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Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustr&te the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmis d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clichi, il est film<§ d partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mithode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 S e I f MM » ..^J rUNIVERSlTY llBRARY u a o - u o SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 13642-PC. SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY DATE DUE DATE DUE ly n »H. 1 8^ m^^ eirn /^U69 7 Z ' -'^t OCT 1 3 1381 f^ 9o^ S^t{3 //^ IV ra SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY PROFESSOR HEILPRIN'S NEW BOOK. ALASKA AND THE KLON DIKE. A Journey to the New Eldorado. With Hints to the T-aveler and Observations on the Physical History and Geology of the Gold Regions, the Condition of and Methods of working the Klondike Placers, and the Laws governing and regulating Mining in the Northwest Territory of Canada. By Angelo Heil- PRiN, Professor of Geology at the Academy of Nat- ural Sciences of Philadelphia, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Past- President of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, etc. Fully illustrated from Photographs and with a new Map of the Gold Regions. lamo. Cloth, $i. 7s. It may fairly br said that Professor Hcilprin's interesting and .luthoritative hook presents for the first time an accurate general account of th , region which has lo recently become famous. Much has been written about the Klondike, but a large proportion uf this material contains so many exaggerations that a proper perspective ii impossible. It was for the purpose of discriminating between fact and fancy by meant of a personal knowledge of the region and its varied conditions that Professor Heilprin, an experienced traveler and the leader of the Peary Relief Expedition of 1891, made his journey through the region. He now presents the results of his observations in a series of graphic chapters which describe the features of the journey, the character of the country, and the life of the mining camps. To those specially interested in the practical possibilities of the region, the book will make a special appeal. Students will find it the first adequate presentation of the Klondike gold problem made by a geologist, and it will prove invaluable to prospectors and others practically interested, since it fur- nishes assistance not to be found in any other publication. Tkit book it for sal* by all booksellers ; or it will be sent by mail om receipt 0/ price, by tki publiskers, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 7a Fifth Avs^nue, New York. (P (OOK. APPLET0N8' KE. to the iistory lion of s, and in the Heil- r Nat- Royal ent of Fully / Map loritative book which has so e, but a large perspective is ancy by means tssor Heilprin, >f 1892, made ibservations in , the character iterested in the Students will by a geologist, , since it fur- r>/ o/pritt, fy York. GUIDE-BOOK TO ALASKA AND THE NORTHWEST COAST INCLUDINO THE SHORES OF WASHINGTON, BltlTISII COLUMBIA, 80UTHKASTEHN ALASKA, THE ALEl'TIAN AM) TUE SEAL ISLANDS, THE BERINO AND THE ARCTIC COASTS, THE YUKON RIVEU AND KLONDIKE DISTRICT BT ELIZA RUHAMAH SCIDMORE AUTIIon OF 'ALARKA: its SOUTHKRN coast and the SITKAN ARCniPBLAOO,' " JUIBIEUUA DATB IN JAPAN," " WE8TWAKI) TO THE FAR EA8T," AND "JAVA, TIIK GARDEN OF TUE EAST" WITH MAPS AND MANY ILLUSTitATIONS NEW EDITION WITH A CHAPTER ON THE KLONDIKE NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1899 CoPTBiOBT, l^Ofl. 1890, 1896, 1800, bt d. appleton and company. • CONTENTS. PAOI Introduction 1 THB PUGET SOUND COUNTRY. The Paciflc ForMt Keserve and Mt. Itainicr 6 The International Houndary Line 19 Vancouvir Island 14 Tides ■ 16 Thk Inland Ska 17 From Victoria to (|ueen Charlotte Sound . . . . . .17 The Vicinity of Nanaimo 18 The Upper End of the Oiilf of Georgia 19 Seymour Narrows or Yaculta Rapids— The Great Malstrom SI The Head of Vancouver Inland 29 From (^uikn Charlotte to Milbank Socnd 98 Nal(wakto Rapids 94 The Coast of British Columbia 96 From Milbank Sound to Dixon Entrancb 97 Gardner Canal or Inlet 98 The Skeena River 29 The Tsimsian Peninsula 81 Nass River, Observatory Inlet, and Portland Canal .... 88 Thb Q0KXN Charlotte Islands 84 llieUaidas 87 ALASKA. Climate op Southeastern Alaska 40 The Native Race of Southeastern Alaska— The Tlinoits . 43 Tllnglt Customs 4S The International Boundary Line 48 The Southern Islands fil Mary Island Customs District 69 New MetlakahUa 68 Metlakahtla 64 The Na-t. Country 86 The Paciflc Salmon 66 Salmon Canneries 67 It CONTENTS. rAoi Tni RiTn.i.AainRDo Lakss and Bibii Cahal M PniNci or Walib latAiiD 00 FnitT Wranhill 00 Tub Htikini Rivib 08 Itinerary of the Stikinc River TO MinliiK Region" of the Htllclne TS 1 itomatlonal Boundary Line on the Stiklne 78 Proii Sumnbr Htiiait to I'rincb Prbobrick Soi7ND via Wranoiix Nahrowh 78 Along I'rince Frederick Soand 74 T»'e Thunder Hay (llBcler 76 GlaclalTheory of theNatlven '•^ Kupreanoff and Kulu iHJandi), the Land of Kakca .... 77 From Capb Fanhhawb to Takit Inlbt, Shucks and Sum Du\i ^ tb . 78 Taku Inlet and the Taku Olaclem 80 The llarrlH Mining DUtrlct— Juneau and Ita Vicinity .... 89 The Silver Bow BaHin Mine* 88 The Largest Quartz-Mill In the World 80 Admiraltt Inland 87 Fisheries of the Region 88 Alonu Chatuax Strait and Ltnn Canal 90 Tub Cbilrat Coitnthy and the Pasrbs to tub Yukon . . . 9R The Great Tribe of the Tlingit Nation 88 To the Yukon River and Mining Campa 06 Glacibr Bat 97 Discovery and Exploration of Glacli-r Bay 97 Indian Traditions 90 Scientists' Camps ...... S 9B Itinerary of the Bay and Inlet 100 Muir Inlet and the Great Mulr Glacier 100 The Lateral Moraines 108 The lute of Recession 104 The Ascent of Mt. Wright to the Ranging Gardens and Mountain- Goat Pastures 106 On thv. Mainland Shore of Cross Sound 100 The ChicagofT Island Shores 106 From Chatham Strait to thb Ocban bt Pbril or Pooibbhi Straits, 106 Baranof Island and the Russian Settlements 110 The Purchase of Russian America 118 The Transfer of Russian America to the United States . . .118 An Abandoned Territory 114 Sitka, tub Capital op thb Tbrritort op Alaska 116 Russian Orthodox Church of St. Michael 117 The Indian River Park 110 The Indian Village 120 The SitkauB and their RecordB 190 The Ascent of Veratovoi 189 00NTBNT9. Bzcnnloni In the Bay and Vicinity of HItka Ml The Aarent of Mt. KilKt-ciimbo !•♦ flilver Bay and the HItka Mining District ...... IJM TllE BARANOr HllORK lOUTII or HiTKA W The White Hiilphur Hot Hprlnga tii ••To WB»TWAni»" Pll" • "ITKA TO UNAI.AHKA, AI-ONO Till COWTI- NkNTAL SlIOBB "8 Prom HItka to YakiiUt IW Mt. Ht. Eliaa IV TontincnUl AU V» , . 18* Prince Winia .. Sound ami Ita t. '.-at (llaclcm 184 t^ook'H Inlet and thu Ki-> al I'uiuiHiila 185 Tides IW Kadlak ant* the Onm Palinon Cannerli-a 187 The (ireateat Hulmoii Hirtam in the World 188 Tho Shuniauii' IhIbikIh and the Cod P'i»herlea 188 The AliaMka IVnInmila 140 Thi Alkiitian Ihi.andu 141 ExcurHlona from Unalanka 148 The Bkbino 8ba and Hiiokkm 144 The Prlhylov or Seal Ulanda 148 The Heal Inland LeaHeb 148 CallorhinuH UrHlniw. the Fur Seal 147 The licrintt Sea yucation 148 Other iHlanda In Bering 8ea 188 Bering Strait *80 In THE Arctic Ocean .181 The Yukon Mininq KEoioNa 188 The Stikine Uoutc IW The Taku Uoute IW The Skagway Koute 188 The Dyea Route 188 The Chilkat Koute, Dalton and Bound Trails ..... 180 The Copper River Trail 188 Cook'B Inlet Route 188 St. Michael's Route . . , 1<>8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. TACIRO PAOX BoADWAT IN Stani-et Pabk, Vancocvkb 14 Indians, keab Nkw Wbstminstbr 17 Thb Goroe of the Homathco !• Johnstone Strait ® A Haida Totem-Pole . 8f7 Tlinoit Woman ** Hutu, or Thunder Glacier 75 (From a photograph by Lient. A. P. Nlblack, U. 8. N.) JUHEAD ® The Treadwbll Mine, Douglass Island 86 Front op Mure Glacier and Mt. Case, prom West Moraine . . 101 (From a photograph by F. Jay Haynes.) Salmon-Berry Market, Sitka 118 The Old Fur Warehouse, Greek Church, and Peak op Mt. Vebs- TOVOI, HiTKA 121 CusTOM-BousE, Castle, and Barracks, Sitka 19* Mt. St. Eliab, prom End op Samovar Hills HO (From a photograph by Prof. Israel C. Russell.) Mt. Shishaldin Mi (From a photograph by Lieut. A. L. Broadbent, U. 8. R. M.) Cut on Claim 18, Eldorado Creek 1lum- bia plains and even the Alaska islands. It is one of the points of de- parture for mountain-climbers who essay the ascent of the great peak of Mt. Rainier, now surrounded by a Government forest reserve. The Pacific Forest Reserve and Mt. Rainier. This park of 967,680 acres was created by proclamation of Presi- dent Harrison, February 20, 1893. Forty-two townships of Pierce, Lewis, Yakima, and Kittetas Counties were withdrawn from entry to QLAOICRS OF >j. , ,.^^ MOUNT BAINIEB > " . :^ B|| tnm tb* "Nivtiwim ^0010011^% TrutoootliMatftl Sunvy," ar BAILEY WILLIS. 1883. 1. Liberty ("ap, 14,282. 2. Dome, 14,869. 8. South Peak. 4. Longmlre Spra. 6. Paradioe Valley. 6. '"■braltar. 7. Eagle Cliff. ♦Crater. protect the head waters of the Puyallup, Carbon, White, Natchez, Tietan, Nisqually, and Cowlitz Rivers which flow from the glaciers radi- ating from the summit of Mt. Rainier like the spokes of a wheel. The THE PUOET SOUND OOUNTRT. park meaoures 86 miles from E. to W. and 42 miles from N. to S. There are trails and waggon roads to the points of intereHt on the W. and S. side. Mt. Rainier (14,444 ft.) is the highest peak in the Cascade Range, chief in a group of volcanoes, and rises abruptly from the low forest lands covering the 56 miles between its base and Puget Sound. Van- couver saw it from Marrowstone Point, opposite Port Townsend, May 10, 1792, and named it for his friend Rcar-Admiral Rainier, onr of the Lords of the Admiralty. It was smoking splendidly when Fremont left the Columbia in 1842, the Pathfinder alluding to it as Regnier, and, with many, Itelieving that it had been named for Lieutenant Regnier, of Mar- chand's cxi)ediuon (1791). The Puyallup Indians call the peak Tnh-ko-bah, the Nisquallys Tah- ho-mah, the Duwamish Ta-ko-bet, all meaning the snowy or snow moun- tain. For years the local and landsman's name was Tacoma, naviga- tors using the chart name of Rainier. The rivalry between the cities of Seattle and Tacoma made the mouiu lin'snamea subject of bitter strife, the N. P. Co. printing it as Tacoma in all maps and publications. In 1890 the U. S. Board of Geographic Names decided that Rainier must stand on all Government charts, maps, and publications, Vancouver's charts having l>een accepted and used as authority for a century. The peak is a symmetrical pyramid, as viewed from Seattle; a double peak from Tacoma ; and from Olympia or Yelm Prairie on the line of the N. P.. south of Tacoma, it shows its three peaks in outline like Mt. Fairweather and Mt. St. Elias. The first attempt to climb the great peak was made by Dr. William Frazer Tolmie, surgeon of the H. B. Co.'s Fort Nistjually, in 1833, and resulted in his reaching Tolmie Peak by way of Crater Lake on the N. W. slope. Lieutenant A. V. Kautz reached the South Peak in 1857 ; Messrs. P. B. Van Trump and Hazard Stevens reached the Dome or Crater Peak in August, 1870; and Messrs. A. D. Wilson and S. F. Emmons, U. S. Geological Survey, in October, 1870, At the close of 1892, 88 climbers were known to have reached the summit, all ascend- ing by the Gibraltar Trail on the S. side, save Warner Fobes and two companions who climbed the ridge on the N. E. side by the White River Glacier, in 1884, and George Bayley and P, B, Van Trump on the W. side in 1892. One woman. Miss Fay Fuller, reached the summit August 10, 1890, and over 200 climbers of the Mazamas Club reached the summit from their grand encampment in Paradise Valley, in July, 1897. Eight days is the least time in which an experienced climber can make the round trip from either Seattle or Tacoma to the summit of Mt, Rainier and return. P. B. Van Trump, the veteran guide, lives at 8 THE PUOET SOUND CODNTBT. Yelm Prairie ; George Drirer, guide, may be communicated with through 7^« Tacoma, Tacoma; and Mr. E. C. Ingraham, the Seattle publisher, will advise any intending dim Iters who may appeal to him there. Eton- ville (P. 0.) is the point of real departure, and may be reached by daily stages or hacks from Puyallup, Roy, or Yelm Prairie stations on the N. P. R., either route involving a ride of 26 or 30 miles. The next stage is 18 miles to Kemahan's Palisade Farm in Succotash (Su-ho-tas, " black raspberry ") Valley. A third start is made before sunrise, in order to ford the Rainier Fork of the Nisqually (6 miles beyond) before the melting ice and snow raise the glacial torrent. Longmire't hot soda springs hotel is headquarters for campers and climbers, and offers plain shelter and comforts. A horse trail leads thence 4 miles to the foot of the Nisqually Glacier, the Nisciually River emerging irom an ice cavern in its front. A switchback trail of 2 miles leads 1,200 ft. un the front of the Nisqually Bluff and ends in Paradise Valley (6,700 ft.), a park at the snow-line carpeted with wild f.ow- ers. Good climbers may leave their horses at the foot of the glacier, climb and cross the ice to Paradise Valley, which is 6 miles from the summit. It is one day's hard climb with creepers or lumbermen's " calkf,"' over ice and snow to the foot of Gibraltar Rock (11,000 ft.), where the night is spent. An early start is made to cross the dangerous ledges on Gi- braltar's face and cut steps up a steep ice cliff before the day's avalanches begin, and the twin craters with a common central rim upholding the snowy Dome or Crater Peak (14,444 ft.) may be reached before noon. Climbers usually aim to spend the night in the ice caves formed by the sulphur vent-holes in the crater. Food is warmed over steam jets, and with lights the ice caverns may be explored for hundreds of feet. The larger crater is three quarters of a mile in diameter, and both but vent- holes of a vaster cone of preglacial days. The Liberty Cap, Tacoma, or North Peak (14,000 ft.), tlic apparent summit seen from Tacoma, is 2 miles distant from South Peak, and the true or Crater Peak lies mid- way. The height, 14,444 ft., as given in Gannett's Dictionary of Alti- tudes, is the result of triangulations from a base-line on the Sound measured by Prof. George C. Davidson. Mr. A. D. Wilson, of the North- ern Transcontinental Curvey, gives 14,900 ft. as the result of over one hundred trigonometrical determinations from the E. side of the moun- tain. A shorter and easier Rainier excursion may be made by the Bailey Willis trail from Wilkeson station on the N. P. R. to Observation Point THE PUOKT SOUND COUNTRY. 9 at the head of the Edmundfl Glacier, named for the Hon. George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, acting Vicc-Preflident of the United States at the time of bis visit, in 1883. The Point (10,0()0 ft.) commands as ex- tensive a view as the summit save to S. E., and the black cliff 4,000 feet high rising immediately behind it may be distinguished from Seat- tle. Ladies hav. reached the point by horse and sled without walking. The Meadows, Crater Lake, Eagle Cliff, Lace Falls, Prospect Park, and the Bailey Willis, the Edmunds, and the Puyallup Glaciers feeding the one river, are objects of interest on that route. The view from Eagle Cliff which overhangs the Puyallup River 2,600 ft. below it, and com- mands a full outline of the snowy summit, is extolled as the finest mountain view on the Pacific coast by many Sierra and Alpine climbers. The glaciers of Mt. Rainier were first reported by Messrs. Wilson and Emmons, of the U. S. Geological Survey, in 1870, and mapped by Bailey Willis, of the Northern Transcontinental Survey, in 1883. The Cowlitz Glacier, on the S. side, is 12 miles long and from 1 to 8 miles wide, broken by several magnificent ice falls. No systematic explora- tions or thorough study of these glaciers have been made. All have an average motion of 12 inches a day in midsummer. Original accounts of the earlier ascents of Mt. Rainier and descrip- tive articles have been published as follows : Emmons, S. F., Bulletin No. 4 of American Geological Society (N. Y.), session 1876-'77 ; Fobes, Wanier, The West Shore Magazine, ^'"'ttle, September, ISBJS; Hen- dricknon, C. D., The American Magk,...ie, London, November, 1887 ; Kautz, A. v.. Overland Monthly Magazine, San Francisco, June, 1875 ; Muir, John, " Picturesque California," New York and fc'^n Fran- cisco, part xviii. ; Stevens, Hazard, Atlantic Monthly Magazine, Boston, November, 1876; Willis, Bailey, Columbia College (N. Y.) School of Mines Quarterly, January, 1887 ; Report of Tenth Census (1 880), Wash- ington; Smith, Rev. E. C., Appalachia Magazine, April, 1894; Snyder, Carl, Review of Reviews, February, 1894 ; Mazaraas Club Proceedings, 1897. The Alaska excursion steamers usually leave Tacoma at daylight, pas- sengers going on board the night before. A few hours' stay are allowed at Seattle, which is fully described in Appletons' General Guide. Seattle^ population 42,837 by the census of 1890, the commercial rival of Tacoma, was named for the old Duwamish chief, and fronts on Elliot, originally Duwamish Bay. The stations from which the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Great Northern, the Columbia & Puget Sound, the Seattle & Northern, and the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Ry, trains depart, are on the water front in close proximitj 10 THE PUGET SOUND COUNTRY. to Tesler's and Commercial Wharf, where Sound and ocean ateamera land. Cabs and omnibuseH have moderate tariff of chargeH. The Jtanier and the Denny, ratea $8 a day and upward, are the leading hotels. The ship's delay utiually allows time for a ride by cable or electric cars to the heights around the harbour or to Lake Washington or to Lake Union, 2 miles distant. Port Townaend, the " Key City of the Sound," population 4,608,* is the port of entry for the Puget Sound customs district, and point of departure of U. S. mails for Alaska. San Francisco passengers usually join the Alaska steamers at this port. Excursion steamers make short stops, but mail steamers receive and discharge the larger part of their cargo hero, and often lie for 24 hours. The new Custom-House and Court-House on the edge of the blufF command fine views, and electric railways crossing the peninsula to the Fuca shore afford menns of passing the waiting hours. There is a large modem hotel near the wharves of the Port Townsend k Southern Ry., which is under con- struction, and will connect the west shore towns with the other rail- way systems at Olympia. Fort Townsend, a two-company military post at the end of the bay, may Le reached by fi-milo carriage-roads, or by small steamers which ply between the town and the Irondale blast- furnaces and Port Hadlock mill beyond. Small steamers run between Port Townsend, Port Angeles, Pysht, and Neah Bay on the Fuca shore. There is a large village of Makah Indians at Neah Bay, 4 miles E. of Cape Flattery. The women are the finest basket-weavers on the coast, and their gayly coloured wares may be bought at Port Townsend and Victoria. Everette is the terminal point of the Great Northern Ry. from St. Paul. Its rail communications permit passengers to join Alaska steamers at Anacortes or Seattle. Everette's growth has been since 1690, and among its industries are ship-yards where whaleback freight and passenger steamers are built. Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island, population 2,000, is 108 miles from Seattle, and terminus of the Pacific division (Portland, Seattle k Anacortes Line) of the N. P. R. There is a fine modem hotel, The Anacortes, in a pine grove adjoining the wharf. Alaska and San * Through neglect to enlarge the city limits and include newly settled additions before the census of 1890, Port Townsend showed little increase of population in the decade, and Jefferson County was given credit for the great increase in inhabitante. THE PUOET SOUND OOtTNTBY. 11 FranclRco •teamers of the P. C. 8. S. ('o. call repilarly, and the Round boats give daily eommuDication with Seattle and Taeoroa. Alaska steamers sometimes visit Fairhaven, population 4,000, and What- coni) population 10,000, the tig^o enterprising towns on Bellingham Bay. All this upper end of the Sound is dominated by Mt. Baker (10,- 810 ft.), an extinct volcano, whose many native names — Pukhomis, Puksan, and Kulshan — all mean "the fire-mountain." Galiano and Valdes called it .(//. Carmelo. Vancouver saw it l&ter from the strcit of Fuca or New Dungeneas, at first vaguely floating above the clouds, and then the whole slope of "the lofty mountain discovered in the afternoon by the third eutenant, and in compliment to him called by me Mt. Baker," Monday, April 80, 1792. Baker drew all of Van- couver's charts. The mountain has been in eruption many times in thix century, by Indian tradition. There was an eruption in 1862, when a great body of lava flowed down the side of the mountain, and showed as a black mass amid the snow all winter. There are no trails on its slopes, and it is much more dilHcult of ascent than Mt. Rauier. It was first as- cended from the W. or Luromi side by Edmund T. Coleman, an English landscape artist and Alpine climber, in August, 1868.* Mr. E. S. Ingiaham and a party of six left the railroad at Silver Lake Station, followed the Nooksack cafion, and made the last climb on the W. side. They found the summit, July 3, 1891, an elliptical plateau, a third of a mile in length, probably a snow-filled crater. A small crater, 1,000 ft. below, was filled with sulphur crystals and sulphurous gas, and steam blew in clouds. The group of Washington Islands lying between Bellingham Bay and the strait of Fuca constitute Inland County, with Friday Ilarboar on San Juan Island as the county seat. There are ranches and fruit farms on all these islands, and this maze of water-ways at the boundary line offer great inducement in the way of protection to smugglers of opium and Chinese. The smugglers own swift schooners and launches, and easily elude the one slow revenue cutter assigned to the patrol of the sound. San Juan Ittland, 14 miles long and 6 or 7 miles wide, contains vast deposits of limestone. A half million barrels of lime are shipped from the ovens at Roches Harbour each year. It is shipped to all parts * See Mountaineering on the Pacific, Harper's Monthly, November, 1869. 12 THE PUOET SOUND COUNTRY. of the coast, and seTeral vessels loaded with cargoes of lime have been fired by a leak or a daehing wave. THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY LINE. San Juan Island nearly caused a ww between Great Britain and the United States, both countries claiming ownership, as the Oregon Treaty, June 16, 1846, did not specify whether the boundary line should pass through Canal de Uaro or Rosario strait. Sir James Douglass and Govemoi!' Isaac Stevens both claimed jurisdiction. The Sheriff of Whatcom County sold O. B. Co. sheep for taxes. An American citizen shot a British pig, for whose loss $lOi> was no equivalent to its owner ; and sentiment waxed bitter. Genera! Harney hurried troops off from Steildcoom, and established a military post on one end of the island in 1869, just as the British and American boundary commissioners had begun their work of peaceable settlement. A British war ship re- mained on guard ; the garri.^D was increased ; General Scott came from Washington, and offered joint occupation by both Governments until the boundary line should be decided. Until 1S71 a company of United States soldiers held the southern end of the island, and an equal number of British blue jackets the northern point. There was amicable intercourse, the two garrii^ons entering into athletic contests with ardour; and succeeding the Treaty of VVashington, 1871, the Emperor of Germany, as arbitrator, decided that de Haro was the main channel and the water boundary. The British withdrew in November, 1872, replanting gardens in order to leave San Juan exactly as they found it. It commands the straits, and its thousand-feet-high hill affords a site for the most effective battery in the world. The dip- lomats split finest hairs in their arguments. One strait was said to separate the continent from Vancouver, the other to separate Van- couver from the continent ; and Lord John Russell said : " San Juan is a defensive position if in the hands of Great Britain ; it is an ag- gressive position if in the hands of the United States. The United States may fairly be called upon to renounce aggression ; but Great Britain can hardly be expected to abandon defence." The Strait of Juan de Faca, leading to the Pacific, is a magnifi- cent highway, 83 miles in length and 12 miles in width, but broadening into a considerable sound at the eastern end. It is close walled on the United States side by the Olympic range, chief among whose snowy Bummits is " the Mt. Olympiut of Meares," " the most remarkable moun- tain we had seen off the coast of New Albion, ... a summit with a very elegant double fork," rrote Vancouver. Long before him Juan Perez had named it the Sier> i de Santa Rosalina. This is the fabled strait of Anian supposed to lead through to the Atlantic, and for which the greatest navigators of two centuries Bought. Such & strait was first Axploited bj the Portuguese naviga- TH3 PUGET SOUND COUNTET. 13 tor Cortereal, who claimed to have sailed from tbe Labrador coast through a narrow strait to the Indian Ocean in the year 1 600. Eighty- eight years later Maldonado said that he too had sailed through these straits of Anian to the Western Ocean. Then Admiral del Fonte has- tened north-vard from Oallao in 1C40 to intercept some Boston ships that were to come through this northwest passage to interfere with Spanish interests in the Pacific. Del Font£ gave full details, and told all about the great archipelago of San Lazaria and the great river under the 63d parallel. He described the natives, gave the names of their villages, their numbers, and, sailing up a river to a lake, passed out by another river into the Atlantic, and there found a ship from " Malteshusetts." In the year 1692, Apostolos Vr.ienanos, or Juan de Fuca, a Greek pilot in the employ of the Viceroy of Nov Spain, took a caravel into "a broad opening between 47° and 48°.'' He sailed east- ward for 100 miles, and past divers islands for 20 days, where be saw men clad in the skins of beasts, and emerged into the Atlantic. Con- sidering his duty done, he sailed back through his straits and down to Acapuico ; was sent to Spain to report the marvel to the king, and some years later told his tale of discovery and royal neglect to an Eng- lish consul in Italy, who tried vainly to interest Sir Walter Raleigh in the matter and have the old man taken to England. Then began that series of voyages in search of the straits of Anian, which employed all the great navigators from Frobisher and Drake to Vancouver, and filled their day with such true sea-stories as have no match now. Every adventurer and every navigator out of a job claimed to hnv; gone through the straits, or to be willing to go at some one else's expense, and the wits and romancers made fine play with the theme. Captain James Cook, on his third and last voyage of discovery, sought for tbe strait, but missed it, discovering Nootka, on the W. coast of Vancouver Island, which the Spaniards had previously found, and where they later built a fort to ward off Russian advances toward their California colonies. In 1787 Berkely found the broad strait; in 1788 Meares sailed into and named it for Juan de Fuca ; in 1 789 Captain Kendrick, of Boston, sailed arovind Vancouver Island; in 179f^ Lieu- tenant Quimper entered Puget Sound and the Gulf of Georgia ; in 1791 Caamano explored and discovered the Eraser River ; and in 1792 Gaiiano and Valdes surveyed the Gulf of Georgia and circumnavigated the great island, overtaken and accompanied by Vancouver. The latter had been sent in accordance with the provisions of the Nootka Con- vention, which, in adjudging indemnity for British ships seized and sold for invading the Spanish colonies, decreed that the Spaniards should abandon their Nootka fort, and the Northwest Coast become virgin soil free to trade and settlement by all people. Vancouver was charged tc investigate the alleged discovery of De Fuca's strait, and to explore the coast for a passage into the Atlantic. Spanish explorers, and Boston and British fur-traders had preceded him in many instances, but al- though he met them, saw their charts, and received much aid, his charts and narrative ignore their work, and. bein^ the first published, won him a discoverer's honours throughout. His charts were the only 14 VANCOFVEB ISLAND. ones in use between Puget Sound and Dixon Entrance until the Wilkes Exploring Expedition surveys, in 1841, furnished new charts from Com- mencement Bay to the Gulf of Georgia, and the Richards and Pender surveys, 1868-'68, of the entire British Columbia coast were made the basis of a new set of admiralty charts. Vancouver is the authority for many charts of southeastern Alaska now in use. Vancouver Island. The island of Quadra* and Vancouver, as those two agreed to call it in 1792, is the largest island on the Pacific coast of North America, 800 miles long, from 40 to 80 miles wide, and in area nearly equalling Ireland, which its climate resembles. It is mountainous throughout, the main range, a continuation of the Olympics, showing many peaks 6,000 and 8,000 ft. in height. The shores are deeply indented, many inlets penetrating to the heart of the island, which is deiisely wooded throughout, with occasional small prairies at the southern end. Mineral deposits have been uncovered at many places, and extensive coal fields are worked on the C orgian shore. Settlements have advanced slowly on the west coiist, which is beset with many dangers to navigation, but which in time must attract fishing communities. Scottish crofter families have already been colonized for that purpose. After the abandonment of Nootka, the first settlement was made by the H. B. Co. in 1844, when they built a fort at the native Camosvn, " the place where camass grows," wliich became Fort Victoria. In 1849 her Majesty assigned all of Vancouver Island to the H. B. Co. forever. In 1868 it was bought back by the Crown for £5T,.''>00, just as the Fraser River gold excitemi nt brought 30,000 people to the colony at once, and a canvas city of 15,000 inhabitants surrounded the stockade for months. Vancouver was a separate colony, and Sir James Douglass its Governor, until 1866, when it became one province with British Columbia, under the same distinguished Governor. In 1871 British Columbia joined the Dom'uion of Canada, with an understanding that the Domini 3n would build a railway to the Pacific. Delay in fulfilling that promise caused disaffection and a strong sentiment for annexation with the United States. The completion of the C. P. R. in 1885 brought a revival second only to Fraser River times, and the island cities have grown as rapidly as their younger rivals on the mainland shore. Exteni^ive fortifications protect Esquimault, the British naval station, which commands the strait of Fuca. Victoria, population 20,00(^^», fully described in Thk Canadian GriDK-BooK, Part II, offers much to the tourist who awaits the * Quadra was Spanish commandant at Nootka in 1792. Unitilirtiy in Sldiilcy I'uik, I'ancuuver, VANCOUVER ISLAND. 15 Alasba steamer at that point. The Driard ($3.60 per day) and tb« Dalleu (|3 per day), are the leading hotels, and the Mt. Baker Hotel, at Oak Bay, reached by electric cars. T.ie P. C. S. S. Co.'s steam- ers land passengers at the outside wharf, and the C. P. N. Co.'s steam- ers land at the wharves at the inside harbour. An electric railway connects the outside wharf with the business part of the city, and its branch lines reach Esquimault and the suburbs. Cabs are cheap, and the drives about Victoria are much famed for the picturesque scenes they lead to, and their perfect road-beds. There is daily communica- tion between Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, Port Townsend, Seattle, and Tacoma. The C. P. N. Co.'s mail steamers make semi- monthly trips to Barclay Sound, on the W. coast of the island, and to the N. coast. C. P. N. Co.'s excursion steamers depart at inter- vals for Alaska during the summer months, calling at Vancouver, Alert Bay, Fort Rupert, River's Inlet, China Hat, Gardiner's Inlet, Port Essington, Metlakahtla and Port Simpson, in addition to the chief points of interest in Alaska — Fort Wrangel, Sitka and Juneau, and skirting past but not landing at the Muir and Taku Glaciers. The P. C. S. S. Co.'s steamers regularly call at Victoria in going and returning, and their steamers plying between San Francisco and the Paget Sound ports make it a regular port of call every five days. The C. P. R. Royal Mail Steam^^hip Line to China and Japan and the Canadian Australian Line call at Victoria in going and returning. The steamers of the N. P. R. Co. to China and Japan, the Puget Sound and Hawaii Traffic Co.'s Honolulu steamers, and the Nippon Tuseu Kaisha vessels, also cal! at Victoria. The Island Railway, 80 miles in length, connects Esquimault and Victoria with Nanaimo on the Gulf of Georgia. It wr s begun in 1884 and completed in 1888, its projectors, Robert Dunsmuir and his sons, James Bryden, Leiand Stanford, C. P. Huntington, and Charles Crocker, receiving a Government subsidy of $760,000, and a grant of land ten miles in width on either side of the road-bed, with all the minerals and timber included. Passengers may, at tneir own expense, agreeably break the steamer trip by taking this short rail route between Victoria and Nanaimo, and enjoy the island forests and scenery. In a single day, or during the usual waits of Alaska mail and ex- cursion steamers at Victoria, the to'irist can see the fortifications, war ships, and dry dock at Esquimault ; the boiling-tide rapids at the Gorge, the true Esquimault, or " rush of waters " ; the Colonial Museum and 16 VANCOUVEK ISLAND. new Oovernment building; the Songhies Gamp across the harbour; the curio shops in Johnson Street; Chinatown; and on certain days hear the Military Band play in Beacon Hill Park. There are two golf clubs at Victoria, which visitors properly commended may have use of. The Dominion tariff prevents the shops from offering many inducements to shoppers and amateur smugglers to the United States. Sooke, Saanich, Gowichan, further inlets and distant lakes, with their tidy British inns, snug shooting-boxes, or rough c&mps, offer much to sportsmen and anglers who may prolong their stay. TIDES. The tides of the Pacific coast differ greatly from those of the Atlantic. Lieutenant R. 0. Ray, U. S. N., in the U. S. Hydrographic Office, "Coast of Britiijh Columbia," explains these Pacific tides in this reference to those of the strait c tuca and Gulf of Georgia : " The great and perplexing tidal irregularities may therefore be said to be embraced between the strait of Fuca, near the Race L-^lands, and Cape Mudge, a distance of 160 miles ; and a careful investigation of the observations made at Esquia>ault, and among the islands of the Haro Archipelago, shows that during the summer months. May, June, and July, there occurs but one hi'^h and one low w.