Alaska, its southern coast and the Sitkan archipelago

Front matter

t

HB

Lothrop's Historical Library.

Preface

These chapters are mainly a republication of the series of letters appearing in the columns of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat dnr'ing the summer of 1883, and in the St. Loitis Globe-Democrat and the New York Times during the summer of 1884. To readers f those journals, and to many exchange editors, who >;ave further circulation to the letters, they may carry niliar echoes. The only excuse for offering them in this permanent form is the wish that the comparatively unknown territory, with its matchless scenery and many attractions, may be better known, and a hope that those who visit it may find in this book information that will add to their interest and enjoyment of the trip.

In rearranging the original letters many errors have been corrected and new material incorporated. During brief summer visits it was impossible to make any serious study, solve the mysteries of the native people, or give other than fleeting sketches of their out-door life and daily customs. Elaborate resumes of the writings of Baron Wrangell and Bishop Veniaminoff have been given by Professor Dall in his work on "The Resources of Alaska," and by Ivan Petroff in the Census Report of 1880 (Vol. IX.), and have

iii

IV PREFACE.

since been so often and so generally quoted as hardly to demand another introduction to those interested in ethnology. Such mention as I have made of the traditions and customs of the Thlinkets is condensed from many deck and table talks, and from conversations with teachers, traders, miners, and government officers in Alaska. Wherever possible, credit has been given to the original sources of information, and the ''Pacific Coast Pilot" of 1883 and other government publications have been freely consulted. The nomenclature and spelling of the " Coast Pilot " have been followed, although to its exactness and phonetic severity much picturesqueness and euphony have been sacrificed.

The map accompanying the book is a reduced section of the last general chart of Alaska published by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and is reproduced here by the permission of the compiler, Prof. William H. Ball.

Of the illustrations, the cut of the Indian grave at Fort Wrangell was one accompanying an article published in Harper s Weekly, August 30, 1884, and other pictures have been presented to readers of the Wide Azvake magazine of March, 1885. For views of the Davidson glacier, the North River, and the top of the Muir glacier, and the interior of the Greek Church at Sitka, from which cuts were made, I am indebted to a daring and successful amateur photographer of San P'rancisco, to whom especial credit is due.

To the officers of the ship and agents of the company I have to express appreciation of the favors and courtesies extended by them to my friends

PBEFACE. V

and to myself. Each summer I bought my long purple ticket, reading from Portland to Sitka and return, with pleasurable anticipations ; and all of them — and more — being realized, I yielded up the last coupons with regret.

For information given and assistance rendered in the course of this work I am under obligations to many people. I would particularly make my acknowledgments in this place to Prof. William H. Dall, Capt. James C. Carroll, Hon. Frederic W. Seward, Prof. John Muir, Prof. George Davidson, Capt. R. W. Meade, U.S.N., Capt. C. L. Hooper, U.S.R.M., and Hon. J. G. Swan.

E. R. S.

Washington, D. C, March 15, 1885.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Start — Port Townsend — Victoria — Na-

NAIMO I

Chapter I. The Start — Port Townsend Victor I A

NANAIMO.

ALTHOUGH Alaska is nine times as large as the group of New England States, twice the size of Texas, and three times that of California, a false impression prevails that it is all one barren, inhospitable region, wrapped in snow and ice the year round. The fact is overlooked that a territory stretching more than a thousand miles from north to south, and washed by the warm currents of the Pacific Ocean, may have a great range and diversity of climate within its borders. The jokes and exaggera- I tions that passed current at the time of the Alaska j purchase, in 1867, have fastened themselves upon the ; public mind, and by constant repetition been accepted as facts. For this reason the uninitiated view the country as a vast ice reservation, and appear to believe that even the summer tourist must undergo the perils of the Franklin Search and the Greeley Relief Expeditions to reach any part of Alaska. The official records can hardly convince them that the winters at

Sitka are milder than at New York, and the summers delightfully cool and temperate.

