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To the lover of pure wildness
Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world. No excursion
that I know of may be made into any other American wilderness where so
marvelous an abundance of noble, newborn scenery is so charmingly brought to
view as on the trip through the Alexander Archipelago to Fort Wrangell and
Sitka. Gazing from the deck of the steamer, one is borne smoothly over calm
blue waters, through the midst of countless forest-clad islands. The
ordinary discomforts of a sea voyage are not felt, for nearly all the whole
long way is on inland waters that are about as waveless as rivers and lakes.
So numerous are the islands that they seem to have been sown broadcast; long
tapering vistas between the largest of them open in every direction.
Day after day in the fine
weather we enjoyed, we seemed to float in true fairyland, each succeeding
view seeming more and more beautiful, the one we chanced to have before
us the most surprisingly beautiful of all. Never before this had I been
embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description. To sketch picturesque
bits, definitely bounded, is comparatively easy — a lake in the woods, a
glacier meadow, or a cascade in its dell; or even a grand master view of
mountains beheld from some commanding outlook after climbing from height to
height above the forests. These may be attempted, and more or less telling
pictures made of them; but in these coast landscapes there is such
indefinite, on-leading expansiveness, such a multitude of features without
apparent redundance, their lines graduating delicately into one another in
endless succession, while the whole is so fine, so tender, so ethereal, that
all penwork seems hopelessly unavailing. Tracing shining ways through fiord
and sound, past forests and waterfalls, islands and mountains and far azure
headlands, it seems as if surely we must at length reach the very paradise
of the poets, the abode of the blessed.
Some idea of the wealth of this scenery may be
gained from the fact that the coastline of Alaska is about twenty-six
thousand miles long, more than twice as long as all the rest of the United
States. The islands of the Alexander Archipelago, with the straits,
channels, canals, sounds, passages, and fiords, form an intricate web of
land and water embroidery sixty or seventy miles wide, fringing the lofty
icy chain of coast mountains from Puget Sound to Cook Inlet; and, with
infinite variety, the general pattern is harmonious throughout its whole
extent of nearly a thousand miles. Here you glide into a narrow channel
hemmed in by mountain walls, forested down to the water's edge, where there
is no distant view, and your attention is concentrated on the objects close
about you — the crowded spires of the spruces and hemlocks rising higher and
higher on the steep green slopes; stripes of paler green where winter
avalanches have cleared away the trees, allowing grasses and willows to
spring up; zigzags of cascades appearing and disappearing among the bushes
and trees; short, steep glens with brawling streams hidden beneath alder and
dogwood, seen only where they emerge on the brown alga of the shore; and
retreating hollows, with lingering snow-banks marking the fountains of
ancient glaciers. The steamer is often so near the shore that you may
distinctly see the cones clustered on the tops of the trees, and the ferns
and bushes at their feet.
But new scenes are brought to view with magical
rapidity. Rounding some bossy cape, the eye is called away into far-reaching
vistas, bounded on either hand by headlands in charming array, one dipping
gracefully beyond another and growing fainter and more ethereal in the
distance. The tranquil channel stretching river-like between, may be stirred
here and there by the silvery plashing of upspringing salmon, or by flocks
of white gulls floating like water-lilies among the sun spangles; while
mellow, tempered sunshine is streaming over all, blending sky, land, and
water in pale, misty blue. Then, while you are dreamily gazing into the
depths of this leafy ocean lane, the little steamer, seeming hardly larger
than a duck, turning into some passage not visible until the moment of
entering it, glides into a wide expanse — a sound filled with islands,
sprinkled and clustered in forms and compositions such as nature alone can
invent; some of them so small the trees growing on them seem like single
handfuls culled from the neighboring woods and set in the water to keep them
fresh, while here and there at wide intervals you may notice bare rocks just
above the water, mere dots punctuating grand, out-swelling sentences of
islands.
The variety we find, both as
to the contours and the collocation of the islands, is due chiefly to
differences in the structure and composition of their rocks, and the unequal
glacial denudation different portions of the coast were subjected to. This
influence must have been especially heavy toward the end of the glacial
period, when the main ice-sheet began to break up into separate glaciers.
Moreover, the mountains of the larger islands nourished local glaciers, some
of them of considerable size, which sculptured their summits and sides,
forming in some cases wide cirques with canons or valleys leading down from
them into the channels and sounds. These causes have produced much of the
bewildering variety of which nature is so fond, but none the less will the
studious observer see the underlying harmony — the general trend of the
islands in the direction of the flow of the main ice-mantle from the
mountains of the Coast Range, more or less varied by subordinate foothill
ridges and mountains. Furthermore, all the islands, great and small, as well
as the headlands and promontories of the mainland, are seen to have a
rounded, over-rubbed appearance produced by the over-sweeping ice-flood
during the period of greatest glacial abundance.
