Alaska, the Great Country

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Alaska

The Great Country

[Illustration]

The Macmillan Company

New York . Boston . Chicago Atlanta . San Francisco

Macmillan & Co., Limited

London . Bombay . Calcutta Melbourne

The Macmillan Co. Of Canada, Ltd. Toronto

[Illustration: Photo by E. W. Merrill, Sitka

Courtesy of G. Kostrometinoff

Alexander Baranoff]

Alaska

The Great Country

By

Ella Higginson

AUTHOR OF "MARIELLA, OF OUT-WEST," "WHEN THE BIRDS GO NORTH AGAIN," "FROM THE LAND OF THE SNOW-PEARLS," ETC.

_New York_ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910

_All rights reserved_

Copyright, 1908, By The Macmillan Company.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1908. Reprinted February, 1909; March, 1910.

_Norwood Press_ J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To MR. AND MRS. HENRY ELLIOTT HOLMES

Foreword

When the Russians first came to the island of Unalaska, they were told that a vast country lay to the eastward and that its name was Al-ay-ek-sa. Their own island the Aleuts called Nagun-Alayeksa, meaning "the land lying near Alayeksa."

The Russians in time came to call the country itself Alashka; the peninsula, Aliaska; and the island, Unalashka. Alaska is an English corruption of the original name.

A great Russian moved under inspiration when he sent Vitus Behring out to discover and explore the continent lying to the eastward; two great Americans--Seward and Sumner--were inspired when, nearly a century and a half later, they saved for us, in the face of the bitterest opposition, scorn, and ridicule, the country that Behring discovered and which is now coming to be recognized as the most glorious possession of any people; but, first of all, were the gentle, dark-eyed Aleuts inspired when they bestowed upon this same country--with the simplicity and dignified repression for which their character is noted--the beautiful and poetic name which means "the great country."

List Of Illustrations

ALEXANDER BARANOFF _Frontispiece_

Facing Page

ALASKA (_colored map_) 1

Copper Smelter In Southeastern Alaska 2

Kasa-An 9

Howkan 16

Distant View Of Davidson Glacier 21

Davidson Glacier 36

A Phantom Ship 41

Road Through Cut-Off Canyon 48

Scene On The White Pass 53

Steel Cantilever Bridge, Near Summit Of White Pass 68

Old Russian Building, Sitka 73

Greek-Russian Church At Sitka 80

Eskimo In Walrus-Skin Kamelayka 101

Eskimo In Bidarka 116

Railroad Construction, Eyak Lake 121

Eyak Lake, Near Cordova 128

Indian Houses, Cordova 133

Valdez 148

An Alaskan Road House 153

Kow-Ear-Nuk And His Drying Salmon 160

Steamer "Resolute" 165

"Obleuk," An Eskimo Girl In Parka 180

A Northern Madonna 185

Eskimo Lad In Parka And Mukluks 192

Scales And Summit Of Chilkoot Pass In 1898 197

Summit Of Chilkoot Pass In 1898 212

Pine Falls, Atlin 229

Lake Bennett In 1898 244

White Horse, Yukon Territory 249

Grand Canyon Of The Yukon 256

White Horse Rapids 261

White Horse Rapids In Winter 276

Steamer "White Horse" In Five-Finger Rapids 293

A Yukon Snow Scene Near White Horse 308

A Home In The Yukon 325

One And A Half Millions Of Klondike Gold 340

A Famous Team Of Huskies 357

Cloud Effect On The Yukon 372

"Wolf" 389

Dog-Team Express, Nome 404

FOUR BEAUTIES OF CAPE PRINCE OF WALES WITH SLED REINDEER OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY HERD 421

COUNCIL CITY AND SOLOMON RIVER RAILROAD--A CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE OF SEWARD PENINSULA 436

Teller 453

Family Of King'S Island Eskimos Living Under Skin Boat, Nome 468

Wreck Of "Jessie," Nome Beach 485

Sunrise On Behring Sea 500

Surf At Nome 505

Moonlight On Behring Sea 512

Alaska

The Great Country

[Illustration: WILLIAMS ENGRAVING CO., N.Y.

Alaska]

Alaska: The Great Country

Chapter I

Every year, from June to September, thousands of people "go to Alaska." This means that they take passage at Seattle on the most luxurious steamers that run up the famed "inside passage" to Juneau, Sitka, Wrangell, and Skaguay. Formerly this voyage included a visit to Muir Glacier; but because of the ruin wrought by a recent earthquake, this once beautiful and marvellous thing is no longer included in the tourist trip.

This ten-day voyage is unquestionably a delightful one; every imaginable comfort is provided, and the excursion rate is reasonable. However, the person who contents himself with this will know as little about Alaska as a foreigner who landed in New York, went straight to Niagara Falls and returned at once to his own country, would know about America.

Enchanting though this brief cruise may be when the weather is favorable, the real splendor, the marvellous beauty, the poetic and haunting charm of Alaska, lie west of Sitka. "To Westward" is called this dream-voyage past a thousand miles of snow-mountains rising straight from the purple sea and wrapped in coloring that makes it seem as though all the roses, lilies, and violets of heaven had been pounded to a fine dust and sifted over them; past green islands and safe harbors; past the Malaspina and the Columbia glaciers; past Yakutat, Kyak, Cordova, Valdez, Seward, and Cook Inlet; and then, still on "to Westward"--past Kodiak Island, where the Russians made their first permanent settlement in America in 1784 and whose sylvan and idyllic charm won the heart of the great naturalist, John Burroughs; past the Aliaska Peninsula, with its smoking Mount Pavloff; past Unimak Island, one of whose active volcanoes, Shishaldin, is the most perfect and symmetrical cone on the Pacific Coast, not even excepting Hood--and on and in among the divinely pale green Aleutian Islands to Unalaska, where enchantment broods in a mist of rose and lavender and where one may scarcely step without crushing violets and bluebells.

The spell of Alaska falls upon every lover of beauty who has voyaged along those far northern snow-pearled shores with the violet waves of the North Pacific Ocean breaking splendidly upon them; or who has drifted down the mighty rivers of the interior which flow, bell-toned and lonely, to the sea.

I know not how the spell is wrought; nor have I ever met one who could put the miracle of its working into words. No writer has ever described Alaska; no one writer ever will; but each must do his share, according to the spell that the country casts upon him.

Some parts of Alaska lull the senses drowsily by their languorous charm; under their influence one sinks to a passive delight and drifts unresistingly on through a maze of tender loveliness. Nothing irritates. All is soft, velvety, soothing. Wordless lullabies are played by different shades of blue, rose, amber, and green; by the curl of the satin waves and the musical kiss of their cool and faltering lips; by the mists, light as thistle-down and delicately tinted as wild-rose petals, into which the steamer pushes leisurely; by the dreamy poise of sea-birds on white or lavender wings high in the golden atmosphere; by the undulating flight of purple Shadow, tiptoe, through the dim fiords; by the lap of waves on shingle, the song of birds along the wooded shore, the pressure of soft winds on the temples and hair, the sparkle of the sea weighing the eyelids down. The magic of it all gets into the blood.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Copper Smelter In Southeastern Alaska]

The steamer slides through green and echoing reaches; past groups of totems standing like ghosts of the past among the dark spruce or cedar trees; through stone-walled canyons where the waters move dark and still; into open, sunlit seas.

But it is not until one sails on "to Westward" that the spell of Alaska falls upon one; sails out into the wild and splendid North Pacific Ocean. Here are the majesty, the sublimity, that enthrall; here are the noble spaces, the Titanic forces, the untrodden heights, that thrill and inspire.

The marvels here are not the marvels of men. They are wrought of fire and stone and snow by the tireless hand that has worked through centuries unnumbered and unknown.

He that would fall under the spell of Alaska, will sail on "to Westward," on to Unalaska; or he will go Northward and drift down the Yukon--that splendid, lonely river that has its birth within a few miles of the sea, yet flows twenty-three hundred miles to find it.

Alaskan steamers usually sail between eight o'clock in the evening and midnight, and throngs of people congregate upon the piers of Seattle to watch their departure. The rosy purples and violets of sunset mix with the mists and settle upon the city, climbing white over its hills; as hours go by, its lights sparkle brilliantly through them, yet still the crowds sway upon the piers and wait for the first still motion of the ship as it slides into the night and heads for the far, enchanted land--the land whose sweet, insistent calling never ceases for the one who has once heard it.

Passengers who stay on deck late will be rewarded by the witchery of night on Puget Sound--the soft fragrance of the air, the scarlet, blue, and green lights wavering across the water, the glistening wake of the ship, the city glimmering faintly as it is left behind, the dim shores of islands, and the dark shadows of bays.

One by one the lighthouses at West Point on the starboard side, and at Point-No-Point, Marrowstone, and Point Wilson, on the port, flash their golden messages through the dusk. One by one rise, linger, and fade the dark outlines of Magnolia Bluff, Skagit Head, Double Bluff, and Liplip Point. If the sailing be early in the evening, midnight is saluted by the lights of Port Townsend, than which no city on the Pacific Coast has a bolder or more beautiful situation.

The splendid water avenue--the burning "Opal-Way"--that leads the ocean into these inland seas was named in 1788 by John Meares, a retired lieutenant of the British navy, for Juan de Fuca (whose real name was Apostolos Valerianos), a Greek pilot who, in 1592, was sent out in a small "caravela" by the Viceroy of Mexico in search of the fabled "Strait of Anian," or "Northwest Passage"--supposed to lead from the Pacific to the Atlantic north of forty degrees of latitude.

As early as the year 1500 this strait was supposed to have been discovered by a Portuguese navigator named Cortereal, and to have been named by him for one of his brothers who accompanied him.

The names of certain other early navigators are mentioned in connection with the "Strait of Anian." Cabot is reported vaguely as having located it "neere the 318 meridian, between 61 and 64 degrees in the eleuation, continuing the same bredth about 10 degrees West, where it openeth Southerly more and more, until it come under the tropicke of Cancer, and so runneth into Mar del Zur, at least 18 degrees more in bredth there than where it began;" Frobisher; Urdaneta, "a Fryer of Mexico, who came out of Mar del Zur this way into Germanie;" and several others whose stories of having sailed the dream-strait that was then supposed to lead from ocean to ocean are not now considered seriously until we come to Juan de Fuca, who claimed that in his "caravela" he followed the coast "vntill hee came to the latitude of fortie seuen degrees, and that there finding that the land trended North and Northeast, with a broad Inlet of Sea between 47 and 48 degrees of Latitude, hee entered thereinto, sayling therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime Northwest and Northeast and North, and also East and Southeastward, and very much broader sea then was at said entrance, and that hee passed by diuers Ilands in that sayling. And that at the entrance of this said Strait, there is on the Northwest coast thereof, a great Hedland or Iland, with an exceeding high pinacle or spired Rocke, like a pillar, thereupon."

He landed and saw people clothed in the skins of beasts; and he reported the land fruitful, and rich in gold, silver, and pearl.

Bancroft and some other historians consider the story of Juan de Fuca's entrance to Puget Sound the purest fiction, claiming that his descriptions are inaccurate and that no pinnacled or spired rock is to be found in the vicinity mentioned.

Meares, however, and many people of intelligence gave it credence; and when we consider the differences in the descriptions of other places by early navigators, it is not difficult to believe that Juan de Fuca really sailed into the strait that now bears his name. Schwatka speaks of him as, "An explorer--if such he may be called--who never entered this beautiful sheet of water, and who owes his immortality to an audacious guess, which came so near the truth as to deceive the scientific world for many a century."

The Strait of Juan de Fuca is more than eighty miles long and from ten to twelve wide, with a depth of about six hundred feet. At the eastern end it widens into an open sea or sound where beauty blooms like a rose, and from which forest-bordered water-ways wind slenderly in every direction.

From this vicinity, on clear days, may be seen the Olympic Mountains floating in the west; Mount Rainier, in the south; the lower peaks of the Crown Mountains in the north; and Mount Baker--or Kulshan, as the Indians named it--in the east.

The Island of San Juan, lying east of the southern end of Vancouver Island, is perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most historic, on the Pacific Coast. It is the island that barely escaped causing a declaration of war between Great Britain and the United States, over the international boundary, in the late fifties. For so small an island,--it is not more than fifteen miles long, by from six to eight wide,--it has figured importantly in large affairs.

The earliest trouble over the boundary between Vancouver Island and Washington arose in 1854. Both countries claimed ownership of San Juan and other islands near by, the Oregon Treaty of 1846 having failed to make it clear whether the boundary was through the Canal de Haro or the Strait of Rosario.

I. N. Ebey, American Collector of Customs, learning that several thousand head of sheep, cattle, and hogs had been shipped to San Juan without compliance with customs regulations, visited the island and was promptly insulted by a British justice of the peace. The _Otter_ made her appearance in the harbor, bearing James Douglas, governor of Vancouver Island and vice-admiral of the British navy; but nothing daunted, Mr. Ebey stationed Inspector Webber upon the island, declaring that he would continue to discharge his official duties. The final trouble arose, however, in 1859, when an American resident shot a British pig; and serious trouble was precipitated as swiftly as when a United States warship was blown up in Havana Harbor. General Harney hastily established military quarters on one end of the island, known as the American Camp, Captain Pickett transferring his company from Fort Bellingham for this purpose. English Camp was established on the northern end. Warships kept guard in the harbors. Joint occupation was agreed upon, and until 1871 the two camps were maintained, the friendliest social relations existing between them. In that year the Emperor of Germany was chosen as arbitrator, and decided in favor of the United States, the British withdrawing the following year.

Until 1895 the British captain's house still stood upon its beautiful bluff, a thousand feet above the winding blue bay, the shore descending in steep, splendid terraces to the water, stairwayed in stone, and grown with old and noble trees. Macadam roads led several miles across the island; the old block-house of pioneer days remained at the water's edge; and clustered around the old parade ground--now, alas! a meadow of hay--were the quarters of the officers, overgrown with English ivy. The captain's house, which has now been destroyed by fire, was a low, eight-roomed house with an immense fireplace in each room; the old claret- and ivory-striped wall-paper--which had been brought "around the Horn" at immense cost--was still on the walls. Gay were the scenes and royal the hospitalities of this house in the good days of the sixties. Its site, commanding the straits, is one of the most effective on the Pacific Coast; and at the present writing it is extremely probable that a captain's house may again rise among the old trees on the terraced bluff--but not for the occupancy of a British captain.

Every land may occasionally have a beautiful sunset, and many lands have gorgeous and brilliant ones; but nowhere have they such softly burning, milky-rose, opaline effects as on this inland sea.

