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RUHAMAH SCIDMORP: WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS "Berlin, Sept 5. — We have seen of Germany erumpli to show that its climate is neither so genial, nor its soil si, fertile, nor it'> resources of forests and mines so rich as those of Soiitiiem Alaska." — /^'/7//;i;'/ //. Snwrii — Travels Around tlu World, Part VI. chap. v. page 708. BOSTON D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY 32 Franklin Street nmMm-mmmv^^'mm p'^o^ 'oA- 265313 / Cofyris^ht, by D. I.oTiiKnr AND Company, Ei.ECTROTYPKD BY C. J. I'l-Ti-Rs AND Sov, Boston. t-r^* »■•«■« 1*!J,1^T-''.-Ti'PY)«^:»^ftT*;'; PREFACE. Thesf. chapters arc mainly a republication of the series of letters appearin«i in the columns of the S/. Louis Globc-Democmt fXwx'Wig the summer of 1883, and in the St. Louis Globi'-Dvmocmt and the New York Times (hiring the summer of 1884. To readers of those journals, and to many exchange editors, who gave further circulation to the letters, they may carry familiar echoes. The only excuse for offering them in this permanent form is the wish that the compar- atively unknown territory, with its matchless scenery and many attractions, may be better known, and a hope that those who visit it may find in this book information that will add to their interest and enjoy- ment of the trip. In rearranging the original letters many errors have been corrected and new material incorporated. Dur- ing brief summer visits it was impossible to make any serious study, solve the mysteries of the native people, or give other than fleeting sketches of their out-door life and daily customs. Elaborate resumes of the writings of Baron VVrangell and Bishop Venia- minoff have been given by Professor Dall in his work on "The Resources of Alaska," and by Ivan Petroff in the Census Report of 1880 (Vol. IX.), and have 111 tr PREFACE. since been so often and so generally quoted as hardly to demand another introduction to those interested in ethnology. Such mention as I have made of the traditions and customs of the Thlinkets is condensed from many deck and table talks, and from conversations with teachers, traders, miners, and government officers in Alaska. Wherever possible, credit has been given to the original sources of information, and the "Pacific Coast Pilot" of 1883 and other government publications have been freely consulted. The nomenclature and spelling of the " Coast Pilot " have been followed, although to its exactness and phonetic severity much picturesqueness and euphony have been sacrificed. The map accompanying the book is a reduced section of the last general chart of Alaska published by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and is reproduced here by the permission of the compiler, Prof. William H. Dall. Of the illustrations, the cut of the Indian grave at Fort Wrangell was one accompanying an article published ir. Harper s Weekly, August 30, 1884, and other pictures have been presented to readers of the Wide Aivakc magazine of March, 1885. For views of the Davidson glacier, the North River, and the top of the Muir glacier, and the interior of the Greek Church at Sitka, from which cuts were made, I am indebted to a daring and successful amateur photo- grapher of San Francisco, to whom especial credit is due. To the officers of the ship and agents of the company I have to express appreciation of the favors and courtesies extended by them to my friends .» •■-v PREFACE. ▼ and to myself, Kach summer I bought my long purple ticket, reading from Portland to Sitka and return, with pleasurable anticipations ; and all of them — and more — being realized, I yielded up the last coupons with regret. For information given and assistance rendered in the course of this work I am under obligations to many people. I would particularly make my ac- knowledgments in this place to Prof. William H. Dall, Capt. James C. Carroll, Hon. Frederic W. Seward, Prof. John Muir, Prof. George Davidson, Capt. R. W. Meade, U.S.N., Capt. C. L. Hooper, U.S.R.M., and Hon. J. G. Swan. E. R. S. Washington, D. C, March 15, 1885. !■ £ ■^■n CONTENTS. CHAPTIR I'A(;K I. Thk, Stari — Port Townsfnd — Victoria — Na- na i mo . . I II. The ItRiKSH Columbia Coast and Tongass . r6 III. Cai'E Fox and \aha Hav . 26 IV. Kasa an Hay 31 V. Fort W'RANiiKi.i, and the Stikink 46 VI. VVranuell Narrows ani» Taku (ii a( ikk;. ... 72 VII. Ju., J .'. , SiLVKR Bow Basin, and Dougla>^s Is- land Mines 81 VIII. The Chilkat Country 100 IX. Bartlett Hay and the IIooniahs 123 X. Muir Glacier and Idaho Inlet if XI. Sitka — The Castle and the Oreek Church . . 153 XII. Sitka — The Indian Rancherie 174 XIII. Sitka — Suhurus and Clim.ate 184 XIV. Sitka — An Historical Sketch 198 X.V. Sitka — History SucceediNci the Transfer . . 214 yyi. Education in Alaska 229 XVTI. Peril Straits and Kootznahoo 236 ■CVIII. KiLLISNOO AND TUV. LaND OE KaKES 246 XLX. The Prince ok Wales Island . .... . • • 258 XX. HowKAN. or Kaioahnke , ♦ . . 269 XXI. The Metlakatlah Mission .....»,.. 280 XXII. Homeward Bound 289 XXIII. Sealskins 300 .>1XIV. Ti*E Treaty and Con(;ressional Pajers .... 315 vu LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGB Map of Alaska Frontispiece Three Carved Spoons and Shaman's Rattle 38 Totem Poles at Fonr Wranuell 53 CiRAVE at Fori" Wrangeli 55 Silver Bracelets and Laurettes 61 A Thlinket IUsket 90 The Davidson Glacier 103 Chilkat Blanket 106 Thlinket Bird-IMpe (Side and bottom) lr^ Diagram of the Muir Glacier 133 River on North Side of the Muir Glacier 137 Glacier Bay — Front 01 the Muir Glacier 141 Section of the Muir Glacier (Top) 144 Section of the Muir Glacier (Front) 147 Sitka 155 The Greek Church at Sitka 162 Interior of the Greek Church at Sitka 165 Easter Decorations in the Greek Church at Sitka . 167 Basket Weavers at Killisnoo 251 Indian Pipe 268 ToiEM Poles at Kaigahnee or IIowkan 273 The Chief's Residence at Kaigahnee, showing Totem Poles 274 Halibut Hook 276 Tiii V- : i SOUTHERN ALASKA AND THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. CHAPTER I. THE START — PORT TOWNSEND NANAIMO. VICTORIA — ALTHOUGH Alaska is nine times as large as the group of New England States, twice the size of Texas, and three times that of California, a false impression prevails that it is all one barren, inhospitable region, wrapped in snow and ice the year round. The fact is overlooked that a territory stretching more than a thousand miles from north to south, and washed by the warm currents of the Pacific Ocean, may have a great range and diversity of cli- mate within its bor^lers. The jokes and exaggera- tions that passed current at the time of the Alaska purchase, in 1867, have fastened themselves upon the public mind, and by constant repetition been accepted as facts. P'or this reason the uninitiated view the country as a vast ice reservation, and appear to be- lieve that even the summer tourist must undergo the perils of the Franklin Search and the Greeley Relief Expeditions to reach any part of Alaska. The official records can hardly convince them that the winters at imm SOUTHERN ALASKA. m\ Sitka are milder than at New York, and the summers dehghtfully cool and temperate. In the eastern States less has been heard of the Yukon than of the country of the Congo, and the wonders of the Stikine, Taku, and Chilkat rivers are unknown to those who have travelled far to view the less impressive scenery of the Scandinavian coast. Americans climb the well-worn route to Alpine sum- mits every year, while the highest mountain in North America is unsurveyed, and only approximate esti- mates have been made of its heights. The whole 580,107 square miles of the territory are almost as good as unexplored, and among the islands of the archipelago over 7,000 miles of coast are untouched and primeval forests. The Pribyloff or Seal Islands have usurped all interest in Alaska, and these two litiie fog-bound islands in Behring Sea, that are too small to be marked on an ordinary map, have had more attention drawn to them than any other part of the territory. The rental of the islands of St. Paul and St. George, and the taxes on the annual one hundred thousand sealskins, pays into the treasury each year more than four per cent interest on the $7,200,000 originally paid to Russia for its possessions in North America. This fact is unique in the history of our purchased territories, and justifies Secretary Seward's efforts in acquiring it. The neglect of Congress to provide any for in of civil government or protection for the inhabitmts checked all progress and enterprise, and kept the country in the background for seventeen years. With the development of the Pacific northwest, settlements, M THE SITE AN ARCHIPELAGO. o mining-camps, and fisheries have been slowly growing, and increasing in numbers in the southeastern part of Alaska, adjoining British Columbia. The prospec- tors and the hardy pioneers, who seek the setting sun and follow the frontiers westward, were attracted there by the gold discoveries in 1880, and the impetus then given was not allowed to subside. Pleasure-travellers have followed the prospectors* lead, as it became known that some of the grandest scenery of the continent is to be found along the Alaska coast, in the region of the Alexander or Sitkan Archipelago, and the monthly mail steamer is crowded with tourists during the summer season. It is one of the easiest and most delightful trips to go up the coast by the inside passage and cruise through the archipelago ; and in voyaging past the unbroken wil- derness of the island shores, the tourist feels quite like an explorer penetrating unknown lands. The mountain range that walls the Pacific coast from the Antarctic to the Arctic gives a bold and broken front to the mainland, and everyone of the eleven hundred islands of the archipelago is but a submerged spur or peak of the great range. Many of the islands are larger than Massachusetts or New Jersey, but none of them have been wholly explored, nor is the survey of their shores completed. The Yosemite walls and cascades are repeated in mile after mile of deep salt- water channels, and from the deck of an ocean steamer one views scenes not paralleled after long rides and climbs in the heart of the Sierras. The gorges and cafions of Colorado are surpassed ; moun- tains that tower above Pike's Peak rise in steep in- cline from the still level of the sea ; and the shores * SOVTHERy ALASKA. arc clothed with forests and undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a Florida swamp. On these summer trips the ship runs into the famous inlets on the mainland shore and anchors before vast glaciers that push their icy fronts down into the sea. The still waters of the inside passr.ge give smooth sailing nearly all of the way ; and, living on an ocean steamer for three and four weeks, one only feels the heaving of the Pacific swells while crossing the short stretches of Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon En- trance. The Alaska steamer, however, is a perfect will o' the wisp for a landsman to pursue, starting sometimes from Portland and sometimes from San Francisco, adapting its schedule to emergencies and going as the exigencies of the cargo demand. It clears from Puget Sound ports generally during the first days of each month, but in midwinter it arranges its depar- ture so as to have the light of the full moon in the northern ports, where the sun sets at three and four o'clock on December afternoons. When the steamer leaves Portland for Alaska, it goes down the Columbia River, up the coast of Wash- ington Territory, and, reaching Victoria and Port Townsend three days later, takes on the mails, and the freight shipped from San Francisco, and then clears for the north. The traveller who dreads the Columbia River bar and the open ocean can go across overland to Puget Sound, and thence by the Sound steamers to whichever port the Alaska steamer may please to anchor in. The first time that I essayed the Alaska trip, the steamship /fh//o with its shining b^ack hull, its 1 4? i THE SITKAN ABCtllPELAGO. 