Alaska Part 48

I went up the companionway and stepped out upon the deck; and there in the north, across the blue, mist-softened sea, in the rich splendor of an Aleutian sunset, trembled and glowed the exquisite thing of my desire.

In the absolute perfection of its conical form, its chaste and delicate beauty of outline, and the slender column of smoke pushing up from its finely pointed crest, Shishaldin stands alone. Its height is not great, only nine thousand feet; but in any company of loftier mountains it would shine out with a peerlessness that would set it apart.

The sunset trembled upon the North Pacific Ocean, changing hourly as the evening wore on. Through scarlet and purple and gold, the mountain shone; through lavender, pearl, and rose; growing ever more distant and more dim, but not less beautiful. At last, it could barely be seen, in a flood of rich violet mist, just touched with rose.

So steadily I looked, and with such a longing pa.s.sion of greeting, rapture, possession, and farewell in my gaze and in my heart, that lo!

when its last outline had blurred lingeringly and sweetly into the rose-violet mist, I found that it was painted in all its delicacy of outline and soft splendor of coloring upon my memory. There it burns to-day in all its loveliness as vividly as it burned that night, ere it faded, line by line, across the widening sea. It is mine. I own it as surely as I own the green hill upon which I live, the blue sea that sparkles daily beneath my windows, the gold-brilliant constellations that move nightly above my home, or the song that the meadow-lark sings to his mate in the April dawn.

The sea breaks into surf upon Shishaldin's base, and snow covers the slender cone from summit to sea level, save for a month or two in summer when it melts around the base. Owing to the mists, it is almost impossible to obtain a sharp negative of Shishaldin from the water.

They played with it constantly. They wrapped soft rose-colored scarfs about its crest; they wound girdles of purple and gold and pearl about its middle; they set rayed gold upon it, like a crown. Now and then, for a few seconds at a time, they drew away completely, as if to contemplate its loveliness; and then, as if overcome and compelled by its dazzling brilliance, they flung themselves back upon it impetuously and crushed it for several moments completely from our view.

Large and small, the islands of the Aleutian Archipelago number about one hundred. They drift for nearly fifteen hundred miles from the point of the Aliaska Peninsula toward the Kamchatkan sh.o.r.e; and Attu, the last one, lies within the eastern hemisphere. This chain of islands, reaching as far west as the Komandorski, or Commander, Islands--upon one of which Commander Behring died and was buried--was named, in 1786, the Catherina Archipelago, by Forster, in honor of the liberal and enlightened Empress Catherine the Second, of Russia.

The Aleutian Islands are divided into four groups. The most westerly are Nearer, or Blizni, Islands, of which the famed Attu is the largest; the next group to eastward is known as Rat, or Kreesi, Islands; then, Andreanoffski Islands, named for Andreanoff, who discovered them, and whose largest island is Atka, where it is said the baskets known as the Attu baskets are now woven.

East of this group are the Fox, or Leesi, Islands. This is the largest of the four Aleutian groups, and contains thirty-one islands, including Unimak, which is the largest in the archipelago. Others of importance in this group are Unalaska, formerly spelled Unalashka; Umnak; Akutan; Akhun; Ukamak; and the famed volcano islands of St. John the Theologian, or Joanna Bogoslova, and the Four Craters. Unimak Pa.s.s, the best known and most used pa.s.sage into Behring Sea, is between Unimak and Akhun islands. Akutan Pa.s.s is between Akutan and Unalaska islands; Umnak Pa.s.s, between Unalaska and Umnak islands. (These _u_'s are p.r.o.nounced as though spelled _oo_.)

Unalaska and Dutch Harbor are situated on the Island of Unalaska. By the little flower-bordered path leading up and down the green, velvety hills, these two settlements are fully two miles apart; by water, they seem scarcely two hundred yards from one another. The steamer, after landing at Dutch Harbor, draws her prow from the wharf, turns it gently around a green point, and lays it beside the wharf at Unalaska.

The bay is so surrounded by hills that slope softly to the water, that one can scarcely remember which blue water-way leads to the sea. There is a curving white beach, from which the town of Unalaska received its ancient name of Iliuliuk, meaning "the beach that curves." The white-painted, red-roofed buildings follow this beach, and loiter picturesquely back over the green level to the stream that flows around the base of the hills and finds the sea at the Unalaska wharf.

This is one of the safest harbors in the world. It is one great, sparkling sapphire, set deep in solid emerald and pearl. It is entered more beautifully than even the Bay of Sitka. It is completely surrounded by high mountains, peak rising behind peak, and all covered with a thick, green, velvety nap and crowned with eternal pearl.