In the eastern States less has been heard of the Yukon than of the country of the Congo, and the wonders of the Stikine, Taku, and Chilkat rivers are unknown to those who have travelled far to view the less impressive scenery of the Scandinavian coast. Americans climb the well-worn route to Alpine summits every year, while the highest mountain in North America is unsurveyed, and only approximate estimates have been made of its heights. The whole 580,107 square miles of the territory are almost as good as unexplored, and among the islands of the archipelago over 7,000 miles of coast are untouched and primeval forests.

The Pribyloff or Seal Islands have usurped all interest in Alaska, and these two little fog-bound islands in Behring Sea, that are too small to be marked on an ordinary map, have had more attention drawn to them than any other part of the territory. The rental of the islands of St. Paul and St. George, and the taxes on the annual one hundred thousand sealskins, pays into the treasury each year more than four per cent interest on the $7,200,000 originally paid to Russia for its possessions in North America. This fact is unique in the history of our purchased | territories, and justifies Secretary Seward's efforts in | acquiring it. I

The neglect of Congress to provide any form of | civil government or protection for the inhabitants^ checked all progress and enterprise, and kept the country in the background for seventeen years. With the development of the Pacific northwest, settlements.

THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. O

mining-camps, and fisheries have been slowly growing, and increasing in numbers in the southeastern part of Alaska, adjoining British Columbia. The prospectors and the hardy pioneers, who seek the setting sun and follow the frontiers westward, were attracted there by the gold discoveries in 1880, and the impetus then given was not allowed to subside.

Pleasure-travellers have followed the prospectors' lead, as it became known that some of the grandest scenery of the continent is to be found along the Alaska coast, in the region of the Alexander or Sitkan Archipelago, and the monthly mail steamer is crowded with tourists during the summer season. It is one of the easiest and most delightful trips to go up the coast by the inside passage and cruise through the archipelago ; and in voyaging past the unbroken wilderness of the island shores, the tourist feels quite like an explorer penetrating unknown lands. The ountain range that walls the Pacific coast from the ^^lintarctic to the Arctic gives a bold and broken front tc> the mainland, and everyone of the eleven hundred isl^ands of the archipelago is but a submerged spur or 3f^ak of the great range. Many of the islands are aj/rger than Massachusetts or New Jersey, but none vf them have been wholly explored, nor is the survey 't their shores completed. The Yosemite walls and :<4scades are repeated in mile after mile of deep saltwater channels, and from the deck of an ocean teamer one views scenes not paralleled after long ides and climbs in the heart of the Sierras. The orges and canons of Colorado are surpassed ; mounains that tower above Pike's Peak rise in steep inline from the still level of the sea ; and the shores

\m are clothed with forests and undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a Florida swamp. On these summer trips the ship runs into the famous inlets on the mainland shore and anchors before vast glaciers that push their icy fronts down into the sea. The still waters of the inside passage give smooth sailing nearly all of the way ; and, living on an ocean steamer for three and four weeks, one only feels the heaving of the Pacific swells while crossing the short stretches of Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance.

The Alaska steamer, however, is a perfect will o' the wisp for a landsman to pursue, starting sometimes from Portland and sometimes from San Francisco, adapting its schedule to emergencies and going as the exigencies of the cargo demand. It clears from Puget Sound ports generally during the first days of each month, but in midwinter it arranges its departure so as to have the light of the full moon in the northern ports, where the sun sets at three and four o'clock on December afternoons.

When the steamer leaves Portland for Alaska, goes down the Columbia River, up the coast of Was) ington Territory, and, reaching Victoria and Por Townsend three days later, takes on the mails, ancj the freight shipped from San Francisco, and then' clears for the north. The traveller who dreads the Columbia River bar and the open ocean can go acros&i overland to Puget Sound, and thence by the Sounc'' steamers to whichever port the Alaska steamer ma, please to anchor in.

The first time that I essayed the Alaska trip the steamship Ida/io with its shining black hull, it,

THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO.

trim spars, and row of white cabins on deck, slipped

down the Columbia River one Friday night, and on

Monday morning we left Portland to overtake it. It

was a time of forest fires, and a cloud of ignorance

brooded over Puget Sound, only equalled in density

by the clouds of smoke that rolled from the burning

forests on shore, and there was an appalling scarcity

of shipping news. The telegraph lines were down

between the most important points, and the Fourth

of July fever was burning so fiercely in patriotic veins

that no man had a clear enough brain to tell us where

the ship IdaJio was, had gone to, or was going to.