Their enchanting beauty is doubtless due to the many wooded islands which lift dark green forestated hills around open sweeps of water, whereon settle delicate mists. When the fires of sunrise or of sunset sink through these mists, the splendor of coloring is marvellous and not equalled anywhere. It is as though the whole sound were one great opal, which had broken apart and flung its escaping fires of rose, amethyst, amber, and green up through the maze of trembling pearl above it. The unusual beauty of its sunsets long ago gave Puget Sound the poetic name of Opal-Sea or Sea of Opal.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Kasa-An]

Chapter II

After passing the lighthouse on the eastern end of Vancouver Island, Alaskan steamers continue on a northerly course and enter the Gulf of Georgia through Active Pass, between Mayne and Galiana islands. This pass is guarded by a light on Mayne Island, to the steamer's starboard, going north.

The Gulf of Georgia is a bold and sweeping body of water. It is usually of a deep violet or a warm purplish gray in tone. At its widest, it is fully sixty miles--although its average width is from twenty to thirty miles--and it rolls between the mainland and Vancouver Island for more than one hundred miles.

The real sea lover will find an indescribable charm in this gulf, and will not miss an hour of it. It has the boldness and the sweep of the ocean, but the setting, the coloring, and the fragrance of the forest-bordered, snow-peaked sea. A few miles above the boundary, the Fraser River pours its turbulent waters into the gulf, upon whose dark surface they wind and float for many miles, at sunrise and at sunset resembling broad ribbons of palest old rose crinkled over waves of silvery amber silk. At times these narrow streaks widen into still pools of color that seem to float suspended over the heavier waters of the gulf. Other times they draw lines of different color everywhere, or drift solid banks of smoky pink out to meet others of clear blue, with only the faintest thread of pearl to separate them. These islands of color constitute one of the charms of this part of the voyage to Alaska; along with the velvety pressure of the winds; the picturesque shores, high and wooded in places, and in others sloping down into the cool shadowy bays where the shingle is splashed by spent waves; and the snow-peaks linked above the clouds on either side of the steamer.

Splendid phosphorescent displays are sometimes witnessed in the gulf, but are more likely to occur farther north, in Grenville, or one of the other narrow channels, where their brilliancy is remarkable.

Tourists to whom a whale is a novelty will be gratified, without fail, in this vicinity. They are always seen sporting about the ships,--sometimes in deadly conflict with one another,--and now and then uncomfortably near.

In December, 1907, an exciting battle between a whale and a large buck was witnessed by the passengers and crew of the steamer _Cassiar_, in one of the bays north of Vancouver, on the vessel's regular run from that city to northern ports.

When the _Cassiar_ appeared upon the scene, the whale was making furious and frequent attacks upon the buck. Racing through the water, which was lashed into foam on all sides by its efforts, it would approach close to its steadily swimming prey and then disappear, only to come to the surface almost under the deer. This was repeated a number of times, strangely enough without apparent injury to the deer. Again, the whale would make its appearance at the side of the deer and repeatedly endeavor to strike it with its enormous tail; but the deer was sufficiently wise to keep so close to the whale that this could not be accomplished, notwithstanding the crushing blows dealt by the monster.

The humane passengers entreated the captain to go to the rescue of the exhausted buck and save it from inevitable death. The captain ordered full speed ahead, and at the approach of the steamer the whale curved up out of the water and dived gracefully into the sea, as though making a farewell, apologetic bow on its final disappearance.

Whereupon the humane passengers shot the helpless and worn-out buck at the side of the steamer, and he was hauled aboard.

It may not be out of place to devote a few pages to the average tourist. To the one who loves Alaska and the divinely blue, wooded, and snow-pearled ways that lead to its final and sublime beauty, it is an enduring mystery why certain persons--usually women--should make this voyage. Their minds and their desires never rise above a whale or an Indian basket; and unless the one is to be seen and the other to be priced, they spend their time in the cabin, reading, playing cards, or telling one another what they have at home.

"Do you know," said one of these women, yawning into the full glory of a sunset, "we have sailed this whole day past Vancouver Island. Not a thing to be seen but it and this water you call the Gulf of Georgia! I even missed the whales, because I went to sleep, and I'd rather have seen them than anything. If they don't hurry up some towns and totem-poles, I'll be wishing I'd stayed at home. Do you play five hundred?"

The full length of the _Jefferson_ was not enough to put between this woman and the woman who had enjoyed every one of those purple water-miles; every pearly cloud that had drifted across the pale blue sky; every bay and fiord indenting the shore of the largest island on the Pacific Coast; every humming-bird that had throbbed about us, seeking a rose at sea; every thrilling scent that had blown down the northern water-ways, bearing the far, sweet call of Alaska to senses awake and trembling to receive it; who had felt her pulses beating full to the throb of the steamer that was bearing her on to the land of her dreams--to the land of Far Delight.

If only the players of bridge and the drinkers of pink tea would stay at home, and leave this enchanted voyage for those who understand! There be enough of the elect in the world who possess the usual five senses, as well as that sixth sense which is of the soul, to fill every steamer that sails for Alaska.

Or, the steamship companies might divide their excursions into classes--some for those who love beauty, and some for those who love bridge.

For the sea lover, it is enough only to stand in the bow of a steamer headed for Alaska and hear the kiss and the rippling murmur of the waves as they break apart when the sharp cut-water pierces them, and then their long, musical rush along the steamer's sides, ere they reunite in one broad wake of bowing silver that leads across the purple toward home.

The mere vibration of a ship in these still inland seas is a physical pleasure by day and a sensuous lullaby at night; while, in summer, the winds are so soft that their touches seem like caresses.

The inlets and fiords extending for many miles into the mainland in this vicinity are of great beauty and grandeur, many winding for forty or fifty miles through walls of forestation and snow that rise sheer to a height of eight or ten thousand feet. These inlets are very narrow, sometimes mere clefts, through which the waters slip, clear, still, and of deepest green. They are of unknown depth; the mountains are covered with forests, over which rise peaks of snow. Cascades are numerous, and their musical fall is increased in these narrow fastnesses to a roar that may be heard for miles.

Passing Burrard Inlet, on which the city of Vancouver is situated, the more important inlets are Howe, Jervis, from which Sechelt Arm leads southward and is distinguished by the wild thunder of its rapids; Homery Channel, Price Channel, which, with Lewis Channel on the west, forms Redonda Island; Bute Inlet, which is the most beautiful and the most important; Knight, Seymour, Kingcome, and Belize inlets.

The wild and picturesque beauty of these inlets has been praised by tourists for many years. The Marquis of Lorne was charmed by the scenery along Bute Inlet, which he extolled. It is about fifty miles in length and narrows in places to a width of a half-mile. The shores rise in sheer mountain walls, heavily forestated, to a height of seven and eight thousand feet, their snowy crests overhanging the clear, green-black waters of the narrow fiord. Many glaciers stream down from these peaks.

The Gulf of Georgia continues for a distance of one hundred miles in a northwesterly direction between the mainland and Vancouver Island. Texada, Redonda, and Valdes are the more important islands in the gulf. Texada appears on the starboard, opposite Comox; the narrow strait separating it from the mainland is named Malaspina, for the Italian explorer. The largest glacier in the world, streaming into the sea from Mount St. Elias, more than a thousand miles to the northwestward from this strait, bears the same name.

Texada Island is twenty-eight miles long, with an average width of three miles. It is wooded and mountainous, the leading peak--Mount Shepard--rising to a height of three thousand feet. The lighthouse on its shore is known as "Three Sisters Light."

Along the shores of Vancouver Island and the mainland are many ranches owned and occupied by "remittance men." In these beautiful, lonely solitudes they dwell with all the comforts of "old England," forming new ties, but holding fast to old memories.

It is said that the woman who should have one day been the Queen of England, lived near the city of Vancouver a few years ago. Before the death of his elder brother, the present Prince of Wales passionately loved the young and beautiful daughter of Admiral Seymour. His infatuation was returned, and so desperately did the young couple plead with the present King and the Admiral, that at last the prince was permitted to contract a morganatic marriage.

The understanding and agreement were that, should the prince ever become the heir to the throne of England, neither he nor his wife would oppose the annulment of the marriage.

There was only one brief year of happiness, when the elder brother of the prince died, and the latter's marriage to the Princess May was demanded.

No murmur of complaint was ever heard from the unhappy morganatic wife, nor from the royal husband; and when the latter's marriage was solemnized, it was boldly announced that no bar to the union existed.

Here, in the western solitude, lived for several years--the veriest remittance woman--the girl who should now, by the right of love and honor, be the Princess of Wales; and whose infant daughter should have been the heir to the throne.

To Vancouver, a few years ago, came, with his princess, the Prince of Wales. The city was gay with flags and flowers, throbbing with music, and filled with joyous and welcoming people. Somewhere, hidden among those swaying throngs, did a pale young woman holding a child by the hand, gaze for the last time upon the man she loved and upon the woman who had taken her place? And did her long-tortured heart in that hour finally break? It is said that she died within a twelvemonth.

Passing Cape Mudge lighthouse, Discovery Passage, sometimes called Valdes Narrows, is entered. It is a narrow pass, twenty-four miles long, between Vancouver and Valdes islands. Halfway through it is Seymour Narrows, one of the most famous features of the "inside route," or passage, to Alaska. Passengers are awakened, if they desire, that they may be on deck while passing through these difficult narrows.

The Indian name of this pass is Yaculta.

"Yaculta is a wicked spirit," said the pilot, pacing the bridge at four o'clock of a primrose dawn. "She lives down in the clear depths of these waters and is supposed to entice guileless sailors to their doom. Yaculta sleeps only at slack-tide, and then boats, or ships, may slip through in safety, provided they do not make sufficient noise to awaken her. If they try to go through at any other stage of the tide, Yaculta stirs the whole pass into action, trying to get hold of them. Many's the time I've had to back out and wait for Yaculta to quiet down."

If the steamer attempts the pass at an unfavorable hour, fearful seas are found racing through at a fourteen-knot speed; the steamer is flung from side to side of the rocky pass or sucked down into the boiling whirlpools by Yaculta. The brown, shining strands of kelp floating upon Ripple Reef, which carries a sharp edge down the centre of the pass, are the wild locks of Yaculta's luxuriant hair.

Pilots figure, upon leaving Seattle, to reach the narrows during the quarter-hour before or after slack-tide, when the water is found as still and smooth as satin stretched from shore to shore, and not even Yaculta's breathing disturbs her liquid coverlet.

Many vessels were wrecked here before the dangers of the narrows had become fully known: the steamer _Saranac_, in 1875, without loss of life; the _Wachusett_, in 1875; the _Grappler_, in 1883, which burned in the narrows with a very large loss of life, including that of the captain; and several less appalling disasters have occurred in these deceptive waters.

Three miles below Cape Mudge the tides from Juan de Fuca meet those from Queen Charlotte Sound, and force a fourteen-knot current through the narrows. The most powerful steamers are frequently overcome and carried back by this current.

Discovery Passage merges at Chatham Point into Johnstone Strait. Here the first Indian village, Alert Bay, is seen to starboard on the southern side of Cormorant Island. These are the Kwakiutl Indians, who did not at first respond to the advances of civilization so readily as most northern tribes. They came from their original village at the mouth of the Nimpkish River, to work in the canneries on the bay, but did not take kindly to the ways of the white man. A white child, said to have been stolen from Vancouver, was taken from these Indians a few years ago.

Some fine totem-poles have been erected here, and the graveyard has houses built over the graves. From the steamer the little village presents an attractive appearance, situated on a curving beach, with wooded slopes rising behind it.

Gorgeous potlatches are held here; and until the spring of 1908 these orgies were rendered more repulsive by the sale of young girls.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Howkan]

Dr. Franz Boas, in his "Kwakiutl Texts," describes a game formerly played with stone disks by the Kwakiutls. They also had a myth that a game was played with these disks between the birds of the upper world and the myth-people, that is, "all the animals and all the birds." The four disks were called the "mist-covered gambling stone," the "rainbow gambling stone," the "cloud-covered gambling stone," and the "carrier of the world." The woodpecker and the other myth-birds played on one side; the Thunder-bird and the birds of the upper air on the other. The contestants were ranged in two rows; the gambling stones were thrown along the middle between them, and they speared them with their beaks. The Thunder-bird and the birds of the upper air were beaten. This myth is given as an explanation of the reason for playing the game with the gambling stones, which are called laelae.

The Kwakiutls still play many of their ancient and picturesque gambling games at their potlatches.

Johnstone Strait is fifty-five miles long, and is continued by Broughton Strait, fifteen miles long, which enters Queen Charlotte Sound.

Here is a second, and smaller, Galiana Island, and on its western end is a spired rock which, some historians assert, may be "the great headland or island with an exceeding high pinnacle or spired rock thereon," which Juan de Fuca claimed to discover, and which won for him the charge of being an "audacious guesser" and an "unscrupulous liar." His believers, however, affirm that, having sailed for twenty days in the inland sea, he discovered this pinnacle at the entrance to what he supposed to be the Atlantic Ocean; and so sailed back the course he had come, believing himself to have been successful in discovering the famed strait of Anian. Why Vancouver's mistakes, failures, and faults should all be condoned, and Juan de Fuca's most uncompromisingly condemned, is difficult to understand.

Fort Rupert, on the northern end of Vancouver Island, beyond Broughton Strait, is an old Hudson's Bay post, situated on Beaver Harbor. The fort was built in 1849, and was strongly defended, troubles frequently arising from the attacks of Kwakiutl and Haidah Indians. Great potlatches were held there, and the chief's lodge was as notable as was the "Old-Man House" of Chief Seattle. It was one hundred feet long and eighty feet wide, and rested on carved corner posts. There was an immense wooden potlatch dish that held food for one hundred people.

Queen Charlotte Sound is a splendid sweep of purple water; but tourists do not, usually, spend much time enjoying its beauty. Their berths possess charms that endure until shelter of the islands is once more assured, after the forty miles of open exposure to the swell of the ocean which is not always mild, notwithstanding its name. Those who miss it, miss one of the most beautiful features of the inland voyage. The warm breath of the Kuro Siwo, penetrating all these inland seas and passages, is converted by the great white peaks of the horizon into pearl-like mist that drifts in clouds and fragments upon the blue waters. Nowhere are these mists more frequent, nor more elusive, than in Queen Charlotte Sound. They roll upon the sparkling surface like thistle-down along a country lane--here one instant, vanished the next. At sunrise they take on the delicate tones of the primrose or the pinkish star-flower; at sunset, all the royal rose and purple blendings; all the warm flushes of amber, orange, and gold. Through a maze of pale yellow, whose fine cool needles sting one's face and set one's hair with seed-pearls, one passes into a little open water-world where a blue sky sparkles above a bluer sea, and the air is like clear, washed gold. But a mile ahead a solid wall of amethyst closes in this brilliant sea; and presently the steamer glides into it, shattering it into particles that set the hair with amethysts, instead of pearls. Sometimes these clear spaces resemble rooms walled in different colors, but ceiled and floored in blue. Other times, the whole sound is clear, blue, shining; while exquisite gossamers of changeful tints wrap and cling about the islands, wind scarfs around the green hills, or set upon the brows of majestic snow-monarchs crowns as jewelled and as evanescent as those worn by the real kings of the earth. Now and then a lofty fir or cedar may be seen draped with slender mist-veils as a maiden might wind a scarf of cobwebby lace about her form and head and arms--so lightly and so gracefully, and with such art, do the delicate folds trail in and out among the emerald-green branches of the tree.