-\ter during the twenty- four hours, high water at the full and change of the moon happening about midnight, and varying but slightly from that hour during any day of the three months; the springs range from 8 to 10 ft., the neaps from 4 to 5 ft. The tides are almost stationary for two hours on either side of high or low wate' , Uiiless affected by strong winds outside. " During August, September, and October there are two high and low waters in the twenty-f ^ur hours ; a superior and an inferior tide, the high water of the superior varying between Ih. and 3h. a. m.. the range during these months from 3 to 6 ft., the night tide the highest. " During winter almost a reversal of these rules appears to take place : thus, in November, December, and January the twelve-hour tides again occur, but the time of high water is at or about noon instead of midnight. " In February, March, and April there are two tides, the superior high water occurring from Ih. to 3h. p. m. Thus it may be said that in sum- mer months the tides are low during the day, the highest tides occur- ring in the night, and in winter the tides are low durng the night, the highest tide occurring in the day. " The ebb stream has always been found to run southward through the Haro Archipelago, and out of Fuca Strait for two and one-half >. urs after it is low water by the shore, the water rising during that time ; the ebb is stronger than the flood, and generally two hours' longer duration. " The tides during those months when two high and two low wat'^rs occur in the twenty-four hours are far more irregular than when there is only one twelve-hour tide ; and another anomaly exists, viz., the greatest range not infrequently occurs at the first and last quarters, instead of at the full and change of the moon," in id id be ro 3d ps er )W he ge iin tit. gh m- nr- he gh irs he in. ars len ;he ra. THE INLAND SEA. 17 The Inland Sea. From Victoria to Queen Charlotte Sound. The P. C. S. S. Co.'s steamers after leaving Victoria skirt the shores of San Juan Island and enter the Gulf of (Jeorj^ia by the narrow Active P(tMi between Miiyne and (Inlinno Islands, discovered by and named for the U. S. S. survey ship Actii'c, in 1H5K. The C. P. N. Co.'s steamers use Pliintjwr I'dsn, named for H. B. M. S. Plumper. Both are very nar- row, with steep, picturesque banks. The Ciulf of Georgia and its connecting waters comprise an Inland Sea greater in extent than that famous one lying between the three great islands of Japan, and it is more richly endowed by Nature. The lOO-mile stretch between Active Pass and Cape Mudge is the finest part of this Inland Sea, that is 40 and 60 miles broad off the mouth of the Fraser River. The Crown Mountains on the Vancouver shore are snow-capped all their length, and Mt. Baker is chief in the white host of Cascade peaks on the main- land shore. The fresh water of the Fraser River may be distinguished miles away on emerging from Active or Plumper Pass, the fresh flood strip- ing and mottling the surface with a paler green, and with its different density and temperature floating over the sea-water or cutting through it in solid bodies that everywhere show sharply defined lines of separa- tion. Vancouver scouted the idea of there being a great river such as Caamano claimed to have found a year before and named the Rio Blanco in honour of the Prime Minister of Spain, although his ships were then anchored in the midst of these mottled waters which every tourist notes. The Fraxer Hirer, whose head-waters were discovered by Sir Alex- ander Mackenzie in 17915, and whose course was followed from head- waters to tide-waters by Simon Fraser in 1808, is described in all its length in Appletons' Canadian Guide-Book, Part II. Full accounts of the cities of New We.stminster and Vancouver are found there as well. Passengers arriving from the East by the C. P. R. may join the Alaska excursion steamers of the P. C. S. S. Co. at Victoria. The Alaska mail and excursion steamers of the P. C. S. S, Co. do not touch 18 THE INLAND SEA. at Vancouver. Steamers for Victoria (Monday excepted) and Nanaimo leave Vancouver daily upon the arrival of the overland trains. The Vicinity of Nanaimo. Nanaimo, 40 miles acroBs from Vancouver, population 4,000, is a busy colliery town, where Ala8ka steamers of the P. C. S. S. Co. remain from six to twtiit -four hours while coaling. It is fully described in The Ca.nadian Guide Book, Part II. The town itself offers little of interest to the tourist save the old H. B. Co. block-house, dating fr«m 1883. Coal was discovered in 1860 through the Indians, who brought a canoe load of the black stones to the H. B. Co. blacksniiths at Vic- toria. At first the Indians were paid one blanket for 8 barrels of coal taken out. Four companies now operate the Nanaimo mines; the har- bour is busy with waiting and loading ships, and the output is about 600,000 tons a year, selling at the wharf for $3 and $3.60 per ton. The Alaska steamers as often coal at the Wellington wharves in Departnra Bay, which is separated from Nanaimo harbour by New- castle Island, whose coal-pits and stone (jiiarry are abandoned. A steam ferry connects Departure Bay wharves with Nanaimo, and a 6- mile carriage road through the forest gives beautiful outlooks upon the water. The Wellington mines lie 5 miles from the wharves, connected by railway and carriage road. The mines were discovered by the late Richard Dunsmuir, Scotch coal expert of the H. B. Co., whose horse stumbled and uncovered the outcroppings of the best coal in the neigh- bourhood. The British admiral, Mr. Dunsmuir, and one other ventured £1,000 each in developing the property. At the end of two years Mr. Dunsmuir bought the admiral's share for £50,000, and at the end of five years the remaining partner's share for £160,000. The 6 Dunsmuir mines at Wellinu'm and North Wellington clear over $60,000 each month, and the pits are surrounded by long rows of colliers' tenements. Native, Chinese, Cornish, and frontier miners have been employed, and after a serious riot, calling for troops to suppress it, the owners closed one group of mines for two years, and its village was depopulated. Wellington commands a higher price than Nanaimo coal, and is used in city gas works on the coast. Dr. George M. Dawson, who recently examined these bituminous coal measures, found that the cretaceous rocks holding these coal-beds filled a trough 130 miles in length along the east shore of Vancouver Island. Dr. Harrington's analysis of this /* -*2 \. .v-^ The Gorge of the Uomuthco. I THE INLAND 8EA. 19 true bituminous coal gave an average of 6-29 per cent of aih and 147 per cent of water. BenldeB the carriage roads already mentioned, one is lieing cut to (he Miimniit of Mt. Jiemon, l>etiin(l Nanaimo. Tlie Hiirroiiii(lin>? forests are of (^reatc^t intcrt'^t to hotaniHtR, and wherever the roeks are iiiicovered thi\v nhow the grooved and rounded carvings of a glacial garden. The carriage road is often a tunnel thr'-.jjh tlie densp, darit foliage of tlie iiuge Doii^das firs, and the last of the ricii, red-barlicd madiofia-trees or Men/.ies arlnitus grow among tlie evergreens. Tliere is an especially fine grove of niadrf^nas on the knoll between the coal wharves and the block-house in Nanaimo. Ferns of many varieties and of gijjantic si/e thriv(! — those 6 and 9 ft. in length being easily found at the en THE IXLANT) SEA. Sechelt ^Wii^sion in Trail Baj, across the gulf frcni Nanaimo, is a tidy village with a large Roman Catholic church, where excursion steamers often touch. A first representation of the Passion Play was given here in 1890, and native communicants from all parts of British Columbia assembled for the religious ceremonies, which occupied three days. These scenes from the life and crucifixion of Christ were re- peated at the mission opposite Vancouver City in 1891, and at Mission Junction on the Fraser in 1802. Phosphorescent seas of wonderful brilliancy are often witnessed in the Gulf of Georgia, and black whalts may always be seen spouting singly or in school,". Texada Inland is 27 miles in length and 4 in breadth, with Mt. Shep- herd (2,90(5 ft.) rising above its many ridges. There are large deposits of coarse magnetic iron-ore, containing only "003 per cent of phos- phorus, valuable for steel-making, and enhanced in value by the neigh- bouring coal-beds. Denolalion Sotmd and Bate Inlet indent the mainland, the latter the most famous fiord along the gulf. It is 40 milts in length, often less than a mile in width, and the precipitous mountain walls rise from 4,000 to 8,000 ft. in height. Soundings of 400 fathoms have been made without bottom, and the clear waters are so darkly green as to be almost black. Dense forests clothe these walls ; glaciers, si.ow-banks, and cascades gleam among the green. Lord Duffcrin and th» itJarquis of Lome began the praise of Bute Inlet as the scenic gtn^ of the coast, and its reputation increa-ses yearly. The Cape Mwlije villatrc marks the limit of the Salish tribes which inhabit the coast between it and the head of Pugot Soimd. The Salish are fast dying, and some have l>ecome extinct within a decade. They had a toteinic organization, pos-*e8sed many arts, yiermanent hoi^^s, seaworthy and graceful canoes, when the first whites came. Their black, shovel-nosed dug-out canoes make pictures in the still waters be- tween wooded shores, and the Chinook canoe is said to have given the lines for tiie American clipper ships of the China and East Indian trade. They are a stiperior people, dilT -ing thus from the canoe Indi- ans of So\ith America, and quite as aggressive as the meat-eating tribes of the interior. Cape Mu/lge potlatches, or feasts, where the host divides all his property among his guests, are famous, one in 1892 rep- resenting an expenditure of *f),0<)Oin the gifts distributed. In 1888 the neighbouring Cowichans htd at-cumulated personal property estimated at i{;40'7,000. The British Columbia legislature forbade potlatches, and in one year their wealth d^cr ased to |!80.000 — the prohibition of potlatches quenching all their desire to accumulate. Before the THE INLAND SEA. 21 whites came the sign-language was used between the tribes. Since then the general medium of communication, with whites as well, has been the Chinook Jaigon compounded by H. B. C'o.'s factors from Salish, French, English, Russian, and Xanaka speech. It has a vocabu- laiy but no grammar, and one quickly learns its simple arrangements from the printed manuals, and finds it a useful accomplishment on the coast. Siwanh, the Chinook name for an Indian, is a corruption of the French sauvage. Klahowyah, the usual salutation, is the native equiva- lent for t'le " Clark, how arc you ? " as a white trader was always greeted by arriving friends. Beymonr Narrows or Yaculta Rapids — The Great ]Malstroin. Discovery Passage, 23 miles in length, separates Vancouver from Valdes Islam/, and the geological formations of its banks show how recently the t.. ^ islands were one. Midway in the pasu are the 8eymonr Nan own, named for the British admiral, but known to the natives as YacnUa, the home of an evil spirit, who lived in its depths and delighted to snatch canoes and devour theii occupants, and to vex and toss whalea about. The Richards and Pender surveys reduced the fabled dangers to exactness. The Narrows are a mile and a half long and less than half a mile wide, and the ebbing tide from the Gulf of Georgia races thro'i^h at a speed varying fi-om to 10 and 12 knots an hour. Ripple Rock lifts a knife-edged reef for 3oO yards down the centre of the pass, with 13 ft. of water over the.se pinnacles, and depths of 100 fathoms around them. Ships are timed to reach the Narrows during the favourable quarter hour before or after the ten ;ninutes of slack water, when the whirlpool boils and simmers mildly. The few who have inadvertently gone through with the racing tide have seen the whole gorge white with foam, waves rearing and break- ing nadly, deep holes t)oring down into the water, fountains Iwiling up li'te geysers, and ships reeling, shivering, and staggering in the demon's hold. Ships steaming 12 knots an hour have made but a cable's head- way in two iiours, and have often been swept back to await the favour- able half hour in the many convenient coves near. Many vessels were wrecked before the pass was fully known. The U. S. S. Sarana", a second-rate side-wheel steamer of 1 1 guns, was lost in Seymour \arrows June 18, 1875. It entered the pass too late, was caught in the current, and struck broadside on Ripple Rock. It swung off, was headed lor the Vancouver shore, and made fast with hawsers to trees ; but there was only time to lower a boat with the na- perp and a few provisioub, when the Saranac sank 60 fathoms deep, 22 THE INLAND SEA. and the crew camped on shore while a small boat went to Nanaimo for help. In 1882 the U. S. S. Wachusett ventured within Yaculta'a realm too late, was seized by the demon, dra^rn down in a big eddy and hurled against the rock with such force that its falsj keel was entirely torn away. In 1883 the little coasting steamer Grappler, returning with the pack and crew from northern canneries, took tire as it entered the Narrows. The hemp rudder-ropes burned ; the frantic passengers leaped overboard as the boat careened and whirled in the rapids ; the captain was sucked down in an eddy with his lit >-nr7!ii«rver belted on, and few escaped. The rings of floating kelp '.ut ' ru the race-way are said to be the queues of the 70 Chine-o ' - : . the OrappUr. The Norwegian Malstrom, lying between the ii («f ^ ouiherly islands of the Loffoden group, atta'js a spc 1 of 6 knots an hour, only when a westerly gale aids the tide : and the greater Salstrom in behind Tromao has but a little stronger current at the ebb. The fortification of the shores ut . jIs point is part of the scheme of defense of Victoria and Vancouver. The Head of Vanconrer Island. Johnaimie Strait, 65 miles in length, and Broughton Strait, 14 miles in length, varying from I to 2 miles in width, continue the double panorama of forested slopes and bold mountain walls. The Alert Bay cannery, on the S. side of Cormorant Island, has drawn a village of 160 Rwakiutl Indians from the abandoned village of Cheslakee, at the mouth of the Nimpkish River. Missionari^? have not been able to do anything with these people. The most Mith^rly totem-pole, and the only one known to have been erected or (tst '! xgt within ten years, is to be seen in front of the chief's h*-' 8( . >Tt Bay. The graveyard is most interesting, with painted l *- .., x\ poles, many flags and streamers. The eccentric fashions in head-ii tun- ing ceased with the Salish people at the line of Cape MuJge, and tbe Kwakiutl cranium was elongated, and drawn up Into pyramidal shape. A few very aged people show the peculiar shapes of skull once in vogue, and fine specimens have been obtained from graves. The Alert Bay Indians will give the old peace and festival dances in cos- tume, if a Bufficient purse is made up by their white visitors. FoTt Rupert, an old H. B. Co. post, is in Beaver I/arbour, 9 miles beyond Broiighton Strait. The fort w»' »()i: in 1849, .f»i: strongly de- fended because of the natives near it .he freq:; r? visit;' of the Haidas and northern tribes. There was a heavy earth«\i'. .. - •^ x : In August, 1866, '.ad in 1867 tlie ranche was bombarded by H. ii, M. S. Clio until the tribe surrendered some h'd;ic>n murderers. Since then the Kwa- kiuils bnve been pticit «nnalB eventless. The young QUEEN UHABLOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK 80UND. 23 men desert the village every summer, to work at mills and canneries. Tlie block houses and gateway of the old fort remain, and also the chief's house, a famous old lodge 100 ft. long and 80 ft. wide, resting on carved corner [)osts. The great potlatch dish, in shape of a recumbent man, holding food for 100 people, is shown. Coal-mines were worked by the H. B. Co. before the Nanaimo veins were discovered, and the cleared fields and gardens are still productive. Beyond the Broughton Archipelago there are several fine fiords, the narrow King Come Inlet having an 1 8-mile-long wall of snow-peaks ; and McKenzie Sound vertical walls that almost shut the sunlight from the flooded gorge, that is only foreground and approach to the noble peak Vancouver, named for Sir John Philip Stephens, of the Admiralty. At the W. end of Galiano hland there is a spire of rock crowning a promontory 1,200 ft. high, which Admiral Phelps, U. S.N. , and Hon. J. G. Swan argue to be " the great headland or island with an exceed- ing high piimacle or spired rock like a pillar thereon " which Juan de Fuca saw. They show how easily the Greek may have sailed for 20 days behind Vancouver Island, (ind, believing the ocean beyond Queen Charlotte Sound to be the Atlantic, retraced his course from this pinnacle in good faith. From Queen Charlotte Sound to Kilbank Sonnd. At Qaeen Charlotte Sound there is a 40-mil[.