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I NEVER saw Alaska looking
better than it did when we bade farewell to Sum Dum on. August 22 and pushed
on northward up the coast toward Taku. The morning was clear, calm, bright —
not a cloud in all the purple sky, nor wind, however gentle, to shake the
slender spires of the spruces or dew-laden grass around the shores. Over the
mountains and over the broad white bosoms of the glaciers the sunbeams
poured, rosy as ever fell on fields of ripening wheat, drenching the forests
and kindling the glassy waters and icebergs into a perfect blaze of colored
light. Every living thing seemed joyful, and nature's work was going on in
glowing enthusiasm, not less appreciable in the deep repose that brooded
over every feature of the landscape, suggesting the coming fruitfulness of
the icy land and showing the advance that has already been made from glacial
winter to summer. The care-laden commercial lives we lead close our eyes to
the operations of God as a workman, though openly carried on that all who
will look may see. The scarred rocks here and the moraines make a vivid
showing of the old winter-time of the glacial period, and mark the bounds of
the mer-de-glace that once filled the bay and covered the surrounding
mountains. Already that sea of ice is replaced by water, in which multitudes
of fishes are fed, while the hundred glaciers lingering about the bay and
the streams that pour from them are busy night and day bringing in sand and
mud and stones, at the rate of tons every minute, to fill it up. Then, as
the seasons grow warmer, there will be fields here for the plough.
Our Indians, exhilarated by
the sunshine, were garrulous as the gulls and plovers, and pulled heartily
at their oars, evidently glad to get out of the ice with a whole boat.
"Now for Taku," they said, as
we glided over the shining water. "Good-bye, Ice-Mountains; good-bye, Sum
Dum." Soon a light breeze came, and they unfurled the sail and laid away
their oars and began, as usual in such free times, to put their goods in
order, unpacking and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has
an old flintlock musket suggestive of Hudson's Bay times, which he wished to
discharge and reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at. a gull
that was flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell slowly with
outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping from its bill. I
asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed the question by a severe
reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to which he could offer no other excuse
than that he had learned from the whites to be careless about taking life.
Captain Tyeen denounced the deed as likely to bring bad luck.
Before the whites came most
of the Thlinkits held, with Agassiz, that animals have souls, and that it
was wrong and unlucky to even speak disrespectfully of the fishes or any of
the animals that supplied them with food. A case illustrating their
superstitious beliefs in this connection occurred at Fort Wrangell while I
was there the year before. One of the sub-chiefs of the Stickeens had a
little son five or six years old, to whom he was very much attached, always
taking him with him in his short canoe-trips, and leading him by the hand
while going about town. Last summer the boy was taken sick, and gradually
grew weak and thin, whereupon his father became alarmed, and feared, as is
usual in such obscure cases, that the boy had been bewitched. He first
applied in his trouble to Dr. Carliss, one of the missionaries, who gave
medicine, without effecting the immediate cure that the fond father
demanded. He was, to some extent, a believer in the powers of missionaries,
both as to material and spiritual affairs, but in so serious an exigency it
was natural that he should go back to the faith of his fathers. Accordingly,
he sent for one of the shamans, or medicine-men, of his tribe, and submitted
the case to him, who, after going through the customary incantations,
declared that he had discovered the cause of the difficulty.
"Your boy," he said, "has
lost his soul, and this is the way it happened. He was playing among the
stones down on the beach when he saw a crawfish in the water, and made fun
of it, pointing his finger at it and saying, 'Oh, you crooked legs! Oh, you
crooked legs! You can't walk straight; you go sidewise,' which made the crab
so angry that he reached out his long nippers, seized the lad's soul, pulled
it out of him and made off with it into deep water. And," continued the
medicine-man, "unless his stolen soul is restored to him and put back in its
place he will die. Your boy is really dead already; it is only his lonely,
empty body that is living now, and though it may continue to live in this
way for a year or two, the boy will never be of any account, not strong, nor
wise, nor brave."
The father then inquired
whether anything could be done about it; was the soul still in possession of
the crab, and if so, could it be recovered and re-installed in his forlorn
son? Yes, the doctor rather thought it might be charmed back and re-united,
but the job would be a difficult one, and would probably cost about fifteen
blankets.