9 ti im spars, and row of white cabins on deck, slipped down the Columbia River one Friday night, and on Monday morning we left Portland to overtake it. It was a time of forest fires, and a cloud of ignorance brooded over Puget Sound, only equalled in density by the clouds of smoke that rolled from the burning forests on shore, and there was an appalling scarcity of shipping news. The telegraph lines were down between the most important points, and the Fourth of July fever was burning so fiercely in patriotic veins that no man had a clear enough brain to tell us where the ship /(/a/io was, had gone to, or was going to. For two restless and uncertain days we see-sawed from British to American soil, going back and forth from Victoria to Port Townsend as we were in turn as- sured that the ship lay at anchor at one place, would not go to the other, and that we ran the risk of losing the whole trip if we did not immediately embark for the opposite shore. The dock hands came to know us, the pilots touched their hats to us, the agents fled from their ticket-offices at sight of us, and I think even the custom-house officers must have watched suspiciously, when the same two women and one small boy paced impatiently up and down the various wharves at that end of Pusfet Sound. We saw the Union Jack float and heard the American eagle scream on the I'ourth of July, and after a night of fire-crackers, bombs, and inebriate chorus-singing, the /da/io came slipping into the harbor of Port Townsend as innocently as a messenger of peace, and fired a shot from a wicked little cannon, that started the very foundations of the town with its echoes. tl O SOUTHERN ALASKA. Port Townsend, at the entrance of Puget Scumd, is the last port of entry and custom-house in the United States, and the real point of departure for the Alaska steamers. It was named by Vancouver in 1792 for his friend, " the most noble Marquis of Townsend," and scorning the rivalry of the new towns at the head of Puget Sound, believes itself destined to be the final railway terminus and the future great city of this extreme northwest The busy and thriving little town lies at the foot of a steep bluff, and an outlying suburb of residences stretches along the grassy heights above. A steep stairway, and several zig-zag walks and roads connect the business part of Port Townsend with the upper town, and it argues strong lungs and a goat-like capacity for climbing on the part of the residents, who go up and down the stair- way several times a day. /\ marine hospital flies the national flag from a point on the bluff, and four miles west on the curve of the bay lies Fort Townsend, where a handful of United States troops keep up the traditions of an army and a military post. Near the fort is the small settlement of IrondrJe, where the crude bog ore of the spot is successfully melted with Texada iron ore, brought from a small island in the Gulf of Georgia. The sand spit on which Port Townsend society holds its summer clam-bakes, and the home of the ' Duke of York," the venerable chief 0*" the Clallam tribe, are points of interest about the shores. * Across the Straits of Fuca there is the pretty English town of Victoria, that has as solid mansions, as well-built roads, and as many country homes around it, as any little town on the home island. It I THE SITKA X ARdllPELAGO. * has an intricate lantl-locked harbor, where the tides rush in and out in a way that defies reason, and none have ever yet been able to solve the puzzle and make out a tide-table for that harbor. All Victoria breathes the atmosphere of a past and greater gran- deur, and the citizens feelingly revert to the time when British Columbia was a separate colony by itself, and Victoria the seat of the miniature court of the Governor-General and commander-in-chief of its forces. There is no real joy in the celebration of "Dominion Day," which reminds them of how British Columbia and the two provinces of Canada were made one under the specious promise of a con- necting railway. Recent visits of Lord Dufferin and the Marquis of Lome stilled some of the disaffec- tion, and threats of annexation to the United States are less frequent now. Victoria has " the perfect climate," according to the Princess Louise and other sojourners, and there is a peace and rest in the atmosphere that charms the briefest visitor. Every one takes life easily, and things move in a slow and accustomed groove, as if sanctioned by the custom of centuries on the same spot. Business men hardly get down town before ten o'clock in the morning, and by four in the afternoon they are striding and riding off to their homes, as if the fever and activity of American trade and compe- tition were far away and unheard of. The clerk at the post-office window turns a look of surprise upon the stranger, and bids him go across the street, or down a block, and buy his postage-stamps at a sta- tioner's shop, to be sure. The second summer that my compass was set for !'l 8 so UriIEUS A LA S KA . 1 the nor'-norwest, our party of three spent a week at Victoria before the steamer came in from San P'ran- cisco, and the charm of the place grew upon us every day. The drives about the town, along the island shores, and through the woods, are beautiful, and the heavy, London-built carriages roll over hard and per- fect English highways. Ferns, growing ten and twelve feet high by the roadside, amazed us beyond expression, until a loyal and veracious citizen of Oregon assured us that ferns eighteen feet high could be found anywhere in the woods back of Astoria , and that he had often been lost in fern prairies among the Cascade mountains, where the fronds arched far above his head when he was mounted on a horse. Wild rose-bushes are matted together by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of Bulgaria. The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection in this climate, and covers and smothers the cottages and trellises with thickly-set blossoms. F2ven the currant-bushes grow to unusual height, and in many gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their red, ripe clusters high overhead. For a few days we watched anxiously every trail of smoke in the Straits of Fuca, and at last welcomed the ship, one sunny morning, when the whole Olymjiic range stood like a sapphire wall across the Straits, and the Angels' Gate gave a clear view of more azure slopes and snow-tipped summits through that gap in the mountain front. Instead of the trim propeller Idahoj the old side-wheeler, the Ancoji, was 5 ;; .1 < THE SITKAN AlWlllPELAQO. 9 put on the Alaska route for the summer months, and the fact of its haviny; taken five days for the trip up from San Francisco did not prepossess us with any false notions of its speed. The same captain and officers from the hfa/io were on board, and after making the tour of Puget Sound again, we were quite resigned to the change of ships by the time we finally left Victoria. At Victoria the steward buys his last su.)plies for the coming weeks of great appetites ; for with smooth water and the tonic of sea and mountain air both, the passengers make great inroads on the ship's stores. The captain often affects dismay at the way the provisions disappear, and threatens to take an account of stores at Sitka and bring the ship down by the outside passage in order to save some profit for the company. During the last hours at the Victoria wharf, several wagon -loads of meat had been put in the ice-boxes of the Af/con, when some live beef came thundering down the wharf, driven by hallooing horsemen. Each month the ship takes up these live cattle and sheep, and leaving them to fatten on the luxurious grasses of Sitka, insures ? fresh supply of fresh beef for the return voyage. It was within half an hour of sailing-time when the herders drove the sleek fellows down to the wharf, and for an hour there was a scene that surpassed any- thing under a circus tent or within a Spanish arena. The sailors and stevedores had a proper respect for the bellowing beasts, and kept their distance, as they barricaded them into a corner of the wharf. The ship's officer who had charge of loading the cargo is "a salt, salt sailor," with a florid complexion ; and it was V 7i P. !|tf- Ill 10 HO urn Kit y a la ska . 11 his brave part to advance, flap his arms, and say " Shoo ! " and then fly behind the first man or barrel, or dodge into the warehouse door. The crowd gath- ered and increased, the eighty passengers, disregard- ing all signs and rules, mounted on the paddle-boxes and clung to the ratlines forward, applauded the picador and the matador, and hummed suggestive airs from CartHin. When the lasso was fastened round one creature's horns, and his head was drawn down close to a pile, there were nervous moments when we waited to see the herder tossed on high, or else vol- untarily leaping into the water to escape the savage prods of the enraged beast. Theie was great delay in getting the belts ready to put round the animals so that they could be swung over into the ship, and while the great bull-fight was in progress and the hour of sailing had come, the captain rode down the wharf in a carriage, strode on to the ship and de- manded, in a stiff, official tone, " How long have these cattle been here .^ " " More than an hour, sir, replied the mate. " Turn those cattle loose and draw in the gang-plank," was the brief order from the bridge, and the one warning shriek of the whistle scattered the spectators and sent the excited beasts galloping up the wharf. While the gang-plank was being with- drawn, two Chinamen came down on a dog trot, hidden under bundles of blankets, with balanced bas- kets across their shoulders, and pickaxes, pans, and mining tools in their arms. Without a tremor the two Johns walked out on the swaying plank, and, stepping across a gap of more than two feet, landed safely on deck, bound and equipped for the deserted placer mines on Stikine River. TIIK SlTKAN AUCUIPKLAGO. 11 We left Victoria at noon, and all the afternoon the passengers gave their preliminary ohs ! and ahs ! strewed the decks with exclamation points, and buried their heads in tlicir pink-covered maps of British Columbia, while the ship ran through narrow chan- nels and turned sharp curves around the picturesque islands for the possession of which England and America nearly went to war. San Juan Island, with its limekilns, its gardens, meadows, and browsing sheep, was as pretty and pastoral a spot as nations ever wrangled about, and the F^mperor of Germany did just the right thing when he drew his imperial pencil across the maps and gave this garden spot of San Juan to the United States. The beautiful scenery of the lower end of the Gulf of Georgia fitly introduces one to the beauties of the inland passage whi h winds for nearly a thousand miles between the islands that fringe this northwest coast, and even the most cap- tious travellers forgot fancied grievances over state- rooms, table seats, and baggage regulations. The exhausted purser, who had been persecuted all day by clamoring passengers and anxious shippers, was given a respite, and all was peace, satisfaction, and joy on board. In the nine o'clock gloaming we rounded the most northern lighthouse that gleams on this shore of the Pacific, and, winding in and through the harbor of Nanaimo, dropped anchor in Departure Bay. The coal mines of Nanaimo have given it a com- mercial importance upon which it bases hopes of a great future ; but it has no bu.stling air to it, to im- press the stranger from over the border with that prospect. In early days it was an important trading- murnm M! S 12 SOUTHERN ALASKA. ; i 1 jl iM ri M t ;1M ■■■'fl post of the Hudson Bay Company, and a quaint old block-house still stands as a relic of the times when the Indian canoes used to blacken the beach at the seasons of the great trades. The traders first opened the coal seams near Nanaimo, and thirty years ago used to pay the Indians one blanket for every eight barrels of coal brought out. Geologists have hammered their way all up the Pacific Coast without finding a trace of true coal, and on account of the recent geological formation of the country they consider further search useless. The nearest to true coal that has been found was the coal seam on the Arctic shore of Alaska near Cape Lis- burn. Captain Hooper, U. S. R. M., found the vein, and his vessel, the CoriviN, was supplied with coal from it during an Arctic cruise in 1880. Otherwise, the lignite beds of Vancouver Island supply the best steaming coal that can be had on the coast, and a fleet of colliers ply between Nanaimo and the chief ports on the Pacific. The mines nearest the town of Nanaimo were ex- hausted soon after they were worked systematically, and operations were transferred to Newcastle Island in the harbor opposite the town. A great fire in the Newcastle mine obliged the owners to close and abandon it, and the whole place stands as it was left, the cabins and works dropping slowly to decay. Even the quarry from which the fine stone was taken for the United States Mint at San Francisco is aban- doned, and its broken derricks and refuse heaps make a forlorn break in the beauty of the mild shores of the island. , Richard Dunsmuir found the Wellington mines at THE SITK.XN AUnilPELAGO. 