It is this warm and excessive moisture--this daily mist-shower--that bequeaths to British Columbia and Alaska their marvellous and luxuriant growth of vegetation, their spiced sweetness of atmosphere, their fairness and freshness of complexion--blending and constituting that indescribable charm which inspires one, standing on the deck of a steamer at early dawn, to give thanks to God that he is alive and sailing the blue water-ways of this sublime country.

"I don't know what it is that keeps pulling me back to this country," said a man in the garb of a laborer, one day. He stood down in the bow of the steamer, his hands were in his pockets, his throat was bared to the wind; his blue eyes--sunken, but burning with that fire which never dies in the eyes of one who loves nature--were gazing up the pale-green narrow avenue named Grenville Channel. "It's something that you can't exactly put into words. You don't know that it's got hold of you while you're up here, but before you've been 'outside' a month, all at once you find it pulling at you--and after it begins, it never lets up. You try to think what it is up here that you want so; what it is keeps begging at you to come back. Maybe there ain't a darn soul up here you care particular about! Maybe you ain't got an interest in a claim worth hens' teeth! Maybe you're broke and know you'll have to work like a go-devil when you get here! It don't make any difference. It's just Alaska. It calls you and calls you and calls you. Maybe you can't come, so you keep pretending you don't hear--but Lord, you do hear! Maybe somebody shakes hands as if he liked you--and there's Alaska up and calling right through you, till you feel your heart shake! Maybe a phonograph sets up a tune they used to deal out at Magnuson's roadhouse on the trail--and you hear that blame lonesome waterfall up in Keystone Canyon calling you as plain as you hear the phonograph! Maybe you smell something like the sun shining on snow, all mixed up with tundra and salt air--and there's double quick action on your eyes and a lump in your throat that won't be swallowed down! Maybe you see a white mountain, or a green valley, or a big river, or a blue strait, or a waterfall--and like a flash your heart opens, and shuts in an ache for Alaska that stays!... No, I don't know _what_ it is, but I do know _how_ it is; and so does every other poor devil that ever heard that something calling him that's just Alaska. It wakes you up in the middle of the night, just as plain as if somebody had said your name out loud, and you just lay there the rest of the night aching to go. I tell you what, if ever a country had a spirit, it's Alaska; and when it once gets hold of you and gets to calling you to come, you might just as well get up and start, for it calls you and follows you, and haunts you till you do."

It is the pleading of the mountains and the pleading of the sea woven into one call and sent floating down laden with the sweetness of the splendid spaces. No mountaineer can say why he goes back to the mountains; no sailor why he cannot leave the sea. No one has yet seen the spirit that dwells in the waterfall, but all have heard it calling and have known its spell.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

Distant View Of Davidson Glacier]

"If you love the sea, you've got to follow it," said a sea-rover, "and that's all there is to it. A man can get along without the woman he loves best on earth if he has to, but he can't get along without the sea if he once gets to loving it. It gets so it seems like a thing alive to him, and it makes up for everything else that he don't have. And it's just like that with Alaska. When a man has made two-three trips to Alaska, you can't get him off on a southern run again, as long as he can help himself."

It is an unimaginative person who can wind through these intricate and difficult sounds, channels, and passes without a strange, quickened feeling, as of the presence of those dauntless navigators who discovered and charted these waters centuries ago. From Juan de Fuca northward they seem to be sailing with us, those grim, brave spectres of the past--Perez, Meares, Cuadra, Valdes, Malaspina, Duncan, Vancouver, Whidbey--and all the others who came and went through these beautiful ways, leaving their names, or the names of their monarchs, friends, or sweethearts, to endure in blue stretches of water or glistening domes of snow.

We sail in safety, ease, luxury, over courses along which they felt their perilous way, never knowing whether Life or Death waited at the turn of the prow. Nearly a century and a quarter ago Vancouver, working his way cautiously into Queen Charlotte Sound, soon came to disaster, both the _Discovery_ and her consort, the _Chatham_, striking upon the rocks that border the entrance. Fortunately the return of the tide in a few hours released them from their perilous positions, before they had sustained any serious damage.

But what days of mingled indecision, hope, and despair--what nights of anxious watching and waiting--must have been spent in these places through which we glide so easily now; and the silent spirits of the grim-peopled past take hold of our heedless hands and lead us on. Does a pilot sail these seas who has never on wild nights felt beside him on the bridge the presence of those early ones who, staring ever ahead under stern brows, drove their vessels on, not knowing what perils lay beyond? Who, asked, "What shall we do when hope be gone?" made answer, "Why, sail on, and on, and on."

* * * * *

From Queen Charlotte Sound the steamer passes into Fitzhugh Sound around Cape Calvert, on Calvert Island. Off the southern point of this island are two dangerous clusters of rocks, to which, in 1776, by Mr. James Hanna, were given the interesting names of "Virgin" and "Pearl." In this poetic vicinage, and nearer the island than either, is another cluster of rocks, upon which some bold and sacrilegious navigator has bestowed the name of "Devil."

"It don't sound so pretty and ladylike," said the pilot who pointed them out, "but it's a whole lot more appropriate. Rocks _are_ devils--and that's no joke; and what anybody should go and name them 'virgins' and 'pearls' for, is more than a man can see, when he's standing at a wheel, hell-bent on putting as many leagues between him and them as he can. It does seem as if some men didn't have any sense at all about naming things. Now, if I were going to name anything 'virgin'"--his blue eyes narrowed as they stared into the distance ahead--"it would be a mountain that's always white; or a bay that gets the first sunshine in the morning; or one of those little islands down in Puget Sound that's just _covered_ with flowers."

Just inside Fitzhugh Sound, on the island, is Safety Cove, or Oatsoalis, which was named by Mr. Duncan in 1788, and which has ever since been known as a safe anchorage and refuge for ships in storm. Vancouver, anchoring there in 1792, found the shores to be bold and steep, the water from twenty-three to thirty fathoms, with a soft, muddy bottom. Their ships were steadied with hawsers to the trees. They found a small beach, near which was a stream of excellent water and an abundance of wood. Vessels lie here at anchor when storms or fogs render the passage across Queen Charlotte Sound too perilous to be undertaken.

Fitzhugh Sound is but a slender, serene water-way running directly northward thirty miles. On its west, lying parallel with the mainland, are the islands of Calvert, Hecate, Nalau, and Hunter, separated by the passages of Kwakshua, Hakai, and Nalau, which connect Fitzhugh with the wide sweep of Hecate Strait.

Burke Channel, the second link in the exquisite water chain that winds and loops in a northwesterly course between the islands of the Columbian and the Alexander archipelagoes and the mainland of British Columbia and Alaska, is scarcely entered by the Alaskan steamer ere it turns again into Fisher Channel, and from this, westward, into the short, very narrow, but most beautiful Lama Pass.

From Burke Channel several ribbonlike passages form King Island.

Lama Pass is more luxuriantly wooded than many of the others, and is so still and narrow that the reflections of the trees, growing to the water's edge, are especially attractive. Very effective is the graveyard of the Bella Bella Indians, in its dark forest setting, many totems and curious architectures of the dead showing plainly from the steamer when an obliging captain passes under slow bell. Near by, on Campbell Island, is the village of the Bella Bellas, who, with the Tsimpsians and the Alert Bay Indians, were formerly regarded as the most treacherous and murderous Indians of the Northwest Coast. Now, however, they are gathered into a model village, whose houses, church, school, and stores shine white and peaceful against a dark background.

Lama Pass is one of the most poetic of Alaskan water-ways.

Seaforth Channel is the dangerous reach leading into Millbank Sound. It is broken by rocks and reefs, on one of which, Rejetta Reef, the _Willapa_ was stranded ten years ago. Running off Seaforth and Millbank are some of the finest fiords of the inland passage--Spiller, Johnston, Dean, Ellerslie, and Portlock channels, Cousins and Cascades inlets, and many others. Dean and Cascades channels are noted for many waterfalls of wonderful beauty. The former is ten miles long and half a mile wide. Cascades Inlet extends for the same distance in a northeasterly direction, opening into Dean. Innumerable cataracts fall sheer and foaming down their great precipices; the narrow canyons are filled with their musical, liquid thunder, and the prevailing color seems to be palest green, reflected from the color of the water underneath the beaded foam. Vancouver visited these canals and named them in 1793, and although, seemingly, but seldom moved by beauty, was deeply impressed by it here. He considered the cascades "extremely grand, and by much the largest and most tremendous we had ever beheld, their impetuosity sending currents of air across the canal."

These fiords are walled to a great height, and are of magnificent beauty. Some are so narrow and so deep that the sunlight penetrates only for a few hours each day, and eternal mist and twilight fill the spaces. In others, not disturbed by cascades, the waters are as clear and smooth as glass, and the stillness is so profound that one can hear a cone fall upon the water at a distance of many yards. Covered with constant moisture, the vegetation is of almost tropic luxuriance. In the shade, the huge leaves of the devil's-club seem to float, suspended, upon the air, drooping slightly at the edges when touched by the sun. Raspberries and salmon-berries grow to enormous size, but are so fragile and evanescent that they are gone at a breath, and the most delicate care must be exercised in securing them. They tremble for an instant between the tongue and the palate, and are gone, leaving a sensation as of dewdrops flavored with wine; a memory as haunting and elusive as an exquisite desire known once and never known again.

In Dean Canal, Vancouver found the water almost fresh at low tide, on account of the streams and cascades pouring into it.

There he found, also, a remarkable Indian habitation; a square, large platform built in a clearing, thirty feet above the ground. It was supported by several uprights and had no covering, but a fire was burning upon one end of it.

In Cascade Canal he visited an Indian village, and found the construction of the houses there very curious. They apparently backed straight into a high, perpendicular rock cliff, which supported their rears; while the fronts and sides were sustained by slender poles about eighteen feet in height.

Vancouver leaves the method of reaching the entrances to these houses to the reader's imagination.

It was in this vicinity that Vancouver first encountered "split-lipped" ladies. Although he had grown accustomed to distortions and mutilations among the various tribes he had visited, he was quite unprepared for the repulsive style which now confronted him.

A horizontal incision was made about three-tenths of an inch below the upper part of the lower lip, extending from one corner of the mouth to the other, entirely through the flesh; this orifice was then by degrees stretched sufficiently to admit an ornament made of wood, which was confined close to the gums of the lower jaws, and whose external surface projected horizontally.

These wooden ornaments were oval, and resembled a small platter, or dish, made concave on both sides; they were of various lengths, the smallest about two inches and a half; the largest more than three inches long, and an inch and a half broad.

They were about one-fifth of an inch thick, and had a groove along the middle of the outside edge to receive the lip.

These hideous things were made of fir, and were highly polished. Ladies of the greatest distinction wore the largest labrets. The size also increased with age. They have been described by Vancouver, Cook, Lisiansky, La Perouse, Dall, Schwatka, Emmans, and too many others to name here; but no description can quite picture them to the liveliest imagination. When the "wooden trough" was removed, the incision gave the appearance of two mouths.

All chroniclers unite as to the hideousness and repulsiveness of the practice.

Of the Indians in the vicinity of Fisher Channel, Vancouver remarks, without a glimmer of humor himself, that the vivacity of their countenance indicated a lively genius; and that, from their frequent bursts of laughter, it would appear that they were great humorists, for their mirth was not confined to their own people, but was frequently at the expense of his party. They seemed a happy, cheerful people. This is an inimitable English touch; a thing that no American would have written, save with a laugh at himself.

Poison Cove in Mussel Canal, or Portlock Canal, was so named by Vancouver, whose men ate roasted mussels there. Several were soon seized with numbness of the faces and extremities. In spite of all that was done to relieve their sufferings, one--John Carter--died and was buried in a quiet bay which was named for him.

Millbank Sound, named by Mr. Duncan before Vancouver's arrival, is open to the ocean, but there is only an hour's run before the shelter of the islands is regained; so that, even when the weather is rough, but slight discomfort is experienced by the most susceptible passengers. The finest scenery on the regular steamer route, until the great snow fields and glaciers are reached, is considered by many well acquainted with the route, to lie from Millbank on to Dixon Entrance. The days are not long enough now for all the beauty that weighs upon the senses like caresses. At evening, the sunset, blooming like a rose upon these splendid reaches, seems to drop perfumed petals of color, until the still air is pink with them, and the steamer pushes them aside as it glides through with faint throbbings that one feels rather than hears.

Through Finlayson Channel, Heikish Narrows, Graham, Fraser, and McKay reaches, Grenville Channel,--through all these enchanting water avenues one drifts for two hundred miles, passing from one reach to another without suspecting the change, unless familiar with the route, and so close to the wooded shores that one is tormented with the desire to reach out one's hand and strip the cool green spruce and cedar needles from the drooping branches.

Each water-way has its own distinctive features. In Finlayson Channel the forestation is a solid mountain of green on each side, growing down to the water and extending over it in feathery, flat sprays. Here the reflections are so brilliant and so true on clear days, that the dividing line is not perceptible to the vision. The mountains rise sheer from the water to a great height, with snow upon their crests and occasional cataracts foaming musically down their fissures. Helmet Mountain stands on the port side of the channel, at the entrance.

There's something about "Sarah" Island! I don't know what it is, and none of the mariners with whom I discussed this famous island seems to know; but the fact remains that they are all attached to "Sarah."

Down in Lama Pass, or possibly in Fitzhugh Sound, one hears casual mention of "Sarah" in the pilot-house or chart-room. Questioned, they do not seem to be able to name any particular feature that sets her apart from the other islands of this run.

"Well, there she is!" exclaimed the captain, at last. "Now, you'll see for yourself what there is about Sarah."

It is a long, narrow island, lying in the northern end of Finlayson Channel. Tolmie Channel lies between it and Princess Royal Island; Heikish Narrows--a quarter of a mile wide--between it and Roderick Island. Through Heikish the steamer passes into the increasing beauty of Graham Reach.