The entrance way is so winding that these peaks have the appearance of leaning aside to let us slide through, and then drawing together behind us, to keep out the storms; for ships of the heaviest draught find refuge here and lie safely at anchor while tempests rage outside.

Now and then, between two enchantingly green near peaks, a third shines out white, far, glistening mistily--covered with snow from summit to base, but with a dark scarf of its own internal pa.s.sion twisted about its outwardly serene brow.

The _Kuro Siwo_, or j.a.pan Current, breaks on the western end of the Aleutian Chain; half flows eastward south of the islands, and carries with it the warm, moist atmosphere which is condensed on the snow-peaks and sinks downward in the fine and delicious mist that gives the gra.s.s and mosses their vivid, brilliant, perpetual green. The other half pa.s.ses northward into Behring Sea and drives the ice back into the "Frozen Ocean." Dall was told that the whalers in early spring have seen large icebergs steadily sailing northward through the strait at a knot and a half an hour, against a very stiff breeze from the north. In May the first whalers follow the Kamchatkan Coast northward, as the ice melts on that sh.o.r.e earlier than on ours. The first whaler to pa.s.s East Cape secures the spring trade and the best catch of whales.

The color of the _Kuro Siwo_ is darker than the waters through which it flows, and its j.a.panese name signifies "Black Stream." Pa.s.sing on down the coast, it carries a warm and vivifying moisture as far southwest as Oregon. It gives the Aleutians their balmy climate. The average winter temperature is about thirty degrees above zero; and the summer temperature, from fifty to sixty degrees.

The volcano Makushin is the noted "smoker" of this island, and there is a hot spring, containing sulphur, in the vicinity, from which loud, cannon-like reports are frequently heard. The natives believe that the mountains fought together and that Makushin remained the victor. These reports were probably supposed to be fired at his command, as warnings of his fortified position to any inquisitive peak that might chance to fire a lava interrogation-point at him.

In June, and again in October, of 1778, Cook visited the vicinity, anchoring in Samghanooda Harbor. There he was visited by the commander of the Russian expedition in this region, Gregorovich Ismaloff. The usual civilities and gifts were exchanged. Cook sent the Russian some liquid gifts which were keenly appreciated, and was in return offered a sea-otter skin of such value that Cook courteously declined it, accepting, instead, some dried fish and several baskets of lily root.

The Russian settlement was at Iliuliuk, which was distant several miles from Samghanooda. Several of the members of Cook's party visited the settlement, notably Corporal Ledyard, who reported that it consisted of a dwelling-house and two storehouses, about thirty Russians, and a number of Kamchatkans and natives who were used as servants by the Russians. They all lived in the same houses, but ate at three different tables.

Cook considered the natives themselves the most gentle and inoffensive people he had ever "met with" in his travels; while as to honesty, "they might serve as a pattern to the most civilized nation upon earth." He was convinced, however, that this disposition had been produced by the severities at first practised upon them by the Russians in an effort to subdue them.

Cook described them as low of stature, but plump and well-formed, dark-eyed, and dark-haired. The women wore a single garment, loose-fitting, of sealskin, reaching below the knee--the parka; the men, the same kind of garment, made of the skin of birds, with the feathers worn against the flesh. Over this garment, the men wore another made of gut, which I have elsewhere described under the name of kamelinka, or kamelayka. All wore "oval-snouted" caps made of wood, dyed in colors and decorated with gla.s.s beads.

The women punctured their lips and wore bone labrets. "It is as uncommon, at Oonalashka, to see a man with this ornament as to see a woman without it," he adds.

The chief was seen making his dinner of the raw head of a large halibut.

Two of his servants ate the gills, which were cleaned simply "by squeezing out the slime." The chief devoured large pieces of the raw meat with as great satisfaction as though they had been raw oysters.

These natives lived in barabaras. (This word is p.r.o.nounced with the accent on the second syllable; the correct spelling cannot be vouched for here, because no two authorities spell it in the same way.)

They were usually made by forming shallow circular excavations and erecting over them a framework of driftwood, or whale-ribs, with double walls filled with earth and stones and covered over with sod.

The roofs contained square openings in the centre for the escape of smoke; and these low earth roofs were used by the natives as family gathering places in pleasant weather. Here they would sit for hours, doing nothing and gazing blankly at nothing.

The entrance was through a square hole in, or near, the roof. It was reached by a ladder, and descent into the interior was made in the same way, or by means of steps cut in a post. A narrow dark tunnel led to the inner room, which was from ten to twenty feet in diameter.