13 Departure Bay by accident, his horse stumbling on a piece of lignite coal as he rode down through the woods one day. The admiral of the British fleet and one other partner ventured ^'i,ooo each in develop- ing the mine, and at the end of ten years the admiral withdrew with ^$0,000 as his share, and c. year since the other partner sold out his interests to Mr. Duns- muir for ^150,000. At present the mines pay a monthly profit of /^8,ooo, and Yankee engineers claim that that income might be doubled if the mines were worked on a larger scale, as, with duty included, this black lignite commands the highest price and is most in demand in all the cities of California and Oregon. Mr. Dunsmuir is the prime mover in building the Island railway, which is to connect Nanaimo with the naval harbor of Esquimault near Victoria. Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific road are connected with Mr. Dunsmuir in this under- taking, and to induce these capitalists to take hold of it the colonial government gave a land grant twenty- five miles wide along the whole seventy miles of the railroad, with .dl the timber and mineral included. The great Wellington mines have had their strikes, and after the last one the white workmen were sup- planted by Chinese, who, though wanting the brawn and muscle of die Irishmen, could work in the sulphur formations without injuring their eyes. By an explo- sion of fire-damp in Ma)-, 1884, many lives were lost, and gloom was cast over the little settlement on the sunny bay. On this lee shore of Vancouver Island the climate is even softer and milder than at Victoria, and during my three visits Nanaimo has always been steeped in i; 14 SOUTHERN ALASKA, a golden calm of steady sunshine. While waiting for the three or four hundred tons of coal to be dropped into the hold, carload by carload, the passengers amuse themselves by visiting the quiet little town, stirring up the local trade, and busying the post- master and the telegraph operator A small boy steers and commands the comical little steam-tug that is omnibus and street car for the Nanaimo and Well- ington people, and makes great profits while passen- ger steamers are coaling. When all the anglers, the hunters, the botanists and the geologists had gone their several ways from the ship one coaling day, the captain made a diversion for the score of ladies left behind, by order- ing out a lifeboat, and having the little tug tow us around the bay and over to Nanaimo. When the ladies had all scattered into the various shops, the cap- tain made the tour of the town and found that there was not a trout to be had in that market. Then he arranged that if the returning fishermen came back to the ship in the evening and laid their strings of trout triumphantly on deck, a couple of Indians should force their way into the admiring crowd and demand pay for fish sold to the anglers. Can any one pic- ture that scene and the effect of the joke, when it dawned upon the group } A great bonfire on the beach in the evening rounded off that coaling day, and the captain de- clared the celebration to be in honor of Cleveland and Hendricks, who had that day been nominated at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. AlthoMgh the partisans of the other side declined to consider it a ratification meeting on British soil, they i I ^'"If'l THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. 16 helped heap up the burning logs and drift-wood until the whole bay was lighted with the flame ^>. With blue lights, fire-crackers, rockets and pistol -popping the f^te continued, the Republicans deriding ail boasts and prophecies of their opponents, until the commander threatened to drop them on some de- serted island off the course, until after the election. History has since set its seal upon the prophecies then made, and some of the modest participants of the Democratic faith think their international bon- fire assisted in the result. i 16 .so VTllElt S ALASKA. CHAPTER II. THE BRITISH COLUMBIA COAST AND TONGASS. IF Claude Mclnotte had wanted to paint a fairer picture to his lady, he should have told Pauline of this glorious northwest coast, fringed with islands, seamed with fathomless channels of clear, green, sea wat(?r, and basking in the soft, mellow radiance of this summer sunshine The scenery gains everything fronj being translated through the medium of a soft, pearly atmosi)here, where the light is as gray and evenly diffused as in Old England itself. The dis- tant mountain ranges are lost in the blue vaporous shadows, and nearer at hand the masses and outlines show in their i)ure contour without the obtrusion of all the garish details that rob so many western moun- tain scenes of their grander effects. The calm of the brooding air, the shimmer of the opaline sea around one, and the ranges of green and russet hills, misty purple mountains, and snowy summits on the faint horizon, give a dream-like coloring to all one's thoughts, A member of the Canadian Parliament, in speaking of this coast country of British Columbia, called it the '*sea of mountains " and the channels of the ocean through which one winds for days are but as endless valleys and stecji cartons between the peaks and ranges that rise abruptly from the water's edge. - \ .; I ' THE SITKAN AliCHIPELAGO. 17 Only the fiords and inlets of the coast of Norway, and the wooded islands in the Inland Sea of Japan, present anything like a counterpart to the wonderful scenery of these archipelagos of the North Pacific. From the head of Puget Sound to the mouth of the Chilkat River there are seven hundred and thirty-two miles of latitude, and the trend of the coast and the ship's windings between and around the islands make it an actual voyage of more than a thousand miles on inland waters. The Strait or Gulf of Georgia, that separates Van- couver's Island from the mainland, although widening at times to forty miles, is for the most part like a broad river or lake, landlocked, walled by high moun- tain ranges on both sides, and choked at either end with groups of islands. The mighty current of the Frazer River rolls a pale green flood of fresh water into it at the southern entrance, and the river water, with its different density and temperature floating on the salt water, and cutting through it in a body, shows everywhere a sharply defined line of separation. In the broad channels schools of whales are often seen spouting and leaping, and on a lazy, sunny afternoon, while even the mountains seemed dozing in the wave- less calm, the idlers on the after deck were roused by the cry of "Whales !" For an hour we watched the frolicking of the snorting monsters, as they spouted jets of water, arched their black backs and fins above the surface, and then disappeared with perpendicular whisks of their huge tails Toward the north end of Vancouver's Island, where Valdes Island is wedged in between it and the main- land shore, the ship enters Discovery Pass, in which 18 SOUTIlEliN ALAHKA. M are the dangerous tide rips of Seymour Narrows. The tides rushing in and out of t:ip. Strait of Georgia dash through this rocky gorge at the rate of four and eight knots an hour on the turn, and the navigators time their sailing hours so as to reach this perilous place in daylight and at the flood tide. Even at that time the water boils in smooth eddies and deep whirlpools, and a ship is whirled half round on its course as it threads the narrow pass between the reefs. At other times the water dashes over the rapids and raises great waves that beat back an opposing bow, and the dullest landsman on the largest ship appreciates the real dangers of the run through this wild ravine, where the wind races with the water and howls in the rigging after the most approved fashion for thrill- ing^narine adventures. Nautical gossips tell one of vessels that, steaming against the furious tide, have had their paddle wheels reversed by its superior strength, and have been swept back to wait the favor- able minutes of slack water. Others, caught by the opposing current, are said to have been slt)wly forced back, or, steaming at full speed, have not gained an inch of headway for two hours. The rise and fall of the tides is thirteen feet in these narrows, and al- though there are from twenty to sixty fathoms of water in the true channel, there is an ugly ledge and isolated rocks in the middle of the pass on which there arc only two and a quarter fathoms. Long be- fore Vancouver carried his victorious ensign through these li ;nown waters, the Indians had known and dreade ^hese rapids as the abode of an evil spirit, and for iialf a century the adventurous Hudson Bay traders went warily through the raging whirlpools. : Ai THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. 19 :$ If Although the British Admiralty have made careful surveys, and the charts are in the main accurate, there have been serious wrecks on this part of the coast. The United States man-of-war Sarauac was lost in Seymour Narrows on the i8th of June, 1875. The Sarauac was an old side-wheel steamer of the second rate in naval classification, carrying eleven guns, and was making its third trip to Alaskan waters. There was an unusually low tide the morn- ing the Sarauac entered the pass, and the ship was soon caught in the wild current, and sent broadside on to the mid-rock. It swung off, and was headed for the Vancouver shore, and made fast with hawsers to the trees, but there was only time to lower a boat with provisions and the more important papers before the Sarauac sunk, and not even the masts were left visible. The men camped on shore while a party went in the small boats to Nanaimo for help. No attempt was ever made to raise the ship, and in the investigation it was shown that the boilers were in such a condition when they reached Victoria, that striking the rock in Seymour Narrows was only one of the perils that awaited those on board. No lives were lost by this disaster, and Dr. Bessels, of the Smithsonian Institute, who was on his way up the coast to make a collection of Indian relics for the Centen- nial Exposition, showed a scientist's zeal in merely regretting the delay, and continuing on his journey by the first available craft. In April, 1883, the steamer Grapplcr, which plied between Victoria and the trading-posts on the west coast, took fire late at night, just as it was entering Seymour Narrows. The flames reached the hempen rudder-ropes, and 20 HOUTIlERy ALASKA, V\ the boat was soon helplessly drifting into the rapids. Flames and clouds of smoke made it difficult to launch the boats, antl all but one were swamped. The frantic passengers leaped overboard while the ship was whirling and careening in the rapids, and the captain, with life-preserver on, was swept off, and disappeared in midstream. The Grapplcr finally drifted in to the Vancouver shore, and burned until daylight. Another United States war vessel, the Suwani'c was lost a hundred miles beyond the Sey- mour Narrows by striking an unknown rock at the entrance to Oueen Charlotte Sound. In crossing this forty-mile stretch of Queen Char- lotte Sound the voyager feels the swell, and touches the outer ocean for the first time. If the wind is strong there may be a chopping sea, but in general it is a stilled exjjanse on which fog and mist eternally brood. The Kuro Siwo, or Black Stream, or Japan Current, of the Pacific, which corresponds to the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, touches the coast near this Sound, and the colder air from the land striking this warm river of the sea produces the heavy vapors which lie in impenetrable banks for miles, or float in filmy and downy clouds along the green mountain shores. It is this warm current which modifies the climate of the whole Pacific coast, bends the iso- thermal lines northward, and makes temperature depend upon the distance from the sea instead of upon distance from the equator. Bathed in perpetual fog, like the south coast of England and Ireland, there is a climatic resemblance in many ways be- tween the islands of Great Britain and the islands of the British Columbia shore. The constant moisture m 5« ^•»*.