<> gap in the island belt. Captain Gray first charted the expanse as Pintard Sound, for the Boston owner of his vessel. Vancouver recharted it as named by Captain Wedgeborough, of the Expenment, in 1786. Sometimes the swell of the outer ocean may be felt, but more often it is a stilled ex- panse, where mists and fogs perpetually hover and play fantastic tricks among the ragged islands and the near snow-peaks. Piloting, which is all by sight along this coast, is often by echo along this reach, and the mariner's acute senses tell, as the sound is flung back, how the shores are trending, and have even detected, by a strange quality in the echo, the presence of another ship's sails. Feeling around its rocky edges, both of Vancouver's ships struck ; and in July, 1889, the U. S. S. Su- wanc was lost on an unknown rock in Shadwell Passage. The Kuro Siwo strikes full against this entrance, on its recurved course, and .Hs warm air, condensed by Mt. Stephens and the white host, lies in solid lanks upon the water, in and out of which one passes as through a do'jr ; or the tips of a ship's masts sparkle in the sunlight of 24 QUEEN CHARLOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK SOUND. a high white plain, the hull invisible. Bands of fog pencil the hillfiide with Japanese conventional cloud effects ; a gray canopy truncates the mountain pyramids ; or filmy, downy tatters of clouds, mere mist trailers finer than cobweb, drift across green heights, are tangled in the forest, or gathered in still ravines. Every branch and twig sparkles with vivid greenness in tiiis dewy air, washed clean with perpetual mists. The Kuro Siwo gives the British Columbia coast the climate of Ireland, of Devonshire and Cornwall, and fosters a fa: richer vegetation on shore, all ferns, bushes, and thirsty plants growing as in a hot-house. In forests as dense as any that Stanley describes, and choked with an undergrowth through which an explorer must cut his way, water- courses, and the paths made to them by bears, are the only possible footways below the level of a thousand feet. Tiie Menzie and Merton spruces, and the Douglas fir, stand as closely together as blades of grass, and the eye sees only leagues and leagues of tree-tops on every slope and shore, their foliage so intensely green, when near at hand, blending and toning to the richest bronze, grey and olive in the dis- tance, and often glowing in the late afternoon ns if the foliage reflected some concealed colour, or the slopes were clad in blooming heather. No forest fires darken the air beyond Vancouver's shores, and the scar of a land-slide or wind-break is clothed with green by a second season. A crevice in the rock for safe lodging, a handful of sand or gravel to cover its roots, and a young spruce will prick forth and spread its thin branches, until in time its own needles form a soil and support thick layers of moss. A whole forest thu-; thrives on air and rocks, the trees crowding one another in their growth, and, with no tap-root to steady them, they fail by acres before a storm wind. Their own weight often pulls the thin skin of earth from the rocks, and acres of perpen- dicular forest go thundering down into the bottomless channels, and Nature decorates th^- 'leights afresh. Madronos disappear, and the fa- mous yellow or AlasKa cedars {Ctipressis nxitkakemnti) of the Northwest coast show in the forest from Fort Rupert northward. Nakwakto Rapids. The Great Mahtrom or Reversible Tidal Cataract. Belize Inlet is the strangest piece of glacial carving on the coast as it zigzags and straggles by many deep cuts to the foot of Mt. Ste- phens. It holds a malstrom twice the strength of Seymour Narrows, in the long, narrow gateway that gives entrance to its wonderland. There are Indian villages along those cafions, but it is only for ten min- utes at a time that a canoe can pass the Nakwakto Rapids to reach them. In the first narrows of SHngsby Channel^ which are but 200 yards wide, there is a maelstrom where the tide makes 9 knots an hour at the turn. The canon continues for 5 miies and widens to 400 yards at the Nakwakto Rapids, the KahtsisiUa of the natives, and the most QUEEN CHARLOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK SOUND. 25 remarkable place of its kinJ on the coast. The ebb tide races out at a speed of 16 and 20 knots uu hour, the waves running up th^ face of Turret Isle, which rises 80 ft. above the water in mid-channel. There is magnificent scenery in the labyrinth of farther Inlets, and at the end of one arm there is a peak 5,000 ft. high which easily acquired the name of Perpendicular Mountain. The Coast of British Colombia. Tlie Innide Passage through the Columbian Archipelago. Fitzhngh Sound, first in the line of channels separating the Co* lumbiaii Archipelago from the mainland of British Columbia, trends 80 miles due N. a smooth river running between mountain banks. Just within its entrance, on the shores of Calvert Island, is Oatsoalis or Satiety Cove, a mariner's refuge since Duncan's time (1787). Van- couver anchored and repaired ships there before returning to Nootka in 1792, and his men explored the neighbouring inlets in small boats. Mail steamers and canoes rest there when fog, storm, or darkness prevent their crossing the sound. In August, 1885, the P. C. S. S. Ancon broke her main cylinder on her way southward and was anchored in the cove for ten days, while Captain James Carroll made the 221-mile voyage to Nanaimo in a life-boat in four days and returned with help. The pas- sengers made it a gala season of adventure and exploration, and re- gretted leaving. Mt. Buxton, 3,430 ft., is the sharp-pointed peak on the Calvert shore. Rivers Inlet, the next indentation of the mainland coast, pene- trates 20 miles inland, widening into loch-like expanses so sheltered by the precipitous ridges and ranges that it is clear and sunny within when the Sound is banked with fog. There are three canneries at the end, and the C. P. N. steamers call regularly during the summer season. The Bella Bellas' village of Owikino is near the larger cannery, but presents little of interest in the way of polos or graves. Two canoe- loads of Owikino seal-hunters were killed at Sorrow Island by the Kit- kahtlds, a Tcimsian tribe, in January, 1892, and a bittei Indian war re- sulted ; war canoes carried chanting braves in paint and regalia up and down the channels seeking foes, and the cunstables required the aid of gunboata to suppress and settle the difficulty. Vancouver explored Burke Canal and its branches, Bentinck Arm and Dean Canal in 17".>3, his second season on the Northwest Coast. There is a large native village at the end of Bentinck Arm, 26 QUEEN CHAELOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK SOUND. 60 milea from the sea, where Sir Alexander Mackenzie completed the first crossing of the continent of North America in 1 793. The Biiquias, or Bella Coolas, inhabiting these fiords, are an estray branch of the Sa- lifeh people, isolated in the heart of the Kvvakintis country, and they re- ceived Mackenzie hospitably, and informed him that '* Mactibah " (Van- couver) had just been there. Dr. Dawson says that the Biiquias' trail to the interior and the upper Fraser has existed from time immemo- rial, and the Tinneh tribes called it the Orecuie Trail, because of the supplies of oulachon and other oil acquired in trade with the Biiquias. There was a H. B. Co. post at this important point, and in Cariboo times many prospectors reached the diggings over the old Indian trail from Burke Canal. Cascade Inlet, in Dean Canal, is the Geiranger of this coast, so strangely wanting in great waterfalls. The fiord is 1 1 miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, with innumerable waterfalls leaping from its tremendous cliffs. Vancouver wrote that these cascades " were extremely grand, and by much the largest and most tremendous we had ever beheld, their impetuosity sending currents of air across the canal." One of Vancouver's men. Carter, died, and others were made numb and ill for days, from eating mussels in Poison Cove. Special provi- dence, far more than Duncan's or Caaraano's charts, helped Vancouver to successfully navigate in this region, where a maze of water-ways, and hun- dreds of cul-desncs test the pilot's memory. One attractive little open- ing in Hunter Island is known as The Trap, and a vessel getting in can- not turn around nor make a tour of the blockading islet which is the bait to the trap, but must be pulled out backward. An English gunboat was once lost in this labyrinth region for two weeks ; and when Mr. Seward visited Alaska, in 1869, his pilot also lost the way. The Bella Bellas have a bad name, and when they took one aboard to steer the ship through to Finlayson^a Channel, a pile of silver dollars was put before the pilot as the reward for a safe passage, and pistols pointed at either ear promised other reward for any treachery. Jacobsen's Inlet is named for the Tromso scientist, who has made large collections and long ethnological reports to the Bergen find Berlin museums, and once took seven Bella Coolas to Europe. There is a splendid waterfall 300 ft. high in this inlet. Lama Passage^ named for an old H. B. Co. ship, is a beautifully wooded way, its northern shore broken at one place by a graveyard with kennels of tombs painted with totemic designs, and many flags and streamers flying from tall poles. In an opposite cove, on Campbell Island, the remnant of .the Bella Bellas are gathered in a model village, with mission., church, school, store, and cabins shining with whitewash, and 80 dazzling one with their immaculate array that passers-by dis- credit the curdling tales of the past. They were long the most treach- erous, bloodthirsty, and turbulent ttibe, and made the Ufe of the H. B, i FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. 27 Go. agents such a dangerous imprisionnient that the post of Fort Mc- L->u(jhlin was only maintained for a few years after its establishment in 1834. In 1868 the company tried it again, and the new fashiona in Bella Bella have made life profitable and worth living. I From Milbank Sound to Dixon Entrance. The Oreat Scenic Region. There are only 8 miles of Milbank Sound to be crossed to re- gain the shelter of the great islands again, and it is so fringed with islets that a ship is often past it before its passengers have suspected any opening to the ocean. The finest scenery on the steamer's regular course through the Columbian Archipelago lies between Milbank Sound and Dixon Entrance, a double panorama of unbroken beauty 200 miles in length. The tourist cannot afford to lose an hour of this scenic watch. Green slopes are reflected in greener waters, every tree and twig growing double, and only bands of algae or tide-washed rock tell where reflections part. The shores rise almost perpendicularly for 1,000 or 1,600 ft., above which snow-clad ridges rise as high again, and the channels vary front an eighth of a mile to 2 miles in width. Tall trees climb and cling to these walls like vines, and cascades slip- ping out from the snow-banks flash among the green and go singing to the sea. The mountain contours tell where lakes must lie in rocky amphitheatres, and overflow in these roaring ribbons. Finlayson Channel is 24 miles in length, from 1 to 2 miles in width, with depths of 60 and 150 fathoms. Helmet Mountain on the W., and Stripe Mountain marked with the line of a great land-slide, are at the entrance of the channel. Bell Peak (1,280 ft.), on Cone Island, is commonly known as China Hat, from its outlines. The village of China Hat and fantastic graveyard are seen from the C. P. N. Co.'s steamers, which regularly call for mails. Sarah Island divides the channel's northern end. Its landmarks are two waterfalls that leap from the snow-banks and descend in full view to the sea. Tolmie Channel, W. of Sarah Island, is 16 miles in length, and from a half mile to a mile in width. The scenery increases in charm as the ships pass through Hiehish Narrows, a quarter of a mile in width at the head of Sarah Island, and enters Graham Reach, 17 miles long and less than a mile in width. McKay Reach coatiuues the ^magnificent panorama for the next 8 milea 28 FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. The mountains rise more abruptly, granite cliflffi tower perpendicularly, their front glistening with glacier polish and latticed over with fine cascades ; more waterfalls and land-slides are reflected in the glassy reaches ; great alcoves on the heights betray the hidden lakes, and side canons, lesser Yosemites, lead away into the wilderness of Princeta Royal hhind. In McKay Reich and Wright Sound there is no bottom at 226 fathoms. At Wright Suniid submerged peaks stand as islands ; six diverg- ing channels open, and the tourist with an Admiralty Chart is as puzzled as were Caamano and Vancouver a century ago, to know which way leads on or out to the ocean. Gardner Canal or Inlet. Ursida and Devwstalion Channels, behind Gribbel Island, lead to the grand canal which Vancouver named f< i Vice- Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, who recommended that Vancouver be given charge of the expedition to Nootka and the Northwest Coast. Whidbey explored it in that summer of 1 793, and reported that it wus " almost an entirely barren waste, nearly destitute of wood and verdure, and presenting to the eye one rude mass of almost naked rocks, ri^«ing into rugged moun- tains, more lofty than any he had before seen, whose towering summits seeming to ove/nang their bases gave them a tremendous appearance. The whole was covered with perpetual ice and snow that reached, in the gullies formed between the mountains, close down to the high- water mark, and many waterfalls of various dinient^ions were seen to descend in every ditection " — a description that might as coldly de- scribe the Sogne Fiord, the Naerodal, the Yosemite, or any other rival canon's walls. But Mr. Whidbey went the 60 miles of its length, " where it terminated, as usual," and the explorer gave up getting into Hudson Bay by that route. Tourists consider the Gardner Canal, or Kithip Cation, the culmination of the scenery of the British Columbian coast, as it cleaves its narrowing way for 50 miles between gloomy walls, to where a great mountain blocks the end, with glaciers resting on its sides, cascades foaming down to join the sea, and cannery buildings dwarfed to toys at its base. The Old Man, a conspicuous landmark on the cafion walls, rises perpendicularly 2,000 ft. from the water, and soundings at its base- line give a depth of over 1 ,400 ft. The hlander has been laid along- side, and passengers have gathered ferns from the seamed and over- banging wall. Irving Falls, on the opposite wall, descend 2,000 ft. by successive leaps, and there is a fine frothy fall draining the glacier FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. 