After we were fairly out of
the bay into Stephens Passage, the wind died away, and the Indians had to
take to their oars again, which ended our talk. On we sped over the silvery
level, close alongshore. The dark forests extending far and near, planted
like a field of wheat, might seem monotonous in general views, but the
appreciative observer, looking closely, will find no lack of interesting
variety, however far he may go. The steep slopes on which they grow allow
almost every individual tree, with its peculiarities of form and color, to
be seen like an audience on seats rising above one another — the blue-green,
sharply-tapered spires of the Menzies spruce, the warm yellow-green Mertens
spruce with their finger-like tops all pointing in the same direction, or
drooping gracefully like leaves of grass, and the airy, feathery,
brownish-green Alaska cedar. The outer fringe of bushes along the shore and
hanging over the cliffs, the white mountains above, the shining water
beneath, the changing sky over all, form pictures of divine beauty in which
no healthy eye may ever grow weary.
Toward evening at the head of
a picturesque bay we came to a village belonging to the Taku tribe. We found
it silent and deserted. Not a single shaman or policeman had been left to
keep it. These people are so happily rich as to have but little of a
perishable kind to keep, nothing worth fretting about. They were away
catching salmon, our Indians said. All the Indian villages hereabout are
thus abandoned at regular periods every year, just as a tent is left for a
day, while they repair to fishing, berrying, and hunting stations, occupying
each in succession for a week or two at a time, coming and going from the
main, substantially built villages. Then, after their summer's work is done,
the winter supply of salmon dried and packed, fish-oil and seal-oil stored
in boxes, berries and spruce bark pressed into cakes, their trading-trips
completed, and the year's stock of quarrels with the neighboring tribe
patched up in some way, they devote themselves to feasting, dancing, and
hootchenoo drinking. The Takus, once a powerful and warlike tribe, were at
this time, like most of the neighboring tribes, whiskied nearly out of
existence. They had a larger village on the Taku River, but, according to
the census taken that year by the missionaries, they numbered only 269 in
all, —109 men, 79 women, and 81 children, figures that show the vanishing
condition of the tribe at a glance.
Our Indians wanted to camp
for the night in one of the deserted houses, but I urged them on into the
clean wilderness until dark, when we landed on a rocky beach fringed with
devil's-clubs, greatly to the disgust of our crew. We had to make the best
of it, however, as it was too dark to seek farther. After supper was
accomplished among the boulders, they retired to the canoe, which they
anchored a little way out, beyond low tide, while Mr. Young and I at the
expense of a good deal of scrambling and panax stinging, discovered a spot
on which we managed to sleep.
The next morning, about two
hours after leaving our thorny camp, we rounded a great mountain rock nearly
a mile in height and entered the Taku fiord. It is about eighteen miles long
and from three to five miles wide, and extends directly back into the heart
of the mountains, draining hundreds of glaciers and streams. The ancient
glacier that formed it was far too deep and broad and too little
concentrated to erode one of those narrow canons, usually so impressive in
sculpture and architecture, but it is all the more interesting on this
account when the grandeur of the ice work accomplished is recognized. This
fiord, more than any other I have examined, explains the formation of the
wonderful system of channels extending along the coast from Puget Sound to
about latitude 59 degrees, for it is a marked portion of the system, — a
branch of Stephens Passage. Its trends and general sculpture are as
distinctly glacial as those of the narrowest fiord, while the largest
tributaries of the great glacier that occupied it are still in existence. I
counted some forty-five altogether, big and little, in sight from the canoe
in sailing up the middle of the fiord. Three of them, drawing their sources
from magnificent groups of snowy mountains, came down to the level of the
sea and formed a glorious spectacle. The middle one of the three belongs to
the first class, pouring its majestic flood, shattered and crevassed,
directly into the fiord, and crowding about twenty-five square miles of it
with bergs. The next below it also sends off bergs occasionally, though a
narrow strip of glacial detritus separates it from the tide-water. That
forenoon a large mass fell from it, damming its draining stream, which at
length broke the dam, and the resulting flood swept forward thousands of
small bergs across the mud-flat into the fiord. In a short time all was
quiet again; the floodwaters receded, leaving only a large blue scar on the
front of the glacier and stranded bergs on the moraine flat to tell the
tale.
These two glaciers are about
equal in size — two miles wide — and their fronts are only about a mile and
a half apart. While I sat sketching them from a point among the drifting
icebergs where I could see far back into the heart of their distant
fountains, two Taku seal-hunters, father and son, came gliding toward us in
an extremely small canoe. Coming alongside with a good natured "Sagh-a-ya,"
they inquired who we were, our objects, etc., and gave us information about
the river, their village, and two other large glaciers that descend nearly
to the sea-level a few miles up the river canon. Crouching in their little
shell of a boat among the great bergs, with paddle and barbed spear, they
formed a picture as arctic and remote from anything to be found in
civilization as ever was sketched for us by the explorers of the Far North.
