Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska Part 4

Others are of stone, with windows and peaked roofs,--very comfortable receptacles. But most of the bodies are below ground, and the last vestiges of their graves are lost in the depths of the jungle.

Incineration is not uncommon in Alaska, and in such cases the ashes are distributed among the winds and waves. Birds feast upon the bodies of certain tribes--meat-offerings, very gracious in the sight of the Death Angel; but by far the larger portion find decent burial, and they are all long and loudly and sincerely mourned.

We awoke one morning at Casa-an, and found ourselves made fast to a dock. On the dock was a salmon-house, or shed, a very laboratory of ancient and fish-like smells. It was not long before the tide slipped away from us and left the steamer resting easily on her beam-ends in shallow water. We were prisoners for a few hours; but we were glad of this, for every hour was of interest to us. This was our first chance to thoroughly explore an Indian village; and, oh! the dogs, cousins-german to the coyotes, that shook off their fleas and bayed us dismally! Lodges of the rudest sort were scattered about in the most convenient localities. As for streets or lanes, there were none visible. The majority of the lodges were constructed of hemlock bark or of rough slabs, gaudily festooned with split salmon drying in the sun. The lodges are square, with roofs slightly inclined; they are windowless and have but one narrow door about shoulder high.

The Casa-an Indians are a tribe of the Haidas, the cleverest of the northern races. They are expert craftsmen. From a half dollar they will hammer out or mold a bangle and cover it with chasing very deftly cut.

Their wood-carvings, medicine-man rattles, spoons, broth bowls, and the like, are curious; but the demand for bangles keeps the more ingenious busy in this branch of industry. Unfortunately, some simple voyager gave the rude silversmiths a bangle of the conventional type, and this is now so cunningly imitated that it is almost impossible to secure a specimen of Haida work of the true Indian pattern. Very shortly the Indian villages of Alaska will be stocked with curios of genuine California manufacture. The supply of antiquities and originals has been already nearly, if not quite, exhausted. It is said that no sooner is the boom of the paddle-wheel heard in the noiseless Alaskan sea than the Indian proceeds to empty of its treasures his cedar chest or his red Chinese box studded with bra.s.s nails, and long before the steamer heaves in sight the primitive bazar is ready for the expected customer. There is much haggling over the price of a curio, and but little chance of a bargain. If one has his eye upon some coveted object, he had best purchase it at once at the first figure; for the Indian is not likely to drop a farthing, and there are others who will gladly outbid the hesitating shopper.

Time is no object in the eyes of these people. If an Indian thought he could make a quarter more on the sale of a curio by holding it a month longer, until the arrival of the next excursion boat, or even by getting into his canoe and paddling a day or two over to the next settlement, he would as lief do it as not. By the merest chance I drew from a heap of rubbish in the corner of a lodge a Shaman rattle, unquestionably genuine. This Shaman rattle is a quaintly carved rattle-box, such as is used by sorcerers or medicine-men in propitiation of the evil spirit at the bedside of the dying. The one I have was not offered for sale, nor did the possessor seem to place much value on it; yet he would not budge one jot or t.i.ttle in the price he first set upon it, and seemingly set at a guess. Its discovery was a piece of pure luck, but I would not exchange it for any other curio which I chanced to see during the whole voyage.

In one of the lodges at Casa-an a chief lay dying. He was said to be the last of his race; and, judging from appearances, his hours were fast drawing to a close. He was breathing painfully; his face was turned to the wall. Two or three other Indians sat silently about, stirring at intervals a bright wood-fire that burned in the centre of the lodge. The curling smoke floated gracefully through a hole in the roof--most of it, but not quite all. As we entered (we were in search of the dying chief; for, as he seemed to be the one lion in the settlement, his fame was soon noised abroad) we found that the evangelist had forestalled us. He was asking the price of salmon in San Francisco; but upon our appearance he added, solemnly enough: "Well, we all must die--Indians and all." An interpreter had reluctantly been pressed into service; but as the missionary work was not progressing, the evangelist dropped the interpreter, rolled up his spiritual sleeves and pitched in as follows:

"Say, you Injun! you love G.o.d? You love Great Spirit?" No answer came from the thin, drawn lips, tightly compressed and visible just over the blankets edge in the corner of the lodge. "Say, John! you ready to die!