29 above the Price cannery. The KitlupH, who inhabit the Bummer Bolm- on villages on the inlet and the oiiliclian viihige on the Kcmano River at its head, have few legends connected with the fiord. Kitlup, in Tnimsian speech, is derived from Kit, "the people," aml/iz/M, "sewed garments" — some vague distinction of earlier days. The cannery was established by Coates, the Scotch thread manufacturer, in 1889. C. P. N. excur- sion steamers first visited the fiord in August, 1891. There is a village' of Christian Indians at Hartley J/arbovr who were formerly members of Mr. Duncan's community at Metlukahtla, and who, without siding with their leader or the bishop, withdrew to their old home when the troubles began. Tliey have a neat village with a church, school-house, and saw-mill, and the men find summer work at the canneries. Grenville Channel, the arrowy reach cutting northwestwardly from Wright Sound for 46 miles without bond or break, was named for the Right Hon. FiOrd Grenville, Secretary of State, who gave Vancou- ver his commission for the expedition to the Northwest Coast. Un- til Gardner's Inlet was exploited Grenville Channel was considered first of Columbian fiords, and the deep, glass-floored, echoing green lane is still a boasted show place on the Alaska route. Lone Inlet is the only break in the wall, and the cannery is niched in a fold in the ro< ks, through which a salmon stream cascades from a high lake. Right Hon. William PitCs Archipelago is W. of Grenville Channel, and, in Chatham Sound, Capt Ibbetson immortalizes another of Vancouver's friends in the Admiralty office. The Skccna River. Sl^eena River, the largest stre';.. '-i the province above the Fraser, is navigable by small steamers • oO miles above its mouth, and for 200 miles by canoes. Its name — Skee, "terror, calamity, trou- ble," and Eeiia, " a stream " — was given it because of poisonous shell- fish, which killed many canoe-loads of the first people who came around from Nass River. It is the greatest salmon stream of the Northwest Coast, and can- neries dot its shores for 20 miles. Vancouver was first to enter it, and named Por< Ensiriffton (or a naval friend; and the H. B. Co.'s post was built there in 1835, adjoining the native village of Spuksut. It is the most in\porriint settlement on the livcr, with a hotel, church, school, cannery, mill, and fish-refrigerating works, where salmon are frozen, hermetically sealed, and shipped to England. It was considered as a 30 FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTEANCB. possible terminus for the C. P. R., bein^ 4nO miles nearer to Asiatic ports than the towns at the mouth of the Fraser, and its distance from the United States boundary and immunity in eatte of war were also in its favour. Land acquired a (^reat value witli the prospect, and is still held at $100 and 1^800 an acre, as the owners believe that a branch of the present trunit line must soon come northward. The canneries at Port Essington, Cluxton, Cascade, Al)erdcen, In- verness, Standard, and Mumford Landing produce over 80,000 cases of salmon each season. Tiiey are properly restricted by Government regu- lations, and officers are stationed on the river during the season to enforce them. Each fishing-boat pays a tax of $20 a season. The size of the nets is prescribed by law, and a wr "' close season from Saturday to Monday allow a fraction of the sal i reach the spawn- ing-grounds. Over 100 fisliing-boats may be . . at once when the seine:; are being set or drawn, and more than $60,000 was paid in wages on the Skeena during the salmon season of 1892. The work is performed by Indians, Chine.'son, the most important H. B. Co. post on the coast, ^ 16 miles beyond Metlakahtla. Rocks and ledges oblige ships t > make a great detour to reach tiie wharf. In 1831 the U. B. C'". Lui) , a first post at Port Simpson, 40 miles up the Nass River, but as the Tsim.«ians firmly held tliAr monopoly of trade with the interior, the profitless isolation only endured for three years, and the post was moved to this bit of Tongass ground on the N. shore of the Tsimsian peninsula. It ictained the name given it in honour of Lieutenant Simpson, R. N., who was in charge of the company's ship-building, and who died at the first foit on the Xa^s. The Tsimsians had originally twelve villages on the Skeena for salmon-fishing, twelve on the Nass for the oulachan-fishing, and twelve permanent winter villages on the coast near to halibut grounds. The , beaches about Fort Simpson had been common camping grounds for all tribes for more than a century, and the Tsimsians, tlie greatest traders and gre.'-e merchants of the c<»a*t, did a large business at their spring fair, when the oulachan silvered sound a/id inlets f' miles, and the wnters were aliv:; with canoes fi-om every (juarter. After the fort was built the May fairs were larger; i4,OOU savages were often en- camped around the stockade ; the Ije.ich wa» bkck wHli canoes, and perpetual revel and bedlam went on. The fort was often attacked; attempts were made to burn it, ;ear, otter, beaver, fort, mink, and marten skins used to dangle by the tens of thousands, are all but empty. Tiie II. B. Co. fortress is only a general country store, The day of beads, red calicj, and toy looking-glasses has gone by, and clocks, fancy lamps, sewing-machines, orguinettes, silk goods, chem- ical fire-engines, and marble tombstones are objects of Tsimsian pride. The In Han Villnnc on the i.>land wholly changed its appearance within the decade of loSl)-'90. The old lo Iges were replaced by cot- tages, and the totem-pole" nearly all destroyed, only a half dozen remaining from tlie forest that used to encircle the beach. The tribe paid $750 for the granite mon-.wnent over the giave of their old chief, on which is chiselled : " In Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Chief of the PROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTKANCE. 33 EiUhee Tribe. Died at Por^ Simpson, July 21, 1890, aged 86 rears. He said : ' Let me die in peace Peace I leave with you.' " Methodist missionaries succeeded Mr. Duncan at Port Simpson, and the Rev. Mr. Crosby and liis aids have almost parallelled v he Met- lakahtla miracle, and the church, school, hospital, and museum are the points cf great interest. The Salvation Army has a band among these Tsiiu.sians. The village is governed by a municipal council of elders. They have their tire co npany and brass band, and duriug the small-pox epidemic at Victoria in 1892 nil suljmitteO to vaccinstion, and closed the bridge to the village whenever a Victoria steamer was in port. All the Dixon Entrance region is bathed in perpetual mists and rains, t nd the moist greenhouse atmosphere of summer forces a ranli vegetation. The finest raspberries in the world are said to grow in the old H. B. Co. gardens — inch-long globes of crimson dew that melt at a touch — rose-red bubbles that have never felt dry air, a withering sun, or a du.Ji particle. i Fort Simpson is confident of becoming the terminus of the next great transcontintental railroad line, the farthest city of the Canadian Northwest. Suburban tracts and wild tiniljer lands are hehi at a pre- mium, and sites for roi-.Tnl-house and car-shops have been discussed. Till! rail"..iy will follow the ^ shore of Work Canal, which cuts south- ward to within a mile of the SLi'tna River. Mt. McNeil, on its N. shore, is a snowy, conical peak 4,300 ft. in height. The fiord, but 800 yaids broad, widens into a lake-like eipan'se at the end, and the scenery along its walls is highly praised. Nass River, Observatory Inlet and Pr;.iland Canal. Nats Kiver heads 100 miles inland, and its shores are historic ground to all the coast tribes, the scenes of half the myths and legends, the cradle cf the native race. There are several canneries and mills along its banks, and an Indiau mission. The site of the original Fort Simj ?ou is almost opposite Echo Cove, the most picturesque cannery site on the coast. Tl.e sce.i>;ry up to that point is wonderfully fine, and the i-aiions and gorge? (pyond offer every temptation to those con- templating any canoe tr^^)B. The salmon-fisheries of the Nass are regulated in the same way as those on the Skeena. The coming of the oulichan in March and April is occasion for the great fish festival of the year, and the tribes gather from all quarters to rt ip the Nass harvest. The Haidas bring their canoes to exchange for ouliolian-oil ; the Tinneh come do«n from the mountains with pelts and horns ; and every Tsim.-ian man, woman, and least child help gather the living silver from the water. The oulichan (Thale- ichlhyn panficnj<\ or candlf-fish, is most nearly like the Atlantic cape- lin, has a delicate flavour when freshly caught, and contains more oil than ucy other known fish. It melts like a lump of butter in the 1 34 THE QUEEN CHAELOTTE ISLANDS. frying-pan, and when dried, threaded with a spruce wick, and stuck in a bottK% bums like a candle. A bunch of them touched to the fire furnish a suilicient torch. They exist in greatest numbers, and schools of them coming in from the sea fill the river and inlets from bank to bank. The natires rake, shovel, dip, and seine them by canoe-loads, and either dry them and string them through the eyes, or prc^ the oil and store it for winter use, as age cannot impair its iiualitie.-. A little oulichan has been smoked and salted for export, and ranks as a rival to herring as a whettar to dull appetites. Portland Canal sep< rates Alaska from B-itish Columbia for the 60 miles that it cuts into the heart of the Coast Range. Captain Gray was first to discover these waters, and af^er running into Portland Canal and Observatory Inlet was sure he had found Del Fonte's River. The Spanish commandant at Nootka gave Captain Gray's charts to Vancouver, and full reports of his voyage. The Englishman estab- lished an astronomical observatory here under Puget and himself, went with a yawl and two small boats on a reconnoissance that in- cluded the shores of Portland Canal, and the circumnavigation cf Retillagigedo Inland, He covered 700 geograpuical miles in twenty- three days. Portland Canal U walled by mountains 3,000 and 4,000 ft. high at the entrance, while those at the end of the fiord tov^er to twice that height. At tho time of the Alaska purchase the surveyors named the heights on one side for distinguished Americans of that day, and Pea- body, Rousseau, Halleck, Adams, Seward, Johnson (Reverdy), and Lin- coln's name grace peaks and ranges that, guarding the still channel below, combine and compose themselves into as noble landscapes as can be Keen in any of the broader fiords. Much careful surveying and exploration has been done in its reaches since the Alaska and British Columbia boundary line has become a subject of discussion. The Clueen Charlotte Islands. The Queen Charlotte Island group lies off the island belt of the immediate mainland coast, placed much as the Loffoden Islands are with respect to Norway, and, like them, bordered with extensive cod banks. The islands are a half-submerged mountain range, the direct continuation of the Olyujpics and the Vancouver Island chain. The compact archipelago measures 180 miles from N. to S., and 60 miles across at the greatest width of Graham Island. The Kuro Siwo in its recurved course falls full 'upon the Queen Charlotte shores and givei THE QITEEN CHABLOTTE ISLANDS. 35 the islands a milder, moister, ind more even climate than Fort Simp- son or the Skeena River settlements enjoy. The west coast is a region of almost perpetual rain, the peaks ris?Ing sheer 2,000 and 4,000 ft. from the ocean's edge, catching anJ foudensing all the clouds and va- pours borne "vith the warm ocean current. The eastern shores are less rugged, and, sheltered by the mountain hairier, enjoy a sunnier and drier climate. Cattle have been successfully raised for fifty years, and potatoes grown for a hundred years. ■All the islands are densely forested, and each a vast dead fall of timber. Log jams arch and dam every stream, and the wilderness is almost untouched. Although Juan Perez discovered these islands in 1774, Dr. George M. Dawson has sliown how very pos.sible it is that this i? Ikl Fonte's Archipeiago of San Lazario, where the men wore the skins of beasts and travelled in great canoes hewn from a single log ; where there were river-ways vexed by lapids no greater than the tide rips and currents that race thro'igh the inlets to-day ; nnd Mynbasset and the name of Del Fonte's other village are as near to Massett and its rivals as Spanish recorders oonld come in 1640. After Perez, La P^rouse sighted the islands ; ar. <'!i < 'aptain Gray, of Boston, visited them and named them for his sIn) iie Washinrffon Mands. Next, in '787, Captain Dixon, who was exploring for a London ftir coropan t(. lehed these shores, obtained a large nuni)>' of sea otter skins which were then the common dress of the peopii, ami named the uTOup the Queen Charlotte Islands, in honour of his ship. <'«ptain Di\.>n gives a full description of the shores and their people in his Voyage Around the World, and sums up the natives as dirty, thievish, inipmien* md mur- derous cannibals. In 1791 Marchand came to tbt- Northwest Coast, surveyed and explored along the W. coast, and m his Voyages says that the people were " good husbands, good lathers, . . . hospi- table, mild, intelligent, and industrious people, endowed with great good sense, to whom the useful arts are not unknown : who join to these even the agreeable ones, and who may be said t< have already made considerable advancen;ent towards civilization" , le recognized Aztec words and terminations in their speech, and ; nblances to Az- tec work in their monuments and picture writings. For the next twenty years the islands were much resorted to by fur-traders, but when the sea otter became extinct they were passed by for a half cen- tury. The traders had given the people potatoes, and from fur fisher- men they turned to truck farmers, and took canoe-loads of potatoes to each I'ort Simpson fair. In 1861 the H. B. Co.'s agent at Fort Simp- son showed the chief Edlnso a ' iece of gold-bearing quartz, and asked him to look for such stones on his island. An old squaw showed where a great vein cropped out on the face of a bluflf on Graham Isl- and, and in the next year the company established a post at Uttewas Tillage, on Mcmett Inlet, and their employes worked the ledge at Gold 36 THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. Harbour until it dipped down into the sea. Some miner?, who char- tered a schooner and sailed for the new gold region, were wrecked on the coast and held as slaves until ransomed. Massett is reached by the C. P. N. Co.'s steamers on their irregular cruises fro.n Victoria, and by small trading steamers from Fort Simp- son. Its old lodges are being abandoned, its famous totem-poles are tottering to decay, and the spirit of progress is fast eliminating every element of picturesqueness. Masnett Inlet is the Clyde of the coast and canoe-making is always in progress. The Haida canoe ''as a curved bottom, flaring sides, a high round- ed stern, and a long, projecting prow. It is the lightest most buoyant, graceful and cranky craft on the coast. The old w».r canoes were 60 and 60 ft. long, elaborately painted and carved, and often carried 100 warriors. The Haida family or travelling canoe, wMch one seet" all up and down the coast, is a slender, graceful, gondola-hke affair 20 or 30 ft. in length and 4 or 6 ft. wide. The hunting or otter canoes are cockle-shell? 6 or 10 ft. in length, in which HaicJa experts go far to sea. All these crafts are hewn from the single log of red cedar, and are given their flare and graceful curves by being filled with water and hot stones until the steamed wood can be braced out to the desired widtli. Travelling canoes range in price from ^75 to f 150 at Port Simpson, and liunting cinoes faO to $50; but the canoe market has its fluctuations like any other, and there are often seasons of great bar- gains. The canoe requires constant care while out of the water. It must be protected from the sunV heat and always kept wet, and the draped canoes along a village beach are the most picturesque adjuncts of native life. There are large oil-works at Skidegate, where the livers of the dog-fi-ii, which swarm in incredible numbers in winter and spring, yield an oil much valued by tanners. A soft, black slate is found on the banks of a cre^'k at the head of Skideyate Inlet, and the Haidas carve from It riiniature totem-poles, boxes, plaques, and pipes, often inlaying them with haliotis shell. The slate is soft and easily cut with a knife when first quarried, but quickly hardens, and will crack if exposed to the sun or heat before it has seaso.ied. There is a colony of Norwegian fishermeri on the W. coast who catch and cure halilMit and the famous black cod {Anoplopomajimhria), a valuable fvwd-fisli which has a different name in each section of the Pacific coast. As S|)anish mackerel it is little valued at San P'rancisco. It attains perfection farther N., and along the strait of Fuca ranks first with epicuK'.^ ■»« " 6c.i/ioit'," the popular Makah name adopted by the Fish Commission. The Haidas call it the skil, and catch it wit'.i wooden books attached to trawl-liaes. The hook is steamed to the fl***^. hrv A JJaida TotemPok: THE QITEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 87 shape of the letter U and set with ".n incurved barb. When not in use the ends of the hook are bound fast with thongs. When baited the ends are held apart by a little stick, and, as the skil nibbles the bait, it pushes out the chip and the hook closes upon him like a trap. The chip ascending tallies one sAi/ caught ; but as dop-fish and shark wait upon the trawl, the fishermen often pulls up only the hundred heads. THE HA1DA8. A church mission was established at Massett in 1876. Dr. Har- rison came to it in 1878, and has studied the language, made a vocabu- lary of 10,000 Haida words, translated hymns and songs, and rescued much of their folk-lore and tradition. Tne Haidas are fast dwindling. Mr. John Work recorded 6,593 inhabitants to the 31 villages visited in 1841. In 1878 there were but three permanent winter villages occu- pied — Massett, Skidegate, and Gold Harbour — and the Haidas num- bered less than 2,000. Only 700 Haidas were enumerated in 1891. The Haidas are the fine flower of the nativ? races of the coast. They are taller, fairer, with oval faces and more regular features than any of the Columbian coast tribes, and are nearer to tiie Tlingit than to any other people I'iiey are aliens to the Tlingits, and differ from all their neighbours physically and mentally, in speech and customs, and many similarities are more often the result ot Haida influences. The Tlingits call them De-Kinw* " people of the sea " ; and these Pacific Northmen rivalled the earlier Vikings in their journeys to distant shores. The Vancouver and Puget .: uund country w.