Making our way through the
crowded bergs to the extreme head of the fiord, we entered the mouth of the
river, but were soon compelled to turn back on account of the strength of
the current. The Taku River is a large stream, nearly a mile wide at the
mouth, and, like the Stickeen, Chilcat, and Chilcoot, draws its sources,
from far inland, crossing the mountain-chain from the interior through a
majestic canon, and draining a multitude of glaciers on its way.
The Taku Indians, like the
Chilcats, with a keen appreciation of the advantages of their position for
trade, hold possession of the river and compel the Indians of the interior
to accept their services as middle-men, instead of allowing them to trade
directly with the whites.
When we were baffled in our
attempt to ascend the river, the day was nearly done, and we began to seek a
camp-ground. After sailing two or three miles along the left side of the
fiord, we were so fortunate as to find a small nook described by the two
Indians, where firewood was abundant, and where we could drag our canoe up
the bank beyond reach of the berg-waves. Here we were safe, with a fine
outlook across the fiord to the great glaciers and near enough to see the
birth of the icebergs and the wonderful commotion they make, and hear their
wild, roaring rejoicing. The sunset sky seemed to have been painted for this
one mountain mansion, fitting it like a ceiling. After the fiord was in
shadow the level sunbeams continued to pour through the miles of bergs with
ravishing beauty, reflecting and refracting the purple light like cut
crystal. Then all save the tips of the highest became dead white. These,
too, were speedily quenched, the glowing points vanishing like stars sinking
beneath the horizon. And after the shadows had crept higher, submerging the
glaciers and the ridges between them, the divine alpenglow still lingered on
their highest fountain peaks as they stood transfigured in glorious array.
Now the last of the twilight purple has vanished, the stars begin to shine,
and all trace of the day is gone. Looking across the fiord the water seems
perfectly black, and the two great glaciers are seen stretching dim and
ghostly into the shadowy mountains now darkly massed against the starry sky.
Next morning it was raining
hard, everything looked dismal, and on the way down the fiord a growling
head wind battered the rain in our faces, but we held doggedly on and by 10
A.M. got out of the fiord into Stephens Passage. A breeze sprung up in our
favor that swept us bravely on across the passage and around the end of
Admiralty Island by dark. We camped in a boggy hollow on a bluff among
scraggy, usnea-bearded spruces. The rain, bitterly cold and driven by a
stormy wind, thrashed us well while we floundered in the stumpy bog trying
to make a fire and supper.
When daylight came we found
our campground a very savage place. How we reached it and established
ourselves in the thick darkness it would be difficult to tell. We crept
along the shore a few miles against strong head winds, then hoisted sail and
steered straight across Lynn Canal to the mainland, which we followed
without great difficulty, the wind having moderated toward evening. Near the
entrance to Icy Strait we met a Hoona who had seen us last year and who
seemed glad to see us. He gave us two salmon, and we made him happy with
tobacco and then pushed on and camped near Sitka Jack's deserted village.
Though the wind was still
ahead next morning, we made about twenty miles before sundown and camped on
the west end of Farewell Island. We bumped against a hidden rock and sprung
a small leak that was easily stopped with resin. The salmon-berries were
ripe. While climbing a bluff for a view of our course, I discovered moneses,
one of my favorites, and saw many well-traveled deer-trails, though the
island is cut off from the mainland and other islands by at least five or
six miles of icy, berg-encumbered water.