You make your peace with G.o.d! You go to heaven--to the happy hunting-ground?" The chief, who had silenced the interpreter with a single look, was apparently beyond the hearing of human speech; so the evangelist, with a sigh, again inquired into the state of the salmon market on the Pacific coast. Then the stricken brave turned a glazed eye upon the man of G.o.d, and the latter once more sought to touch that heart of stone: "I say, you Injun! you prepared to meet Great Spirit? You ready to go to happy hunting-ground?" The chief's eyes flamed for a moment, as with infinite scorn he muttered between his teeth to the evangelist: "You ---- fool! You go to ----!" And he went.

While the steamer was slowly righting we had ample time to inspect the beached hull of a schooner with a history. She was the Pioneer of Casa-an once commanded by a famous old smuggler named Baronovich. Long he sailed these waters; and, like Captain Kidd, he bore a charmed life as he sailed. It is a mystery to me how any sea-faring man can trust his craft to the mercy of the winds and tides of this myriad-islanded inland sea. This ancient mariner, Baronovich, not only braved the elements, but defied Russian officials, who kept an eye upon him night and day. On one occasion, having been boarded by the vigilant inspectors, and his piratical schooner thoroughly searched from stem to stern, he kindly invited the gentlemen to dine with him, and entertained them at a board groaning with the contraband luxuries which his suspicious guests had been vainly seeking all the afternoon. It is a wee little cabin and a shallow hold that furnish the setting for a sea-tale as wildly picturesque as any that thrills the heart of your youthful reader; but high and dry lies the moldering hulk of the dismantled smuggler, and there is no one left to tell the tale.

As we lounged about, some hideous Indians--I trust they were not framed in the image of their Maker,--ill-shapen lads, dumpy, expressionless babies, green-complexioned half-breeds, sat and looked on with utter indifference. Many of the Haida Indians have kinky or wavy hair, j.a.panese or Chinese eyes, and most of them toe out; but they are, all things considered, the least interesting, the most ungainly and the most unpicturesque of people. If there is work for them to do they do it, heedless of the presence of inquisitive, pale-faced spectators. Indeed they seem to look down upon the white-man, and perhaps they have good reasons for so doing. If there is no work to be done, they are not at all disconcerted.

I very much doubt if a Haida Indian--or any other Indian, for that matter--knows what it is to be bored or to find the time hanging heavily on his hands. I took note of one old Indian who sat for four solid hours without once changing his position. He might have been sitting there still but that his wife routed him out after a lively monologue, to which he was an apparently disinterested listener. At last he arose with a grunt, adjusted his blanket, strode grimly to his canoe and bailed it out; then he entered and paddled leisurely to the opposite sh.o.r.e, where he disappeared in the forest.

Filth was everywhere, and evil odors; but far, far aloft the eagles were soaring, and the branches of a withered tree near the settlement were filled with crows as big as buzzards. Once in awhile some one or another took a shot at them--and missed. Thus the time pa.s.sed at Casa-an. One magnifies the merest episode on the Alaskan voyage, and is grateful for it.

Killisnoo is situated in a cosy little cove. It is a rambling village that climbs over the rocks and narrowly escapes being pretty, but it manages to escape. Most of the lodges are built of logs, have small, square windows, with gla.s.s in them, and curtains; and have also a kind of primitive chimney. We climbed among these lodges and found them quite deserted. The lodgers were all down at the dock. There were inscriptions on a few of the doors: the name of the tenant, and a request to observe the sacredness of the domestic hearth. This we were careful to do; but inasmuch as each house was set in order and the window-curtains looped back, we were no doubt welcome to a glimpse of an Alaskan interior. It was the least little bit like a peep-show, and didn't seem quite real.