«.'-zK3J»it3J'.tt -i-liX.' '!§ Tin: SITKAS AllCIirPKLAdO. SI and the lon^^ days force vej^etation like a hothouse, arnl the density of the forests and the luxuriance of the undergrowth are equalled only in the tropics. The i^ine-trecs cover the mountain slopes as thickly as the grass on a hillside, and as fires have never destroyed the forests, only the spring avalanches and land-slides break their continuity. 71iere is an in- side passage between the mountains from Queen Charlotte to Milbank Sound that gave us an after- noon and evening in the midst of fine scenery, but for another whole day we passed through the grand- est of fiords on the British Columbia coast. The sun rose at three o'clock on that rare summer morning, when the ship thrust her l)ow into the clear, mirror-like waters of the T'inlavson Channel, and at four o'clock a dozen passengers were up in front watching the matchless panorama of mountain walls thai slii)}")ed silently past us. The clear, soft light, the jHU'e air, and the stillness of sky, and shore, and water, in the early morning, made it seem like the dawn of creation in some new paradise. The breath of the sea and the breath of the pine forest were blended in the air, and the silence and calm added to the inspiration of the surroundings. The eastern wall of the channel lay in pure shado v, the forest slopes were deep unbroken waves of green, with a narrow base-line of sandstone washed snowy white, and beneath that every tree and twig lay reflected in the still mirror of waters of a deeper, purer, and softer green than the emerald. The marks of the spring avalanches were white scars on the face of the mountains, and the course of preceding landslides showed in the paler green of 22 HOUTIIEHN ALASKA. f^ the ferns, bushes, and the dense growth of young trees that quickly cover these places. Cliffs of the color and boldness of the Yosemite walls shone in the sunlight on the opposite side, and wherever there were snowbanks on the summits, or lakes in the hollows and amphitheatres back of the mountain ridge, foaming white cataracts tumbled down the sheer walls into the green sea water. luigles soared overhead in long, lazy sweeps, and hundreds of young ducks fluttered away from the ship's bow, and dived at the sharp echoes of a rifle shot. In this Finlayson Channel the soundings give from 50 to 130 fathoms, and^ from the surface of these still, deep waters the first timbered slopes of the mountains rise nearly perpendicularly for 1,500 feet, and their snow- crowned summits reach 3,000 feet above their perfect reflections. From a width of two miles at the en- trance, the pass narrows one half, and then by a turn around an island the ship enters Tolmie and Fraser channels, which repeat the same wonders in bolder forms, and on deeper waters. At the end of that last fiord, where submerged mountain peaks stand as islands, six diverging channels appear, and the intri- cacy of the inside passage up the coast is as marvel- lous now, as when Vancouver dropped his anchor in this Wright Sound, puzzled as to which way he should turn to reach the ocean. Finer even than the three preceding fiords is the arrowy reach of Gren- ville Channel, which is a narrow cleft in the moun- tain range, forty-five miles long, and with scarcely a curve to break the bold palisade of its walls. In the narrowest part it is not a quarter of a mile in width ; and the forest walls, and bold granite cliffs, < ■;i. THE S I TK AN A li (in I'KL A a 0. 23 3 1; rising there to their greatest height, give back an echo many times before it is lost in h)ng rever- berations. Junerging from Grenville Channel, the church and houses of Metlakatlah, the one model missionary settlement on the coast, and an Arcadian village of civilized and Ciiristianized Indians, were seen shining in the afternoon sun. At tliat point the water is tinged a [)cder green by the turbid curients of the Skeena River, and up that ri\er the newest I'^l Do- rado has lately been found. Miners have gone up in canoes, and fishermen have dropped their lines and joined them in the hunt for gold, which is found in nuggets from the size of a pea to soliil chunks worth ^20 ami $6o. " Jern," tiie first [)rospector, took out $6oo in two days, anil in the same week two miners panned out j>68o in six hours. One nugget, taken from a crevice in a rock, was sent down to Victoria, and found to be pure gold and worth $26. Other consignments of treasure following, that quiet colo- nial town has been shaken by a gold fever that is sending all the adventurous spirits off to the Lome Creek mines. Before the sunset hour we crossed Dixon Entrance and. the famous del)atable line of 54° 40'. and the patriots who said the northern boundary of rhe United States should be " Fifty-four Forty, or Fight," are best remembered now, when it is seen that the Alaska possessions begin at that line. We were within the Alaska boundaries and standing on United States soil again at the fishing station of Tongass, on Wales Island, It is a wild and picturesque little place, tucked away in the folds of the hills and islands, and the ship 24 sour lit: lis Alaska. i rounded many points before it dropped anchor in front of two new wooden iiouses on a rocky shore that constituted Toni;ass. A chister of bark huts and tents further down thi; beach w:is tlie home of the Indians wiio catch, salt, and barrel the salmon. There was one white man as host at the fish house, a fur- capped, sad-eyed mortal, who wistfully said that he had not been " below " in seven years, and entertained us with the si^ht (^f his one hundred and forty bar- rels of salmon, and the vats and scow fiUeil with split and salted or freshly cauj^dit fish. He showed us a string of fine trout that set the amateur fisher- men wild, and then gallantly offered to weigh the ladies on his new scales. Over in the group of Ton- gass Indians, sitting stolidly in a row before their houses, there was a " one-moon-old " baby that gave but a look at the staring white people, and then sent up one pitiful little barbaric yawp. A clumsy, fiat- bottomed scow was rowed slowly out to the steamer, and while the salt, the barrel hoops, barrel staves, and groceries were unloaded to it from the ship, a ball was begun on deck. A merry young mrner bound for the Chilkat country gave rollicking old tunes on his violin, and a Juneau miner called off figures that convulsed the dancers and kept the four sets flying on the after deck. " The winnowing sound of dancers' feet" anil the scrape of the fiddle brought a few In dian women out in canoes, and they paddled listlessly around the stern, talking in slow gutturals of the strange performances of the " Boston people," as all United States citizens have been termed by them since Captain Gray and John Jacob Astor's ships first came to the Northwest coast. At half-past ten i! THE SITKAN ARCHIPKLAUO. %b o'clock daynght still lingered on the sky, and the Chicago man gravely read a page of a Lake Shore railroad time-table in tine print for a test, and then went solemnly to bed, six hundred miles away from the rest of the United States. S6 SOUTHERN ALASKA. CHAPTER III. CAPE FOX AND NAUA BAY. di U ' FROM the Tongass fishery, which is some miles below the main village of the Tongass Indians and the deserted fort where United States troops were once stationed, the ship made its way by night to Cape Fox. At this point on the mainland shore, beyond Fort Tongass, the Kinneys, the great salmon packers of Astoria, have a cannery that is one of the model establishments up here, Two 'arge buildings for the cannery, two houses," a store, and the scattered line of log houses, bark houses and tents of the In- dian village, are all that one sees from the water. In the cannery most of the work is done by the Indians, but a few Chinamen perform the work which requires a certain amount of training and mechanical skill. The Indians cast the nets and bring in the shining silver fish with their deep moss-green backs and fierce mouths, and heap them in slippery plies in an outside shed overhanging the water. A Chinaman picks them up with a long hook, and, laying them in a row across a table, goes through a sleight-of-hand per- formance with a sharp knife, which in six minutes leaves twenty salmon shorn of their heads, tails, fin.s, and inwards. Experienced visitors to such places took out their watches and timed him, and in ten seconds '\«i V * THE SITKAS ARCHIPELAGO. 87 a fish was put through his first rough process of trim- ming, and passed on to men who washed it, cleaned it more thoroughly, scraped off a few scales, and by a turn of revolving knives cut it in sections the length of a can. Indian women packed the tins, which were soldered, plunged into vats of boiling water, tested, resoldered, laquered, labelled, and packed in boxes in quick routine. There was the most perfect cleanliness about the cannery, and the salmon itself is only touched after the last washing by the fingers of the Indian women, who fill the cans with solid pieces of bright red flesh. In 1883 there were 3,784 cases of canned salmon shipped from this establishment as the result of the first sea.son's venture. In the following year. 1,156 cases were shipped by the July steamer, and the total for the season was about double th^t of the prerccu'^g year. Owing to the good salmon season and the steady employment given them at the cannery, the In- dians held their things so high that even the most insatiate and abandoned curio-buyers made no pur- chases, although there has been regret ever since at the thought of the wide old bracelets and the finely- woven hats that they Lt escape them. At Cape Fox a shrewd Indian came .d)oard, and spied the amateur photographer taking groups on deck. Imme- diately he was eager to be taken as well, and followed the camera around, repeating, " I low much Siwash picture.^" He was not to be appeased by any state- ments about the photographer doing his work for his own amusement, and i)leaded so hard that the arHst finally relented and turned his camera upon him. The Indian stiffened himself into his most rigid atti- 'M, 1^ 1 28 SOUTHERN ALASKA. tude, when directed to a corner of the deck between two lifeboats, and when the process was over he could hardly be made to stir from his pose. When we pressed him to tell us what he wanted his picture for, he chuckled like any civilized swain, and confessed the whole sentimental story by the mahogany blush that mantled his broad cheekij. Up Revillagigedo Channel the scenery is more like that of the Scotch lakes, broad expanses of water walled by forest ridges and mountains that in certain lights show a glow like blooming heather on their sides. The Tongass Narrows, which succeed this channel of the long name, give more vie vs of ca- ftons filled with water, winding between high bluffs and sloping summits. It was a radiant sunny morn- ing when we steamed slowly through these beautiful waterways, and at noort the ship turned into a long green inlet on the Revillagigedo shore, and cast an- chor at the head of Naha Bay. Of all the lovely spots in Alaska, commend me to this little landlocked bay, where the clear green waters are stirred with the leaping of thousands of salmon, and the shores are clothed with an enchanted forest of giant pines, and the undergrowth is a tangle of ferns and salmon-berry bushes, and ;ae ground and every log are covered with v/onderful mosses, into which the foot sinks at every step. The splash of the leaping salmon was on every side and at every moment, and the sight of the large fish jumping above the surface and leaping through the air caused the excitable passenger at the stern to nearly capsize the small boat and steer wildly. As the sailors rowed the boat up the narrow bay, where '^ Till!: aUKAN AltCllIPELAaO. 