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WHILE Stickeen and I were
away, a Hoona, one of the head men of the tribe, paid Mr. Young a visit, and
presented him with porpoise meat and berries and much interesting
information. He naturally expected a return visit, and when we called at his
house, a mile or two down the fiord, he said his wives were out in the rain
gathering fresh berries to complete a feast prepared for us. We remained,
however, only a few minutes, for I was not aware of this arrangement or of
Mr. Young's promise until after leaving the house. Anxiety to get around
Cape Wimbelton was the cause of my haste, fearing the storm might increase.
On account of this ignorance, no apologies were offered him, and the upshot
was that the good Hoona became very angry. We succeeded, however, in the
evening of the same day, in explaining our haste, and by sincere apologies
and presents made peace.
After a hard struggle we got
around stormy Wimbelton and into the next fiord to the northward (Klunastucksana
— Dundas Bay). A cold, drenching rain was falling, darkening but not
altogether hiding its extraordinary beauty, made up of lovely reaches and
side fiords, feathery headlands and islands, beautiful every one and
charmingly collocated. But how it rained, and how cold it was, and how weary
we were pulling most of the time against the wind! The branches of this bay
are so deep and so numerous that, with the rain and low clouds concealing
the mountain landmarks, we could hardly make out the main trends. While
groping and gazing among the islands through the misty rain and clouds, we
discovered wisps of smoke at the foot of a sheltering rock in front of a
mountain, where a choir of cascades were chanting their rain songs. Gladly
we made for this camp, which proved to belong to a rare old Hoona sub-chief,
so tall and wide and dignified in demeanor he looked grand even in the
sloppy weather, and every inch a chief in spite of his bare legs and the old
shirt and draggled, ragged blanket in which he was dressed. He was given to
much hand-shaking, gripping hard, holding on and looking you gravely in the
face while most emphatically speaking in Thlinkit, not a word of which we
understood until interpreter John came to our help. He turned from one to
the other of us, declaring, as John interpreted, that our presence did him
good like food and fire, that he would welcome white men, especially
teachers, and that he and all his people compared to ourselves were only
children. When Mr. Young informed him that a missionary was about to be sent
to his people, he said he would call them all together four times and
explain that a teacher and preacher were coming and that they therefore must
put away all foolishness and prepare their hearts to receive them and their
words. He then introduced his three children, one a naked lad five or six
years old who, as he fondly assured us, would soon be a chief, and later to
his wife, an intelligent-looking woman of whom he seemed proud. When we
arrived she was out at the foot of the cascade mountain gathering
salmon-berries. She came in dripping and loaded. A few of the fine berries
saved for the children she presented, proudly and fondly beginning with the
youngest, whose only clothing was a nose-ring and a string of beads. She was
lightly appareled in a cotton gown and bit of blanket, thoroughly
bedraggled, but after unloading her berries she retired, with a dry calico
gown, around the corner of a rock and soon returned fresh as a daisy and
with becoming dignity took her place by the fireside. Soon two other
berry-laden women came in, seemingly enjoying the rain like the bushes and
trees. They put on little clothing so that they may be the more easily
dried, and as for the children, a thin shirt of sheeting is the most they
encumber themselves with, and get wet and half dry without seeming to notice
it while we shiver with two or three dry coats. They seem to prefer being
naked. The men also wear but little in wet weather. When they go out for all
day they put on a single blanket, but in choring around camp, getting
firewood, cooking, or looking after their precious canvas, they seldom wear
anything, braving wind and rain in utter nakedness to avoid the bother of
drying clothes. It is a rare sight to see the children bringing in big
chunks of firewood on their shoulders, balancing in crossing boulders with
firmly set bow-legs and bulging back muscles.
We gave Ka-hood-oo-shough,
the old chief, some tobacco and rice and coffee, and pitched our tent near
his hut among tall grass. Soon after our arrival the Taylor Bay sub-chief
came in from the opposite direction from ours, telling us that he came
through a cut-off passage not on our chart. As stated above, we took pains
to conciliate him and soothe his hurt feelings. Our words and gifts, he
said, had warmed his sore heart and made him glad and comfortable.