One inscription was as follows--it was over the door of the lodge of the laureate:

JOSEPH HOOLQUIN.

My tum-tum is white, I try to do right: All are welcome to come To my hearth and my home.

So call in and see me, white, red or black man: I'm de-late hyas of the Kootznahoo quan.

Need I add that _tum-tum_ in the Chinook jargon signifies the soul!

Joseph merely announced that he was clean-souled; also _de-late hyas_--that is, above reproach.

At the store of the Northwest Trading Company we found no curios, and it is the only store in the place. Sarsaparilla, tobacco, blankets, patent medicines, etc., are there neatly displayed on freshly painted shelves, but no curios. On a strip of plank walk in front of the place are Indians luxuriously heaped, like prize porkers, and they are about as interesting a spectacle to the unaccustomed eye.

Our whistle blew at noon. We returned on board, taking the cannery and oil-factory on the way, and finding it impossible to forget them for some time afterward. At 12.45 p. m. we were off, but we left one of the merriest and most popular of our voyagers behind us. He remained at Killisnoo in charge of the place. As we swam off into the sweet sea reaches, the poor fellow ran over the ridge of his little island, looking quite like a castaway, and no doubt feeling like one. He sprang from rock to rock and at last mounted a hillock, and stood waving his arms wildly while we were in sight. And the la.s.sies? They swarmed like bees upon the wheelhouse, wringing their hands and their handkerchiefs, and weeping rivers of imaginary tears over our first bereavement! But really, now, what a life to lead, and in what a place, especially if one happens to be young, and good-looking and a bit of a swell withal!

But is there no romance here? Listen! We came to anchor over night in a quiet nook where the cliffs and the clouds overshadowed us. Everything was of the vaguest description, without form and void. There seemed to be one hut on sh.o.r.e, with the spark of a light in it--a cannery of course. Canoes were drifting to and fro like motes in the darkness, tipped with a phosph.o.r.escent rim. Indian voices hailed us out of the ominous silence; Indian dogs muttered under their breath, yelping in a whisper which was mocked by Indian papooses, who can bark before they have learned to walk or talk.

Softly out of the balmy night--for it was balmy and balsamic (we were to the windward of the cannery),--a shadowy canoe floated up just under our rail; two shadowy forms materialized, and voices like the voices of spirits--almost the softest voices in the world, voices of infantile sweetness--hailed us. "_Alah, mika chahko!_" babbled the flowers of the forest. My solitary companion responded glibly, for he was no stranger in these parts. The maids grew garrulous. There was much bantering, and such laughter as the G.o.ds delight in; and at last a shout that drew the attention of the captain. He joined us just in season to recognize the occupants of the canoe, as they shot through a stream of light under an open port, crying "_Anah nawitka mika halo shem!_" And then we learned that the sea-nymphs he had put to flight were none other than the belles of Juneau City, the Alaskan metropolis, who were spending the summer at this watering-place, and who were known to fame as "Kitty the Gopher,"

and "Feather-Legged Sal."

CHAPTER XI.

In the Sea of Ice.

We appreciated the sun's warmth so long as we were cruising among the ice-wrack. Some of the pa.s.sengers, having been forewarned, were provided with heavy overcoats, oilskin hats, waterproofs, woolen socks, and stogies with great nails driven into the soles. They were iron-bound, copper-fastened tourists, thoroughly equipped--Alpine-stock and all,--and equal to any emergency.

Certainly it rains whenever it feels like it in Alaska. It can rain heavily for days together, and does so from time to time. The excursion-boat may run out of one predicament into another, and the whole voyage be a series of dismal disappointments; but this is not to be feared. The chances are in favor of a round of sunshiny days and cloudless nights as bright as the winter days in New England; of the fairest of fair weather; bracing breezes tempered by the fragrant forests that mantle each of the ten thousand islands; cool nights in midsummer, when a blanket is welcome in one's bunk; a touch of a fog now and again, generally lasting but a few hours, and welcome, also, by way of change. As for myself, a rubber coat protected me in the few showers to which we were exposed, and afforded warmth enough in the coldest weather we encountered. For a climb over a glacier, the very thickest shoes are absolutely necessary; beyond these, all else seems superfluous to me, and the superfluous is the chief burden of travel.