-re their Britain and their Normandy, and coppery Erics and Harolds swept the coasts, attacking native villages, Hudson Bay Company posts, and white settlements. They once seized a schooner in Seattle harbour and murdered all on board, and Haida was a name of terror. Their origin is the puzzle of ethnologis. They have the tradition of a deluge and a sole surviving raven, from whom sprang Qu-a-cda, " the people," as they call themselves, and from which came ihe T.-'>l (Riicsian and native) 1,819 IndiaiiH 23,274 Moiigoliaiifi 2,287 All others 113 Total 3^798 The Indians are »^ a divided as follows : Kskimo 1.2,784 Tliiigit 4,739 Athahaekan 3,441 Aleut 9«8 Tsimpsean 951 Ilyda 891 Total 23,274 By decision of the General Land Office, October 26, 1897, it was conceded that the nstives, not Laving been distinctly exempted, as na- tives in the Treaty ot '''.ssion. have the same rifihts as white citizens to prospect, locate, enter and receive patents for mineral lands. CLIMATE OF SOLTnEASTERN ALASKA. '• BKiti.iN, September .5. — U'e have eeen of Germany enongh to show that its climate is neither ho genial, nor its soil mi fertile, nor its rceio'irces of forests and .nines so "-ich as those of southern Alaska."— W.lliam H. SewabjI, Travels Arouti'J tue World, Pari V'l.. chap. v.. page 708. In cliiuate and all ph-sical features southeastern Alaska is a repeti- tion of soiithern Norway, ciijoyine. however, a far richer forestation. In latituJe, confiiutation, tempci iture, rainfall, and ocean curienti! it is identical. During the thirty-six years that lae Russians kept meteor- olOitical records at Sitka the mercury went below 0° F, but four times. While Su. Johu'.s, Nowfo.indland, is bekagiiered by icebergs in summer and its harbour is froz' u solid in wiuvor, Sitka, 10° N. of it, has always an open roadstcai! <<:[>d only the ends ol the loviger fiords are ever closed by ice. '-ilka I'astit , tyinp 17', or 3 miles, N. of Baiiiioral Castle in Scotliunl, lias a hijiuer aveiasre winter teni()eraturo than the Iliphland hon)e. i^utka's mean temp 'ature for the year is 43'3 against Ber- gen's 4tTi. Tiie ."^now rarely lies on the ground for any time at sea- level, mist and riii?)s soon reducing it to .-^lasli, ns in Kentucky or the Di:jtrict of Columbia, the isothermal e<|uals of this region, '''he snow- line on the moiMitains is at 2,5fM) and 3.000 ft. Hkatiug is a rare pleasure for Siikan-*, m\(\ the Ru.-isian bishop toll Mr. Seward how de- lighted he was fo co ne and live in " such a nice, mild climate." The winter of 1879 -'80 was the most severe known in the century; 3 ft. of fnow remained on the level for three months, and the mercury fell to —70°, as in Dakota or Montana. CLIMATE OF ALASKA. 41 The mean temperature of the air and of the surface sea-water and the precipitation for each month of the year at Sitka are thus given by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in its Alaska " Coast Pilots "of 1883 and 1891: January... F'i'uniary.., itiarch Aori) May June July August September . October November.. Deceuibcr.. Year. Temjwrttun of j T«'.i!p«nture of the afr. ' surface taa-waUr. 31-4 32-9 35-7 40-8 470 52-4 55-6 M 9 PI -5 ',4-0 38- » 33-3 890 390 39-5 420 465 480 49-0 500 61 -5 48-9 44 4 41-7 43'3 450 Prwlpltatioa. 7-35 6-45 5-29 5- 17 4 13 3-68 4' 19 6-96 9-66 11-83 8 »5 8-39 81-69 Tiie old residents insist that the climate is changing; that the sum- mers are wanner and drier than lornierly ; and that, allowing for the different hours at which Baron Wrangell and his successors took the temperature, the records show three degrees increase of average tem- perature .-^ince 1835. The rapid retreat of all the tide-water glaciers during even 20 years is offered as a^iother proof, and there was only one ot the old-at.vle, pijrpetually rainy summers in the decade 1880-'90. The greater Gull Stream of '.tie Pacific and the loftier mountain ranges give southeast ervi Alaska a greater rainfall than southern Nor- way. Bergen's aimual 72-25 inches and the Xordtioid's extreme 78 inches are exceeded by Sitka's annual HI inches, and Fort Tongass's 1 18-30 inches — all exceeded, however, by Cape Flattery's 140-9 inches in 1885-'86. There have been wet seasons in Alaska of 286 and 340 rainv days. This heavy precipitation gives the mountains their shin- ing crowns, feeds the glaciers, forces the luxuriant vegetation, brings every leaf and twig to its fullest perfection, and keeps the toliape so fresh and dewy that at times the green sparkles and almost dazzles one with its intensity. Witii all the down-pour or drizzl" of days, there is nothing like that soul-piercing, nmrrowpenctraiiiif; dampness, that awful chill of the ocean that creeps into Atlantic cities far to south- ward, (juns do not rust ; cigars and tobacco do not mould or mildew. Clothes dry under a shed on tlia rainiest days, even under awnings on shipboard ; and the tourist finds that his gloves and shoes show no re- luctance in being p-ullcd on on wet mornings. Tliere is a blessed immunity from thunder-storms', and the rare dis- pkys of thun ; apples, phinis, and cherries to 64° ami 65° ; and wild raspberries, strawberries, currants, and goose- berries up to the North Cape, 71° 10. The length of the sr.mmer days compensates for the lo"er teinpi'rature, and there is usually a fortni}.'ht or more of realh liot weather in the Sitkan region ead- sum- mer — a fortrdglit of hot days 18 hours long, in 1K91, with the mer- cury passing 8(l° every noon, and reaching 93° on board the U. S. S. Pinta. Noiwegians long ago discovered that seeds and plants from southern Europe had to be acclimated lor two or three years before yielding a good crop. Even niaph -trees undergo a change when trans- planted from southern to northern Norwav, the ni;:htlfss days forcing the heaves to an enormous dzo, while the tree itself is low and stunted, and all common wild tlowcrs attain unusual size and colour in the BOrthlands. ALASKA — NATIVE EACE8. 43 THE NATIVE RACE OF SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA.-THE TLINGITS. The 1 1 tribes of Tlingits inhabiting the coast and islands of south- eastern Alaska were roughly estimated by the Ru8.t>, the Northwest Coast became virgin soil o|)en to free settlement and trade by any people, and three nations claimed it. The Russians asserted ownerslii|) down to the Columbia, and then withdrew to 51°, or to the north end of Vancouver Island. The British clai.ued the coast from the Columbia River to 55", and the United States claimed all W. of the Rocky Mts. between 42° and 54° 40 . In 1818 the United States and Great'lbititin agreed to a joint occupancy of the region, and in 1819 the United States bought Florida from Spain, and with it aetpiired all of Spanish rights and claims on the coast N. of 42''. By the number of its trading posts and vessels regulaily visiting the coast, the United States was virtually in possession of the region, but British fur-traders were pushmg westward from the interior. The Emperor of Russia, by his ukase of 1821, forbidding all foreign \ossels from approaching within 1(M) Italian miles of his possessions in the North Pacific, ])Uiposely brought about the conventions of 1824-'26 to adjust the rival claims to North American territory and to regulate trade. By the treaty of 1824 with the United States, un,d that of 1826 with (Jreat Britain, Russia agreed to 54" 4n' as the southern limit of her posses^ions, and allowed the vessels of the other two nations to freely trade for a [)eriod of ten years. The useless and t:ninhabited interior was parcelled out in even thirds — Russia taking the north- THE BOUNDAKY LINE. 49 western or Yukon region, Enpland the Mackenzie region and all be- tween Iludrton Bay and the Uncky Mts., while the Oregon territory, all W. of the RockieH and N. of 42", was claimed for the t'liited States. In 1828 the joint occupaiion of tlie Nort Invest < 'oast by the United States and (Jreat Britain was indolinitely extended. In 1837-'38 socie- ties lor emigrating to Oregon were formed in the United States, and in 1843 that great waggon train with a thousand jx'ople crossed from the Missonri River to the (.'ohimbia, and the country demanded the imme- diate settlenu'nt ol the northwestern boundary. President Txler, in his animal message to Congress in I84;i, cleclared that "United Slates rights appertain to all Itetween 42" and 64 4o' ". Slave interests were then negotiating for Texas, and, to gain it without interlVience, Calhoun was discus>ing a settlement with the British mini.-ter with the forty- ninth parallel as the Oregon lioundary, which the latter rejected, as his predecessor had in 1807 when JetVerson had proposeil tlie same line. The Whigs and Henry Clay coin elled moderotion and coniproniise, but the Democrats raised the war-cry of "riftyfoui Forty, or Fight!" and elected Polk as the champion of that cause. In his inaugural mes- sage President I'olk said, "Our title to the country of Oreg, Secretary Buchanan concluded the famous Oregon Treaty with Minister I'akenham on the same terms — the line of the forty-ninth paiailel — as otlered by Calhuun two years before and by Jetterson forty years before. Thomas II. Benton gives his own views and defence of this retreat from the first i)i)sition of hi- party in regard to the Orajou QiicMiou in his Thirty Years in th,-" United States Senate. The dearest sumndng up of tl.c s'tuation is giv 'n by Mr. IJlaine in his Twenty Years in Con- gress, vol. i., chap. iii. ; aiid later (chap, xiii.) he says : " Meanwhile, . . . we lost thai vast tract on the north known as British Columbia, the possessioti of 'vhich after the aciiinsitioti of Alaska woidd have given to the United ;-tates the coniinuous frontage on the Pacific Ocean, from the southern lino of Califorida to Herintr Strait." By the trtati'S of 1824-':J5 the limits of Russian possessions are thus defined, and the same articles were repeated in the Treaty of Wash- ington of i8fi7 : " Commencing from the southernmost point of the island called Prince of W'ales Island, which point lies in the parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, and Ix'tween the i:Ust and the lH3d degree of west longtitude (meridian of (ireeiiwicii), the said line shall ascend to the north along the chamul called Portland Channel, as far as the point of the continent where it strikes the 56th degree of north latitude; from this last-mentioned |)o!nt the line of demarcation shall follow the summit of the mountains situatei' parallel to the coast iis far as the point of intersection of the 141st degree of west longitude (of the same meridian); and finally, from the said point of intersection, 50 THE BOUNDARY LINE. tii hi the siiiil meritliiin line of the Ulst degree, in its prolongation as far as the Fiozi'u Ocean. "IV. With lefeienfe to the line of demarcation laid down in the preceding article it is understood — " 1. Tliat tlie irilimd ciilled I'rincc of Wales Island Bhall belong wholly to Kiissia" (now by tlds cession, to the I'nited ."states). "2. Tliat wlienever the siiiiiinit of the inountains which extend in a direction par.illel to tlie coa.-t from tiie fiCith degree of north latitude to the point of intersection of the 141st dc^tree of west longitude shall prove to be at the distance of more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the line of coast which is to belong to Hus>iii as alxtve n\entioned (that is to say, the limit to the possessions ceded by this convention) shall be formed by a line parallel to the winding of the coast, and which shall never exceed the (iistance of ten marine leagues therefrom." The boundary line from Mt. St. Elias to Portland Chaimel has not been surveyed nor determined. For the last twenty-eight years of Kus- sian ownership the " Thirty-ndle Strip," as it was called, was leased to the Hudson Hay Company, who paid an animal rental for the territory Canada now claims as partly her own. The recent growth of Alaska and British Columbia has made the international boundary a (piestion of moment and interest, and " Fifty- four Forty " may again become a campaign slogan. During the Fisheries Conference at Washington in 1887-'88 an in- formal discussion of the Alaska and British Columbia boundary wa« conducted by Dr. W. II. Dall, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Dr. G. M. Dawson of the Doiniiuon (ieological Survey, both scientists of first repute, and both personally acquainted with the regions under discussion. Dr. Dawson [)resented a new nuip showing the boundary line claimed by his Goverimient, as drawn by Major-tieneral It. I). Cameron, which narrows the thirty-mile strip to five ndles in width in numy places, and absorbs it entii ely as part of British Columbia in others. This Cameron line leaps hays and iidets ; gathers in all of Glacier Bay, Lynn Canal, and Taku Iidet; takes all of iheStikine Hiver, and, instead of following " along the channel known as Portland Channel," it strikes to tide- water at the head of Burroughs's Bay and follows by Behm ('anal and Clarence Strait to Dixon Enti ance. By this arrangement, Revillagigedo, Wales, and Pearce Islands and the great peinnsula between Behni Canal and Portland Canal, are annexed to British Columbia ; also the islands of the Gravina group, on one of which Mr. Duncan's colony of Metlakahtlans have found refuge — the island which the United States used for a military post ad then for a custom-house for twenty years, and even Mary Island, where the U. S. custom-house now stands. Claiming all of the Alaska coast up to 5t)° by this arrangement, the late Sir John Robson, Premier of British Columbia, suggested that the United States yield up the small remaining strip of nuiiidand between 56" and St. Elias, for certain concessions in sealing matters. All Cana- dian maps are now drawn according to the Cameron line ; and the Canadians, who are keenly alive to the advantages of possessing this THE SOUinERN ISLANDS. 51 territory, have repentedly cnlled tlie attention of tlic United Ptntes to a mutter wliieii liaH sectncd to be reniinlt'd witli indillVrcncc on our nide of the line.* Tiie U. S. const iind (ieodctii' Survey lias niiule careful 8ur- vcvH of tlie Portland Cannl, Hflitn rmnl, lunl St. Klias region-", and tTATUrr HlLtt ewcedM marked the croasinj? of the line of the Hist meridian on the Yukon River; and late in 18!)2 Prof. T. C. Mendenhall was appointed commis- sioner on the part of the United States, and Mr. W. h. King on the part of Canada, to consider and determine the true line. The Southern Islands. Vancouver divided the island belt above Dixon Entrance into the Prince of Wales and the George the Third Archipelago* The two were as often known as the Sitkan Archipelago, and in 1667 * Sec Century Magazine, July, 18!tl : "The Disputed Boundary between Alaska ami British Columbia." Also Extra Senate Document, No. 14tt, Fiftieth Congress, 2d Session, Report on the Boundary Line be- tween Alaska and British Columbia, and Century Magazine, May, 18v>5. 52 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. Professor Davidfoii snppested the present name of tlie Alexander ArchipRliit^u, in oomi>liiiient to the Russian emperor. The inilitiiry prn^t of Fort Tnngass was btiilt on an ialet between Wales Ixlnml iind ilie mainland, facing the Tlckhonsiti llnrbnur of Kiis- sian trddera, as* often culled Clement or Crescent City. The buikiinps were on the bliilT on the X. siom of lHs;}-'84, but the Ca/>f Fox c;uiiK'ry was moved to Khhik'in, in Tougiiss Narrows, and the boca de Quadra was deserted after a few seasons. Mary Island Tustorns District. The first flag and light seen on the Alaska coast are at the U. S. custom house on Mary Island, a green dot named for the daughter of Admiral Wiuslow, who cruised past it with her father in the U. S. S. Saj-anw in 1872. Tliis Government station was built in 1891, and one may see the white buildings frotr) afar, or hear the siren wailing when mists or darkness brood upon these reef and rock strewn waters. Siiins may enter and clear a? Mary Nland, and tlte deputy and a row-boat ere expect: d to exert a sufficient moral force to prevent the Juneau whis- ky fleet from taking on contraband cargo anywhere across the British THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 68 line and scatterinf:^ to northward by myriad channels. A few years ago there were 21 mo r. Ad toteni-polec, many ruined houses and picturesque graves over or. Cat Mand, where a larj^e community used to dwell ; but many of the venerable columns have been cut, stolen, burned, and wantonly defaced. The CraTina Islands were first seen and named by Caamano. Anuelte, the largest island of the group, is 17 miles in length and over 4 in width, and was named for Mrs. William II. Dall in 1880. It is mountainous tliroughout, and Mt. larnffan, 8,684 ft. in height, retains its snow-cap throughout the year, and is easily distinguished from any side. J'oinl Davixon was christened by Vancouver in nonour of Alexander Davison, owner of the fleet's storcship, and the Englishmen camped for a night at that place. Nicholh Paxx, separating Annette and Gravina I.-ilands, was named for Captain II. E. NichoUs, U. S. N., who first sur- veyed Its dangerous ledges. He also named Port Chester, where he found the ruined lioiiscs and decaying poles of a Tongass community, wboiu the L'hilkats had massacred sixty years before. New Metlakahtla> When Mr. Duncan's people sought a new home on thp Alaska side, the site of this deserte especial champions of his cause, but all creeds and jieoplc assisted. Mr. Duncafi was assured at Washington that his people would be protected in the ownership of any lands tln'\ might select, whenever, by the extension of the general land-iaws to Ala.