The view down the bay among
the islands was, I thought, the finest of this kind of scenery that I had
yet observed.
The weather continued cold
and rainy. Nevertheless Mr. Young and I and our crew, together with one of
the Hoonas, an old man who acted as guide, left camp to explore one of the
upper arms of the bay, where we were told there was a large glacier. We
managed to push the canoe several miles up the stream that drains the
glacier to a point where the swift current was divided among rocks and the
banks were overhung with alders and willows. I left the canoe and pushed up
the right bank past a magnificent waterfall some twelve hundred feet high,
and over the shoulder of a mountain, until I secured a good view of the
lower part of the glacier. It is probably a lobe of the Taylor Bay or Brady
Glacier.
On our return to camp,
thoroughly drenched and cold, the old chief came to visit us, apparently as
wet and cold as ourselves.
"I have been thinking of you,
all day," he said, "and pitying you, knowing how miserable you were, and as
soon as I saw your canoe coming back I was ashamed to think that I had been
sitting warm and dry at my fire while you were out in the storm; therefore I
made haste to strip off my dry clothing and put on these wet rags to share
your misery and show how much I love you."
I had another long talk with
Ka-hood-ooshough the next day.
"I am not able," he said, "to
tell you how much good your words have done me. Your words are good, and
they are strong words. Some of my people are foolish, and when they make
their salmon-traps they do not take care to tie the poles firmly together,
and when the big rain-floods come the traps break and are washed away
because the people who made them are foolish people. But your words are
strong words and when storms come to try them they will stand the storms."
There was much hand-shaking
as we took our leave and assurances of eternal friendship. The grand old man
stood on the shore watching us and waving farewell until we were out of
sight.
We now steered for the Muir
Glacier and arrived at the front on the east side the evening of the third,
and camped on the end of the moraine, where there was a small stream.
Captain Tyeen was inclined to keep at a safe distance from the tremendous
threatening cliffs of the discharging wall. After a good deal of urging he
ventured within half a mile of them, on the east side of the fiord, where
with Mr. Young, I went ashore to seek a camp-ground on the moraine, leaving
the Indians in the canoe. In a few minutes after we landed a huge berg
sprung aloft with awful commotion, and the frightened Indians incontinently
fled down the fiord, plying their paddles with admirable energy in the
tossing waves until a safe harbor was reached around the south end of the
moraine. I found a good place for a camp in a slight hollow where a few
spruce stumps afforded firewood. But all efforts to get Tyeen out of his
harbor failed. "Nobody knew," he said, "how far the angry ice mountain could
throw waves to break his canoe." Therefore I had my bedding and some
provisions carried to my stump camp, where I could watch the bergs as they
were discharged and get night views of the brow of the glacier and its sheer
jagged face all the way across from side to side of the channel. One night
the water was luminous and the surge from discharging icebergs churned the
water into silver fire, a glorious sight in the darkness. I also went back
up the east side of the glacier five or six miles and ascended a mountain
between its first two eastern tributaries, which, though covered with grass
near the top, was exceedingly steep and difficult. A bulging ridge near the
top I discovered was formed of ice, a remnant of the glacier when it stood
at this elevation which had been preserved by moraine material and later by
a thatch of dwarf bushes and grass.
Next morning at daybreak I
pushed eagerly back over the comparatively smooth eastern margin of the
glacier to see as much as possible of the upper fountain region. About five
miles back from the front I climbed a mountain twenty-five hundred feet
high, from the flowery summit of which, the day being clear, the vast
glacier and its principal branches were displayed in one magnificent view.