We were gathered about the deck in little groups. The unpremeditated coteries which naturally spring into existence on shipboard hailed one another across decks, from the captain's cabin--a favorite resort--or the smoking-room, as we sighted objects of interest. With us there was no antagonism, albeit we numbered a full hundred, and for three weeks were confined to pretty close quarters. Pa.s.sing the hours thus, and felicitating ourselves upon the complete success of the voyage, we were in the happiest humor, and amiably awaited our next experience.

Presently we ran under a wooded height that shut off the base of a great snow-capped mountain. The peak was celestial in its beauty,--a wraith dimly outlined upon the diaphanous sky, of which it seemed a more palpable part. When we had rounded this point we came face to face with a glacier. We saw at a glance the length and the breadth of it as it plowed slowly down between lofty rock-ridges to within a mile and a half of the sh.o.r.e. This was our first sight of one of those omnipotent architects of nature, and we watched it with a thrill of awe.

Picture to yourself a vast river, two or three miles in breadth, pouring down from the eminence of an icy peak thirty miles away,--a river fed by numerous lateral tributaries that flow in from every declivity. Imagine this river lashed to a fury and covered from end to end, fathoms deep, with foam, and then the whole suddenly frozen and fixed for evermore--that is your glacier. Sometimes the surface is stained with the _debris_ of the mountain; sometimes the bluish-green tinge of the ancient ice crops out. Generally the surface is as white as down and very fair to look upon; for at a distance--we were about eight miles from the lower edge of it--the eye detects no flaw. It might be a torrent of milk and honey. It might almost be compared in its immaculate beauty to one of the rivers of Paradise that flow hard by the throne of G.o.d. It seems to be moving in majesty, and yet is stationary, or nearly so; for we might sit by its frozen sh.o.r.e and grow gray with watching, and ever our dull eyes could detect no change in a ripple of it. A river of Paradise, indeed, escaped from the gardens of the blessed; but, overcome by the squalor of this little globe, it has stopped short and turned to ice in its alabaster bed.

One evening, about 8.30 o'clock, the sun still high above the western mountain range, we found ourselves opposite the Davidson glacier. It pa.s.ses out of a broad ravine and spreads fanlike upon the sh.o.r.e under the neighboring cliffs. It is three miles in breadth along the front, and is twelve hundred feet in height when it begins to crumble and slope toward the sh.o.r.e. A terminal moraine, a mile and a half in depth, separates it from the sea. A forest, or the remnant of a forest, stands between it and the water it is slowly but surely approaching. The fate of this solemn wood is sealed. Anon the mightiest among these mighty trees will fall like grain before the sickle of the reaper.

We are very near this glacier. We see all the wrinkles and fissures and the deep discolorations. We see how the monstrous ma.s.s winds in and out between the mountains, and crowds them on every side, and rubs their skin off in spots, and leaves grooved lines, like high-water marks, along the face of the cliffs; how it gathers as it goes, and grinds to powder and to paste whatever comes within its reach, growing worse and worse, and greedier and more rapacious as it creeps down into the lowlands; so that when it reaches the sea, where it must end its course and dissolve away, it will have covered itself with slime and confusion.

It will have left ruin and desolation in its track, but it will likewise have cleft out a valley with walls polished like bra.s.s and a floor as smooth as marble,--one that will be utilized in after ages, when it has carpeted itself with green and tapestried its walls with vines. Surely no other power on earth could have done the job so neatly.