We got under way early next
day, — a gray, cloudy morning with rain and wind. Fair and head winds were
about evenly balanced throughout the day. Tides run fast here, like great
rivers. We rowed and paddled around Point Wimbledon against both wind and
tide, creeping close to the feet of the huge, bold rocks of the north wall
of Cross Sound, which here were very steep and awe-inspiring as the heavy
swells from the open sea coming in past Cape Spencer dashed white against
them, tossing our frail canoe up and down lightly as a feather. The point
reached by vegetation shows that the surf dashes up to a height of about
seventy-five or a hundred feet. We were awe-stricken and began to fear that
we might be upset should the ocean waves rise still higher. But little
Stickeen seemed to enjoy the storm, and gazed at the foam-wreathed cliffs
like a dreamy, comfortable tourist admiring a sunset. We reached the mouth
of Taylor Bay about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, when we had a
view of the open ocean before we entered the bay. Many large bergs from
Glacier Bay were seen drifting out to sea past Cape Spencer. We reached the
head of the fiord now called Taylor Bay at five o'clock and camped near an
immense glacier with a front about three miles wide stretching across from
wall to wall. No icebergs are discharged from it, as it is separated from
the water of the fiord at high tide by a low, smooth mass of outspread,
overswept moraine material, netted with torrents and small shallow rills
from the glacier-front, with here and there a lakelet, and patches of yellow
mosses and garden spots bright with epilobium, saxifrage, grass-tufts,
sedges, and creeping willows on the higher ground. But only the mosses were
sufficiently abundant to make conspicuous masses of color to relieve the
dull slaty gray of the glacial mud and gravel. The front of the glacier,
like all those which do not discharge icebergs, is rounded like a brow,
smooth looking in general views, but cleft and furrowed, nevertheless, with
chasms and grooves in which the light glows and shimmers in glorious beauty.
The granite walls of the fiord, though very high, are not deeply sculptured.
Only a few deep side canons with trees, bushes, grassy and flowery spots
interrupt their massive simplicity, leaving but few of the cliffs absolutely
sheer and bare like those of Yosemite, Sum Dum, or Taku. One of the side
canons is on the left side of the fiord, the other on the right, the
tributaries of the former leading over by a narrow tide-channel to the bay
next to the eastward, and by a short portage over into a lake into which
pours a branch glacier from the great glacier. Still another branch from the
main glacier turns to the right. Counting all three of these separate
fronts, the width of this great Taylor Bay Glacier must be about seven or
eight miles.
While camp was being made,
Hunter Joe climbed the eastern wall in search of wild mutton, but found
none. He fell in with a brown bear, however, and got a shot at it, but
nothing more. Mr. Young and I crossed the moraine slope, splashing through
pools and streams up to the ice-wall, and made the interesting discovery
that the glacier had been advancing of late years, ploughing up and shoving
forward moraine soil that had been deposited long ago, and overwhelming and
grinding and carrying away the forests on the sides and front of the
glacier. Though not now sending off icebergs, the front is probably far
below sea-level at the bottom, thrust forward beneath its wave-washed
moraine.
Along the base of the
mountain-wall we found abundance of salmon-berries, the largest measuring an
inch and a half in diameter. Strawberries, too, are found hereabouts. Some
which visiting Indians brought us were as fine in size and color and flavor
as any I ever saw anywhere. After wandering and wondering an hour or two,
admiring the magnificent rock and crystal scenery about us, we returned to
camp at sundown, planning a grand excursion for the morrow.
I set off early the morning
of August 30 before any one else in camp had stirred, not waiting for
breakfast, but only eating a piece of bread. I had intended getting a cup of
coffee, but a wild storm was blowing and calling, and I could not wait.
Running out against the rain-laden gale and turning to catch my breath, I
saw that the minister's little dog had left his bed in the tent and was
coming boring through the storm, evidently determined to follow me. I told
him to go back, that such a day as this had nothing for him.
"Go back," I shouted, "and
get your breakfast." But he simply stood with his head down, and when I
began to urge my way again, looking around, I saw he was still following me.
So I at last told him to come on if he must and gave him a piece of the
bread I had in my pocket.
Instead of falling, the rain,
mixed with misty shreds of clouds, was flying in level sheets, and the wind
was roaring as I had never heard wind roar before. Over the icy levels and
over the woods, on the mountains, over the jagged rocks and spires and
chasms of the glacier it boomed and moaned and roared, filling the fiord in
even, gray, structureless gloom, inspiring and awful. I first struggled up
in the face of the blast to the east end of the ice-wall, where a patch of
forest had been carried away by the glacier when it was advancing. I noticed
a few stumps well out on the moraine flat, showing that its present bare,
raw condition was not the condition of fifty or a hundred years ago. In
front of this part of the glacier there is a small moraine lake about half a
mile in length, around the margin of which are a considerable number of
trees standing knee-deep, and of course dead. This also is a result of the
recent advance of the ice.