^kn, that Territory was open to settlement; and the act of Congress, March 8, 1K!U, provided: "(Skction 16.) That, until otherwise provided by law, the body of land.) known as Annette Islands, situated in Alexander Archipelago in 54 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. southeastern Alaska, on the N. side of Dixon's Entrance, be, and the same is hereby, set a|)art us a reservation for the use of the Metlakahtla I. dians, and those people known as Mothikahtlans, wiio have recently emi^irated from Hritifih ("ohimbia to Ahinka, and such otlier Alaskan natives a*i niM> join th'-m, to be held and used by them in common, un- der such niies and ref;ula»i**ns, and -ubject to such restriction?, as may be prescribed frotn time to time by the Secretary of the Interior." Pour hundr*-*! M^'tlakaiiflans crossed to Alaska in the spring of 1887. Dedicatorr services ^orc held on the arrival of Mr. Dimcan, Auftu-it 7. IH87 . the Unit>*d waten flag was raised and saluted by the tolling of the new ohureh-bHI, and a psalm chanted l)y the people. The old totem-poles were des^troyed, wrve two given to the -1 ^a Museum, and, apportioning t!ie tv»«-iots *i'>-i)rding to their owti r rr'3 of indi- vidual rank tmA pre* «!d<-tiee. th*- Xetljffcahtlans began building their present attr*etive vilbj^e. The .-a« inill was burned in 1*^80, but within six weeks if was rebuilt, and f■^'A^ new machinery was cutting 6,imiO ft, of lumber a day. A second fire destroyed the mill in Sha'-'li, 1892, but it was again rebuilt ; and in January, 1893, the mill and half the settle- ment were burned. The salmon cannery ships from 6,0() ) to 8,000 cases each year, and all the industries of the old Metlakahtla 1 ave been revived. They print their own newspaper ; and the photof rapher, the silversmiths, the carvers, and bark-weavers do a large bi.siness on the occasional tour- ist days. The churcii and the octagonal school-house, the boys' and the girls' boarding-home, Mr. Duncan's residence, the cannery, the saw- mill, and the stoie, are the poiots of interest, and on steamer days the band plays on a platform built on the tall cedar stump. The Govern- ment day-school relieves Mr, Duncan of much of his old work, and Dr. Bluett having volunteered his services to the people, they have suit- able medical attendance. The original Tsimsians, with the Haidas and Tlingits who have joined them, have all subscribed to and faithfully lived up to this code : METLAKAHTLA, ALASKA. nKCLARATION OF RKSIDENTS. We, thf people of Metlakahtla, Alaaka, in order to secure to ouradve.s and our poHterlli/ the blemn()s of a ('hrlxiian home, do severallif mtb- iicriht. to tlf foQ/iwiv.fj rules for the reijulaiion of our eondurt and town (fair*: 1. To reverence the .Sabbath, a-^d to refrain from all unnecessary secular work on that day; to attend divine worship; to take the Bible (or our rule of faith ; to regard all true Christians as our breth- ren ; and to tie truthful, honest, and industrious. 2. To be faithful and loyal to the Government and laws of the United States. THL 'SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 65 3. To render our votes when called upon for tlie election of the Town Council, and to promptly obey the by-laws and orders imposed by the said Couni'il. 4. To attend to the education of our children and keep them at school as rei^ularly as possible. 6. To totally abstain from all intoxicants and gambling, and never attend heathen festivities or countenance heathen cu.-^tonis in surround- ing villages. 6. To strictly carry out all sanitary regulations necessary for the health of the town. 7. To identify ourselves with the progress of the settlement, and to utilize the land we hold. 8. Never to alienate, give away, or sell our land, or building- lots, or any portion thereof, to any person or persons who have not subscribed to these rules. The Na-a Country. RcTillagigedo Island, first seen by Gr.iy and Caamano, was named by Vancouver in honour of the Conde de Revillagigedo, Viceroy of New Spain, wiio sent out the expeditions of Quadra, Caamano, Gdliano, and Valdes. Its Indian name Xa-a, " The country of the dis- tant lakes," arose from tlie chain of pools which are linked throughout its northern half. Measuring 50 miles from N. to S. and 25 miles across its greatest breadth, it is almost divided by the long inlet named for Captain James C. Carroll, which, opening from Tonc/anx Xarrows, cuts to within a couple of miles of Hehni Cava', which almost encir- cles the island with its graceful loop. The island is mountainous throughout, and its deeply indented shores hold some beautiful scenery. The only settlements have been on the west shores. The cannery at K'uhikan, or Fish Creek, in Tongass Narrows, is the post office and distributing point for the neighbourhood. In August this small stream is packed with humpbacked salmon, and by follow- ing the trail from the beach for 200 yards the tourist may see one of the oft-described pools crowded from bank to bank with salmon, and watch the leaping of this saltatory species. The fall is some 15 ft. above the level of the pool at low tide, and the mass of salmon coming in with the flood wait until the waters rise their regular 12 ft. and shorten the jump. Imi)atient fish are Uways making the dash at the face of the fall, regardless of the tide, during the weeks when the hump- backs are running. Kichikan is a centre of a rich salmon country, and all the waters sparHu witli leai)ing fi8. gins, the President of Cliile, and Clover Pass was discovered and sur- veyed by Lieutenant Richiirdson Clover, U. S. N., while in command of the coast-survey steamer Patterson. At Loriiig, at the entrance of Naha Bay, there is a large salmon cannery which has absorbed in the one establisnment several smaller canneries and fisheries, and packs the catch of half a dozen streams of the n 'j^hlioui hood. There is a post-office and trading-store ia connec- tion with it, and a village of Tongass Indians have settled beside this permanent settlement. The wreck of the Ancon remains a conspicuous object on t'le rocky shore, where it was blown by a williwaw or " vool- ly " as it was letting go from the wharf at high tide on August 26, 1889. The patsengerb walked down the "ang-plank as the ship settled, and, with all the ship's furnishings removed to the cannery loft, living there for five days until the next steamer returned them to Port Townsend. THE PACIFIC SALMON. There are five varieties of the Pacific salmon (Onror^i/nrA; the hook-jawed). The Pacific salmon and the Pacific trout differ so from the Atlantic species that it is a fine ([uestion whethei' there are any true salmon or trout on that coast, and whether any game lawt can be legally enforced under such names. Onfi>rfii/iu/(u.s rh'Oiich.i, or king salnior, is the qninnat of the Co- lumbia, the Chinook and Taku faithcr X., but everywhere recognized a8 the tiiec (chief), /.vciiiging from (lit to 80 pounds in the Stikine, it increases to loit po;jiids in tlie Yukon. Its flesh is pale, and coming in pairs and not in great schools, it is not the wh -'e pack of any one can- nery. Oneorhj/nehus nerka, the red salmon, is the blue-back of Oregon, the sockcyc of the Fraser, and the canncr's favourite because of the toughness and tlx' deep tint -if its flesh. It averages (\ and 10 pounds in weight, and visit' ilic coast in incredible nuiubei'.s. (hKorhiiiiehus kiKiitrli, the silvc:' s.almoii, is the most beaiitiful of its kind :iu(l the most spiiitcd. It alw.ys chooses clear water, and leaps falls with agility. Its flesh is pale, ard is unfit foi' caninng within a few hours after landing. Onror/iijiir/ius eforlmxrha, the humpback, is rnost abimdant of the species, and averages from .'i to lo pouiuis. The /lalc flesh I'ooks soft in cans and is not desired Uiv packing, although of fine flavour. The hnni|)back i> even more phni*''' d than the red sahmui, and can outjunip any other species. Tl.eir leaps have not been recorded, like that Dram- men River salmon in Norway tliat juiii{)ed U\ ft. up the face of a fall, but Lieutfuaiu Nihiack photographed one in the act of s[>ringing eight feet. The first run of tyees comes in the early :pring. In June the red galmon come in by Dixon Entrance, closely followed by the silver ealnj- THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 57 on. In August the huinpr)aeks appear, and in September there is a ia.-.t ru;. of ^/wv to the up-stroam and mountain lake spawninfi-j^rounds. The younf^ salmon seeks the sea with tlie liij;li water in spring, and re- turn:' at tl:o end of two years to its birth])laee. The iiialnia or Dolly Viirden trout follow thr) salmon in from the sea to devour their eggs, and tlie crudest taekl.^ biiited with salmon roe will catch 1 a;d fi pound fish of the most l)caii;jfi!l colouring. There is also the cut-throat trout, with the vivin red mark below the gills, and the large steel head, (iairdner or rainbow troat, so often classed as a salmon, and packed as s])eckl('0 steam- vessels. The pack of 18H1, amounting to 78!i,noi» cases of 48 one-pound tins each, so overstocked the market that a combination was formed. 2!t canneries were closed, an o! be de- pendeii Uj)on ; an ft. in length. This Ln«/(/ Ai//, but the local name having became well est blished in comaerce before- hand, it is only alluded to as Vrmi Bui/. Bi(rroiiphs\s Jiai/, at I lie mouth of (lie I'nuk River, is a deep bowl in the mountains where Vancouver fished in August, 179--. and called his prizes "hunchbacked salmon." "'Th*^ had little ent food," he wrote. The shores were covered with deiid salmon then, ns they are now at the height of the run, when the retreating tides strand acres of fish on tlie ri\er bars. A cannery was established at Bur- roughs's Hay in 1885, and while it was in operation the mail steamers regularly made the tour of Behm Canal *. There is placer gold in the bars of the Uiiuk Fiiver, a turbid, glacier-fed stream, which heads IdO miles inland. It is navigable for 70 miles by canoe, hut hunters of the bear, mountain goat, and mountain sheep, which abound in this region, are warned by the surveyors of dangerous rapids and whirl- pools. The mainland shores arc very abrupt all along Behm Canal, the way is narrow, and Commander Newell, U. S. N., who was among the first to carry a large steamer around Kevillagigedo, declares the view northward from Point Sykcs the finest in .southern Alaska. The landmark in that stretch id the New FMd> stone Rock, which rises like a ruined vine-dad tower 250 ft. from the water, with a circumfer- ence of less than 00 yards at the base. There are a few crevices in its side to maintain the green wreaths and plumes that permanently decorate it, and it could be easily scaled. Vancouver named it after breakfasting on its sundy base ; and in 187!> the Coast Survey named the Rudifiird Biuj and the other points near it for engineers and oth- ers connected with the building of the famous Eddystoue Light on the coast of England. Prince of Wales Island. Prince of Wales, the largest island of the Alexander Archipel- ago, is second in size to Vancouver Island, extending 2uo miles from N. to S., with a breadth of 20 and (10 miles. It is a miniature conti- nent, with an island belt on the ocean coast sheltering a continuous Inside Passage, navigable by canoes and launches. It is mountainous throughout ; cedar groves dot its shores ; fine salmon streams lead to scores f)f mountain lakes, and in climate it has been called the Lan- cashire of the coast. Ik'cause of it.-* wealth of cedar and salmon. Con- gress was once asked to declare the island a government reservation of ship timber for the use of the navy-yards on the Pacific coast, and to * Named for Major IJehm, commandant at the Russian port in Kam- chatka, where Cook's ships wintered under Captain King. Geoige Vancouver was miilshipman on this third and last voyage of the great navigator, James Cook. T THE SOUTHERN I8LAND9. 61 lease the Halmon-fislierio.s. The very mention of Alaska has always heen Huffieiont to convulse the ('on^ress at Wiishinjiton ; and although the proponed reservation was larger than the Siiite of New Jersey, and would have brought in a eon«iderable revenue, the humorous legislators did nothing. The yellow cedar {CiipremK iinlhih'TiKiK), wh'u'h ranges from the Queen Charlotte Islands to Yakutat is the most valualjle timl)er on the Pacific coast. The tree reaches a diameter of 5 and 8 ft. and a height of I5(t ft., growing in patches and small gi'oves, and easily distinguished from the rigid, symmetrical spruces by its darker foliage, its ragged and uneven limbs with their [)lumy, willowy, tasselled tips. It hiS a pale-yellow colour and a close fine grain, exhaling a slight resinous odour when fiist cut. The Chiiiese valued it highly, and the Russians carried on a large trade in cedar logs. \t ('aiuou it was made into chests that jiasscd as camphoi-wood, and wi.en ca.'ved and scented was palmed off as sandal-wood. It is as much tlie aversion of moths as are the other fragrant cedars. It is the one shi[) timber of the Pacific coast, the only wood which repels the teredo, and shius' tim- bers hcve been found to be souiul and good after lying under v. ater for thirty yeais. The few vcfsels built of yellow cedar have ihe best standing, since hulls of Oregon pine can only be insured as A. No. 1 for three years, and the average Puget Sound pile is eaten through in the same time. One million dollais a year is said to be sjient in driv- ing and replacing piles in Puget Sound wharves, while the yellow cedar of Alaska is untouched, and the law forbids its exportation. Small lots of yellow cedar have been sold at Portland for ^75 jjer thousand feet ; local cabinet-makers have made much use of it, and Hon. Wil- liam II. Seward secured enough cedar during his visit to Alaska to finish the great hall of his Auburn residence. The natives use this wood for canoe and house building, for totem-polett and all carved work. The inner bark furnishes them with a tough fibre which re- places ropes or thongs, and, finely shredded, is woven into mats, sails, blankets, baskets, and hats. They destroy countless tree.s l)y this girdling, and ghosts of dead cedars show all along shore. All the S. and W. coast of Prince of Wales Island is historic ground. At Cape Chacon, or the traders' Musatchie Nose, Juan Perez landed in 1^14, and finding a mttive with a Russian gun hi his possession, marked the line of 54° 40' as the limit of Russian rule, and by the same token the northern boundary of Spanish possessions. The Ilanrnt/aii originally claimed all the ocean shores, but one hun- dred and fifty or two hundred years ago they were driven northward by the Ilaidas from North Island of the tjuecn Charlotte group, a baud of pirates and freebootors who successfully defied the neighliotiringfilies, and terrorized the nuiiuland coast. At last the other Ilaidas, combined with the Nasa and Tsimsiau warriors, attacked North Island, routed the * G2 THE floUTHERN ISLANDS. rencpndes, and destroyed their villnpes. The Hiirvivors put to sea, hindt'tl on tlie oi)!)^!!!' ^hore of tht- t'litrimi'c, and in time pii.slied tiieir viUaiicH lip to Tk'vali Strait and around to Thorne May, on tlie K. side of tlio island. Tliey drove the Frtnch fla^ from tldn coast early in the century l)y killing the native otter-iiunters whom a French fader had leased fi'oin the liussiaii chief manager at Sitka. After indi >nnifying the Sitkans for their 2'-i dead relatives at !t«2no each, the Frenchman had (i'.i otter-skins wortli if 5 each to take to Canton. His experience deterred his coinitrynien from competing in the pro(ital)lr )ur-trade of the Northwest Coast. These Tleviakans, Kaigahnees, or Prince of Wales Hniilas, liave their largest village at Ilowkaii) in Cordova IJay, itehind Dall Island. The Uoston fur-traders used to anchor near the village in the harbour which Captain Etholin surveyed in 1h;j;{, and named Aineric ft. high, grew on the tojts of totem-poles. Skolka, the head chief, had a magnifi- cent column by his doorway, with two children with storied hats above his ancestral eagle and the image of a bearded white man beneath the bird. He reater Walker, who was lost with the steamer George S. Wrijflit, in Kebruary, 187;{. The loss of the Wiiijhl was one of the tragedies of the sea, and is still a current topic in Alaska. The steame' left Sitka im its return trip to Portland with several army otfieers arJ their families and resident.-, on board. It was last seen at Cordrva Bay, on the south end of I'lince of Wales Island, and, in the face of warnings, the ua|)tain put out to sea in a heavy storm, as he was hurrying to Portland for his weilding. It is supposed that the ship foundered, or struck a rock on the '.