"Now, there!" said the captain. "If you can tell me what there is about that island, you can do more than any skipper _I_ know can do; but just the same, there isn't one of us that doesn't look forward to passing Sarah, that doesn't give her particular attention while we are passing, and look back at her after we're in Graham Reach. She isn't so little ... nor so big.... The Lord knows she isn't so pretty!" He was silent for a moment. Then he burst out suddenly: "I'm blamed if _I_ know what it is! But it's just so with some women. There's something about a woman, now and then, and a man can't tell, to save his soul, what it is; only, he doesn't forget her. You see, a captain meets hundreds of women; and he has to be nice to every one. If he is smart, he can make every woman think she is just running the ship--but Lord! he wouldn't know one of them if he met her next week on the street ... only now and then ... in years and years ... _one!_ And that one he can't forget. He doesn't know what there is about her, any more than he knows what there is about 'Sarah.' Maybe he doesn't know the color of her eyes nor the color of her hair. Maybe she's married, and maybe she's single--for that isn't it. He isn't in love with her--at least I guess he isn't. It's just that she has a way of coming back to him. Say he sees the Northern Lights along about midnight--and that woman comes like a flash and stands there with him. After a while it gets to be a habit with him when he gets into a port, to kind of look over the crowds for some one. For a minute or two he feels almost as if he _expected_ some one to meet him; then he knows he's disappointed about somebody not being there. He asks himself right out who it is. And all at once he remembers. Then he calls himself an ass. If she was the kind of woman that runs to docks to see boats come in, he'd laugh and gas with her--but he wouldn't be thinking of her till she pushed herself on him again."

The captain sighed unconsciously, and taking down a chart from the ceiling, spread it out upon a shelf and bent over it. I looked at Sarah, with her two lacy cascades falling like veils from her crown of snow. Already she was fading in the distance--yet how distinguished was she! How set apart from all others!

Then I fell to thinking of the women. What kind are they--_the ones that stay!_ The one that comes at midnight and stands silent beside a man when he sees the Northern Lights, even though he is not in love with her--what kind of woman is she?

"Captain," I said, a little later, "I want to add something to Sarah's name."

"What is it?" said he, scowling over the chart.

"I want to name her '_Sarah, the Remembered_.'"

He smiled.

"All right," said he, promptly. "I'll write that on the chart."

And what an epitaph that would be for a woman--"The Remembered!" If one only knew upon whose bit of marble to grave it.

Fraser and McKay reaches follow Graham, and then is entered Wright Sound, a body of water of great, and practically unknown, depth. This small sound feeds six channels leading in different directions, one of which--Verney Pass--leads through Boxer Reach into the famed magnificence and splendor of Gardner Canal, whose waters push for fifty miles through dark and towering walls. An immense, glaciered mountain extends across the end of the canal.

Gardner Canal--named by Vancouver for Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, to whose friendship and recommendation he was indebted for the command of the expedition to Nootka and the Northwest Coast--is doubtless the grandest of British Columbian inlets or fiords. At last, the favorite two adjectives of the Vancouver expedition--"tremendous" and "stupendous"--seem to have been most appropriately applied. Lieutenant Whidbey, exploring it in the summer of 1793, found that it "presented to the eye one rude mass of almost naked rocks, rising into rugged mountains, more lofty than he had before seen, whose towering summits, seeming to overhang their bases, gave them a _tremendous_ appearance. The whole was covered with perpetual ice and snow that reached, in the gullies formed between the mountains, close down to the high-water mark; and many waterfalls of various dimensions were seen to descend in every direction."

This description is quoted in full because it is an excellent example of the descriptions given out by Vancouver and his associates, who, if they ever felt a quickening of the pulses in contemplation of these majestic scenes, were certainly successful in concealing such human emotions from the world. True, they did occasionally chronicle a "pleasant" breeze, a "pleasing" landscape which "reminded them of England;" and even, in the vicinity of Port Townsend, they were moved to enthusiasm over a "landscape almost as enchantingly beautiful as the most elegantly finished pleasure-grounds in Europe," which called to their remembrance "certain delightful and beloved situations in Old England."

But apparently, having been familiar only with pleasing pastoral scenes, they were not able to rise to an appreciation of the sublime in nature. "Elegant" is the mincing and amusing adjective applied frequently to snow mountains by Vancouver; he mentions, also, "spacious meadows, elegantly adorned with trees;" but when they arrive at the noble beauty which arouses in most beholders a feeling of exaltation and an appreciation of the marvellous handiwork of God, Vancouver and his associates, having never seen anything of the kind in England, find it only "tremendous," or "stupendous," or a "rude mass." They would have probably described the chaste, exquisite cone of Shishaldin on Unimak Island--as peerless and apart in its delicate beauty among mountains as Venice is among cities--as "a mountain covered with snow to the very sea and having a most elegant point."

There are many mountains more than twice the height of Shishaldin, but there is nowhere one so beautiful.

Great though our veneration must be for those brave mariners of early years, their apparent lack of appreciation of the scenery of Alaska is to be deplored. It has fastened upon the land an undeserved reputation for being "rugged" and "gloomy"--two more of their adjectives; of being "ice-locked, ice-bound, and ice-bounded." We may pardon them much, but scarcely the adjective "grotesque," as applied to snow mountains.

Grenville Channel is a narrow, lovely reach, extending in a northwestward direction from Wright Sound for forty-five miles, when it merges into Arthur Passage. In its slender course it curves neither to the right nor to the left.

In this reach, at one o'clock one June day, the thrilling cry of "man overboard" ran over the decks of the _Santa Ana_. There were more than two hundred passengers aboard, and instantly an excited and dangerous stampede to starboard and stern occurred; but the captain, cool and stern on the bridge, was equal to the perilous situation. A life-boat was ordered lowered, and the steerage passengers were quietly forced to their quarters forward. Life-buoys, life-preservers, chairs, ropes, and other articles were flung overboard, until the water resembled a junk-shop. Through them all, the man's dark, closely shaven head could be seen, his face turned from the steamer, as he swam fiercely toward the shore against a strong current. The channel was too narrow for the steamer to turn, but a boat was soon in hot pursuit of the man who was struggling fearfully for the shore, and who was supposed to be too bewildered to realize that he was headed in the wrong direction. What was our amazement, when the boat finally reached him, to discover, by the aid of glasses, that he was resisting his rescuers. There was a long struggle in the water before he was overcome and dragged into the boat.

He was a pitiable sight when the boat came level with the hurricane deck; wild-eyed, gray-faced, shuddering like a dog; his shirt torn open at the throat and exposing its tragic emaciation; his glance flashing wildly from one face to another, as though in search of one to be trusted--he was an object to command the pity of the coldest heart. In his hand was still gripped his soft hat which he had taken from his head before jumping overboard.

"What is it, my man?" asked the captain, kindly, approaching him.

The man's wild gaze steadied upon the captain and seemed to recognize him as one in authority.

"They've been trying to kill me, sir, all the way up."

"Who?"

The poor fellow shuddered hard.

"They," he said. "They're on the boat. I had to watch them night and day. I didn't dast go to sleep. It got too much; I couldn't stand it. I had to get ashore. I'd been waiting for this channel because it was so narrow. I thought the current 'u'd help me get away. I'm a good swimmer."

"A better one never breasted a wave! Take him below. Give him dry clothes and some whiskey, and set a watch over him."

The poor wretch was led away; the crowd drifted after him. Pale and quiet, the captain went back to the chart-room and resumed his slow pacing forth and back.

"I wish tragedies of body and soul would not occur in such beautiful lengths of water," he said at last. "I can never sail through Grenville Channel again without seeing that poor fellow's haggard face and wild, appealing eyes. And after Gardner Canal, there is not another on the route more beautiful than this!"

Two inlets open into Grenville Channel on the starboard going north, Lowe and Klewnuggit,--both affording safe anchorage to vessels in trouble. Pitt Island forms almost the entire western shore--a beautifully wooded one--of the channel. There is a salmon cannery in Lowe Inlet, beside a clear stream which leaps down from a lake in the mountains. The waters and shores of Grenville have a clear, washed green, which is springlike. In many of the other narrow ways the waters are blue, or purple, or a pale blue-gray; but here they suddenly lead you along the palest of green, shimmering avenues, while mountains of many-shaded green rise steeply on both sides, glimmering away into drifts of snow, which drop threads of silver down the sheer heights.

This shaded green of the mountains is a feature of Alaskan landscapes. Great landslides and windfalls cleave their way from summit to sea, mowing down the forests in their path. In time the new growth springs up and streaks the mountain side with lighter green.

Probably one-half of the trees in southeastern Alaska are the Menzies spruce, or Sitka pine. Their needles are sharp and of a bluish green.

The Menzies spruce was named for the Scotch botanist who accompanied Vancouver.

The Alaska cedar is yellowish and lacy in appearance, with a graceful droop to the branches. It grows to an average height of one hundred and fifty feet. Its wood is very valuable.

Arbor-vitae grows about the glaciers and in cool, dim fiords. Birch, alder, maple, cottonwood, broom, and hemlock-spruce are plentiful, but are of small value, save in the cause of beauty.

The Menzies spruce attains its largest growth in the Alexander Archipelago, but ranges as far south as California. The Douglas fir is not so abundant as it is farther south, nor does it grow to such great size.

The Alaska cedar is the most prized of all the cedars. It is in great demand for ship-building, interior finishing, cabinet-making, and other fine work, because of its close texture, durable quality, and aromatic odor, which somewhat resembles that of sandalwood. In early years it was shipped to Japan, where it was made into fancy boxes and fans, which were sold under guise of that scented Oriental wood. Its lasting qualities are remarkable--sills having been found in perfect preservation after sixty years' use in a wet climate. Its pleasant odor is as enduring as the wood. The long, slender, pendulous fruits which hang from the branches in season, give the tree a peculiarly graceful and appealing appearance.

The western white pine is used for interior work. It is a magnificent tree, as seen in the forest, having bluish green fronds and cones a foot long.

The giant arbor-vitae attains its greatest size close to the coast. The wood splits easily and makes durable shingles. It takes a brilliant polish and is popular for interior finishing. Its beauty of growth is well known.

Wherever there is sufficient rainfall, the fine-fronded hemlock may be found tracing its lacelike outlines upon the atmosphere. There is no evergreen so delicately lovely as the hemlock. It stands apart, with a little air of its own, as a fastidious small maid might draw her skirts about her when common ones pass by.

The spruces, firs, and cedars grow so closely together that at a distance they appear as a solid wall of shaded green, varying from the lightest beryl tints, on through bluish grays to the most vivid and dazzling emerald tones. At a distance canyons and vast gulches are filled so softly and so solidly that they can scarcely be detected, the trees on the crests of the nearer hills blending into those above, and concealing the deep spaces that sink between.

These forests have no tap-roots. Their roots spread widely upon a thin layer of soil covering solid stone in many cases, and more likely than not this soil is created in the first place by the accumulation of parent needles. Trees spring up in crevices of stone where a bit of sand has sifted, grow, fruit, and shed their needles, and thrive upon them. The undergrowth is so solid that one must cut one's way through it, and the progress of surveyors or prospectors is necessarily slow and difficult.

These forests are constantly drenched in the warm mists precipitated by the Kuro Siwo striking upon the snow, and in this quickening moisture they reach a brilliancy of coloring that is remarkable. At sunset, threading these narrow channels, one may see mountain upon mountain climbing up to crests of snow, their lower wooded slopes covered with mists in palest blue and old rose tones, through which the tips of the trees, crowded close together, shine out in brilliant, many-shaded greens.

After Arthur Passage is that of Malacca, which is dotted by several islands. "Lawyer's," to starboard, bears a red light; "Lucy," to port, farther north, a fixed white light. Directly opposite "Lucy"--who does not rival "Sarah," or who in the pilot's words "has nothing about her"--is old Metlakahtla.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

Davidson Glacier]

Chapter III

The famous ukase of 1821 was issued by the Russian Emperor on the expiration of the twenty-year charter of the Russian-American Company. It prohibited "to all foreign vessels not only to land on the coasts and islands belonging to Russia, as stated above" (including the whole of the northwest coast of America, beginning from Behring Strait to the fifty-first degree of northern latitude, also from the Aleutian Islands to the eastern coast of Siberia, as well as along the Kurile Islands from Behring Strait to the south cape of the Island of Urup) "but also to approach them within less than one hundred miles."

After the Nootka Convention in 1790, the Northwest Coast was open to free settlement and trade by the people of any country. It was claimed by the Russians to the Columbia, afterward to the northern end of Vancouver Island; by the British, from the Columbia to the fifty-fifth degree; and by the United States, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, between Forty-two and Fifty-four, Forty. By the treaty of 1819, by which Florida was ceded to us by Spain, the United States acquired all of Spanish rights and claims on the coast north of the forty-second degree. By its trading posts and regular trading vessels, the United States was actually in possession.

By treaty with the United States in 1824, and with Great Britain in 1825, Russia, realizing her mistake in issuing the ukase of 1821, agreed to Fifty-four, Forty as the limit of her possessions to southward. Of the interior regions, Russia claimed the Yukon region; England, that of the Mackenzie and the country between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains; the United States, all west of the Rockies, north of Forty-two.

The year previous to the one in which the United States acquired Florida and all Spanish rights on the Pacific Coast north of Forty-two, the United States and England had agreed to a joint occupation of the region. In 1828 this was indefinitely extended, but with the emigration to Oregon in the early forties, this country demanded a settlement of the boundary question.

President Tyler, in his message to Congress in 1843, declared that "the United States rights appertain to all between forty-two degrees and fifty-four degrees and forty minutes."

The leading Democrats of the South were at that time advocating the annexation of Texas. Mr. Calhoun was an ardent champion of the cause, and was endeavoring to effect a settlement with the British minister, offering the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise on the boundary dispute, in his eagerness to acquire Texas without danger of interference.

The compromise was declined by the British minister.

In 1844 slave interests defeated Mr. Van Buren in his aspirations to the presidency. Mr. Clay was nominated instead. The latter opposed the annexation of Texas and advised caution and compromise in the Oregon question; but the Democrats nominated Polk and under the war-cry of "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight," bore him on to victory. The convention which nominated him advocated the reannexation of Texas and the reoccupation of Oregon; the two significant words being used to make it clear that Texas had belonged to us before, through the Louisiana purchase; and Oregon, before the treaty of joint occupation with Great Britain.

President Polk, in his message, declared that, "beyond all question, the protection of our laws and our jurisdiction, civil and criminal, ought to be immediately extended over our citizens in Oregon."

He quoted from the convention which had nominated him that "our title to the country of Oregon as far as Fifty-four, Forty, is clear and unquestionable;" and he boldly declared "for all of Oregon or none."

John Quincy Adams eloquently supported our title to the country to the line of Fifty-four, Forty in a powerful speech in the House of Representatives.

Yet it soon became apparent that both the Texas policy and the Oregon question could not be successfully carried out during the administration. "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight" as a watchword in a presidential campaign was one thing, but as a challenge to fight flung in the face of Great Britain, it was quite another.

In February, 1846, the House declared in favor of giving notice to Great Britain that the joint occupancy of the Oregon country must cease. The Senate, realizing that this resolution was practically a declaration of war, declined to adopt it, after a very bitter and fiery controversy.