Pushing up through the ragged
edge of the woods on the left margin of the glacier, the storm seemed to
increase in violence, so that it was difficult to draw breath in facing it;
therefore I took shelter back of a tree to enjoy it and wait, hoping that it
would at last somewhat abate. Here the glacier, descending over an abrupt
rock, falls forward in grand cascades, while a stream swollen by the rain
was now a torrent, — wind, rain, ice-torrent, and water-torrent in one grand
symphony.
At length the storm seemed to
abate somewhat, and I took off my heavy rubber boots, with which I had waded
the glacial streams on the flat, and laid them with my overcoat on a log,
where I might find them on my way back, knowing I would be drenched anyhow,
and firmly tied my mountain shoes, tightened my belt, shouldered my ice-axe,
and, thus free and ready for rough work, pushed on, regardless as possible
of mere rain. Making my way up a steep granite slope, its projecting
polished bosses encumbered here and there by boulders and the ground and
bruised ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been uprooted by the
glacier during its recent advance, I traced the side of the glacier for two
or three miles, finding everywhere evidence of its having encroached on the
woods, which here run back along its edge for fifteen or twenty miles. Under
the projecting edge of this vast ice-river I could see down beneath it to a
depth of fifty feet or so in some places, where logs and branches were being
crushed to pulp, some of it almost fine enough for paper, though most of it
stringy and coarse.
After thus tracing the margin
of the glacier for three or four miles, I chopped steps and climbed to the
top, and as far as the eye could reach, the nearly level glacier stretched
indefinitely away in the gray cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now
almost moderate, though rain continued to fall, which I did not mind, but a
tendency to mist in the drooping draggled clouds made me hesitate about
attempting to cross to the opposite shore. Although the distance was only
six or seven miles, no traces at this time could be seen of the mountains on
the other side, and in case the sky should grow darker, as it seemed
inclined to do, I feared that when I got out of sight of land and perhaps
into a maze of crevasses I might find difficulty in winning a way back.
Lingering a while and
sauntering about in sight of the shore, I found this eastern side of the
glacier remarkably free from large crevasses. Nearly all I met were so
narrow I could step across them almost anywhere, while the few wide ones
were easily avoided by going up or down along their sides to where they
narrowed. The dismal cloud ceiling showed rifts here and there, and, thus
encouraged, I struck out for the west shore, aiming to strike it five or six
miles above the front wall, cautiously taking compass bearings at short
intervals to enable me to find my way back should the weather darken again
with mist or rain or snow. The structure lines of the glacier itself were,
however, my main guide. All went well. I came to a deeply furrowed section
about two miles in width where I had to zigzag in long, tedious tacks and
make narrow doublings, tracing the edges of wide longitudinal furrows and
chasms until I could find a bridge connecting their sides, oftentimes making
the direct distance ten times over. The walking was good of its kind,
however, and by dint of patient doubling and axe-work on dangerous places, I
gained the opposite shore in about three hours, the width of the glacier at
this point being about seven miles. Occasionally, while making my way, the
clouds lifted a little, revealing a few bald, rough mountains sunk to the
throat in the broad, icy sea which encompassed them on all sides, sweeping
on forever and forever as we count time, wearing them away, giving them the
shape they are destined to take when in the fullness of time they shall be
parts of new landscapes.
Ere I lost sight of the
east-side mountains, those on the west came in sight, so that holding my
course was easy, and, though making haste, I halted for a moment to gaze
down into the beautiful pure blue crevasses and to drink at the lovely blue
wells, the most beautiful of all Nature's water-basins, or at the rills and
streams outspread over the ice-land prairie, never ceasing to admire their
lovely color and music as they glided and swirled in their blue crystal
channels and potholes, and the rumbling of the moulins, or mills, where
streams poured into blue-walled pits of unknown depth, some of them as
regularly circular as if bored with augers. Interesting, too, were the
cascades over blue cliffs, where streams fell into crevasses or slid almost
noiselessly down slopes so smooth and frictionless their motion was
concealed. The round or oval wells, however, from one to ten feet wide, and
from one to twenty or thirty feet deep, were perhaps the most beautiful of
all, the water so pure as to be almost invisible. My widest views did not
probably exceed fifteen miles, the rain and mist making distances seem
greater.
On reaching the farther shore
and tracing it a few miles to northward, I found a large portion of the
glacier-current sweeping out westward in a bold and beautiful curve around
the shoulder of a mountain as if going direct to the open sea. Leaving the
main trunk, it breaks into a magnificent uproar of pinnacles and spires and
up-heaving, splashing wave-shaped masses, a crystal cataract incomparably
greater and wilder than a score of Niagaras.