29 the ship could barely swing round with the tide, the Chicago man pensively observed : " There 's a thou- sand dollars jumping in the air every ten minutes ! " The anglers were maddened at the sight of these fish, for although these wild northern salmon can sometimes be deluded by trolling with a spoon-hook, they have no taste for such small things as flies, and are usually caught with seines or spears, except dur- ing those unusual salmon runs when the Indians wade in among the crowded fins and shovel the fish ashore with their canoe paddles. At the head of Naha Bay, over d narrow point of lar :, lies a beautiful mountain lake, whose surface is a • ifi! t,elow the high-water mark, and at low tide there is a fine cascade oi fresh water foaming from between the rocks in the narrow outlet. During the run of salmon, the pool at the foot of the fall is crowded with the struggling fish ; but the net is cast in the lake as often as in the bay, and the average catch is eighty barrels of salmon a day. The salmon are cleaned, salted, and barrelled in a long warehouse overhanging the falls, and a few bark houses belonging to the In- dians who vv-^rk in the fishery are perched pictu- resquely n the little wooded point between the two wat. r;, 1^ 'oating across this lovely lake in a slimy boat that t. e 'ndians had just emptied of its last catch of salmon, the beauty of its shores v^as more apparent, and the overhanging trees, the thickets of ferns, bu5:hes, and wild grasses, the network o( fallen logs hidden under their thick coating of moss, and the glinting of the sunshine on bark and moss and liche;; ;. ^-xrited our wildest enthusiasm. In Alaska one setc • ,ic greatest range of greens in nature, and 30 SOUTHERN ALASKA. it is an education of the eye in that one color to study the infinite shadt^s, tints, tones, and suggestions of that primary color. Of all green and verdant woods, I know of none that so satisfy one with their rank luxuriance, their beauty and picturesqueness ; and one feels a little sorrow for those people who, never hav- ing seen Alaska, are blindly worshipping the barren, burnt, dried-out, starved-out forests of the East. In still stretches of this lake at Naha there are mirrored the snow-capped summits whose melting snows fill its banks, and the echo from a single ^j^stol-shot is flung back from side to side before it J iway in a roar. Beyond this lake there is a chain f lakes, reached by connecting creeks and short portages, and the few white men who have penetrated to the farthest tarn in the heart of Revillagigedo Island say that each lake is wilder and more lovely than the last one. A mile below the fishery, and back in the woods, there is a waterfall some forty feet in height ; and a mountain stream, hurrying down from the clear pools and snow-banks on the upper heights, takes a leap over a ledge of rocks and covers it with foam and sparkling waters. The fishery and trading-post at Naha Bay was es- tablished in 1883, and shipped 338 barrels of salted salmon that first season. In 1884 over 500 barrels were shipped, and throughout June and July the sal- mon were leaping in the bay so thickly that at the turn of the tide their splashing was like falling rain. THE SITKA^/ ARCHIPELAGO. 31 h CHAPTER IV. KASA-AN HAY. KASA-AN, or Karta Bay opens from Clarence Strait directly west of Naha Bay, and the long inlet runs in from the eastern shore of the Prince cf Wales island for twenty miles. There are villages of Kasa-an Indians in the smaller inlets and coves opening from the bay, and carved totem poles stand guard over the large square houses of these native settlements. The bay itself is as lovely a stretch of water as can be imagined, sheltered, sunny, and calm, with noble mountains outlining its curves, and wooded islands drifted in picturesque groups at the end. It was a Scotch loch glorified, on the radiant summer days that I spent there, and it recalled one's best memories of Lake George in the softer aspects of its shores. ■ Smaller inlets opening from the bay afford glimpses into shady recesses in the mountain-sides, and one little gap in the shores at last gave us a sight of the trader's store, the long row of lichen-covered and moss- grown sheds of the fishery, with the usual cluster of bark houses and tents above a shelving beach strewn with narrow, black canoes, A group of Indians gathered -^n shore, their gay blankets, dresses, and cotton kerchiefs adding a fine touch of color to the SOUTIfKRN ALASKA. I! scene, and the men in the fishery, in their high rubber boots and aprons, flannel shirts and big hats, were heroic adjuncts to the picturesque nnd out-of-the-way scene. There was a skurrying to and fro and great excite- ment when the big steamer rounded slowly up to the little wharf, and bow line, stern line, and breast lines were thrown out, fastened to the piles and to the trees on shore, and the slack hauled in at the stentorian commands of the mate. Karta, or Kasa-an Bay has been a famous place for salmon for a score of years, and is best known, locally, as the Baronovich fishery. Old Charles V. Baronovich was a relic of Russian days, and a character on the coast. He was a Slav, and gifted with all the cunning of that race, and after the transfer of the country to the United States, he disturbed the serenity of the customs officials by the steady smuggling: that he kept up from over the British border. Ke would import all kinds of stores, but chiefly bales of English blankets, by canoe, and when the collector or special agent would nenetrate to this fastness of his, they found no damaging proof in his store, aid only a peppery, hot-headed old pirate, who swore at them roundly in a compound language of Russian, Indian, and English, and shook his crippled limbs with rage. He was also suspected of selling liquor to the Indians, and a revenue cutter once put into Kasa-an Bay, with a commander whom smugglers seldom baflfled, and who was bound to un- cover Baronovich's wickedness. The wily old Slav received the officers courteously. He listened to the formal announcement of the purpose of their visit, and bade them search the place and kindly do him the THE SITKAN AHtUIPELAGO. 88 honor of dining with him when they finished. Baro- novich dozed and smoked, and idled the afternoon away, while a watch kept a close eye upon him, and the officers and men searched the packing-house, the In- dian houses and tents, and the canoes on the beach. They followed every trail and broken pathway into the woods, tapped hollow trees, dug under the logs, and peered down into the waters of the bay, and finally gave up the search, convinced that there w::s no liquor near the place. Baronovich gave them a good dinner, and towaius the close a bottle of whis- key was set before each officer, and the host led with a toast to the captain of the cutter and the revenue marine. ' This queer old fellow married one of the daughters of Skowl, the Haida chief who ruled the bay. She is said to have been a very comely maiden when Baro- novich married her, and is now a stately, fine-looking woman, with good features and a creamy complexion. While Baronovich was cleaning his gun one day, it was accidentally discharged, and one of his children fell dead by his own hand. The Indians viewed this deed with horror, and demanded that Skowl should take his life in punishment. As it was proved an accident, Skowl defended his son-in-law from the charge of murder, and declared that he should go free. Ever after that the Indians viewed Baronovich with a certain fear, and ascribed to him that quality which the Italians call the "evil eye." With the passion of his race for fine weapons and fine metal work, Baronovich possessed many old arms that are worthy of an art museum. A pair of duel- ling pistols covered with fine engraving and inlaying 34 SOl'THEliN ALASKA. were bought of his widow by one of the naval officers in command of the man-of-war on this station, and an ancient double-barrelled flint-lock shot-gun lately passed into the hands of another officer. The shot- gun has the stock and barrels richly damascened with silver and gold, after the manner of the finest Span- ish metal work, and the clear gray flints in the trigger give out a shower of sparks when struck. Gunnell of London was the maker of this fine fowling-piece, and it is now used in the field by its new owner, who prefers it to the latest Remington. Baronovich was a man with a long and highly-col- ored history by all the signs, but he died a few years since with no biographer at hand, and his exploits, adventures, and oddities are now nearly forgotten. The widow Baronovich still lives at Kasa-an, unwil' ling to leave this peaceful sunny nook in the moun tains, but the fishery is now leased to a ship captain, who has taken away the fine old flavor of piracy and smuggling, and substituted a rSgimc of system, en- terprise, and eternal cleanliness. The wandering salmon that swarm on this coast by millions show clear instincts when they choose, with- out an exception, only the most- picturesque and attractive nooks to jump in. They dart and leap up Kasa-an Bay to the mouths of all the little creeks at its head, and three times during the year the water is alive with them. The best salmon run in June and July, and in one day the sei'^e brought in eighteen hundred salmon in a single haul. Two thousand and twenty-one hundred fish have weighted the net at dif- erent hauls, and the fish-house was overrunning with these royal salmon. Indian women do the most of THE SITE AN ARCHIPELAGO. 35 the work in the fishery — cleaning and splitting the fish and taking out the backbones and the worthless parts with some very deft strokes from their murder- ous-looking knives. The salmon are washed thor- oughly and spread between layers of dry -salt in large vats. Brine is poured over them, and they are left for eight days in pickle. Boards and weights are laid on the top of the vats, and they are then barrelled and stored in a long covered shed and treated to more strong brine through the bung-hole until ready for shipment. Of all salt fish the salt salmon is the finest, and here, where salmon are so plentiful, a bar- relled dainty is put up in the shape of salmon bellies, which saves only the fattest and most tender portions of these rich, bright red Kasa-an salmon. Over fifteen hundred barrels were packed in 1884, and under the new r/^imc the Kasa-an fishery has distanced its rivals in quantity, while the quality has a long-established fame. These Kasa-an Indians are a branch of the Haidas, the finest of the Indian tribes of the coast. They are most intelligent and industrious people, and are skilled in many ways that render them superior to the other tribes of the island. Their permanent village is some miles below the fishery, and their square whitewashed houses, and the tomb and mortu- ary column of Skowl, their great chief, n^akes quite a pretty scene in a shady green inlet near Harono- vich's old copper mine. A few of their houses at the fishery are of logs or rough-hewn planks, but the most of them are bark huts, with a rustic arbor hung full of drying salmon outside. These bits of bright- red salmon, against the slabs of rough hemlock bark, 36 SOUTHERN ALASKA. ll make a gay trimming for each house, and when a bronzed old hag, in a dun-colored gown, with yellow 'kerchief on her head, stirs up the fire of snapping fir boughs, and directs a column of smoke toward the drying fish, it is a bit of aborigine life to set an artist wild. Their bark houses are scattered irregu- larly along the beach above high-water mark, and a fleet of slender, black canoes, with high, carved bov/s, are drawn up on the sand and pebbles. The canoe is the only means of locomotion in this region of unexplored and impenetrable woods, and the Indian is even more at home in it than on shore. No horse- man cares for his steed more faithfully than the Siwash tends and mends his graceful cedar canoe, hewn from a single log, and given its flare and grace- ful curves by being steamed with water and hot stones, and then braced to its intended width. The Haida canoe has the same high, double-beaked prow of the Chinook canoes of Puget Sound, but where the stern of the latter drops in a straight line to the keel, the Haida canoe has a deep convex curve. By universal fashion all of these canoes are painted black externally, with the thwarts and bows lined with red, and sometimes the interior brightened with that color. The black paint used to be made from a mixture of seal oil and bituminous coal, and the red paint was the natural clay found in places throughout all Indian countries. Latterly the natives have taken to depending on the traders' stores for paint, but civilization has never grasped them so firmly as to cause them to put seats or cross-pieces in their canoes. They squat or sit flat in the bottom of their dugouts for hours without changing position. It TU£ SITKAN AUCllll'ELAiJO. 