Those who retreated from their first position on the question were hotly denounced by Senator Hannegan, the Democratic senator from Indiana. He boldly attacked the motives which led to their retreat, and angrily exclaimed:--

"If Oregon were good for the production of sugar and cotton, it would not have encountered this opposition."

The resolution was almost unanimously opposed by the Whig senators. Mr. Webster, while avoiding the point of our actual rights in the matter, urged that a settlement on the line of the forty-ninth parallel be recommended, as permitting both countries to compromise with dignity and honor. The resolution that was finally passed by the Senate and afterward by the House, authorized the president to give notice at his discretion to Great Britain that the treaty should be terminated, "in order that the attention of the governments of both countries may be the more earnestly directed to the adoption of all proper measures for a speedy and amicable adjustment of the differences and disputes in regard to said territory."

Forever to their honor be it remembered that a few of the Southern Democrats refused to retreat from their first position--among them, Stephen A. Douglas. Senator Hannegan reproached his party for breaking the pledges on which it had marched to victory.

The passage of the milk-and-water resolution restored to the timid of the country a feeling of relief and security; but to the others, and to the generations to come after them, helpless anger and undying shame.

The country yielded was ours. We gave it up solely because to retain it we must fight, and we were not in a position at that time to fight Great Britain.

When the Oregon Treaty, as it was called, was concluded by Secretary Buchanan and Minister Pakenham, we lost the splendid country now known as British Columbia, which, after our purchase of Alaska from Russia, would have given us an unbroken frontage on the Pacific Ocean from Southern California to Behring Strait, and almost to the mouth of the Mackenzie River on the Frozen Ocean.

Many reasons have been assigned by historians for the retreat of the Southern Democrats from their former bold and flaunting position; but in the end the simple truth will be admitted--that they might brag, but were not in a position to fight. They were like Lieutenant Whidbey, whom Vancouver sent out to explore Lynn Canal in a small boat. Mr. Whidbey was ever ready and eager, when he deemed it necessary, to fire upon a small party of Indians; but when they met him, full front, in formidable numbers and with couched spears, he instantly fell into a panic and deemed it more "humane" to avoid a conflict with those poor, ignorant people.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

A Phantom Ship]

The Southern Democrats who betrayed their country in 1846 were the Whidbeys of the United States. For no better reason than that of "humanity," they gave nearly four hundred thousand square miles of magnificent country to Great Britain.

Another problem in this famous boundary settlement question has interested American historians for sixty years: Why England yielded so much valuable territory to the United States, after protecting what she claimed as her rights so boldly and so unflinchingly for so many years.

Professor Schafer, the head of the Department of American History at the University of Oregon, claims to have recently found indisputable proof in the records of the British Foreign Office and those of the old Hudson's Bay Company, in London, that the abandonment of the British claim was influenced by the presence of American pioneers who had pushed across the continent and settled in the disputed territory, bringing their families and founding homes in the wilderness.

England knew, in her heart, that the whole disputed territory was ours; and as our claims were strengthened by settlement, she was sufficiently far-sighted to be glad to compromise at that time. If the Oregon Treaty had been delayed for a few years, British Columbia would now be ours. Proofs which strengthen our claim were found in the winter of 1907-1908 in the archives of Sitka.

There would be more justice in our laying claim to British Columbia now, than there was in the claims of Great Britain in the famous _lisiere_ matter which was settled in 1903.

By the treaties of 1824, between Russia and the United States, and of 1825, between Russia and Great Britain, the limits of Russian possessions are thus defined, and upon our purchase of Alaska from Russia, were repeated in the Treaty of Washington in 1867:--

"Commencing from the southernmost point of the island called Prince of Wales Island, which point lies in the parallel of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes north latitude, and between the one hundred and thirty-first and the one hundred and thirty-third degree of west longitude (meridian of Greenwich), the said line shall ascend to the North along the channel called Portland Channel, as far as the point of the continent where it strikes the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude; from this last mentioned point, the line of demarcation shall follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast as far as the point of intersection of the one hundred and forty-first degree of west longitude (of the same meridian); and finally, from the said point of intersection, the said meridian line of the one hundred and forty-first degree, in its prolongation as far as the Frozen Ocean, shall form the limit between the Russian and British possessions on the Continent of America to the northwest.

"With reference to the line of demarcation laid down in the preceding article, it is understood:--

"First, That the island called Prince of Wales Island shall belong wholly to Russia.

"Second, That whenever the summit of the mountains which extend parallel to the coast from the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude to the point of intersection of the one hundred and forty-first degree of west longitude shall prove to be at the distance of more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the line of coast which is to belong to Russia as above mentioned shall be formed by a line parallel to the windings of the coast, and which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom.

"The western limit within which the territories and dominion conveyed are contained, passes through a point in Behring Strait on the parallel of sixty-five degrees, thirty minutes, north latitude, at its intersection by the meridian which passes midway between the islands of Krusenstern, or Ignalook, and the island of Ratmanoff, or Noonarbook, and proceeds due north, without limitation, into the same Frozen Ocean. The same western limit, beginning at the same initial point, proceeds thence in a course nearly southwest, through Behring Strait and Behring Sea, so as to pass midway between the northwest point of the island of St. Lawrence and the southeast point of Cape Choukotski, to the meridian of one hundred and seventy-two west longitude; thence, from the intersection of that meridian in a southwesterly direction, so as to pass midway between the island of Attou and the Copper Island of the Kormandorski couplet or group in the North Pacific Ocean, to the meridian of one hundred and ninety-three degrees west longitude, so as to include in the territory conveyed the whole of the Aleutian Islands east of that meridian."

In the cession was included the right of property in all public lots and squares, vacant lands, and all public buildings, fortifications, barracks, and other edifices, which were not private individual property. It was, however, understood and agreed that the churches which had been built in the ceded territory by the Russian government should remain the property of such members of the Greek Oriental Church resident in the territory as might choose to worship therein. All government archives, papers, and documents relative to the territory and dominion aforesaid which were existing there at the time of transfer were left in possession of the agent of the United States; with the understanding that the Russian government or any Russian subject may at any time secure an authenticated copy thereof.

The inhabitants of the territory were given their choice of returning to Russia within three years, or remaining in the territory and being admitted to the enjoyment of all rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States, protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion.

It must be confessed with chagrin that very few Russians availed themselves of this opportunity to free themselves from the supposed oppression of their government, to unite with the vaunted glories of ours.

Before 1825, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, and the United States had no rights of occupation and assertion on the Northwest Coast. Different nations had "planted bottles" and "taken possession" wherever their explorers had chanced to land, frequently ignoring the same ceremony on the part of previous explorers; but these formalities did not weigh against the rights of discovery and actual occupation by Russia--else Spain's rights would have been prior to Great Britain's.

Between the years of 1542 and 1774 Spanish explorers had examined and traced the western coast of America as far north as fifty-four degrees and forty minutes, Perez having reached that latitude in 1774, discovering Queen Charlotte Islands on the 16th of June, and Nootka Sound on the 9th of August.

Although he did not land, he had friendly relations with the natives, who surrounded his ship, singing and scattering white feathers as a beautiful token of peace. They traded dried fish, furs, and ornaments of their own making for knives and old iron; and two, at least, boarded the ship.

Perez named the northernmost point of Queen Charlotte Islands Point Santa Margarita.

Proceeding south, he made a landfall and anchored in a roadstead in forty-nine degrees and thirty minutes, which he called San Lorenzo--afterward the famous Nootka of Vancouver Island. He also discovered the beautiful white mountain which dignifies the entrance to Puget Sound, and named it Santa Rosalia. It was renamed Mount Olympus fourteen years later by John Meares.

This was the first discovery of the Northwest Coast, and when Cook and Vancouver came, it was to find that the Spanish had preceded them.

Not content with occupying the splendid possessions of the United States through the not famous, but infamous, Oregon Treaty, Canada, upon the discovery of gold in the Cassiar district of British Columbia, brought up the question of the _lisiere_, or thirty-mile strip. This was the strip of land, "not exceeding ten marine leagues in width," which bordered the coast from the southern limit of Russian territory at Portland Canal (now the southern boundary of Alaska) to the vicinity of Mount St. Elias. The purpose of this strip was stated by the Russian negotiations to be "the establishment of a barrier at which would be stopped, once for all, to the North as to the West of the coast allotted to our American Company, the encroachments of the English agents of the Amalgamated Hudson Bay and Northwest English Company."

In 1824, upon the proposal of Sir Charles Bagot to assign to Russia a strip with the uniform width of ten marine leagues from the shore, limited on the south by a line between thirty and forty miles north from the northern end of the Portland Canal, the Russian Plenipotentiaries replied:--

"The motive which caused the adoption of the principle of mutual expediency to be proposed, and the most important advantage of this principle, is to prevent the respective establishments on the Northwest Coast from injuring each other and entering into collision.

"The English establishments of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies have a tendency to advance westward along the fifty-third and fifty-fourth degrees of north latitude.

"The Russian establishments of the American Company have a tendency to descend southward toward the fifty-fifth parallel and beyond; for it should be noted that, if the American Company has not yet made permanent establishments on the mathematical line of the fifty-fifth degree, it is nevertheless true that by virtue of its privilege of 1799, against which privilege no power has ever protested, it is exploiting the hunting and the fishing in these regions, and that it regularly occupies the islands and the neighboring coasts during the season, which allows it to send its hunters and fishermen there.

"It was, then, to the mutual advantage of the two Empires to assign just limits to this advance on both sides, which, in time, could not fail to cause most unfortunate complications.

"It was also to their mutual advantage to fix their limits according to natural partitions, which always constitute the most distinct and certain frontiers.

"For these reasons the Plenipotentiaries of Russia have proposed as limits upon the coast of the continent, to the South, Portland Channel, the head of which lies about (par) the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude, and to the East, the chain of mountains which follows at a very short distance the sinuosities of the coast."

Sir Charles Bagot urged the line proposed by himself and offered, on the part of Great Britain, to include the Prince of Wales Island within the Russian line.

Russia, however, insisted upon having her _lisiere_ run to the Portland Canal, declaring that the possession of Wales Island, without a slice (portion) of territory upon the coast situated in front of that island, could be of no utility whatever to Russia; that any establishment formed upon said island, or upon the surrounding islands, would find itself, as it were, flanked by the English establishments on the mainland, and completely at the mercy of these latter.

England finally yielded to the Russian demand that the _lisiere_ should extend to the Portland Canal.

The claim that the Canadian government put forth, after the discovery of gold had made it important that Canada should secure a short line of traffic between the northern interior and the ocean, was that the wording of certain parts of the treaty of 1825 had been wrongly interpreted. The Canadians insisted that it was not the meaning nor the intention of the Convention of 1825 that there should remain in the exclusive possession of Russia a continuous fringe, or strip--the _lisiere_--of coast, separating the British possessions from the bays, ports, inlets, havens, and waters of the ocean.

Or, if it should be decided that this was the meaning of the treaty, they maintained that the width of the _lisiere_ was to be measured from the line of the general direction of the mainland coast, and not from the heads of the many inlets.

They claimed, also, that the broad and beautiful "Portland's Canal" of Vancouver and the "Portland Channel" of the Convention of 1825, were the Pearse Channel or Inlet of more recent times. This contention, if sustained, would give them our Wales and Pearse islands.

It was early suspected, however, that this claim was only made that they might have something to yield when, as they hoped, their later claim to Pyramid Harbor and the valley of the Chilkaht River should be made and upheld. This would give them a clear route into the Klondike territory.

In 1898 a Joint High Commission was appointed for the consideration of Pelagic Fur Sealing, Commercial Reciprocity, and the Alaska Boundary. The Commission met in Quebec. The discussion upon the boundary continued for several months, the members being unable to agree upon the meaning of the wording of the treaty of 1825.

The British and Canadian members, thereupon, unblushingly proposed that the United States should cede to Canada Pyramid Harbor and a strip of land through the entire width of the _lisiere_.

To Americans who know that part of our country, this proposal came as a shock. Pyramid Harbor is the best harbor in that vicinity; and its cession, accompanied by a highway through the _lisiere_ to British possessions, would have given Canada the most desirable route at that time to the Yukon and the Klondike--the rivers upon which the eyes of all nations were at that time set. Many routes into that rich and picturesque region had been tested, but no other had proved so satisfactory.

It has since developed that the Skaguay route is the real prize. Had Canada foreseen this, she would not have hesitated to demand it.

From the disagreement of the Joint High Commission of 1898 arose the modus vivendi of the following year. There has been a very general opinion that the temporary boundary points around the heads of the inlets at the northern end of Lynn Canal, laid down in that year, were fixed for all time--although it seems impossible that this opinion could be held by any one knowing the definition of the term "modus vivendi."

By the modus vivendi Canada was given temporary possession of valuable Chilkaht territory, and her new maps were made accordingly.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

Road Through Cut-Off Canyon]

In 1903 a tribunal composed of three American members and three representing Great Britain, two of whom were Canadians, met in Great Britain, to settle certain questions relating to the _lisiere_.

The seven large volumes covering the arguments and decisions of this tribunal, as published by the United States government, make intensely interesting and valuable reading to one who cares for Alaska.

The majority of the tribunal, that is to say, Lord Alverstone and the three members from the United States, decided that the Canadians have no rights to the waters of any of the inlets, and that it was the meaning of the Convention of 1825 that the _lisiere_ should for all time separate the British possessions from the bays, ports, inlets, and waters of the ocean north of British Columbia; and that, furthermore, the width of the _lisiere_ was not to be measured from the line of the general direction of the mainland coast, leaping the bays and inlets, but from a line running around the heads of such indentations.

The tribunal, however, awarded Pearse and Wales islands, which belonged to us, to Canada; it also narrowed the _lisiere_ in several important points, notably on the Stikine and Taku rivers.

The fifth question, however, was the vital one; and it was answered in our favor, the two Canadian members dissenting. The boundary lines have now been changed on both United States and Canadian maps, in conformity with the decisions of the tribunal.

Blaine, Bancroft, and Davidson have made the clearest statements of the boundary troubles.

Chapter IV

The first landing made by United States boats after leaving Seattle is at Ketchikan. This is a comparatively new town. It is seven hundred miles from Seattle, and is reached early on the third morning out. It is the first town in Alaska, and glistens white and new on its gentle hills soon after crossing the boundary line in Dixon Entrance--which is always saluted by the lifting of hats and the waving of handkerchiefs on the part of patriotic Americans.

Ketchikan has a population of fifteen hundred people. It is the distributing point for the mines and fisheries of this section of southeastern Alaska. It is the present port of entry, and the Customs Office adds to the dignity of the town. There is a good court-house, a saw-mill with a capacity of twenty-five thousand feet daily, a shingle mill, salmon canneries, machine shops, a good water system, a cold storage plant, two excellent hotels, good schools and churches, a progressive newspaper, several large wharves, modern and well-stocked stores and shops, and a sufficient number of saloons. The town is lighted by electricity and many of the buildings are heated by steam. A creditable chamber of commerce is maintained.