The canals, channels,
straits, passages, sounds, etc., are subordinate to the same glacial
conditions in their forms, trends, and extent as those which determined the
forms, trends, and distribution of the land-masses, their basins being the
parts of the pre-glacial margin of the continent, eroded to varying depths
below sea-level, and into which, of course, the ocean waters flowed as the
ice was melted out of them. Had the general glacial denudation been much
less, these ocean ways over which we are sailing would have been valleys and
canons and lakes; and the islands rounded hills and ridges, landscapes with
undulating features like those found above sea-level wherever the rocks and
glacial conditions are similar. In general, the island-bound channels are
like rivers, not only in separate reaches as seen from the deck of a vessel,
but continuously so for hundreds of miles in the case of the longest of
them. The tide-currents, the fresh driftwood, the inflowing streams, and the
luxuriant foliage of the out-leaning trees on the shores make this
resemblance all the more complete. The largest islands look like part of the
mainland in any view to be had of them from the ship, but far the greater
number are small, and appreciable as islands, scores of them being less than
a mile long. These the
eye easily takes in and revels in their beauty with ever fresh delight. In
their relations to each other the individual members of a group have
evidently been derived from the same general rock-mass, yet they never seem
broken or abridged in any way as to their contour lines, however abruptly
they may dip their sides. Viewed one by one, they seem detached beauties,
like extracts from a poem, while, from the completeness of their lines and
the way that their trees are arranged, each seems a finished stanza in
itself. Contemplating the arrangement of the trees on these small islands, a
distinct impression is produced of their having been sorted and harmonized
as to size like a well-balanced bouquet. On some of the smaller tufted
islets a group of tapering spruces is planted in the middle, and two smaller
groups that evidently correspond with each other are planted on the ends at
about equal distances from the central group; or the whole appears as one
group with marked fringing trees that match each other spreading around the
sides, like flowers leaning outward against the rim of a vase. These
harmonious tree relations are so constant that they evidently are the result
of design, as much so as the arrangement of the feathers of birds or the
scales of fishes. Thus
perfectly beautiful are these blessed evergreen islands, and their beauty is
the beauty of youth, for though the freshness of their verdure must be
ascribed to the bland moisture with which they are bathed from warm
ocean-currents, the very existence of the islands, their features, finish,
and peculiar distribution, are all immediately referable to ice-action
during the great glacial winter just now drawing to a close.
We arrived at Wrangell July 14, and after a
short stop of a few hours went on to Sitka and returned on the 20th to
Wrangell, the most inhospitable place at first sight I had ever seen. The
little steamer that had been my home in the wonderful trip through the
archipelago, after taking the mail, departed on her return to Portland, and
as I watched her gliding out of sight in the dismal blurring rain, I felt
strangely lonesome. The friend that had accompanied me thus far now left for
his home in San Francisco, with two other interesting travelers who had made
the trip for health and scenery, while my fellow passengers, the
missionaries, went direct to the Presbyterian home in the old fort. There
was nothing like a tavern or lodging-house in the village, nor could I find
any place in the stumpy, rocky, boggy ground about it that looked dry enough
to camp on until I could find a way into the wilderness to begin my studies.
Every place within a mile or two of the town seemed strangely shelterless
and inhospitable, for all the trees had long ago been felled for
building-timber and firewood. At the worst, I thought, I could build a bark
hut on a hill back of the village, where something like a forest loomed
dimly through the draggled clouds.
I had already seen some of the high
glacier-bearing mountains in distant views from the steamer, and was anxious
to reach them. A few whites of the village, with whom I entered into
conversation, warned me that the Indians were a bad lot, not to be trusted,
that the woods were well-nigh impenetrable, and that I could go nowhere
without a canoe. On the other hand, these natural difficulties made the
grand wild country all the more attractive, and I determined to get into the
heart of it somehow with a bag of hardtack, trusting to my usual good luck.
My present difficulty was in finding a first base camp. My only hope was on
the hill. As I strolled past the old fort I happened to meet one of the
missionaries, who kindly asked me where I was going to take up my quarters.
"I don't know," I replied. "I
have not been able to find quarters of any sort. The top of that little hill
over there seems the only possible place."
He then explained that every room in the mission
house was full, but he thought I might obtain leave to spread my blanket in
a carpenter-shop belonging to the mission. Thanking him, I ran down to the
sloppy wharf for my little bundle of baggage, laid it on the shop floor, and
felt glad and snug among the dry, sweet-smelling shavings.
The carpenter was at work on a new Presbyterian
mission building, and when he came in I explained that Dr. Jackson [Dr.
Sheldon Jackson, 1834-1909, became Superintendent of Presbyterian Missions
in Alaska in 1877, and United States General Agent of Education in 1885. [W.
F. B.]] had suggested that I might be allowed to sleep on the floor, and
after I assured him that I would not touch his tools or be in his way, he
good-naturedly gave me the freedom of the shop and also of his small private
side room where I would find a wash-basin.
I was here only one night, however, for Mr.
Vanderbilt, a merchant, who with his family occupied the best house in the
fort, hearing that one of the late arrivals, whose business none seemed to
know, was compelled to sleep in the carpenter-shop, paid me a good-Samaritan
visit and after a few explanatory words on my glacier and forest studies,
with fine hospitality offered me a room and a place at his table. Here I
found a real home, with freedom to go on all sorts of excursions as
opportunity offered. Annie Vanderbilt, a doctor of divinity two years old,
ruled the household with love sermons and kept it warm.