Tracing its channel three or
four miles, I found that it fell into a lake, which it fills with bergs. The
front of this branch of the glacier is about three miles wide. I first took
the lake to be the head of an arm of the sea, but, going down to its shore
and tasting it, I found it fresh, and by my aneroid perhaps less than a
hundred feet above sea-level. It is probably separated from the sea only by
a moraine dam. I had not time to go around its shores, as it was now near
five o'clock and I was about fifteen miles from camp, and I had to make
haste to recross the glacier before dark, which would come on about eight
o'clock. I therefore made haste up to the main glacier, and, shaping my
course by compass and the structure lines of the ice, set off from the land
out on to the grand crystal prairie again. All was so silent and so
concentered, owing to the low dragging mist, the beauty close about me was
all the more keenly felt, though tinged with a dim sense of danger, as if
coming events were casting shadows. I was soon out of sight of land, and the
evening dusk that on cloudy days precedes the real night gloom came stealing
on and only ice was in sight, and the only sounds, save the low rumbling of
the mills and the rattle of falling stones at long intervals, were the low,
terribly earnest moanings of the wind or distant waterfalls coming through
the thickening gloom. After two hours of hard work I came to a maze of
crevasses of appalling depth and width which could not be passed apparently
either up or down. I traced them with firm nerve developed by the danger,
making wide jumps, poising cautiously on dizzy edges after cutting
footholds, taking wide crevasses at a grand leap at once frightful and
inspiring. Many a mile was thus traveled, mostly up and down the glacier,
making but little real headway, running much of the time as the danger of
having to pass the night on the ice became more and more imminent. This I
could do, though with the weather and my rain-soaked condition it would be
trying at best. In treading the mazes of this crevassed section I had
frequently to cross bridges that were only knife-edges for twenty or thirty
feet, cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little
Stickeen could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the top as I
progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a rail fence. All
this time the little dog followed me bravely, never hesitating on the brink
of any crevasse that I had jumped, but now that it was becoming dark and the
crevasses became more troublesome, he followed close at my heels instead of
scampering far and wide, where the ice was at all smooth, as he had in the
forenoon. No land was now in sight. The mist fell lower and darker and snow
began to fly. I could not see far enough up and down the glacier to judge
how best to work out of the bewildering labyrinth, and how hard I tried
while there was yet hope of reaching camp that night! a hope which was fast
growing dim like the sky. After dark, on such ground, to keep from freezing,
I could only jump up and down until morning on a piece of flat ice between
the crevasses, dance to the boding music of the winds and waters, and as I
was already tired and hungry I would be in bad condition for such ice work.
Many times I was put to my mettle, but with a firmbraced nerve, all the more
unflinching as the dangers thickened, I worked out of that terrible ice-web,
and with blood fairly up Stickeen and I ran over common danger without
fatigue. Our very hardest trial was in getting across the very last of the
sliver bridges. After examining the first of the two widest crevasses, I
followed its edge half a mile or so up and down and discovered that its
narrowest spot was about eight feet wide, which was the limit of what I was
able to jump. Moreover, the side I was on - that is, the west side — was
about a foot higher than the other, and I feared that in case I should be
stopped by a still wider impassable crevasse ahead that I would hardly be
able to take back that jump from its lower side. The ice beyond, however, as
far as I could see it, looked temptingly smooth. Therefore, after carefully
making a socket for my foot on the rounded brink, I jumped, but found that I
had nothing to spare and more than ever dreaded having to retrace my way.
Little Stickeen jumped this, however, without apparently taking a second
look at it, and we ran ahead joyfully over smooth, level ice, hoping we were
now leaving all danger behind us. But hardly had we gone a hundred or two
yards when to our dismay we found ourselves on the very widest of all the
longitudinal crevasses we had yet encountered. It was about forty feet wide.
I ran anxiously up the side of it to northward, eagerly hoping that I could
get around its head, but my worst fears were realized when at a distance of
about a mile or less it ran into the crevasse that I had just jumped. I then
ran down the edge for a mile or more below the point where I had first met
it, and found that its lower end also united with the crevasse I had jumped,
showing dismally that we were on an island two or three hundred yards wide
and about two miles long and the only way of escape from this island was by
turning back and jumping again that crevasse which I dreaded, or venturing
ahead across the giant crevasse by the very worst of the sliver bridges I
had ever seen. It was so badly weathered and melted down that it formed a
knife-edge, and extended across from side to side in a low, drooping curve
like that made by a loose rope attached at each end at the same height. But
the worst difficulty was that the ends of the down-curving sliver were
attached to the sides at a depth of about eight or ten feet below the
surface of the glacier. Getting down to the end of the bridge, and then
after crossing it getting up the other side, seemed hardly possible.