37 gives white men cramps and stiff joints to look at them, and sailors are no luclcier than landsmen in thel.' attemj)ts to paddle and keep their balance in one of ' hese canoes for the first time. The Indians use a broad, short |)addle, which they plunge straight down into the water like a knife, and they literally shovel the water astern with it. The woman, who has a good many rights up here that her sisters of the western plains know not, sits back of her liege, and with a waving motion, never taking the paddle out of the water once, steers and helps on the craft. Often she paddles steadily, while the man bales out the water with a wooden scoop. When the canoes are drawn up on the beach they are carefully tilled with grass and branches, and covered with mats or blankets to keep them sound and firm. A row of these high-beaked canoer thus draped has a very singular effect, and on a gloomy day they are like so many catafalques or funeral gondolas, Baronovich's olil schooner, the Pioneer of Cazan, lies stranded on the beach in the midst of the native boats, moss and lichens tenderly covering its timbers, and vagrant grasses springing up in the seams of the old wreck. The dark, cramped little cabin is just the place for ghosts of corsairs and the goblins of sailors' yarns, and although it has lain there many seasons, no Indian has yet pre-empted it as a home for his family and dogs. The thrifty Siwash, which is the generic and com- mon name for these people, and a corruption of the old French voyagers' sauvage, keeps his valuables stored in heavy cedar chests, or gaudy red trunks studded with brass nails; the latter costly prizes h- 38 SOUriiKUN ALASKA. with which the Russian traders used to tempt them. At the first sound of the steamer's patldle-wheels, — and they can be heard for miles in these fiords, — the Indians rummaj^ed their houses and cliests and sorted out their vaUiable things, and when the first ipi^f^ fpIFf^^ljpri THREK CARVED SPOONS AND SMAMAN's KAITI K. ardent curio-seeker rushed throuf^h the packin^f- houses and out towards the hark huts, their wares were all displayed. The Haidas are famous as the best carvers, silversmiths, and workers on the coast ; and there are some of their best artists in this little band on Kasa-an Bay. An old blind man, with a battered hat on his head and a dirty white blanket THE ^.^KAN AliCIJIPtJLAGO. 39 fvrappcti around him, sat befcc one bark hut, with a 'arge wooiicn bowl filled with carved spoons made from the horns of the mountain goat. These spoons, once in common use amoni; all these people, are now disappearing, as the rage for the tin and pewter uten- sils in the traders' stores increases, although many of them have the handles polished and the bowls worn by the daily usage of generations. The horn is nat- urally black, and constant handling and soaking in seal oil gives them a jetty lustre that adds much to the really fine carvings on the handles. Silver bracelets pounded out of coin, and ornamented with traceries and chasings by the hand of •* Kasa-an John," the famous jeweller of the tribe, were the prizes eagerly sought and contended for by the ladies. The bangle mania rages among the Haida maids and matrons as fiercely as on civilized shores, and d' v wrists were outstretched on which from three . ^ne bracelets lay in shining lines like jointed mail. Anciently they pounded a single heavy brace- let from a silver dollar piece, and ornamented the broad two-inch band with heraldic carvings of the crow, the bear, the raven, the whale, and other em- blematic beasts of their strangely mi.xed mythology. Latterly they have become corrupted by civilized fashions, and they have taken to narrow bands, ham- mered from half dollars and carved with scrolls, con- ventional eagles copied from coins, and geometrical designs. They have no fancy for gold ornaments, and they are very rarely seen ; but the fancy for silver is universal, and their methodical way of converting * every coin into a bracelet and stowing it away in their chests gives hope of there being one place 40 SOUTUERN ALASKA. where the surplus silver and the trade dollars may be legitimately made away with. In one house an enlightened and non-skeptical Indian was driving sharp bar;^ains in the sale of medi- cine-men's rattles and charms, and kindred relics of a departed faith. His scoffing and ir f^verent air would have made his ancestors' dust shake, but he pocketed the chickamin^ or money, without even a supersti- tious shudder. The amateur curio-buyers found themselves worsted and outgeneralled on every side in this rich market of Kasa-an by a Juneau trader, who gathered up the things by wholesale, and, carry- ing them on board, disposed of them at a stupendous advance. " No mere spoon," said the old blind -^hief as he jingled the thirteen dollars that he had received from this trader for his twenty beautifully carved s;?'- ns, and the tourists who had to pay two dollars a piece for these ancestral ladles echoed his refrai'.i and began to see how profits might mount up in ' /ading in the Indian country. Dance blankets from the Chilkat country, woven in curious designs in black, white, and yellow wool, spun from the fleece of the mountain goat, were paraded by the anxious owners, and the strangers elbov/ed one another, stepped on the dogs, and rubbed the oil from the dripping sal- mon overhead in the smoky huts, in order to see and buy all of these things. Old Skowl bid defiance to the missionaries while he lived, and kept his people strictly to the faith and the ways of their fathers. If they fell sick, the shaman or inedicine-man came with his rattles and charms, and with great hocus-pocus and " Presto change " drove away or propitiated the evil spirits that were tor- f ■I i THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. 41 meriting the sufferer. If the patient did not imme- diattly respond to the tr^:atment, the doctor would accuse some one of bewitching his victim, and demand that he should be tortured or put to death in order to relieve the afflicted one. It thus became a serious matte for every one when thw doctor was sent for, as not even the chiefs were safe from being denounced by these wi.-ards. No slave could be- come a shamati, but the profession was open to any one else, regardless of rank or riches, and the medi- cine man was a self-made grandee, unless some great deformity marked him for that calling from birth. As preparation for his life-work he went off by him- self, and fasted in the woods for many days. Return- ing, he danced in :renzy about the village, seizing and biting the flesh of live dogs, and eating the heads and tongues uf frogs. This latter practice accounts for the image of the frog appearing on all the medicine men's rattles ; and in the totemic car- vings the frog is the symbol of the shaman, or speaks of some incident connected with him. Each shaman elected to himself a familiar spirit, either the whale, the bear, the eagle, or some one of the mythological beasts, and 'ited with its qualities, and under the guidance of this totemic spirit, he performed his cures a^id miracles. This token ". 'as carved on his rattles, his masks, drums, spoons, canoes, and all his belorgings. It was woven on his blankets, and after death it was carved on bits of fossil ivory, whale and walrus teeth, and sewed to his grave- clothes. The sJiammi's body was never burned, but was laid in state in the large grave boxes that are seen on the outskirts of every village. Columns rfmmaismmmmBmmmm mm 42 SOUTHERN ALASKA. capped with to-emic animals and flags mark these little houses of the dead, and many of them have elaborately carved and painted walls. The shaman s hair was never cut nor touched by profane hands, and each hair was considered a sacred charm by the people. Captain Merriman, while in command of the U. S. S. Adams, repeatedly interfered with two sJiamans, who were denouncing and putting to torture the helpless women and children in a village where the black measles was raging. He found the victims of this witchcraft persecution with their ankics fastened to their wrists in dark, underground holes, or tied to the rocks at low tide that they might be slowly drowned by the returning waters. All threats failing, the two sliavtaus were carried on the Adamc, and the ship's barber sheared and shaved their heads. The matted hair was carried down to the boiler room and burned, for if it had been thrown overboard it would have been caught and preserved, and the shamans could have retained at least a vestige of authority. The Indians raised a great outcry at the prospect of harm or indignity being offered their medicine-men, but when the two shaved heads appeared at the gangway, the Indians set up shouts of derision, and there were none so poor as to do them honor after that. A few such salutary examples did much to break up these prac- tices, and though their notions of our medicine are rather crude, they have implicit faith in the white, or " Boston doctors." If these fish-eating, canoe-paddling Indians of the northwest coast are superior to the hunters and horsemen of the western plains, the Haidas are the THE srfKAN AliCUIPELAGO. 48 most remarkable of the coast tribes, and offer a fas- cinating study to anyone interested in native races and fellow man. From Cape Fox to Mount St. Elias the Indians of the Alaska coast are known by the generic name of Thlinkets, but in the subdivision of the Thlinkets into tribes, or kivansy the liaidas are not included. The Thlinkets consider the Haidas as aliens, but, except in the language, they have many things in common, and it takes the ethnologist's eye to detect the differences. The greater part of the Haida tribe proper inhabit the Queen Charlotte Islands in the northern part of British Columbia, and the few bands living in villages in the southern part of Alaska are said to be malcontents and secessionists, who paddled away and found hemes for themselves across Dixon Entrance. I have neard it stated, with- out much authority to sustain it, however, that old Skowl was a deserter of this kind, and, "101: approving of some of the political methods of the other chiefs in his native village, withdrew with his followers and founded a colony in Kasa-an Bay. This aboriginnl " mugwump," as he would be rated in the slang of th. day, was conservative in other things, and his people have the same old customs and traditions as the Hai- das of the original villages on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Where the Haidas really did come from is an un- ending puzzle, and in Alaska the origin and migra- tion of races are subjects continually claiming one's attention. There is enough to bo seen by superficial glances to suggest an Oriental origin, and those who believe in the emigration of the Indians from Asia by way of Behring Straits, or the natural causeway of the 44 SOUTHERN ALASKA. Aleutian Islands, in prehistoric times, find an array of strange suggestions and resemblances among the Haidas to encourage their theories. That the name of this tribe corresponds to the name of the great mountain range of Japan may be a mere coincidence, but a few scholars who have visited them say that there are many Japanese words and idioms in their language, and that the resemblance of the Haidas to the Ainos of northern Japan is striking enough to suggest some kinship. Opposed to this, however, is the testimony of Marchand, the French voyager, who visited the Haidas in 1791, and recognizing Aztec words and terminations in their speech, and resem- blances to Aztec work in their monuments and picture- writings, first started the theory that they were from the south, and descendants of those who, driven out of Mexico by Cortez, vanished m boats to the north. To continue the puzzle, the Haidas have some Apache words in their vocabulary, and have the samx gro- tesque dance-masks, and many of the same dances and ceremonies that Gushing describes in his sketches of life among the Zunis in New Mexico. Hon. James G. Swan, of Port Townsend, who has given thirty years to a study of the Indians of the northwest coast, has lately given much attention to the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and has made large collections of their implements and art works for the Smithsonian Institute. He found the Haida tradition and representation of the great spirit, — the Thunder Bird, — to be the same as that of the Aztecs, and when he showed sketches of Aztec car- vings to the Haidas they seemed to recognize and un- derstand them at once. Copper images and relics . i,. ..'