There are seven salmon canneries in operation which are tributary to Ketchikan. The most important one "mild-cures" fish for the German market.

Among the "shipping" mines, which are within a radius of fifty miles, and which receive mails and supplies from Ketchikan, are the Mount Andrews, the Stevenston, the Mamies, the Russian Brown, the Hydah, the Niblack, and the Sulzer. From fifteen to twenty prospects are under development.

There are smelters in operation at Hadley and Copper Mountain, on Prince of Wales Island. From Ketchikan to all points in the mining and fishing districts safe and commodious steamers are regularly operated. The chief mining industries are silver, copper, and gold.

The residences are for the most part small, but, climbing by green terraces over the hill and surrounded by flowers and neat lawns, they impart an air of picturesqueness to the town. There are several totem-poles; the handsomest was erected to the memory of Chief "Captain John," by his nephew, at the entrance to the house now occupied by the latter. The nephew asserts that he paid $2060 for the carving and making of the totem. Owing to its freshly painted and gaudy appearance, it is as lacking in interest as the one which stands in Pioneer Square, Seattle, and which was raped from a northern Indian village.

* * * * *

Four times had I landed at Ketchikan on my way to far beautiful places; with many people had I talked concerning the place; folders of steamship companies and pamphlets of boards of trade had I read; yet never from any person nor from any printed page had I received the faintest glimmer that this busy, commercially described northwestern town held, almost in its heart, one of the enduring and priceless jewels of Alaska. To the beauty-loving, Norwegian captain of the steamship _Jefferson_ was I at last indebted for one of the real delights of my life.

It was near the middle of a July night, and raining heavily, when the captain said to us:--

"Be ready on the stroke of seven in the morning, and I'll show you one of the beautiful things of Alaska."

"But--at Ketchikan, captain!"

"Yes, at Ketchikan."

I thought of all the vaunted attractions of Ketchikan which had ever been brought to my observation; and I felt that at seven o'clock in the morning, in a pouring rain, I could live without every one of them. Then--the charm of a warm berth in a gray hour, the cup of hot coffee, the last dream to the drowsy throb of the steamer--

"It will be raining, captain," one said, feebly.

The look of disgust that went across his expressive face!

"What if it is! You won't know it's raining as soon as you get your eyes filled with what I want to show you. But if you're one of _that_ kind--"

He made a gesture of dismissal with his hands, palms outward, and turned away.

"Captain, I shall be ready at seven. I'm not one of that kind," we all cried together.

"All right; but I won't wait five minutes. There'll be two hundred passengers waiting to go."

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Scene On The White Pass]

"You know that letter that Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote to Professor Morse," spoke up a lady from Boston, who had overheard. "You know Professor Morse wrote a hand that couldn't be deciphered, and among other things, Mr. Aldrich wrote: 'There's a singular and perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old; it never loses its novelty. One can say to one's self every day: "There's that letter of Morse's. I have not read it yet. I think I shall take another shy at it." Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten; but yours are kept forever--unread!' Now, that letter, somehow, in the vaguest kind of way, suggests itself when one considers this getting up anywhere from three to six in the morning to see things in Alaska. There's _always_ something to be seen during these unearthly hours. Every night we are convinced that we will be on deck early, to see something, and we leave an order to be wakened; but when the dreaded knocking comes upon the door, and a hoarse voice announces 'Wrangell Narrows,' or 'Lama Pass,' our berths suddenly take on curves and attractions they possess at no other time. The side-rails into which we have been bumping seem to be cushioned with down, the space between berths to grow wider, the air in the room sweeter and more drowsily delicious. We say, 'Oh, we'll get up to-morrow morning and see something,' and we pull the berth-curtain down past our faces and go to sleep. After a while, it grows to be one of the perpetual charms of a trip to Alaska--this always going to get up in the morning and this never getting up. It never grows old; it never loses its novelty. One can say to one's self every morning: 'There's that little matter to decide now about getting up. Shall I, or shall I not?' I have been to Alaska three times, but I've never seen Ketchikan. Other places are seen and admired and forgotten; but it remains forever--unseen.... Now, I'll go and give an order to be called at half-past six, to see this wonderful thing at Ketchikan!"

I looked around for her as I went down the slushy deck the next morning on the stroke of seven; but she was not in sight. It was raining heavily and steadily--a cold, thick rain; the wind was so strong and so changeful that an umbrella could scarcely be held.

Alas for the captain! Out of his boasted two hundred passengers, there came forth, dripping and suspicious-eyed, openly scenting a joke, only four women and one man. But the captain was undaunted. He would listen to no remonstrances.

"Come on, now," he cried, cheerfully, leading the way. "You told me you came to Alaska to see things, and as long as you travel with me, you are going to see all that is worth seeing. Let the others sleep. Anybody can sleep. You can sleep at home; but you can't see what I am going to show you now anywhere but in Alaska. Do you suppose I would get up at this hour and waste my time on you, if I didn't know you'd thank me for it all the rest of your life?"

So on and on we went; up one street and down another; around sharp corners; past totem-poles, saloons, stylish shops, windows piled with Indian baskets and carvings; up steps and down terraces; along gravelled roads; and at last, across a little bridge, around a wooded curve,--and then--

Something met us face to face. I shall always believe that it was the very spirit of the woods that went past us, laughing and saluting, suddenly startled from her morning bath in the clear, amber-brown stream that came foaming musically down over smooth stones from the mountains.

It was so sudden, so unexpected. One moment, we were in the little northern fishing- and mining-town, which sits by the sea, trumpeting its commercial glories to the world; the next, we were in the forest, and under the spell of this wild, sweet thing that fled past us, returned, and lured us on.

For three miles we followed the mocking call of the spirit of the brown stream. Her breath was as sweet as the breath of wild roses covered with dew. Never in the woods have I been so impressed, so startled, with the feeling that a living thing was calling me.

We could find no words to express our delight as we climbed the path beside the brown stream, whose waters came laughingly down through a deep, dim gorge. They fell sheer in sparkling cataracts; they widened into thin, singing shallows of palest amber, clinking against the stones; narrow and foaming, they wound in and out among the trees; they disappeared completely under wide sprays of ferns and the flat, spreading branches of trees, only to "make a sudden sally" farther down.

At first we were level with them, walked beside them, and paused to watch the golden gleams in their clear depths; but gradually we climbed, until we were hundreds of feet above them.

Down in those purple shadows they went romping on to the sea; sometimes only a flash told us where they curved; other times, they pushed out into open spaces, and made pause in deep pools, where they whirled and eddied for a moment before drawing together and hurrying on. But always and everywhere the music of their wild, sweet, childish laughter floated up to us.

In the dim light of early morning the fine mist of the rain sinking through the gorge took on tones of lavender and purple. The tall trees climbing through it seemed even more beautiful than they really were, by the touch of mystery lent by the rain.

I wish that Max Nonnenbruch, who painted the adorable, compelling "Bride of the Wind," might paint the elfish sprite that dwells in the gorge at Ketchikan. He, and he alone, could paint her so that one could hear her impish laughter, and her mocking, fluting call.

The name of the stream I shall never tell. Only an unimaginative modern Vancouver or Cook could have bestowed upon it the name that burdens it to-day. Let it be the "brown stream" at Ketchikan.

If the people of the town be wise, they will gather this gorge to themselves while they may; treasure it, cherish it, and keep it "unspotted from the world"--yet _for_ the world.

* * * * *

Metlakahtla means "the channel open at both ends." It was here that Mr. William Duncan came in 1857, from England, as a lay worker for the Church Mission Society. It had been represented that existing conditions among the natives sorely demanded high-minded missionary work. The savages at Fort Simpson were considered the worst on the coast at that time, and he was urged not to locate there. Undaunted, however, Mr. Duncan, who was then a very young man, filled with the fire and zeal of one who has not known failure, chose this very spot in which to begin his work--among Indians so low in the scale of human intelligence that they had even been accused of cannibalism.

Port Simpson was then an important trading-post of the Hudson Bay Company. It had been established in the early thirties about forty miles up Nass River, but a few years later was removed to a point on the Tsimpsian Peninsula. In 1841 Sir George Simpson found about fourteen thousand Indians, of various tribes, living there. He found them "peculiarly comely, strong, and well-grown ... remarkably clever and ingenious."

They carved neatly in stone, wood, and ivory. Sir George Simpson relates with horror that the savages frequently ate the dead bodies of their relatives, some of whom had died of smallpox, even after they had become putrid. They were horribly diseased in other ways; and many had lost their eyes through the ravages of smallpox or other disease. They fought fiercely and turbulently with other tribes.

Such were the Indians among whom Mr. Duncan chose to work. He was peculiarly fitted for this work, being possessed of certain unusual qualities and attributes of character which make for success.

The unselfishness and integrity of his nature made themselves visible in his handsome face, and particularly in the direct gaze of his large and intensely earnest blue eyes; his manners were simple, and his air was one of quiet command; he had unfailing cheerfulness, faith, and that quality which struggles on under the heaviest discouragement with no thought of giving up.

His word was as good as his bond; his energy and enthusiasm were untiring, and he never attempted to work his Indians harder than he himself worked. The entire absence of that trait which seeks self-praise or self-glory,--in fact, his absolute self-effacement, his devotion of self and self-interest to others, and to hard and humble work for others,--all these high and noble parts of an unusual and lovable character, added to a most winning and attractive personality, gradually won for young William Duncan the almost Utopian success which many others in various parts of the world have so far worked for in vain.

The Indians grew to trust his word, to believe in his sincerity and single-heartedness, to accept his teachings, to love him, and finally, and most reluctantly of all, to work for him.

At first only fifty of the Tsimsheans, or Tsimpsians, accompanied him to the site of his first community settlement. Here the land was cleared and cultivated; neat two-story cottages, a church, a schoolhouse, stores on the cooperative plan, a saw-mill, and a cannery, were erected by Mr. Duncan and the Indians. At first a corps of able assistants worked with Mr. Duncan, instructing the Indians in various industries and arts, until the young men were themselves able to carry along the different branches of work,--such as carpentry, shoemaking, cabinet building, tanning, rope-making, and boat building. The village band was instructed by a German, until one among them was qualified to become their band-master. The women were taught to cook, to sew, to keep house, to weave, and to care for the sick.

Here was a model village, an Utopian community, an ideal life,--founded and carried on by the genius of one young, simple-hearted, high-minded, earnest, and self-devoted English gentleman.

But William Duncan's way, although strewn with the full sweet roses of success, was not without its bitter, stinging thorns. Mr. Duncan was not an ordained minister, and in 1881 it was decided by the Church of England authorities who had sent Mr. Duncan out, that his field should be formed into a separate diocese, and as this decision necessitated the residence of a bishop, Bishop Ridley was sent to the field--a man whose name will ever stand as a dark blot upon the otherwise clean page whereon is written the story which all men honor and all men praise--the story of the exalted life-work of William Duncan.

Mr. Duncan, being a layman, had conducted services of the simplest nature, and had not considered it advisable to hold communion services which would be embarrassing of explanation to people so recently won from the customs of cannibalism. Bigoted and opinionated, and failing utterly to understand the Indians, to win their confidence, or to exercise patience with them, Bishop Ridley declined to be under the direction of a man who was not ordained, and criticised the form of service held by Mr. Duncan. The latter, having been in sole charge of his work for more than thirty years, and being conscious of its full and unusual results, chafed under the Bishop's supervision and superintendence.

In the meantime, seven other missions had been established at various stations in southeastern Alaska. The Bishop undertook to inaugurate communion services. This was strongly opposed by Mr. Duncan, and he was supported by the Indians, who were sincerely attached to him, the Society in England sympathizing with the Bishop. Friction between the two was ceaseless and bitter, and continued until 1887. This has been given out as the cause of the withdrawal of Mr. Duncan to New Metlakahtla; but his own people--graduates of Eastern universities--claim that it is not the true reason. He and his Indians had for some time desired to be under the laws of the United States, and in 1887 Mr. Duncan went to Washington City to negotiate with the United States for Annette Island. The Bishop established himself in residence, but failed ignominiously to win the respect of the Indians. He quarrelled with them in the commonest way, struck them, went among them armed, and finally appealed to a man-of-war for protection from people whom he considered bloodthirsty savages.

Mr. Duncan, having been successful in his mission to Washington, his faithful followers, during his absence, removed to Annette Island, and here he found on his return all but one hundred out of the original eight hundred which had composed his village on the Bishop's arrival--the few having been persuaded to remain with the latter at Old Metlakahtla. Those who went to the new location on Annette were allowed by the Canadian government to take nothing but their personal property; all their houses, public buildings, and community interests being sacrificed to their devotion to William Duncan--and this is, perhaps, the highest, even though a wordless, tribute that this great man will, living or dead, ever receive.

This story, brief and incomplete, of which we gather up the threads as best we may--for William Duncan dwells in this world to work, and not to talk about his work--is one of the most pathetic in history. When one considers the low degree of savagery from which they had struggled up in thirty years of hardest, and at times most discouraging, labor, to a degree of civilization which, in one respect, at least, is reached by few white people in centuries, if ever; when one considers how they had grown to a new faith and to a new form of religious services, to confidence in the possession of homes and other community property, and to believe their title to them to be enduring; when one considers the tenacity of an Indian's attachment to his home and belongings, and his sorrowful and heart-breaking reluctance to part with them--this shadowy, silent migration through northern waters to a new home on an uncleared island, taking almost nothing with them but their religion and their love for Mr. Duncan, becomes one of the sublime tragedies of the century.

On Annette Island, then, twenty years ago, Mr. Duncan's work was taken up anew. Homes were built; a saw-mill, schools, wharf, cannery, store, town hall, a neat cottage for Mr. Duncan, and finally, in 1895, the large and handsome church, rose in rapid succession out of the wilderness. Roads were built, and sidewalks. A trading schooner soon plied the near-by waters. All was the work of the Indians under the direct supervision of Mr. Duncan, who, in 1870, had journeyed to England for the purpose of learning several simple trades which he might, in turn, teach to the Indians whom he fondly calls his "people." Thus personally equipped, and with such implements and machinery as were required, he had returned to his work.

To-day, at the end of twenty years, the voyager approaching Annette Island, beholds rising before his reverent eyes the new Metlakahtla--the old having sunken to ruin, where it lies, a vanishing stain on the fair fame of the Church of England of the past; for the church of to-day is too broad and too enlightened to approve of the action of its Mission Society in regard to its most earnest and successful worker, William Duncan.