One sees this work in process and in fresh completion in Alaska. The bald islet yonder, with a surface as smooth as gla.s.s and with delicate tracery along its polished sides--tracery that looks like etching upon gla.s.s,--was modelled by glaciers not so many years ago: within the century, some of them, perhaps. A glacier--probably the very glacier we are seeking--follows this track and grinds them all into shape. Every angle of action--of motion, shall I say?--is indelibly impressed upon each and every rock here about; so all these northlands, from sea to sea, the world over, have been laboriously licked into shape by the irresistible tide of ice. Verily, the mills of the G.o.ds grind slowly, but what a grist they grind!

Let me record an episode that occasioned no little excitement among the pa.s.sengers and crew of the _Ancon_. While we were picking our way among the floating ice--and at a pretty good jog, too,--a dark body was seen to fall from an open port, forward, into the sea. There was a splash and a shriek as it pa.s.sed directly under the wheel and disappeared in the foam astern. "Man overboard!" was the cry that rang through the ship, while we all rushed breathlessly to the after-rail. Among the seething waters in our wake, we saw a head appearing and disappearing, and growing smaller and smaller all the while, though the swimmer was struggling bravely to hold his own. In a moment the engines were stopped; and then--an after-thought--we made as sharp a turn as possible, hoping to lessen the distance between us, while a boat was being manned and lowered for the rescue. We feared that it was the cook, who was running a fair chance of being drowned or chilled to death. His black head bobbed like a burnt cork on the crest of the waves; and, though we marked a snow-white circle in the sea, we seemed to get no nearer the strong swimmer in his agony; and all at once we saw him turn, as in desperation or despair, and make for one of the little rocky islets that were lying at no great distance. Evidently he believed himself deserted, and was about to seek this desolate rock in the hope of prolonging existence.

By this time we had come to a dead halt, and a prolonged silence followed. Our sailor boys pulled l.u.s.tily at the oars; yet the little boat seemed to crawl through yawning waves, and, as usual, every moment was an hour of terrible suspense. Then the captain, the most anxious among us all, made a trumpet of his hands and shouted: "Here, Pete, old boy! Here, Pete, you black rascal!" At the sound of his voice the swimmer suddenly turned and struck out for the ship with an enthusiasm that was actually ludicrous. We roared with laughter--we could not help it; for when the boat had pulled up to the almost water-logged swimmer, and he began to climb in with an energy that imperiled the safety of the crew, we saw that the black rascal in question was none other than Pete Bruin, Captain Carroll's pet bear. He shook himself and drenched the oarsmen, who were trying to get him back to the ship; for he was half frantic with delight, and it was pretty close quarters--a small boat in a chop sea dotted with lumpy ice; and a frantic bear puffing and blowing as he shambled bear-fashion from the stem to stern, and raised his voice at intervals in a kind of hoa.r.s.e "hooray," that depressed rather than cheered his companions. It was ticklish business getting the boat and its lively crew back to the davits in safety.

It was still more ticklish receiving the s.h.a.ggy hero on deck; for he gave one wild bound and alighted in the midst of a group of terrified ladies and scattered the rest of us in dismay. But it was side-splitting when the little fellow, seeing an open door, made a sudden break for it, and plunged into the berth of a shy damsel, who, put to ignominious flight in the first gust of the panic, had sought safety in her state-room only to be singled out for the recipient of the rascal's special attentions. She was rescued by the bravest of the brave; but Bruin had to be dragged from behind the lace curtains with a la.s.so, and then he brought some shreds of lace with him as a trophy. He was more popular than ever after this little adventure, and many an hour we spent in recounting to one another the varied emotions awakened by the episode.

Heading for Glacier Bay, we found a flood of bitter cold water so filled with floating ice that it was quite impossible to avoid frequent collisions with ma.s.ses of more or less magnitude. There was an almost continual thumping along the ship's side as the paddle struck heavily the ice fragments which we found littering the frozen sea. There was also a dull reverberation as of distant thunder that rolled over the sea to us; and when we learned that this was the crackling of the ice-pack in the gorges, we thought with increasing solemnity of the majesty of the spectacle we were about to witness.