• *jL ftA'/fei».. JLi'kJiLi ,■■!*■ THE SJTKAi: .RCHIPELAGO. 45 found in their possession were identical with some silver images found in ruins in Guatemala by a British archaeologist. Judge Swan has collected many strange legends and allegories during his canoe jour- neys to the isolated Haida villages, and his guide and attendant, Johnny Kit-Elswa, who conducts him to the great October feasts and dances, is a clever young Haida silversmith and a remarkable genius. Judge Swan has written a memoir on Haida tattoo masks, paintings, and heraldic columns, which was published as No. 26y of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, January, 1874. In The West Shore magazine of August, 1884, he published a long arti- cle with illustrations upon the same subjects, and his library and cabinet, his journals and sketch-books, contain many wonderful things relating to the history and life of these strange people. a" .1.1. V JUliilJlliWMI 46 aOVTUER]^ ALASKA. CHAPTER V. FORT WRANGELL AND THE STIK!N^. THOSE who believe that all Alaska is a place of perpetual rain, fog, snow, and ice would be quickly disabused could they spend some of the ideal summer days in that most lovely harbor of Fort Wran- gell. Each time the sky was clearer and the air milder than before, and on the day of my third visit the fresh beams of the morning sun gave an infinite charm to the landscape, as we turned from Clarence Straits into the narrower pass between the islands, and sailed across waters that reflected in shimmering, pale blue and pearly lights the wonder- ful panorama of mountains. Though perfectly clear, the light was softened and subdued, and even on such a glorious sunny morning there was no glare nor harshness in the atmosphere. This pale, soft light gave a dreamy, poetic quality to the scenery, and the first ranges of mountains above the water shaded from the deep green and russet of the nearer pine forests to azure and purple, where their further sum- mits were outlined against the sky or the snow-cov- ered peaks that were mirrored so faithfully in the long stretches of the channel. The sea water lost its deep green tints at that point, and was discolored and .■ I rUE SiTKAy ARCHIPELAGO. 47 tinged to a muddy tea green by the fresh current of the Stikine River, which there reaches the ocean. The great circle of mountains and snow-peaks, and the stretch of calm waters lying in this vast landlocked harbor, give Fort WrangcU an enviable situation. The little town reached its half-century of existence last summer, but no celebrations stirred the placid, easy-going life of its people. It was founded in 1834 by order of Baron Wrangell, then Governor of Russian America and chief director of the fur company, who sent the Captain-Lieut. Dionysius Feodorovich Zarembo down from Sitka to erect a stockade post on the small tongue of land now occu- pied by the homes, graves, and totem poles of the Indian village. It was known at first as the trading post of St. Dionysius, and, later, it assumed the name of Wrangell, the prefix of Fort being added during the time that the United States garrisoned it with two companies of the 21st Infantry. The Govern- ment began building a now stockade fort there imme- diately after the transfer of the territory in 1867, and troops occupied it until 1870, when they vvere with- drawn, the post abandoned, and the property sold for $500. The discovery of the Cassiar gold mines on the head waters of the vStikine River in 1874 sent a tide of wild life into the deserted street of Fort Wrangell, and the military were ordered back in 1875 and remained until 1877, when General How- ard drew off his forces, and the government finally recalled the troops from all the posts in Alaska. During the second occupation of the barracks and quarters at Fort Wrangell, the War Depai tment helped itself to the property, and, assigning a jiominal sum 48 SOUTlIKliN ALASKA. for rent, held the fort against the protest of the owner. The Cassiar mines were booming then, and I'^ort Wrangell took on something of the excitement of a mining town itself, and being at the head of ocean navigation, where all merchandise had to be trans- ferred to small steamers and canoes, rents for stores and warehouses were extravagantly high. Every shed could bring a fabulous price. The unhappy owner, who rejoices in the euj)honious name of W. King Lear, could only gnash his teeth and violently pro- test against the monthly warrants and vouchers given him by the commandant of the post. Since the troops have gone, the Government has done other strange things with the property that it once sold in due form, and Mr. Lear has a just and plain claim against the War Department for damages. The bar- racks and hospital of the old fort are now occupied by thQ Presbyterian Mission. No alteration, repairs, or improveuK ts having been made for many years, the stockade is gradually becoming more ruinous, weather- worn, and picturesque each year, and the overhang- ing block-house at one corner is already a most sketchable bit of bleached and lichen-covered logs. The main street of Fort Wrangell, untouched by the hoof of horse or mule for these many years, is a wandering grass-grown lane that straggles along for a few hundred feet from the fort gate and ends in a foot-path along the beach. The " Miners' Palace Restaurant," and other high-sounding signs, remain as relics of the livelier days, and listless Indian women sit in rows and groups on the 'unpainted porches of the trading stores. They are a quiet, rather languid lot of klootchmans, slow and deliberate 3 THE 8ITKAN AltlJIIirELAGO. 49 of speech, and not at all clamorous for customers, as they squat or lie face downward, like so many seals, before their baskets of wild berries. In the stores, the curio departments are well stocked with elabo- rately carved spoons made of the black horns of the mountain goat ; with curiously-fashioned halibut hooks and halibut clubs; with carved wooden trays and bowls, in which oil, fish, berries, and food have been mixed for years ; with stone pipes and implements handed down from that early age, and separate store- rooms are filled with the skins of bears, foxes, squir- rels, mink, and marten that are staple articles of trade. Occasionally there can be found fine specimens of a gray mica slate set full of big garnet crystals, like plums in a pudding, or sprinkled through with finer garnets that show points of brilliancy and fine color. This stone is found on the banks of a small creek near the mouth of the Stikine River, and great slabs of it arc blasted off and brought to Fort Wrangell by the boat-load to be broken up into small cabinet specimens in time for the tourist season each summer. None of the garnets are clear or perfect, and the blasting fills them with seams and flaws. The best silver bracelets at Fort Wrangell are made by a lame Indian, who as the chief artificer and silversmith of the tribe has quite a local reputation. His bracelets are beauti- fully chased and decorated, but unfortunately for the integrity of Stikine art traditions, he has given up carving the emblematic beasts of native heraldry on heavy barbaric wristlets, and now only makes the most slender bangles, adapted from the models in an illustrated "jeweller's catalogue that some Philistine has sent him. Worse yet, he copies the civilized 60 SOUHIElty ALASKA, spread eagle from the half-dollar, and, one can only shake his head sadly to see Stikine art so corrupted and debased. For all this, the lame man cannot make bracelets fast enough to supply the market, and at three dollars a pair for the narrower ones he pockets great profits during the steamer days. On the water side of the main street there is a queer old flat-bottomed river-boat, stranded high and dry, that in its day made ;^I3$,0CXD clear each sea- son that it went up the Stikine. It enriched its owner while in the water, and after it went ashore was a profitable venture as a hotel. This Rudder Grange, built over from stem to stern, and green with moss, is so settled into the grass and earth that only the shape of the bow and the empty box of the stern wheel really declare its original purpcse. There is a bakeshop in the old engine-room, and for the rest it is the Chinatown of Fort VVrangell. A small cinnamon-bear cub gambolled in the street before this boat-house, and it stood on its hind legs and sniffed the air curiously when it saw the captain of the ship coming down the street, bestowing sticks of candy on every child in the way. Bruin came in for his share, and formed the centre for a group that watched him chew up mint sticks and pick his teeth with his sharp little claws. The houses of the Indian village string along the beach in a disconnected way, all of them low and square, built of rough hewn cedar and pine planks, and roofed over with large planks resting on heavy log beams. One door gives entrance to an interior, often twenty and forty feet square, and several families live in one of these houses, sharing the same fireplace in mml^ THE SITKAN ARf'IlIPKLAGO. 51 the centre, and keeping peacefully to their own sides and corners of the common habitation. Heraldic de- vices in outline sometimes ornament the gable front of the house, but no paint is wasted on the interior, where smoke darkens everything, the drying salmon drip grease from the frames overhead, and dogs and children tumble carelessly around the fire and over the pots and saucepans. The entrances have some- times civilized doors on hinges, but the aborigine fashion is a portihc of sealskin or walrus hide, or of woven grass mats. When one of the occupants of a house dies he is never taken out by the door where the others enter, but a plank is torn off at the back or side, or the body is hoisted out through the smoke hole in the roof, to keep the spirits away. Before many of the houses are tall cedar posts and poles, carved with faces of men and beasts, repre- senting events in their genealogy and mythology. These tall totems are the shrines and show places of Fort Wrangell, and on seeing them all the ship's company made the hopeless plunge into Thlinket mythology and there floundered aimlessly until the end of the trip. There is nothing more flexible or susceptible of interpretations than Indian traditions, and the Siwash himself enjoys nothing so much as misleading and fooling the curious white man in the':--- matters. The truth about these totems and their carvings never will be quite known until their innate humor is civilized out of the natives, but meanwhile the white man vexes himself with ethnolo- gical theories and suppositions. These totems are for the most part picture writings that tell a i)lain story to every Siwash, and record the great events in the 52 tiOVTIIKliN ALASKA. f history of the man who erects them. They are only erected by the wealthy and powerful members of the tribe, and the cost of carving a cedar log fifty feet long, and the attendant feasts and ceremonies of the raising, bring their value, according to Indian esti- mates, up to one thousand and two thousand dol- lars. The subdivisions of each tribe into distinct families that take for their crest the crow, the bear, the eagle, the whale, the wolf, and the fox, give to each of these sculptured devices its great meaning. The totems show by their successive carvings the descent and alliances of the great families, and the great facts and incidents of their history. The rep- resentations of these heraldic beasts and birds are conventionalized after certain fixed rules of their art, and the grotesque heads of men and animals are highly colored according to other set laws and limi- tations. Descent is counted on the female side, and the first emblem at the top of the totem is that of the builder, and next that of the great family from which he is descended through his mother. In some cases two totem poles are erected before a house, one to show the descent on the female side, and one to give the generations of the male side, and a pair of these poles was explained for us by one of the residents of Fort Wrangell, who has given some study to these matters. The genealogical column of the mother's side has at the top the eagle, the great tote^n or crest of the family to which she belonged. Below the eagle is the image of a child, and below that the beaver, the frog, the eagle, the frog, and the frog for a third time, shuw the generations and the sub- families of the female side. By some interpreters THE SITKA \ AliCrilPELACiO. 