For two restless and uncertain days we see-sawed

"rom British to American soil, going back and forth

.:rom Victoria to Port Townsend as we were in turn as-

oured that the ship lay at anchor at one place, would

not go to the other, and that we ran the risk of losing

the whole trip if we did not immediately embark for

f-he opposite shore. The dock hands came to know

u»s, the pilots touched their hats to us, the agents

fljed from their ticket-offices at sight of us, and I think

etven the custom-house officers must have watched

s/uspiciously, when the same two women and one

'frQftU boy paced impatiently up and down the various

ypl^rves at that end of Puget Sound. We saw the

JWon Jack float and heard the American eagle

,cr; team on the Fourth of July, and after a night of

^r((f -crackers, bombs, and inebriate chorus-singing,

jhe r Idaho came slipping into the harbor of Port

j."o'jwnsend as innocently as a messenger of peace,

o,n.A/'l fired a shot from a wicked little cannon, that

utijirted the very foundations of the town with its

O SOUTHERN ALASKA.

Port Townsend, at the entrance of Puget Sound, is the last port of entry and custom-house in the United States, and the real point of departure for the Alaska steamers. It was named by Vancouver in 1792 for his friend, '' the most noble Marquis of Townsend," and scorning the rivalry of the new towns at the head of Puget Sound, believes itself destined to be the final railway terminus and the future great city of this extreme northwest. The busy and thriving little town lies at the foot of a steep bluff, and an outlying suburb of residences stretches along the grassy heights above. A steep stairway, and several zig-zag walks and roads connect the business part of Port Townsend with the upper town, and it argues strong lungs and a goat-like capacity for climbing on the part of the residents, who go up and down the stairway several times a day. A marine hospital flies the national flag from a point on the bluff, and four miles west on the curve of the bay lies Fort Townsend where a handful of United States troops keep up thfj traditions of an army and a military post. Near thf fort is the small settlement of Irondale, where they crude bog ore of the spot is successfully melted with Texada iron ore, brought from a small island in 'or Gulf of Georgia. The sand spit on which Pmc Townsend society holds its summer clam-bakes, c\er^ the home of the "Duke of York," the veneratht chief of the Clallam tribe, are points of interejs^ about the shores. na

Across the Straits of Fuca there is the pretia^ English town of Victoria, that has as solid mansioi. » as well-built roads, and as many country hom^p around it, as any little town on the home island. it5 i^

'f i\ has an intricate land-locked harbor, where the tides rush in and out in a way that defies reason, and none have ever yet been able to solve the puzzle and make out a tide-table for that harbor. All Victoria breathes the atmosphere of a past and greater grandeur, and the citizens feelingly revert to the time when British Columbia was a separate colony by / itself, and Victoria the seat of the miniature court 1 of the Governor-General and commander-in-chief of 'i its forces. There is no real joy in the celebration j of " Dominion Day," which reminds them of how ! British Columbia and the two provinces of Canada

t^ere made one under the specious promise of a conecting railway. Recent visits of Lord Dufferin and . f he Marquis of Lome stilled some of the disaffeci;

ion, and threats of annexation to the United States

jare less frequent now.

\ Victoria has ''the perfect climate," according to the i;>)mncess Louise and other sojourners, and there is a j^;- -ace and rest in the atmosphere that charms the '^ '^fest visitor. Every one takes life easily, and • ijj^jftgs move in a slow and accustomed groove, as if j^^g,tioned by the custom of centuries on the same '^t%j^,}^, Business men hardly get down town before ten

h.|Q, ck in the morning, and by four in the afternoon

,i^i^ydf ^^^ striding and riding off to their homes, as if

-:r: 1 f-^^^^ ^^^ activity of American trade and compe-

;^ncnP ^^^^ ^^^ away and unheard of. The clerk at

-he e post-office window turns a look of surprise upon

j.^Q, J I stranger, and bids him go across the street, or

gn-Arr'^ ^ block, and buy his postage-stamps at a sta-

tj;-jipier's shop, to be sure.