However, I decided to dare the dangers of the fearful sliver rather than to
attempt to retrace my steps. Accordingly I dug a low groove in the rounded
edge for my knees to rest in and, leaning over, began to cut a narrow
foothold on the steep, smooth side. When I was doing this, Stickeen came up
behind me, pushed his head over my shoulder, looked into the crevasses and
along the narrow knife-edge, then turned and looked in my face, muttering
and whining as if trying to say, "Surely you are not going down there." I
said, "Yes, Stickeen, this is the only way." He then began to cry and ran
wildly along the rim of the crevasse, searching for a better way, then,
returning baffled, of course, he came behind me and lay down and cried
louder and louder.
After getting down one step I
cautiously stooped and cut another and another in succession until I reached
the point where the sliver was attached to the wall. There, cautiously
balancing, I chipped down the upcurved end of the bridge until I had formed
a small level platform about a foot wide, then, bending forward, got astride
of the end of the sliver, steadied myself with my knees, then cut off the
top of the sliver, hitching myself forward an inch or two at a time, leaving
it about four inches wide for Stickeen. Arrived at the farther end of the
sliver, which was about seventy-five feet long, I chipped another little
platform on its upcurved end, cautiously rose to my feet, and with infinite
pains cut narrow notch steps and finger-holds in the wall and finally got
safely across. All this dreadful time poor little Stickeen was crying as if
his heart was broken, and when I called to him in as reassuring a voice as I
could muster, he only cried the louder, as if trying to say that he never,
never could get down there — the only time that the brave little fellow
appeared to know what danger was. After going away as if I was leaving him,
he still howled and cried without venturing to try to follow me. Returning
to the edge of the crevasse, I told him that I must go, that he could come
if he only tried, and finally in despair he hushed his cries, slid his
little feet slowly down into my footsteps out on the big sliver, walked
slowly and cautiously along the sliver as if holding his breath, while the
snow was falling and the wind was moaning and threatening to blow him off.
When he arrived at the foot of the slope below me, I was kneeling on the
brink ready to assist him in case he should be unable to reach the top. He
looked up along the row of notched steps I had made, as if fixing them in
his mind, then with a nervous spring he whizzed up and passed me out onto
the level ice, and ran and cried and barked and rolled about fairly
hysterical in the sudden revulsion from the depth of despair to triumphant
joy. I tried to catch him and pet him and tell him how good and brave he
was, but he would not be caught. He ran round and round, swirling like
autumn leaves in an eddy, lay down and rolled head over heels. I told him we
still had far to go and that we must now stop all nonsense and get off the
ice before dark. I knew by the ice-lines that every step was now taking me
nearer the shore and soon it came in sight. The headland four or five miles
back from the front, covered with spruce trees, loomed faintly but surely
through the mist and light fall of snow not more than two miles away. The
ice now proved good all the way across, and we reached the lateral moraine
just at dusk, then with trembling limbs, now that the danger was over, we
staggered and stumbled down the bouldery edge of the glacier and got over
the dangerous rocks by the cascades while yet a faint light lingered. We
were safe, and then, too, came limp weariness such as no ordinary work ever
produces, however hard it may be. Wearily we stumbled down through the
woods, over logs and brush and roots, devil's-clubs pricking us at every
faint blundering tumble. At last we got out on the smooth mud slope with
only a mile of slow but sure dragging of weary limbs to camp. The Indians
had been firing guns to guide me and had a fine supper and fire ready,
though fearing they would be compelled to seek us in the morning, a care not
often applied to me. Stickeen and I were too tired to eat much, and, strange
to say, too tired to sleep. Both of us, springing up in the night again and
again, fancied we were still on that dreadful ice bridge in the shadow of
death.
Nevertheless, we arose next
morning in newness of life. Never before had rocks and ice and trees seemed
so beautiful and wonderful, even the cold, biting rainstorm that was blowing
seemed full of loving-kindness, wonderful compensation for all that we had
endured, and we sailed down the bay through the gray, driving rain
rejoicing. |