Mr. Vanderbilt introduced me to prospectors and
traders and some of the most influential of the Indians. I visited the
mission school and the home for Indian girls kept by Mrs. MacFarland, and
made short excursions to the nearby forests and streams, and studied the
rate of growth of the different species of trees and their age, counting the
annual rings on stumps in the large clearings made by the military when the
fort was occupied, causing wondering speculation among the Wrangell folk, as
was reported by Mr. Vanderbilt.
"What can the fellow be up to?" they inquired.
"He seems to spend most of his time among stumps and weeds. I saw him the
other day on his knees, looking at a stump as if he expected to find gold in
it. He seems to have no serious object whatever."
One night when a heavy rainstorm was blowing I
unwittingly caused a lot of wondering excitement among the whites as well as
the superstitious Indians. Being anxious to see how the Alaska trees behave
in storms and hear the songs they sing, I stole quietly away through the
gray drenching blast to the hill back of the town, without being observed.
Night was falling when I set out and it was pitch dark when I reached the
top. The glad, rejoicing storm in glorious voice was singing through the
woods, noble compensation for mere body discomfort. But I wanted a fire, a
big one, to see as well as hear how the storm and trees were behaving. After
long, patient groping I found a little dry punk in a hollow trunk and
carefully stored it beside my matchbox and an inch or two of candle in an
inside pocket that the rain had not yet reached; then, wiping some dead
twigs and whittling them into thin shavings, stored them with the punk. I
then made a little conical bark hut about a foot high, and, carefully
leaning over it and sheltering it as much as possible from the driving rain,
I wiped and stored a lot of dead twigs, lighted the candle, and set it in
the hut, carefully added pinches of punk and shavings, and at length got a
little blaze, by the light of which I gradually added larger shavings, then
twigs all set on end astride the inner flame, making the little hut higher
and wider. Soon I had light enough to, enable me to select the best dead
branches and large sections of bark, which- were set on end, gradually
increasing the height and corresponding light of the hut fire. A
considerable area was thus well lighted, from which I gathered abundance of
wood, and kept adding to the fire until it had a strong, hot heart and sent
up a pillar of flame thirty or forty feet high, illuminating a wide circle
in spite of the rain, and casting a red glare into the flying clouds. Of all
the thousands of camp-fires I have elsewhere built none was just like this
one, rejoicing in triumphant strength and beauty in the heart of the
rain-laden gale. It was wonderful, - the illumined rain and clouds mingled
together and the trees glowing against the jet background, the colors of the
mossy, lichened trunks with sparkling streams pouring down the furrows of
the bark, and the gray-bearded old patriarchs bowing low and chanting in
passionate worship! My
fire was in all its glory about midnight, and, having made a bark shed to
shelter me from the rain and partially dry my clothing, I had nothing to do
but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns and prayers.
Neither the great white heart
of the fire nor the quivering enthusiastic flames shooting aloft like
auroral lances could be seen from the village on account of the trees in
front of it and its being back a little way over the brow of the hill; but
the light in the clouds made a great show, a portentous sign in the stormy
heavens unlike anything ever before seen or heard of in Wrangell. Some
wakeful Indians, happening to see it about midnight, in great alarm aroused
the Collector of Customs and begged him to go to the missionaries and get
them to pray away the frightful omen, and inquired anxiously whether white
men had ever seen anything like that sky-fire, which instead of being
quenched by the rain was burning brighter and brighter. The Collector said
he had heard of such strange fires, and this one he thought might perhaps be
what the white man called a "volcano, or an ignis fatuus." When Mr. Young
was called from his bed to pray, he, too, confoundedly astonished and at a
loss for any sort of explanation, confessed that he had never seen anything
like it in the sky or anywhere else in such cold wet weather, but that it
was probably some sort of spontaneous combustion "that the white man called
St. Elmo's fire, or Will-of-the-Wisp." These explanations, though not
convincingly clear, perhaps served to veil their own astonishment and in
some measure to diminish the superstitious fears of the natives; but from
what I heard, the few. whites who happened to see the strange light wondered
about as wildly as the Indians.
I have enjoyed thousands of camp-fires in all
sorts of weather and places, warmhearted, short-flamed, friendly little
beauties glowing in the dark on open spots in high Sierra gardens, daisies
and lilies circled about them, gazing like enchanted children; and large
fires in silver fir forests, with spires of flame towering like the trees
about them, and sending up multitudes of starry sparks to enrich the sky;
and still greater fires on the mountains in winter, changing camp climate to
summer, and making the frosty snow look like beds of white flowers, and
oftentimes mingling their swarms of swift-flying sparks with falling
snow-crystals when the clouds were in bloom. But this Wrangell camp-fire, my
first in Alaska, I shall always remember for its triumphant storm-defying
grandeur, and the wondrous beauty of the psalm-singing, lichen-painted trees
which it brought to light. |