Instead of a stream of ice winding down a mountain-walled valley like the
largest of the Swiss glaciers, the Muir looks like a broad undulating
prairie streaked with medial moraines and gashed with crevasses, surrounded
by numberless mountains from which flow its many tributary glaciers. There
are seven main tributaries from ten to twenty miles long and from two to six
miles wide where they enter the trunk, each of them fed by many secondary
tributaries; so that the whole number of branches, great and small, pouring
from the mountain fountains perhaps number upward of two hundred, not
counting the smallest. The area drained by this one grand glacier can hardly
be less than seven or eight hundred miles, and probably contains as much ice
as all the eleven hundred Swiss glaciers combined. Its length from the
frontal wall back to the head of its farthest fountain seemed to be about
forty or fifty miles, and the width just below the confluence of the main
tributaries about twenty-five miles. Though apparently motionless as the
mountains, it flows on forever, the speed varying in every part with the
seasons, but mostly with the depth of the current, and the declivity,
smoothness and directness of the different portions of the basin. The flow
of the central cascading portion near the front, as determined by Professor
Reid, is at the rate of from two and a half to five inches an hour, or from
five to ten feet a day. A strip of the main trunk about a mile in width,
extending along the eastern margin about fourteen miles to a lake filled
with bergs, has so little motion and is so little interrupted by crevasses,
a hundred horsemen might ride abreast over it without encountering very much
difficulty.
But far the greater portion
of the vast expanse looking smooth in the distance is torn and crumpled into
a bewildering network of hummocky ridges and blades, separated by yawning
gulfs and crevasses, so that the explorer, crossing it from shore to shore,
must always have a hard time. In hollow spots here and there in the heart of
the icy wilderness are small lakelets fed by swift-glancing streams that
flow without friction in blue, shining channels, making delightful melody,
singing and ringing in silvery tones of peculiar sweetness, radiant crystals
like flowers ineffably fine growing in dazzling beauty along their banks.
Few, however, will be likely to enjoy them. Fortunately to most travelers
the thundering ice-wall, while comfortably accessible, is also the most
strikingly interesting portion of the glacier.
The mountains about the great
glacier were also seen from this standpoint in exceedingly grand and telling
views, ranged and grouped in glorious array. Along the valleys of the main
tributaries to the northwestward I saw far into their shadowy depths, one
noble peak in its snowy robes appearing beyond another in fine perspective.
One of the most remarkable of them, fashioned like a superb crown with
delicately fluted sides, stands in the middle of the second main tributary,
counting from left to right. To the westward the magnificent Fairweather
Range is displayed in all its glory, lifting its peaks and glaciers into the
blue sky. Mt. Fairweather, though not the highest, is the noblest and most
majestic in port and architecture of all the sky-dwelling company. La
Perouse, at the south end of the range, is also a magnificent mountain,
symmetrically peaked and sculptured, and wears its robes of snow and
glaciers in noble style. Lituya, as seen from here, is an immense tower,
severely plain and massive. It makes a fine and terrible and lonely
impression. Crillon, though the loftiest of all (being nearly sixteen
thousand feet high), presents no well-marked features. Its ponderous
glaciers have ground it away into long, curling ridges until, from this
point of view, it resembles a huge, twisted shell. The lower summits about
the Muir Glacier, like this one, the first that I climbed, are richly
adorned and enlivened with flowers, though they make but a faint show in
general views. Lines and dashes of bright green appear on the lower slopes
as one approaches them from the glacier, and a fainter green tinge may be
noticed on the subordinate summits at a height of two thousand or three
thousand feet. The lower are mostly alder bushes and the topmost a lavish
profusion of flowering plants, chiefly cassiope, vaccinium, pyrola,
erigeron, gentiana, campanula, anemone, larkspur, and columbine, with a few
grasses and ferns. Of these cassiope is at once the commonest and the most
beautiful and influential. In some places its delicate stems make mattresses
more than a foot thick over several acres, while the bloom is so abundant
that a single handful plucked at random contains hundreds of its pale pink
bells. The very thought of this Alaska garden is a joyful exhilaration.
Though the storm-beaten ground it is growing on is nearly half a mile high,
the glacier centuries ago flowed over it as a river flows over a boulder;
but out of all the cold darkness and glacial crushing and grinding comes
this warm, abounding beauty and life to teach us that what we in our
faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation finer and finer.
