the vicinity of the present native village of Tat.i.tlik.

The ill-provisioned vessel was covered for the winter; spruce beer was brewed, but the men preferred the liquors, which were freely served, and, fresh fish being scarce, scurvy became epidemic. The surgeon was the first to die; but he was followed by many others.

At first, graves were dug under the snow; but soon the survivors were too few and too exhausted for this last service to their mates. The dead were then dropped in fissures of the ice which surrounded their ship.

At last, when the lowest depth of despair had been reached, Captains Portlock and Dixon arrived and furnished relief and a.s.sistance.