The new town shines white against a dark hill. The steamer lands at a good wharf, which is largely occupied by salmon canneries. Sidewalks and neat gravelled paths lead to all parts of the village. The buildings are attractive in their originality, for Mr. Duncan has his own ideas of architecture. The church, adorned with two large square towers, has a commanding situation, and is a modern, steam-heated building, large enough to seat a thousand people, or the entire village. It is of handsome interior finish in natural woods. Above the altar are the following passages: _The angel said unto them: Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.... Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins._

The cottages are one and two stories in height, and are surrounded by vegetable and flower gardens, of which the women seem to be specially proud. They and the smiling children stand at their gates and on corners and offer for sale baskets and other articles of their own making. These baskets are, without exception, crudely and inartistically made; yet they have a value to collectors by having been woven at Metlakahtla by Mr. Duncan's Indian women, and no tourist fails to purchase at least one, while many return to the steamer laden with them.

There is a girls' school and a boys' school; a hotel, a town hall, several stores, a saw-mill, a system of water-works, a cannery capable of packing twenty thousand cases of salmon in a season, a wharf, and good warehouses and steam-vessels.

The community is governed by a council of thirty members, having a president. There is a police force of twenty members. Taxes are levied for public improvements, and for the maintenance of public institutions. The land belongs to the community, from which it may be obtained by individuals for the purpose of building homes. The cannery and the saw-mill, which is operated by water, belong to companies in which stock is held by Indians who receive dividends. The employees receive regular wages.

The people seem happy and contented. They are deeply attached to Mr. Duncan, and very proud of their model town. They have an excellent band of twenty-one pieces, at the mere mention of which their dark faces take on an expression of pride and pleasure, and their black eyes shine into their questioner's eyes with intense interest; in fact, if one desires to steady the gaze and hold the attention of a Metlakahtla Indian, he can most readily accomplish his purpose by introducing the subject of the village band.

It is a surprise that these Indians do not, generally, speak English more fluently; but this is coming with the younger generations. Some of these young men and young women have been graduated from Eastern colleges, and have returned to take up missionary work in various parts of Alaska. Meeting one of these young men on a steamer, I asked him if he knew Mr. Duncan. The smile of affection and pride that went across his face! "_I am one of his boys_," he replied, simply. This was the Reverend Edward Marsden, who, returning from an Eastern college in 1898, began missionary work at Saxman, near Juneau, where he has been very successful.

Mr. Duncan is exceedingly modest and unassuming in manner and bearing, seeming to shrink from personal attention, and to desire that his work shall speak for itself. He is frequently called "Father," which is exceedingly distasteful to him. Visitors seeking information are welcome to spend a week or two at the guest-house and learn by observation and by conversation with the people what has been accomplished in this ideal community; but, save on rare occasions, he cannot be persuaded to dwell upon his own work, and after he has given his reasons for this attitude, only a person lost to all sense of decency and delicacy would urge him to break his rule of silence.

"I am here to work, and not to talk or write about my work," he says, kindly and cordially. "If I took the time to answer one-tenth of the questions I am asked, verbally and by letter, I would have no time left for my work, and my time for work is growing short. I am an old man,"--his beautiful, intensely blue eyes smiled as he said this, and he at once shook his white-crowned head,--"that is what they are saying of me, but it is not true. I am young, I _feel_ young, and have many more years of work ahead of me. Still, I must confess that I do not work so easily, and my cares are multiplying. Some to whom I make this explanation will not respect my wishes or understand my silence. They press me by letter, or personally, to answer only this question or only that. They are inconsiderate and hamper me in my work."

Possibly this is the key-note to Mr. Duncan's success. "Here is my work; let it speak for itself." He has devoted his whole life to his work, with no thought for the fame it may bring him. For the latter, he cares nothing.

This is the reason that pilgrims voyage to Metlakahtla as reverently as to a shrine. It is the noble and unselfish life-work of a man who has not only accomplished a great purpose, but who is great in himself. When he passes on, let him be buried simply among the Indians he has loved and to whom he has given his whole life, and write upon his headstone: "Let his work speak."

The settlement on Annette Island was provided for in the act of Congress, 1891, as follows:--

"That, until otherwise provided for by law, the body of lands known as Annette Islands, situated in Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska, on the north side of Dixon Entrance, be, and the same is hereby, set apart as a reservation for the Metlakahtla Indians, and those people known as Metlakahtlans, who have recently emigrated from British Columbia to Alaska, and such other Alaskan natives as may join them, to be held and used by them in common, under such rules and regulations, and subject to such restrictions, as may be prescribed from time to time by the Secretary of the Interior."

The Indians of the Community are required to sign, and to fulfil the terms of, the following Declaration:--

"We, the people of Metlakahtla, Alaska, in order to secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of a Christian home, do severally subscribe to the following rules for the regulation of our conduct and town affairs:--

"To reverence the Sabbath and to refrain from all unnecessary secular work on that day; to attend divine worship; to take the Bible for our rule of faith; to regard all true Christians as our brethren; and to be truthful, honest, and industrious.

"To be faithful and loyal to the Government and laws of the United States.

"To render our votes when called upon for the election of the Town Council, and to promptly obey the by-laws and orders imposed by the said Council.

"To attend to the education of our children and keep them at school as regularly as possible.

"To totally abstain from all intoxicants and gambling, and never attend heathen festivities or countenance heathenish customs in surrounding villages.

"To strictly carry out all sanitary regulations necessary for the health of the town.

"To identify ourselves with the progress of the settlement, and to utilize the land we hold.

"Never to alienate, give away, or sell our land, or any portion thereof, to any person or persons who have not subscribed to these rules."

Chapter V

Dixon Entrance belongs to British Columbia, but the boundary crosses its northern waters about three miles above Whitby Point on Dundas Island, and the steamer approaches Revilla-Gigedo Island. It is twenty-five by fifty miles, and was named by Vancouver in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain, who sent out several of the most successful expeditions. It is pooled by many bits of turquoise water which can scarcely be dignified by the name of lakes.

Carroll Inlet cleaves it half in twain. The exquisite gorges and mountains of this island are coming to their own very slowly, as compared with its attractions from a commercial point of view.

The island is in the centre of a rich salmon district, and during the "running" season the clear blue waters flash underneath with the glistening silver of the struggling fish. In some of the fresh-water streams where the hump-backed salmon spawn, the fortunate tourist may literally make true the frequent Western assertion that at certain times "one can walk across on the solid silver bridge made by the salmon"--so tightly are they wedged together in their desperate and pathetic struggles to reach the spawning-ground.

Vancouver found these "hunch-backs," as he called them, not to his liking,--probably on account of finding them at the spawning season.

Leaving Ketchikan, Revilla and Point Higgins are passed to starboard--Higgins being another of Vancouver's choice namings for the president of Chile.

"Did you ever see such a cluttering up of a landscape with odds and ends of names?" said the pilot one day. "And all the ugliest by Vancouver. Give _me_ an Indian name every time. It always means something. Take this Revilly-Gig Island; the Indians called it 'Na-a,' meaning 'the far lakes,' for all the little lakes scattered around. I don't know as we're doing much better in our own day, though," he added, staring ahead with a twinkle in his eyes. "They've just named a couple of mountains _Mount Thomas Whitten_ and _Mount Shoup_! Now those names are all right for men--even congressmen--but they're not worth shucks for mountains. Why, the Russians could do better! Take Mount St. Elias--named by Behring because he discovered it on St. Elias' day. I actually tremble every time I pass that mountain, for fear I'll look up and see a sign tacked on it, stating that the name has been changed to Baker or Bacon or Mudge, so that Vancouver's bones will rest more easily in the grave. Now look at that point! It's pretty enough in itself; but--_Higgins!_"

The next feature of interest, however, proved to be blessed with a name sweet enough to take away the bitterness of many others--Clover Pass. It was not named for this most fragrant and dear of all flowers, but for Lieutenant, now Rear-Admiral, Clover, of the United States Navy.

Beyond Clover Pass, at the entrance to Naha Bay, is Loring, a large and important cannery settlement of the Alaska Packers' Association. There is only one salmon-canning establishment in Alaska, or even on the Northwest Coast, more picturesquely situated than this, and it is nearly two thousand miles "to Westward," at the mouth of the famed Karluk River, where the same company maintains large canneries and successful hatcheries. It will be described in another chapter.

A trail leads from Loring through the woods to Dorr Waterfall, in a lovely glen. In Naha Bay thousands of fish are taken at every dip of the seine in the narrowest cove, which is connected with a chain of small lakes linked by the tiniest of streams. In summer these waters seem to be of living silver, so thickly are they swarmed with darting and curving salmon.

Not far from Naha Bay is Traitor's Cove, where Vancouver and his men were attacked in boats by savages in the masks of animals, headed by an old hag who commanded and urged them to bloodthirsty deeds.

This vixen seemed to be a personage of prestige and influence, judging both by the immense size of her lip ornament and her air of command. She seized the lead line from Vancouver's boat and made it fast to her own canoe, while another stole a musket.

Vancouver, advancing to parley with the chief, made the mistake of carrying his musket; whereupon about fifty savages leaped at him, armed with spears and daggers.

The chief gave him to understand by signs that they would lay down their arms if he would set the example; but the terrible old woman, scenting peace and scorning it, violently and turbulently harangued the tribe and urged it to attack.

The brandishing of spears and the flourishing of daggers became so uncomfortably close and insistent, that Vancouver finally overcame his "humanity," and fired into the canoes.

The effect was electrical. The Indians in the small canoes instantly leaped into the water and swam for the shore; those in the larger ones tipped the canoes to one side, so that the higher side shielded them while they made the best of their way to the shore.

There they ascended the rocky cliffs and stoned the boats. Several of Vancouver's men were severely wounded, one having been speared completely through the thigh.

The point at the northern entrance to Naha Bay, where they landed to dress wounds and take account of stock not stolen, was named Escape Point; a name which it still retains.

Kasa-an Bay is an inlet pushing fifteen miles into the eastern coast of Prince of Wales Island, which is two hundred miles in length and averages forty in width. Cholmondeley Sound penetrates almost as far, and Moira Sound, Niblack Anchorage on North Arm, Twelve Mile Arm, and Skowl Arm, are all storied and lovely inlets. Skowl was an old chief of the Eagle Clan, whose sway was questioned by none. He was the greatest chief of his time, and ruled his people as autocratically as the lordly, but blustering, Baranoff ruled his at Sitka. Skowl repulsed the advances of missionaries and scorned all attempts at Christianizing himself and his tribe. His was a powerful personality which is still mentioned with a respect not unmixed with awe. To say that a chief is as fearless as Skowl is a fine compliment, indeed, and one not often bestowed.

Although not on the regular run of steamers, Howkan, now a Presbyterian missionary village on Cordova Bay, on the southwestern part of Prince of Wales Island, must not be entirely neglected. In early days the village was a forest of totems, and the graves were almost as interesting as the totems. Both are rapidly vanishing and losing their most picturesque features before the march of civilization and Christianity; but Howkan is still one of the show-places of Alaska. The tourist who is able to make this side trip on one of the small steamers that run past there, is the envy of the unfortunate ones who are compelled to forego that pleasure.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Steel Cantilever Bridge, Near Summit Of White Pass]

Totemism is the poetry of the Indian--or would be if it possessed any religious significance.

I once asked an educated Tsimpsian Indian what the Metlakahtla people believed,--meaning the belief that Mr. Duncan had taught them. He put the tips of his fingers together, and with an expression of great earnestness, replied:--

"They believed in a great Spirit, to whom they prayed and whom they worshipped everywhere, believing that this beautiful Spirit was everywhere and could hear. They worshipped it in the forest, in the trees, in the flowers, in the sun and wind, in the blades of grass,--alone and far from every one,--in the running water and the still lakes."

"Oh, how beautiful!" I said, in all sincerity. "It must be the same as my own belief; only I never heard it put into words before. And that is what Mr. Duncan has taught them?"

He turned and looked at me squarely and steadily. It was a look of weariness, of disgust.

"Oh, no," he replied, coldly; "that was what they believed before they knew better; before they were taught the truth; before Christianity was explained to them. That is what they believed _while they were savages_!"

We were in the library of the _Jefferson_. The room is always warm, and at that moment it was warmer than I had ever known it to be. Under the steady gaze of those shining dark eyes it presently became too warm to be endured. With my curiosity quite satisfied, I withdrew to the hurricane deck, where there is always air.

Of the Indians in the territory of Alaska there are two stocks--the Thlinkits, or Coast Indians, and the Tinneh, or those inhabiting the vast regions of the interior. The Thlinkits comprise the Tsimpsians, or Chimsyans, the Kygani, or Haidahs, the true Thlinkits, or Koloshes, and the Yakutats.

The Kygani, or Haidah, Indians inhabit the Queen Charlotte Archipelago, which, although belonging to British Columbia, must be taken into consideration in any description of the Indians of Alaska. They were formerly a warlike, powerful, and treacherous race, making frequent attacks upon neighboring tribes, even as far south as Puget Sound. They are noted, not only for these savage qualities, but also for the grace and beauty of their canoes and for their delicate and artistic carvings. Their small totems, pipes, and other articles carved out of a dark gray, highly polished slate stone obtained on their own islands, sometimes inlaid with particles of shell, are well known and command fancy prices. Haidah basketry and hats are of unusual beauty and workmanship. The peculiar ornamentation is painted upon the hats and not woven in. The designs which are most frequently seen are the head, wings, tail, and feet of a duck,--certain details somewhat resembling a large oyster-shell, or a human ear,--painted in black and rich reds. The hats are usually in the plain twined weaving, and of such fine, even workmanship that they are entirely waterproof. The Haidahs formerly wore the nose- and ear-rings, or other ornaments, and the labret in the lower lip.

The Thlinkits,--or Koloshians, as the Russians and Aleuts called them, from their habit of wearing the labret,--are divided into two tribes, the Stikines and the Sitkans; the former inhabiting the mainland in the vicinity of the Stikine River, straggling north and south for some distance along the coast.

The Sitkans dwell in the neighborhood of Sitka and on the near-by islands. They are among the tribes of Indians who gave Baranoff much trouble. They formerly painted with vermilion or lamp-black mixed with oil, traced on their faces in startling patterns. At the present time they dress almost like white people, except for the everlasting blanket on the older ones. Some of the younger women are very handsome--clean, light-brown of skin, red-cheeked, of good figure, and having large, dark eyes, at once soft and bright. They also have good, white teeth, and are decidedly attractive in their coquettish and saucy airs and graces. The young Indian women at Sitka, Yakutat, and Dundas are the prettiest and the most attractive in Alaska; nor have I seen any in the Klondike, or along the Yukon, to equal them in appearance. Also, one can barter with them for their fascinating wares without praying to heaven to be deprived of the sense of smell for a sufficient number of hours.