^_;ci]it:/he second summer that my compass was set for

8 SOUTHERN AL^^SKA.

the nor'-norwest, our party of three spent a week at Victoria before the steamer came in from San Francisco, and the charm of the place grew upon us every day. The drives about the town, along the island shores, and through the woods, are beautiful, and the heavy, London-built carriages roll over hard and perfect English highways. Ferns, growing ten and twelve feet high by the roadside, amazed us beyond expression, until a loyal and veracious citizen of Oregon assured us that ferns eighteen feet high could be found anywhere in the woods back of Astoria ; and that he had often been lost in fern prairies among the Cascade mountains, where the fronds arched far above his head when he was mounted on a horse. Wild rose-bushes are matted together by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of Bulgaria.ji The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection, in this climate, and covers and smothers the cotta^ges and trellises with thickly-set blossoms. Even 'the currant-bushes grow to unusual height, and in m^my gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their red, ripe clusters high overhead. /

For a few days we watched anxiously every trai^ of smoke in the Straits of Fuca, and at last welconied the ship, one sunny morning, when the whole 01ym]i)ic range stood like a sapphire wall across the Straits, and the Angels' Gate gave a clear view of more azure slopes and snow-tipped summits through that gap in the mountain front. Instead of the trim propeller IdaJio, the old side-wheeler, the AticoUi Wiis put on the Alaska route for the summer months, and the fact of its having taken five days for the trip up from San Francisco did not prepossess us with any false notions of its speed. The same captain and officers from the Idaho were on board, and after making the tour of Puget Sound again, we were quite resigned to the change of ships by the time we finally left Victoria.

At Victoria the steward buys his last supplies for the coming weeks of great appetites ; for with smooth water and the tonic of sea and mountain air both, the passengers make great inroads on the ship's stores. The captain often affects dismay at the way the provisions disappear, and threatens to take an account of stores at Sitka and bring the ship down by the outside passage in order to save some profit for the company. During the last hours at the Victoria wharf, several wagon-loads of meat had been put in the ice-boxes of the Aiicon, when some live beef came thundering down the wharf, driven by hallooing horsemen. Each month the ship takes up these live cattle and sheep, and leaving them to fatten on the luxurious grasses of Sitka, insures a fresh supply of fresh beef for the return voyage. It was within half an hour of sailing-time when the herders drove the sleek fellows down to the wharf, and for an hour there was a scene that surpassed anything under a circus tent or within a Spanish arena. Thei sailors and stevedores had a proper respect for the bellowing beasts, and kept their distance, as they bar|ricaded them into a corner of the wharf. The ship's officer who had charge of loading the cargo is **a

salt, salt sailor," with a florid complexion; and it was

i / I his brave part to advance, flap his arms, and say ** Shoo ! " and then fly behind the first man or barrel, or dodge into the warehouse door. The crowd gathered and increased, the eighty passengers, disregarding all signs and rules, mounted on the paddle-boxes and clung to the ratlines forward, applauded the picador and the matador, and hummed suggestive airs from Carmen. When the lasso was fastened round one creature's horns, and his head was drawn down close to a pile, there were nervous moments when we waited to see the herder tossed on high, or else voluntarily leaping into the water to escape the savage prods of the enraged beast. There was great delay in getting the belts ready to put round the animals so that they could be swung over into the ship, and while the great bull-fight was in progress and the hour of sailing had come, the captain rode down the wharf in a carriage, strode on to the ship and demanded, in a stiff, official tone, " How long have these cattle been here .'' " " More than an hour, sir, replied the mate. " Turn those cattle loose and draw in the gang-plank," was the brief order from the bridge, and the one warning shriek of the whistle scattered the spectators and sent the excited beasts galloping up the wharf. While the gang-plank was being withdrawn, two Chinamen came down on a dog trot, hidden under bundles of blankets, with balanced baskets across their shoulders, and pickaxes, pans, and mining tools in their arms. Without a tremor the two Johns walked out on the swaying plank, ai d, stepping across a gap of more than two feet, landed safely on deck, bound and equipped for the deserted placer mines on Stikine River.