When night was approaching I
scrambled down out of my blessed garden to the glacier, and returned to my
lonely camp, and, getting some coffee and bread, again went up the moraine
to the east end of the great ice-wall. It is about three miles long, but the
length of the jagged, berg-producing portion that stretches across the fiord
from side to side like a huge green-and-blue barrier is only about two miles
and rises above the water to a height of from two hundred and fifty to three
hundred feet. Soundings made by Captain Carroll show that seven hundred and
twenty feet of the wall is below the surface, and a third unmeasured portion
is buried beneath the moraine detritus deposited at the foot of it.
Therefore, were the water and rocky detritus cleared away, a sheer precipice
of ice would be presented nearly two miles long and more than a thousand
feet high. Seen from a distance, as you come up the fiord, it seems
comparatively regular in form, but it is far otherwise; bold, jagged capes
jut forward into the fiord, alternating with deep reentering angles and
craggy hollows with plain bastions, while the top is roughened with
innumerable spires and pyramids and sharp hacked blades leaning and toppling
or cutting straight into the sky.
The number of bergs given off
varies somewhat with the weather and the tides, the average being about one
every five or six minutes, counting only those that roar loud enough to make
themselves heard at a distance of two or three miles. The very largest,
however, may under favorable conditions be heard ten miles or even farther.
When a large mass sinks from the upper fissured portion of the wall, there
is first a keen, prolonged, thundering roar, which slowly subsides into a
low, muttering growl, followed by numerous smaller grating, clashing sounds
from the agitated bergs that dance in the waves about the newcomer as if in
welcome; and these again are followed by the swash and roar of the waves
that are raised and hurled up the beach against the moraines. But the
largest and most beautiful of the bergs, instead of thus falling from the
upper weathered portion of the wall, rise from the submerged portion with a
still grander commotion, springing with tremendous voice and gestures nearly
to the top of the wall, tons of water streaming like hair down their sides,
plunging and rising again and again before they finally settle in perfect
poise, free at last, after having formed part of the slow-crawling glacier
for centuries. And as we contemplate their history, as they sail calmly away
down the fiord to the sea, how wonderful it seems that ice formed from
pressed snow on the far-off mountains two or three hundred years ago should
still be pure and lovely in color after all its travel and toil in the rough
mountain quarries, grinding and fashioning the features of predestined
landscapes.
When sunshine is sifting
through the midst of the multitude of icebergs that fill the fiord and
through the jets of radiant spray ever rising from the tremendous dashing
and splashing of the falling and upspringing bergs, the effect is
indescribably glorious. Glorious, too, are the shows they make in the night
when the moon and stars are shining. The berg-thunder seems far louder than
by day, and the projecting buttresses seem higher as they stand forward in
the pale light, relieved by gloomy hollows, while the newborn bergs are
dimly seen, crowned with faint lunar rainbows in the up-dashing spray. But
it is in the darkest nights when storms are blowing and the waves are
phosphorescent that the most impressive displays are made. Then the long
range of ice-bluffs is plainly seen stretching through the gloom in weird,
unearthly splendor, luminous wave foam dashing against every bluff and
drifting berg; and ever and anon amid all this wild auroral splendor some
huge newborn berg dashes the living water into yet brighter foam, and the
streaming torrents pouring from its sides are worn as robes of light, while
they roar in awful accord with the winds and waves, deep calling unto deep,
glacier to glacier, from fiord to fiord over all the wonderful bay.
After spending a few days
here, we struck across to the main Hoona village on the south side of Icy
Strait, thence by a long cut-off with one short portage to Chatham Strait,
and thence down through Peril Strait, sailing all night, hoping to catch the
mail steamer at Sitka. We arrived at the head of the strait about daybreak.
The tide was falling, and rushing down with the swift current as if
descending a majestic cataract was a memorable experience. We reached Sitka
the same night, and there I paid and discharged my crew, making allowance
for a couple of days or so for the journey back home to Fort Wrangell, while
I boarded the steamer for Portland and thus ended my explorations for this
season. |