These barabaras were sometimes warmed only by lamps; but usually a fire was built in the centre, directly under the opening in the roof. Mats and skins were placed on shelves, slightly elevated above the floor, around the walls. Many persons of both s.e.xes and all ages lived in these places; frequently several dwellings were connected by tunnels and had one common hole-entrance. The filth of these airless habitations was nauseating.

Their household furniture consisted of bowls, spoons, buckets, cans, baskets, and one or two Russian pots; a knife and a hatchet were the only tools they possessed.

The huts were lighted by lamps made of flat stones which were hollowed on one side to hold oil, in which dry gra.s.s was burned. Both men and women warmed their bodies by sitting over these lamps and spreading their garments around them.

The natives used the bidarka here, as elsewhere.

They buried their dead on the summits of hills, raising little hillocks over the graves. Cook saw one grave covered with stones, to which every one pa.s.sing added a stone, after the manner fancied by Helen Hunt Jackson a hundred years later; and he saw several stone hillocks that had an appearance of great antiquity.

In Unalaska to-day may still be seen several barabaras. They must be very old, because the native habitations of the coast are constructed along the lines of the white man's dwellings at the present time. They add to the general quaint and picturesque appearance of the town, however. Their sod roofs are overgrown with tall gra.s.ses, among which wild flowers flame out brightly.

(Unalaska is p.r.o.nounced Oo-na-las'-ka, the _a_'s having the sound of _a_ in arm. Aleutian is p.r.o.nounced in five syllables: a-le-oo'-shi-an, with the same sound of _a_.)

The island of Unalaska was sighted by Chirikoff on his return to Kamchatka, on the 4th of September, 1741.

The chronicles of the first expeditions of the Russian traders--or promyshleniki, as they were called--are wrapped in mystery. But it is believed that as early as 1744 Emilian Ba.s.sof and Andrei Serebrennikof voyaged into the islands and were rewarded by a catch of sixteen hundred sea-otters, two thousand fur-seals, and as many blue foxes.

Stephan Glottoff was the first to trade with the natives of Unalaska, whom he found peaceable and friendly. The next, however, Korovin, attempted to make a settlement upon the island, but met with repulse from the natives, and several of his party were killed.

Glottoff returned to his rescue, and the latter's expedition was the most important of the earlier ones to the islands. On his previous visit he had found the highly prized black foxes on the island of Unalaska, and had carried a number to Kamchatka.

I have related elsewhere the story of the atrocities perpetrated upon the natives of these islands by the early promyshleniki. During the years between 1760 and 1770 the natives were in active revolt against their oppressors; and it was not until the advent of Solovioff the Butcher that they were tortured into the mild state of submission in which they were found by Cook in 1778, and in which they have since dwelt.

Father Veniaminoff made the most careful study of the Aleutians, beginning about 1824. It has been claimed that this n.o.ble and devout priest was so good that he perceived good where it did not exist; and his statements concerning his beloved Aleutians are not borne out by the promyshleniki. Considering the character of the latter, I prefer to believe Veniaminoff.

The most influential Aleuts were those who were most successful in hunting, which seemed to be their highest ambition. The best hunters possessed the greatest number of wives; and they were never stinted in this luxury. Even Veniaminoff, with his rose-colored gla.s.ses on, failed to discover virtue or the faintest moral sense among them.

"They incline to sensuality," he put it, politely. "Before the teachings of the Christian religion had enlightened them, this inclination had full sway. The nearest consanguinity, only, puts limits to their pa.s.sions. Although polygamy was general, nevertheless there were frequently secret orgies, in which all joined.... The bad example and worse teachings of the early Russian settlers increased their tendency to licentiousness."

Child-murder was rare, owing to the belief that it brought misfortune upon the whole village.

Among the half-breeds, the character of the dark mother invariably came out more strongly than that of the Russian father. They learned readily and intelligently, and fulfilled all church duties imposed upon them cheerfully, punctually, and with apparent pleasure.

Under the teaching of Veniaminoff, the Aleuts were easily weaned from their early Pantheism, and from their savage songs and dances, described by the earlier voyagers. They no longer wore their painted masks and hats, although some treasured them in secret.

The successful hunter, in times of famine or scarcity of food, shared with all who were in need. The latter met him when his boat returned, and sat down silently on the sh.o.r.e. This is a sign that they ask for aid; and the hunter supplies them, without receiving, or expecting, either rest.i.tution or thanks. This generosity is like that of the people of Belkoffski; it comes from the heart.

The Aleutians were frequently intoxicated; but this condition did not lead to quarrelling or trouble. Murder and attempts at murder were unknown among them.