We left Victoria at noon, and all the afternoon the passengers gave their preliminary ohs ! and ahs ! strewed the decks with exclamation points, and buried their heads in their pink-covered maps of British Columbia, while the ship ran through narrow channels and turned sharp curves around the picturesque islands for the possession of which England and America nearly went to war. San Juan Island, with its limekilns, its gardens, meadows, and browsing sheep, was as pretty and" pastoral a spot as nations ever wrangled about, and the Emperor of Germany did just the right thing when he drew his imperial pencil across the maps and gave this garden spot of San Juan to the United States. The beautiful scenery of the lower end of the Gulf of Georgia fitly introduces one to the beauties of the inland passage which winds for nearly a thousand miles between the islands that fringe this northwest coast, and even the most captious travellers forgot fancied grievances over staterooms, table seats, and baggage regulations. The exhausted purser, who had been persecuted all day by clamoring passengers and anxious shippers, was given a respite, and all was peace, satisfaction, and joy on board. In the nine o'clock gloaming we rounded the most northern lighthouse that gleams on this shore of the Pacific, and, winding in and through the harbor of Nanaimo, dropped anchor in Departure

Bay.

The coal mines of Nanaimo have given it a commercial importance upon which it bases hopes of a great future ; but it has no bustling air to it, to impress the stranger from over the border with that prospect. In early days it was an important trading-

12 SOUTnEHN ALASKA.

post of the Hudson Bay Company, and a quaint old block-house still stands as a relic of the times when the Indian canoes used to blacken the beach at the seasons of the great trades. The traders first opened the coal seams near Nanaimo, and thirty years ago used to pay the Indians one blanket for every eight barrels of coal brought out.

Geologists have hammered their way all up the Pacific Coast without finding a trace of true coal, and on account of the recent geological formation of the country they consider further search useless. The nearest to true coal that has been found was the coal seam on the Arctic shore of Alaska near Cape Lisburn. Captain Hooper, U. S. R. M., found the vein, and his vessel, the Corwiiiy was supplied with coal from it during an Arctic cruise in 1880. Otherwise, the lignite beds of Vancouver Island supply the best steaming coal that can be had on the coast, and a fleet of colliers ply between Nanaimo and the chief ports on the Pacific.

The mines nearest the town of Nanaimo were exhausted soon after they were worked systematically, and operations were transferred to Newcastle Island in the harbor opposite the town. A great fire in the Newcastle mine obliged the owners to close and abandon it, and the whole place stands as it was left, the cabins and works dropping slowly to decay. Even the quarry from which the fine stone was taken for the United States Mint at San Francisco is abandoned, and its broken derricks and refuse heaps make a forlorn break in the beauty of the mild shores of the island.

Richard Dunsmuir found the Wellington mines at

Departure Bay by accident, his horse stumbling on a niece of lignite coal as he rode down through the woods one day. The admiral of the British fleet and one other partner ventured ;£.,ooo each m developinc. the mine, and at the end of ten years the admiral withdrew with ^50,000 as his share, and a year smce the other partner sold out his interests to Mr. Dunsmuir for ;£i50,ooo. At present the mmes pay a monthly profit of ;£8,ooo, and Yankee engmeers claim that that income might be doubled if the m-nes were worked on a larger scale, as, with duty included, this black li-nite commands the highest price and is most in dema°nd in all the cities of California and Oregon. Mr Dunsmuir is the prime mover in building the Island railway, which is to connect Nanaimo with the naval harbor of Esquimault near Victoria. Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific road are connected with Mr. Dunsmuir in th's "ndertakin- and to induce these capitalists to take hold of it the^colonial government gave a land grant twenty-five miles wide along the whole seventy miles o the railroad, with all the timber and mineral included

The great Wellington mines have had their strikes, and after the last one the white workmen were supplanted by Chinese, who, though wanting the brawn and muscle of the Irishmen, could work in the sulphur formations without injuring their eyes. By an explosion of fire-damp in May, 1884, many lives were lost, and gloom was cast over the little settlement on the

sunny bay. , , , i- t

On this lee shore of Vancouver Island the climate is even softer and milder than at Victoria, and during my three visits Nanaimo has always been steeped in a golden calm of steady sunshine. While waiting for the three or four hundred tons of coal to be dropped into the hold, carload by carload, the passengers amuse themselves by visiting the quiet little town, stirring up the local trade, and busying the postmaster and the telegraph operator A small boy steers and commands the comical little steam-tug that is omnibus and street car for the Nanaimo and Wellington people, and makes great profits while passenger steamers are coaling.