Thus we pushed forward bravely toward an ice-wall that stretched across the top of the bay from one high sh.o.r.e to the other. This wall of ice, a precipitous bluff or palisade, is computed to be from two hundred to five hundred feet in height. It is certainly nowhere less than two hundred, but most of it far nearer five hundred feet above sea level, rising directly out of it, overhanging it, and chilling the air perceptibly. Picking our path to within a safe distance of the glacier, we cast anchor and were free to go our ways for a whole glorious day.

According to Professor John Muir--for whom the glacier is deservedly named,--the ice-wall measures three miles across the front; ten miles farther back it is ten miles in breadth. Sixteen tributary glaciers unite to form the one.

Professor Muir, accompanied by the Rev. S. Hall Young, of Fort Wrangell, visited it in 1879. They were the first white men to explore this region, and they went thither by canoe. Muir, with blankets strapped to his back and his pockets stuffed with hard-tack, spent days in rapturous speculation. Of all glacial theorists he is doubtless the most self-sacrificing and enthusiastic. I believe, as yet, no one has timed this glacier. It is dissolving away more rapidly than it travels; so that although it is always advancing, it seems in reality to be retreating.

Within the memory of the last three generations the Muir glacier filled the bay for miles below our anchorage; and while it recedes, it is creeping slowly down, scalping the mountains, grinding all the sharp edges into powder or leaving a polished surface behind it. It gathers rock dust and the wreck of every living thing, and mixes them up with snow and ice. These congeal again, or are compressed into soft, filthy monumental ma.s.ses, waiting their turn to topple into the waves at last.

The wash of the sea undermines the glacier; the sharp sunbeams blast it.

It is forever sinking, settling, crushing in upon itself and splitting from end to end, with fearful and prolonged intestinal reverberations, that remind one of battle thunders and murder and sudden death. There was hardly a moment during the day free from rumble or a crash or a splash.

The front elevation might almost be compared to Niagara Falls in winter; but here is a spectacular effect not often visible at Niagara. At intervals huge fragments of the ice cliffs fall, carrying with them torrents of snow and slush. Heaven only knows know many hundred thousand tons of this _debris_ plunged into the sea under our very eyes. Nor was it all _debris_: there were ma.s.ses of solid ice so l.u.s.trous they looked like gigantic emeralds or sapphires, and these were fifty or even a hundred times the size of our ship. When they fell they seemed to descend with the utmost deliberation; for they fell a much greater distance than we could realize, as their bulk was beyond conception, so that a fall of two hundred or three hundred feet seemed not a tenth part of that distance.

With this deliberate descent, as if they floated down, they also gave an impression of vast weight and when they struck the sea, the foam flew two-thirds of the way up the cliff--a fountain three hundred feet in height and of monstrous volume. Then after a long time--a very long time it seemed to us--the ice would rise slowly from the deep and climb the face of the cliff as if it were about to take its old place again; but it sank and rose, until it had found its level, when it joined the long procession drifting southward to warmer waves and dissolution.

In the meantime the ground swell that followed each submersion resembled a tidal wave as it rolled down upon us and threatened to engulf us. But the _Ancon_ rode like a duck--I can not consistently say swan in this case,--and heaved to starboard and to larboard in picturesque and thoroughly nautical fashion. Some of us were on sh.o.r.e, wading in the mud and the slush, or climbing the steep bluffs that hem in the glacier upon one side. Here it was convenient to glance over the wide, wide snow-fields that seem to have been broken with colossal harrows. It was even possible to venture out upon the ice ridges, leaping the gaps that divided them in every direction. But at any moment the crust might have broken and buried us from sight; and we found the spectacle far more enjoyable when viewed from the deck of the steamer.

What is that glacier like? Well, just a little like the whitewashed crater of an active volcano. At any rate, it is the glorious companion piece to Kilauea in Hawaii. In these wonders of nature you behold the extremes, fire and ice, having it all their own way, and a world of adamant shall not prevail against them.

CHAPTER XII.

Alaska's Capital.