^ueen Charlotte shore. The most terrible anxiety prevailed as week after week went by with no tidings of the Wi-'kjIiI^ and the feeling was intensitied when the rumour was started that it had been wrecked near a village of Kuergefath Indians, and that the survivors had been tortured and put to death. Two years after the disajipearance of the Wrhjlit the body of .Major Walker was found in Port Ba/.an, rccogni/ablc only by fragments of his uniform that had been held to him by a life preserver. Other remains and bits of wreckage were found in the island recesses, and the mystery of the Wri(fhf was cleared. In the Howkan and the Kaigahnee region everything has been named and charted three and four times, fx/w Afnzon itself was named Cape Muiioz by the Spaniards, and \'ancouver copied the name incorrectly. Dixon had named it ("a])e Pitt before him, and Tebenkofl" c.illed it Cape Kaigahnee afterward. The original village of Kaiffahiir^rwus near this cape, but since its altandonment that name is as often applied to Howkan. Kdli/an is the Japanese word for strand or seashore, and its use in this eoimection give great comfort to those who contend for the Asiatic origin of these people. The missionaries named the place Jackson, and the Post-Otlice Department sent blanks and cancelling stamps marked Haida Mission. Captain Nichols resisted all appeals to enter Jackson on IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) /. I I.I 11.25 ■It lU 12.2 Illlim U IIIIII.6 — 6" y] O v: V / /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STRfET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14SS0 (716) 872-4503 ^*^> V k^ ^ c^ ;V I 64 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. the Coast Survey charts, and the Board of Geographic Xames made Howkan the legal and odicial uppellatlon. This id only one of many similar incidents in the naming of the region. The Howkan Mission has a saw-mill beyond American Bay, and the Klawak cannery and mill arc niched in the far end of Bucarelli Bay, that picturesque, cedur-linod reach where Bodega and Maurclle took possession in the name of Spain in 1775. Mail and excursion steamers never visit this shore, and the Klawuk cannery runs its own schooners to San Francisco, and steam launches to Howkan, or Fort Wrangel, for mails. A mission and a Government school care for the Hanegas, who inhabit this W. coast, a tnoe quite as untamable for a century as the Kaigahnees. There is an inside passage from Dixon Entrance to Sumner Strait, and a large cannery and saw-mill at Shakan, or Chican, off the N. end of Prince of Wales. That saw-mill was doing a large business in cedar shingles with San Francisco in 1889, when the zealous timber agent descended, a cargo was contiscatcd, a large tine levied, and the mill was silenced. Vancouver sighted the " very remarkable barren, peaked mountain " on the N. end of Prince of Wales, which he named for his friend Captain Calder, of the navy ; but other navigators briefly describe Mt. Calder as a volcano, and tell of its eruptiou towards the close of the last century. The northern and eastern shores of the island down to Thome Bay are claimed by the Stikines, and their first village is in Rtd Bay, the Krasnaia of the Russian traders. The dreaded Eye-opener, or Shoo- Fty Roek, is off its entrance, and by a sharp turn a ship runs into a small opening that narrows until it can barely pa-ss. Beyond this gateway the bay rounds out into a placid reach, with magnificent trees crowding to the water's edge. There was a small saltery there in 1884, and another at Salmon Creek, E. of Red Bay. Kasa-an Bay, on the E. coast of Prince of Wales Island, pene- trates some 17 miles in a westerly direction, and several fine salmon streams empty into its arms and inlets. Skowl's old village, the original Kasa-an, is on iSkowl Arm, which opens southwardly near the entrance. At the time of Skowl's death his village held i7 great lodges, and the threescore ot^m-poles constituted the finest collection of their kind in Alaska. This jhief of the eagle clan was an autocrat of the old school, ruled his people with a rod of iron, held them to the old faiths and customs, and gave missionaries no welcome. A totem-pole in his village showed the image of a priest, an angel, and a book, and was intended as a derisive reminder of the efforts made to convert him. THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 65 There Is an interesting old graveyard on the N. shore, half-way np Kasa- an Bay, near the Baronovich copper^niinc, which was much ex])h)ited twenty years ago. The Baronovich Fkhery in in a cove of Karta lint/, at the extreme end of the opening, and was established at the time of the transfer by a Russian trader who married Skowl's daughter. It was a headcpiarters of smuggling operations during the lirst years of Tnitod States owner- ship of Alaska, and Baronovich was one of the first of pelagic sealers or rookery raiders, returning with it,(M»() fur-seal skins from a mysterious cruise in a small schooner in the summer of 1868. In 1886 the customs officers found over ,$40,(»(X1 worth of prepared opium at this fishery, packed in barrels and ready for shipment below as salt saltnon. Since that event the fishery has been abandoned, and the catch of Kam-nii, Tohtoi, Thome, and Stilmon Bays (jn the E. coast of Prince of Wales Island, are towed in scows to the Lorinrf cannery. Choloiondeley Sound, which extends inland for It) miles, was named by Vancouver, and iJora liai/, its scenic boast, with Mt. Eu- dora, 3,600 ft. iiigh at its end, were named for Mrs. Richardson Clover. Motra Sound, anottier of Vancouver's discoveries, and the northern arm reaching almost to the base of Mt. Hudora, is much lauded for ita scenic combination. Niblack anchorage was named for Lieut. A. P. Niblack, U. S. N., who conducted the surveys in this region and gathered the ma- terial for his valuable work on The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia, published as part of the Report of the U. S. National Musetuu, 1887-'88. It contains the fullest explanation of the arts, customs, and social organization of these interesting iwople. This report, and the other U. S. (iovernment publications referred to, cannot be purchased, but can be obtained for any United States citizen who makes proper application to a Senator or Representative in Congress from his State. Fort Wrangell. Vancouver's Dnke of i'larence Strait is 107 miles in length, and at its nc»rthern end is .sensibly discoloured by the fresh water of the Slik-itw River. Fort Wrangcll, on the island of that name off the mouth of that river, was the second settlement in southeastern Alaska after Sitka, and commands a broad iiouutain-walled harbour that lies 80 miles in from the open ocean. This gives it warmer and drier sum- mers and colder winters than places on the outer coast, the mercury often rising above 90" in July, and remaining above 80" for a fortnight at a time. The winter average of 28";j° leaves the harbour open, and "^xtreme cold is rarely known. John Muir has highly extolled its bluuJ, r 66 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. soothing, " poultict'-Iike atn»oi»iilu'n'," iind ^n-iitly pruJHed the mountain panoninia iinroiiud to one wlio clinilts tlit* liill liehiiid the old fort. The first Hcttlenient on Wranf/tll Inhiiid wa« made hy order of the chief manager, Adiiilrui-liaron Wraiiv;cli who sent the eaptain-lieiitenant, Dionysius Feodorovieii Zaremlxi, down from Sitlta, in lH',i4, to erect a 8tost was abamioned, the groinid and liuildings ."old to VV. King Lear for i?tjt)0. The discovery of the('a>siar mines, at the head- waters of the Stikine, and sent a tide of new life into the deserted street, and a company of the Fourth Artillery occui)ied the barracks from l^'7.5 to 1877, when the (iovernment withdrew its troops from all posts in Alaska. During the second occupation the tenants fi.xed the lent of the prop- erty, and paid the protesting landlord a tenth of what he might have received at that time. In 1884 the Treasury Department tcwk posses- sion of the buildings, on the ground that the sale of 1870 was illegal, and installed the deputy-collector in the fort. Twenty years after Mr. Lear's purchase of the property, the Sitka court decided that, as the original sale was illegal and uncimstitutional, Mr. Lear was entitled to his #t»(>0 with interest, and the enune citebre was ended. As the old binldings went to ruin, tbey lent Fort Wrangell a certain interest and picturesqueness. The old tpiarters are used by the civil officers — a deputy-collector, commissioner, marshal, postmaster, and superintend- ent of education. During the Stikine-Klondike bd, and from an alliance witli tiiiH bear were de- scended all his people. One bear column hIiows the f(M)tprintH of the bear that crawled to the top of the tree whence he was rescued by i^hakes's ancestors ; and wheti Shakes was laid away in a balconied pa- vilion on the Point, a l>ear was put on guard. Kadashan hati inherited the orca-stafF that ndes the tribe and a tine war canoe. For a sutticient purse he and a rival tyee will muster crews of thirty-two and paddle a spirited race. They paddle to a chant, the fierce old war-song of the " northern Indians " that spread terror on the lower coast. Shualacka Point was the home of another chief, who long defied the mi.ssionaries' efforts, but who was laid away in his ornamented grave soon after Vlah, the Christian Tsiinsian, accetled to the Sti- kines' re<|uest 'ind opened a school in their midst. Mr. Seward and General Howard had vainly appealed to mission boards, but the letter of a private .>toldier describing the pathetic efforts of these people to do for themselves made most impression, and in 1877 the Presbyterian Board sent Rev. Sheldon Jackson to investigate. He found the won- derful Clah teaching in a dance-hall leased from the miners, and, guarded by the chief Toyatt, opening his school with hymn and prayer. A teacher was left for that winter, and the next year Mrs. McFarland opened a girls' Itoarding-school, which, after its own building was burned, was united with the Sitka ociiool. A ('atholic chapel was built during garrison days, and receives periodical visits fmm the Jesuit father at Juneau, but as the Tlingits have been given in charge of the Presbyterian Board, the Roman church does not attempt any evangel- ical work among them. A Methodist and a Presbyterian church and Government ()ay school are the forces at work, and are judged suffi- cient and satisfactory. The pre-emptor of the old company gardens beyond the fort has proved in these later days that vegetable and poultry raising are more certain and profitable ventures in Alaska than mining. Cabbages and mangel-wurzel reach prodigious size; cauliflowers measure 18 inches around ; and peas, beans, lettuce, celery, rhubarb, and radishes thrive. This enthusiastic planter believes that he could have ripened wheat during two dry summers, and perhaps com. Wild timothy grows 6 ft. high in old clearings, and clover-heads arc twice the size of Eastern clover, each blossom wide-spread, as red and fragrant as a carnation pink. The Stikine River. There is a salmon cannery at Labonchere Bay, 2 miles from Fort Wrangell, on the north point of the island. A trail through the woods connects the two settlements. This spot is better known aa the Point Highjield of Vancouver, and commands a view of the mo h of the Stikine River and the high peaks surrounding its delta. THE 8TIKINE RIVEK. 69 Althotigh Vancouver's men, in reaching this point, were Burronnded by the grey-groen and turbid Hood of the ^reat ntream, they did not di8> cover it, tlie third great river of the coast which they almost entered unaware^. Captain Cleveland, of the American sloop Dragon, and Cap- tain Rowan, of the Ehzn, visited the delta and learned of the great stream in 175'9. Hudson Bay ('o. cmploy68 knew the head-waters, s(K»n after their repulse by Zarembo at Fort Dionysius. Mr. Robert Campbell tells of his discovery of its sources in a letter to Senator M. ('. Butler, dated Riding Mountain House, Manitoba, November 30, 1881: '* Being an employ^ of the Hudson Bay Co., I was for a series of years employed by it in exploring, trading, and extending the trade in the till then unknown part of the Rocky Mountains, and especially in search of rivers, or sources of rivers, flowing from the west of the mountains. " In summer, 1838, I ascended to and established a trading post at Dea.se's Lake (since then a gold field), and soon after, in July, I crossed the mountain and came to the head-waters uf a river, which with a party of two Indian boys and a half-breed I followed for some time, and came to a tributary which we crossed on Terror Bridge, a very shaky structure over a foaming torrent. About 16 miles beyond the bridge we came on a ver)' large camp of Indians assembled there for the double purpose of catching salmon, which abounded in the river, and of trading with the then notable chief ' Shakes,' who ascended there from Ftirt Highfield, a large trading station of the Russians, es- tablished at the mouth of the river, on the Pacific coast. From these Indians I was glad to learn that the name of the river was ' Stikene.' " I gave notes to some of the Indians, to be delivered at any Hudson Bay Co. post, relating the result of my discovery thus far, and as the object of my trip was now attained I wished to retrace my ster s without delay ; but it wa« with no little difficulty that we got away from the camp of the savages. We owed gur safety to the Nahany chief, and the tribe we came first in contact with va the morning. This discovery, which made no small noise at the time, led in a great measure to the Hudson Bay Co. leasing from the Russians a stretch of country along the coast, for purposes of trade." The Hudson Bay Co. first established Fort Mum/ord, 60 miles up the river from Fort Wrangell, at the supposed Russian boundary line, and Fort Glenora, 126 miles up river, at the head of canoe navigation. When the miners came with steamboats, fir^i-arms, and blasting powder, game was frightened away, and the Indians found more lucrative pur- suits than hunting and trapping. In 1878 the company abandoned the river |>osts, the mines failed, and the region relapsed into a wildeiness. The scenery of Stah-Kccna, the Great River, will revive the for- tunes of the region when increasing tourist travel makes it better known. Prof. John Muir, who canoed its length in 1879, epitomized its finest reach as " a Yosemite 100 miles long." Three hundred Udnggla- TO THE 8TIKINE RIVKB. dent drain directly into titc Stilcino, and Prof. Muir counted 100 from liifl canoe. Tiie river is very sliallow at the moutli, witli a current running 6 miles an hour, but in the upper canons tiie current is terrific. Steam- ers were withdrawn from the river in 188:{, but a relic continued to navi- gate until 1891, although canoe travel was and is still more satisfactory to those who can give a fortnight to the excursion. The dozen power- fully-engined boats |>ut on the river in the spring of 1898 were nearly all withdrawn at the end of three months. The fastest trips were mude in 80 houra up stream (tying up overnight) and 9 hount down stream. Itinerary of the Stiklne River* The first object of interest is the Popoff, or Little Olarier, 10 miles above Point Rothsay. At the Big Bend, a few miles above, the Iikooi River opens a valley southward, its course defined by the sharp needle peaks of the Glacier Range. The natives, following the Iskoot cafiona for 50 miles, reach a table-land from which they descend the Nusa River to Fort Simpson. Pesides scenery of the wildest description, peaks, precipices, and glaciers that defy Zermatt climbers, the Iskoot region is a great preserve of big game. Grizzly, cinnamon, and black bears, mountain goat and mountain sheep, deer and elk, roam undis- turbed, grouse abound, and mosquitoes surpass in numbers and vo- racity any others of their kind. The same condition as to game ond insects exists all along the Stikine. The International Boundary Line, as temporarily accepted, is a few miles beyond the Popoff Olacier, a U S. Custom-Housc, a Canadian Custom-House and barracks of mounted police, collecting duties and preserving order on the river. The Great, or Orlebar Glacier, 20 miles above the Little Qla- eier, and 40 miles from Fort Wrangel, is often visited in chartered steamers, when mail steamers are delayed at the latter port for a whole doy, and offers an interesting excursion. The glocier descends through a mountain gateway less than a mile in width, and spreads out in a broad, rounded, fan slope measuring 3 milca around its rim. A tcnninal moraine half a mile in width lies between it and the river, a place of sloughs and quicksands cut by the milk-white Ice Water River, and scores of streams throtigh which the pilgrim wades to the foot of ice-cliffs rising abruptly 600 and 700 ft. The glacier slopes back easily and disappears in fine curves behind mountain spurs. Its surface is much broken, but it has not been explored nor its motion recorded. Two young Russian officers once came down frou Sitk» to THE STIKINE RIVER. 71 explore thin K^acier to its Boiirce, but they never returned with its secrcta. Old miners and river trndcrH say tliat it lia.i Hln-unl< and retreated niueli Hiuec tlitwe good old days when "the hoys," with their ba^rt of flour gold, and nuggets, used to eongtegate at liiuk\ liar (Choqiiette'n) on the oppoMite bank, and, while boilini; thenmelves in the Hot Springt baths, eonteinplated the great iee Htrcani over the way. A smaller gla- cier faces the (ire