When all the anglers, the hunters, the botanists and the geologists had gone their several ways from the ship one coaling day, the captain made a diversion for the score of ladies left behind, by ordering out a lifeboat, and having the little tug tow us around the bay and over to Nanaimo. When the ladies had all scattered into the various shops, the captain made the tour of the town and found that there was not a trout to be had in that market. Then he arranged that if the returning fishermen came back to the ship in the evening and laid their strings of trout triumphantly on deck, a couple of Indians should force their way into the admiring crowd and demand pay for fish sold to the anglers. Can any one picture that scene and the effect of the joke, when it dawned upon the group .<*

A great bonfire on the beach in the evening rounded off that coaling day, and the captain declared the celebration to be in honor of Cleveland and Hendricks, who had that day been nominated at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. Although the partisans of the other side declined to consider it a ratification meeting on British soil, they helped heap up the burning logs and drift-wood until the whole bay was lighted with the flames. With blue lights, fire-crackers, rockets and pistol-popping the fete continued, the Republicans deriding all boasts and prophecies of their opponents, until the commander threatened to drop them on some deserted island off the course until after the election. History has since set its seal upon the prophecies then made, and some of the modest participants of the Democratic faith think their international bonfire assisted in the result.

Chapter II. The British Columbia Coast And Tongass

IF Claude Melnotte had wanted to paint a fairer picture to his lady, he should have told Pauline of this glorious northwest coast, fringed with islands, seamed with fathomless channels of clear, green, sea water, and basking in the soft, mellow radiance of this summer sunshine. The scenery gains everything from being translated through the medium of a soft, pearly atmosphere, where the light is as gray and evenly diffused as in Old England itself. The distant mountain ranges are lost in the blue vaporous shadows, and nearer at hand the masses and outlines show in their pure contour without the obtrusion of all the garish details that rob so many western mountain scenes of their grander effects. The calm of the brooding air, the shimmer of the opaline sea around one, and the ranges of green and russet hills, misty purple mountains, and snowy summits on the faint horizon, give a dream-like coloring to all one's thoughts. A member of the Canadian Parliament, in speaking of this coast country of British Columbia, called it the " sea of mountains " and the channels of the ocean through which one winds for days are but as endless valleys and steep canons between the peaks and ranges that rise abruptly from the water's edge.

THE SITE AN ARCHIPELAGO.

Only the fiords and inlets of the coast of Norway, and the wooded islands in the Inland Sea of Japan, present anything like a counterpart to the wonderful scenery of these archipelagos of the North Pacific. From the head of Puget Sound to the mouth of the Chilkat River there are seven hundred and thirty-two miles of latitude, and the trend of the coast and the ship's windings between and around the islands make it an actual voyage of more than a thousand miles on inland waters.

The Strait or Gulf of Georgia, that separates Vancouver's Island from the mainland, although widening at times to forty miles, is for the most part like a broad river or lake, landlocked, walled by high mountain ranges on both sides, and choked at either end with groups of islands. The mighty current of the Frazer River rolls a pale green flood of fresh water into it at the southern entrance, and the river water, with its different density and temperature floating on the salt water, and cutting through it in a body, shows everywhere a sharply defined line of separation. In the broad channels schools of whales are often seen spouting and leaping, and on a lazy, sunny afternoon, while even the mountains seemed dozing in the waveless calm, the idlers on the after deck were roused by the cry of "Whales !" For an hour we watched the frolicking of the snorting monsters, as they spouted jets of water, arched their black backs and fins above the surface, and then disappeared with perpendicular whisks of their huge tails.