Among the Thlinkits, as well as among many of the Innuit, or Eskimo tribes, the strange and cruel custom prevails of isolating young girls approaching puberty in a hut set aside for this purpose. The period of isolation varies from a month to a year, during which they are considered unclean and are allowed only liquid food, which soon reduces them to a state of painful emaciation. No one is permitted to minister to their needs but a mother or a female slave, and they cannot hold conversation with any one.

When a maiden finally emerges from her confinement there is great rejoicing, if she be of good family, and feasting. A charm of peculiar design is hung around her neck, called a "Virgin Charm," or "Virtue Charm," which silently announces that she is "clean" and of marriageable age. Formerly, according to Dall and other authorities, the lower lip was pierced and a silver pin shaped like a nail inserted. This made the same announcement.

The chief diet of the Thlinkit is fish, fresh or smoked. Unlike the Aleutians, they do not eat whale blubber, as the whale figures in their totems, but are fond of the porpoise and seal. The women are fond of dress, and a voyager who will take a gay last year's useless hat along in her steamer trunk, will be sure to "swap" it for a handsome Indian basket. In many places they still employ their early methods of fishing--raking herring and salmon out of the streams, during a run, with long poles into which nails are driven, like a rake.

They are fond of game of all kinds. They weave blankets out of the wool of the mountain sheep. Large spoons, whose handles are carved in the form and designs of totems, are made out of the horns of sheep and goats.

The Thlinkits are divided into four totems--the whale, the eagle, the raven, and the wolf. The raven, which by the Tinnehs is considered an evil bird, is held in the highest respect by the Thlinkits, who believe it to be a good spirit.

Totemism is defined as the system of dividing a tribe into clans according to their totems. It comprises a class of objects which the savage holds in superstitious awe and respect, believing that it holds some relation to, and protection over, himself. There is the clan totem, common to a whole clan; the sex totem, common to the males or females of a clan; and the individual totem, belonging solely to one person and not descending to any member of the next generation. It is generally believed that the totem has some special religious significance; but this is not true, if we are to believe that the younger and educated Indians of to-day know what totemism means. Some totems are veritable family trees. The clan totem is reverenced by a whole clan, the members of which are known by the name of their totem, and believe themselves to be descended from a common animal ancestor, and bound together by ties closer and more sacred than those of blood.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Courtesy of Webster & Stevens, Seattle

Old Russian Building, Sitka]

The system of totemism is old; but the word itself, according to J. G. Frazer, first appeared in literature in the nineteenth century, being introduced from an Ojibway word by J. Long, an interpreter. The same authority claims that it had a religious aspect; but this is denied, so far, at least, as the Thlinkits are concerned.

The Eagle clan believe themselves to be descended from an eagle, which they, accordingly, reverence and protect from harm or death, believing that it is a beneficent spirit that watches over them.

Persons of the same totem may neither marry nor have sexual intercourse with each other. In Australia the usual penalty for the breaking of this law was death. With the Thlinkits, a man might marry a woman of any save his own totem clan. The raven represented woman, and the wolf, man. A young man selected his individual totem from the animal which appeared most frequently and significantly in his dreams during his lonely fast and vigil in the heart of the forest for some time before reaching the state of puberty. The animals representing a man's different totems--clan, family, sex, and individual--were carved and painted on his tall totem-pole, his house, his paddles, and other objects; they were also woven into hats, basketry, and blankets, and embroidered upon moccasins with beads. Some of the Haidah canoes have most beautifully carven and painted prows, with the totem design appearing. These canoes are far superior to those of Puget Sound. The very sweep of the prow, strong and graceful, as it cleaves the golden air above the water, proclaims its northern home. Their well-known outlines, the erect, rigid figures of the warriors kneeling in them, and the strong, swift, sure dip of the paddles, sent dread to the hearts of the Puget Sound Indians and the few white settlers in the early part of the last century. The cry of "Northern Indians!" never failed to create a panic. They made many marauding expeditions to the south in their large and splendid canoes. The inferior tribes of the sound held them in the greatest fear and awe.

A child usually adopts the mother's totem, and at birth receives a name significant of her family. Later on he receives one from his father's family, and this event is always attended with much solemnity and ceremony.

A man takes wives in proportion to his wealth. If he be the possessor of many blankets, he takes trouble unto himself by the dozen. There are no spring bonnets, however, to buy. They do not indulge themselves with so many wives as formerly; nor do they place such implicit faith in the totem, now that they are becoming "Christianized."

Dall gives the following interesting description of a Thlinkit wedding ceremony thirty years ago: A lover sends to his mistress's relations, asking for her as a wife. If he receives a favorable reply, he sends as many presents as he can get together to her father. On the appointed day he goes to the house where she lives, and sits down with his back to the door.

The father has invited all the relations, who now raise a song, to allure the coy bride out of the corner where she has been sitting. When the song is done, furs or pieces of new calico are laid on the floor, and she walks over them and sits down by the side of the groom. All this time she must keep her head bowed down. Then all the guests dance and sing, diversifying the entertainment, when tired, by eating. The pair do not join in any of the ceremonies. That their future life may be happy, they fast for two days more. Four weeks afterward they come together, and are then recognized as husband and wife.

The bridegroom is free to live with his father-in-law, or return to his own home. If he chooses the latter the bride receives a _trousseau_ equal in value to the gifts received by her parents from her husband. If the husband becomes dissatisfied with his wife, he can send her back with her dowry, but loses his own gifts. If a wife is unfaithful he may send her back with nothing, and demand his own again. They may separate by mutual consent without returning any property. When the marriage festival is over, the silver pin is removed from the lower lip of the bride and replaced by a plug, shaped like a spool, but not over three-quarters of an inch long, and this plug is afterward replaced by a larger one of wood, bone, or stone, so that an old woman may have an ornament of this kind two inches in diameter. These large ones are of an oval shape, but scooped out above, below, and around the edge, like a pulley-wheel. When very large, a mere strip of flesh goes around the _kalushka_, or "little trough." From the name which the Aleuts gave the appendage when they first visited Sitka, the nickname "Kolosh" has arisen, and has been applied to this and allied tribes.

Many years ago, when a man died, his brother or his sister's son was compelled to marry the widow.

That seems worth while. Naturally, the man would not desire the woman, and the woman would not desire the man; therefore, the result of the forced union might prove full of delightful surprises. If such a law could have been passed in England, there would have been no occasion for the prolonged agitation over the "Deceased wife's sister" bill, which dragged its weary way through the courts and the papers. Nobody would desire to marry his deceased wife's sister; or, if he did, she would decline the honor.

An ancient Thlinkit superstition is, that once a man--a Thlinkit, of course--had a young wife whom he so idolized that he would not permit her to work. This is certainly the most convincing proof that an Indian could give of his devotion. From morning to night she dwelt in sweet idleness, guarded by eight little redbirds, that flew about her when she walked, or hovered over her when she reclined upon her furs or preciously woven blankets.

These little birds were good spirits, of course, but alas! they resembled somewhat women who are so good that out of their very goodness evil is wrought. In the town in which I dwell there is a good woman, a member of a church, devout, and scorning sin, who keeps "roomers." On two or three occasions this good woman has found letters which belonged to her roomers, and she has done what an honorable woman would not do. She has read letters that she had no right to read, and she has found therein secrets that would wreck families and bow down heads in sorrow to their graves; and yet, out of her goodness, she has felt it to be her duty "to tell," and she has told.

Since knowing the story of the eight little Thlinkit redbirds, I have never seen this woman without a red mist seeming to float round her; her mouth becomes a twittering beak, her feet are claws that carry her noiselessly into secret places, her eyes are little black beads that flash from side to side in search of other people's sins, and her shoulders are folded wings. For what did the little good redbirds do but go and tell the Thlinkit man that his young and pretty and idolized wife had spoken to another man. He took her out into the forest and shut her up in a box. Then he killed all his sister's children because they knew his secret. His sister went in lamentations to the beach, where she was seen by her totem whale, who, when her cause of grief was made known to him, bade her be of good cheer.

"Swallow a small stone," said the whale, "which you must pick up from the beach, drinking some sea-water at the same time."

The woman did as the whale directed. In a few months she gave birth to a son, whom she was compelled to hide from her brother. This child was Yehl (the raven), the beneficent spirit of the Thlinkits, maker of forests, mountains, rivers, and seas; the one who guides the sun, moon, and stars, and controls the winds and floods. His abiding-place is at the head waters of the Nass River, whence the Thlinkits came to their present home. When he grew up he became so expert in the use of the bow and arrow that it is told of his mother that she went clad in the rose, green, and lavender glory of the breasts of humming-birds which he had killed in such numbers that she was able to fashion her entire raiment of their most exquisite parts,--as befitted the mother of the good spirit of men.

Yehl performed many noble and miraculous deeds, the most dazzling of which was the giving of light to the world. He had heard that a rich old chief kept the sun, moon, and stars in boxes, carefully locked and guarded. This chief had an only daughter whom he worshipped. He would allow no one to make love to her, so Yehl, perceiving that only a descendant of the old man could secure access to the boxes, and knowing that the chief examined all his daughter's food before she ate it, and that it would therefore avail him nothing to turn himself into ordinary food, conceived the idea of converting himself into a fragrant grass and by springing up persistently in the maiden's path, he was one day eaten and swallowed. A grandson was then born to the old chief, who wrought upon his affections--as grandsons have a way of doing--to such an extent that he could deny him nothing.

One day the young Yehl, who seems to have been appropriately named, set up a lamentation for the boxes he desired and continued it until one was in his possession. He took it out-doors and opened it. Millions of little milk-white, opaline birds instantly flew up and settled in the sky. They were followed by a large, silvery bird, which was so heavy and uncertain in her flight to the sky that, although she finally reached it, she never appeared twice the same thereafter, and on some nights could not be seen at all. The old chief was very angry, and it was not until Yehl had wept and fasted himself to death's very door that he obtained the sun; whereupon, he changed himself back into a raven, and flying away from the reach of his stunned and temporary grandfather, who had commanded him not to open the box, he straightway lifted the lid--and the world was flooded with light.

One of the most interesting of the Thlinkit myths is the one of the spirits that guard and obey the shamans. The most important are those dwelling in the North. They were warriors; hence, an unusual display of the northern lights was considered an omen of approaching war. The other spirits are of people who died a commonplace death; and the greatest care must be exercised by relatives in mourning for these, or they will have difficulty in reaching their new abode. Too many tears are as bad as none at all; the former mistake mires and gutters the path, the latter leaves it too deep in dust. A decent and comfortable quantity makes it hard and even and pleasant.

Their deluge myth is startling in its resemblance to ours. When their flood came upon them, a few were saved in a great canoe which was made of cedar. This wood splits rather easily, parallel to its grain, under stress of storm, and the one in which the people embarked split after much buffeting. The Thlinkits clung to one part, and all other peoples to the other part, creating a difference in language. Chet'l, the eagle, was separated from his sister, to whom he said, "You may never see me again, but you shall hear my voice forever." He changed himself into a bird of tremendous size and flew away southward. The sister climbed Mount Edgecumbe, which opened and swallowed her, leaving a hole that has remained ever since. Earthquakes are caused by her struggles with bad spirits which seek to drive her away, and by her invariable triumph over them she sustains the poise of the world.

Chet'l returned to Mount Edgecumbe, where he still lives. When he comes forth, which is but seldom, the flapping of his great wings produces the sound which is called thunder. He is, therefore, known everywhere as the Thunder-bird. The glance of his brilliant eyes is the lightning.

Concerning the totem-pole which was taken from an Indian village on Tongas Island, near Ketchikan, by members of the _Post-Intelligencer_ business men's excursion to Alaska in 1899--and for which the city of Seattle was legally compelled to pay handsomely afterward--the following letter from a member of the family originally owning the totem is of quaint interest:--

"I have received your letter, and I am going to tell you the story of the totem-pole. Now, the top one is a crow himself, and the next one from the pole top is a man. That crow have told him a story. Crow have told him a good-looking woman want to married some man. So he did marry her. She was a frog. And the fourth one is a mink. One time, the story says, that one time it was a high tide for some time, and so crow got marry to mink, so crow he eats any kind of fishes from the water. After some time crow got tired of mink, and he leave her, and he get married to that whale-killer, and then crow he have all he want to eat. That last one on the totem-pole is the father of the crow. The story says that one time it got dark for a long while. The darkness was all over the world, and only crow's father was the only one can give light to the world. He simply got a key. He keeps the sun and moon in a chest, that one time crow have ask his father if he play with the sun and moon in the house but, was not allowed, so he start crying for many days until he was sick. So his father let him play with it and he have it for many days. And one day he let the moon in the sky by mistake, but he keep the sun, and he which take time before he could get his chances to go outside of the house. As soon as he was out he let sun back to the sky again, and it was light all over the world again. (End of story.)

"Yours respectfully,

"David E. Kinninnook.

"P.S. The Indians have a long story, and one of the chiefs of a village or of a tribe only a chief can put up so many carvings on our totem-pole, and he have to fully know the story of what totem he is made. I may give you the whole story of it sometimes. Crow on top have a quart moon in his mouth, because he have ask his father for a light.

"D. E. K.

"If you can put this story on the _Post-Intelligencer_, of Seattle, Wash., and I think the people will be glad to know some of it."

The Thlinkits burned their dead, with the exception of the shamans, but carefully preserved the ashes and all charred bones from the funeral pyre. These were carefully folded in new blankets and buried in the backs of totems. One totem, when taken down to send to the Lewis and Clark Exposition, was found to contain the remains of a child in the butt-end of the pole which was in the ground; the portion containing the child being sawed off and reinterred.

[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

Greek-Russian Church At Sitka]

A totem-pole donated to the exposition by Yannate, a very old Thlinkit, was made by his own hands in honor of his mother. His mother belonged to the Raven Clan, and a large raven is at the crest of the pole; under it is the brown bear--the totem of the Kokwonton Tribe, to which the woman's husband belonged; underneath the bear is an Indian with a cane, representing the woman's brother, who was a noted shaman or sorcerer many years ago; at the bottom are two faces, or masks, representing the shaman's favorite slaves.

The Haidahs did not burn their dead, but buried them, usually in the butts of great cedars. Frequently, however, they were buried at the base of totem-poles, and when in recent years poles have been removed, remains have been found and reinterred.

On the backs of some of the old totem-poles at Wrangell and other places, may be seen the openings that were made to receive the ashes of the dead, the portion that had been sawed out being afterward replaced.

The wealth of a Thlinkit is estimated according to his number of blankets; his honor and importance by the number of potlatches he has given. Every member of his totem is called upon to contribute to the potlatch of the chief, working to that end, and "skimping" himself in his own indulgences for that object, for many years, if necessary. The potlatch is given at the full of the moon; the chief's clan and totem decline all gifts; it is not in good form for any member thereof to accept the slightest gift. Guests are seated and treated according to their rights, and the resentme