53 the frog is believed to indicate a pestilence or some great disaster, but others niuintain that it is the recognized crest of one of the sub-families. The male toU-M })ole has at the top the image of the chief, ■ •> 4 TOTEM POLES AT FORT WRANOELL. wearing his conical hat, below that his great totems the crow. Succeeding the crow is the image of a child, then three frogs, and at the base of the column the eagle, the great totem of the builder's mother. 54 SOUTHEIiN ALASKA. in front of one chief's bouse a very natural-looking bear is crouched on the top of a pole, gazing down at his black foot-tracks, which are carved on the sides of the column. A crossbeam resting on posts near this same house used to show three frogs sitting in line, and other grotesque fantasies are scattered about the village. With the advance of civilization the Indians are losing their reverence for these heraldic monuments, and some have been dcstrc^ ed and others sold; for the richest of these natives are so mrrcenary that they do not scruple to sell anything that belongs to ^hem. The disaj:)pear.ince of the /ofcm poles would rob these villages of their greatest interest for the tourists, and the ethnologist who would solve the mysteries and read the pictures finally aright, should hasten to this rich and neglected field. In their mythology, which, as now known, is sadly involved through the medium of so many incorrect and perverted explanations, the crow or raven stands supreme as the creator and the first of all created things. He made everything, and all life comes from him. After he had made the world, he created woman and then man, making her «"preme as representative of the crow family, while man, created las^ is the head of tlic wolf or warrior's family. From them sprang the sub-families of the whale, the bear, the eagle, the beaver, and the frog. The Stikine Indians have a tradition of the deluge, in which the chosen pair '.vere given th^ shape of crows until the water had sub- sided, when they again returned to the earth and peopled it wit'i their descendants. No alliances are ever made within the great families, and a crow never marries a crow, but rather a member of the whale, I mm GRAVK AT luUr WKANCKLL THE SITKA N ABCUIPELAGO. 57 bear, or wol' families. The man takes the totem of his wile's f:.mily, and fights with them when the great family feuds arise in the tribe. On many of the totem poles tlie chiefs are repre- sented as wearing tall, conical hats, similar to those worn by certain classes in China, and this fact has been assumed by many ardent ethnologists to give certain proof of the oriental origin of these people, and their emigration by way of Behring's Straits. Others explain the storied hats piled one on top of another, as indicating the number of potlatches, or great feasts, that the builder has given. Over the graves of the dead, which are square log boxes or houses, they put full-length representations of the dead man's totemic beast, or smooth poles finished at the top with the family crest. One old chief's tomb at Kort Wrangell has a very realistic whale on its moss-grown roof, another a bear, and another an otter. The Indians cremated their dead until the arrival of the missionaries, who have steadily opposed the practice. The Indian's idea of a hell of ice made him reason that he who was buried in the earth or the sea would be cold forever after, while he whose ashes were burned would be warm and comfortable throughout eternity. These Thlinket Indians of the coast have broad heavy faces, small eyes, and anything but quickness or intelligence in their expression. They are slow and deliberate in speech, lingering on and emphasizing each aspirate and guttural, and any theories as to a fish diet promoting the activity of the brain are dispersed after watching these salmon-fed natives for a few weeks. Many of their customs are such a i S8 SOUTHERN ALASKA. travesty and burlesque on our civilized ways as to show that the same principles and motives underlie all human action. When those expensive trophies of decorative art, the /o/nn poles, are raised, the event is celebrated by the whole tribe, A common Indian can raise himself to distinction and nobility by giving many feasts and setting up a pole to commemorate them. After he owns a totem pole he can aspire to greater eminence. That man is considered the richest who gives most away, and at the great feasts Q>x potlatchcs that accompany a house-warming or pole- raising, they nearly beggar themselves. All the delicacies of the Alaska market are provided by the canoe-full, and the guests sit around the canoes and dip their ancestral spoons into the various com- pounded dishes. Blankets, calico, and money are distributed as souvenirs on the same principle as costly f v/rs are given for the German. His rank and riches increase in exact ratio as he tears up and gives away his blankets and belongings ; and the Thlinket has satisfied pride to console himself with while he struggles through the hard times that follow a potlatch. In the summer season Fort Wrangell is a peaceful, quiet place ; the climate is a soothing one, and Prof. Muir extolled the " poultice-like atmosphere" which so calms the senses. The Indians begin to scatter on their annual fishing trips in June, and come back with their winter supplies of salmon in the early fall. Many of the houses were locked or boarded up, while the owners had gone away to spend the summer at some other watering-place. One absentee left this notice on his front door : — THE SITKAN AliCHIPELAGO. 59 LET NO ONK UPEN OK SHUT THIS HOUSE DUKLNG MV ABSENCE. Over another locked door was this name and legend, which combines a well-witnessed and legal testament, together with the conventional door-plate of the white man : — A NAT I. A SH. Let all tliat read know that I Am a f iciul lo tiie wli tes. Let no One mo lest this house. In case ot mv Death i t bel uiigs to my wilt. Thus wrote Anatlash, a man of tall totems and many blankets ; and stanzas in bkuik verse after the same manner decorated the doonvay of many Thlin- ket r^ bodes. The family groups within the houses were as inter- esting and })icturesque as the totem poles without ; and strangers were free to enter without formality, and study the ways of the best native society with- out hindrance. These people nearly all wear civilized garments, and in the baronial halls of Fort Wrangeil there aie imposing heaps of red-covered and brass- bound trunks that contain stores of blankets, festal garments, and family treasures. In all the houses the Indians went right on with their bTeakfasts and do- mestic duties regardless of our presence ; and the 60 SOUTHERN ALASKA. white visitors made friiem selves at home, scrutinized and turned over everything they saw with an effron- tery that would be resented, if indulged in in kind by I'-e Indians. The women hud the shrewdest eye to money-making, and tried to sell ancient and greasy baskets and broken spoons when *^^hev hctd nothing else in the curio line. In one house two giggling damsels were playing on an accordeon when we entered, but stoj)ped and hid their heads in their blankets at sight of us. An old gentleman, in a single abbreviated garment, crouched by the fireside, frying a dark and suspicious-looking dough in seal oil ; and the coolness and self-possession with which he rose and stepped about his habitation were admira- ble. He was a grizzled and surly-looking old fellow, but from the number of trunks and fur robes i)iled around the walls, he was evidently a man of wealth, and his airy costume rather a matter of taste than economy. Many of the men showed us buckskin pouches containing little six-inch sticks of polished cedar that they use in their great social games. These gambling sticks are distinguished by different mark- ings in red and black lines, and the game consists in one man taking a handful, shufTling them around under his blanket, and making the others guess the marks of the first stick drawn out. These Indians are great gamblers, and they spend hours and days at their fascinating games. They shufHe the sticks to see who shall go out to cut and gather firewood in winter, and if a man is seen crawling out after an armful of logs, his neighbors shout with derision at him as a loser. In addition to their silver bracelets, their silver ear- r 1 ^■■i^BW ^»^ THE .SITKA y AliCJlIPELAOO. 61 rings and finger rings, many of the women keep up the old custom of wearing nose rings and lij) rings, that no W'ii^:r:^ SII.VKR HRACKLETS. amount of missionary and catechism, seemingly, can brccik them of. The lip rings used to be worn by all but slaves, and the three kinds worn by the women of all the island tribes are marks of age that take the place of family records. When a young girl reaches marriageable age, a long, flat-headed silver pin, aii inch in length, is thrust through the lower lip. After the marriage festival the Thlinkct dame assumes a LABRKTl'ES. bone or ivory button a quarter or half inch across. This matronly badge is a mere collar-button com- pared to the two-inch plugs of wood that they wear in their under lips when they reach the sere and yellow leaf of existence. This big labrette gives the 62 .so UTIIEUN u 1 LA SKA. last touch of hidcousness to the wrinkled and blear- eyed old women that one finds wearing them, and it was from the Russian name for this trough in the lip — kolosh — that all the tribes of the archipelago were known as Koloshians, as distinguished from the Aleuts, the Innuits, and Esquimaux of the north- west. Far less picturesque than the natives in their own houses were the little Indian girls at the mission- school in tlic old fort. Combed, cleaned, and mar- shalled in stiff rows to recite, sing, and go through calisthenic exercises, they were not nearly so strik- ing for studies and sketches aboriginal, but more hopeful to contemplate as fellow-beings. Clah, a Christianized Indian from Fort Simpson, B. C, was the first to attempt mission work among the In- dians at Fort Wrangell. In 1877 Mrs. McFarland was sent out by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, after years of mission work in Colorado and the west, and, taking Clah on her staff, she labored untiringly to establish the school and open the home for Indian girls. Others have joined her in the work at Fort Wrangell, and everyone on the coast testifies to good results already attained by her labors and example. She is known and reverenced among all the tribes, and the Indians trust in her implicitly, and go to her for advice and aid in every emergency. With the establishment of the new industrial mission-school at Sitka, Mr.s. McFarland will be transferred to the girls' department of that institution. The Rev^ Hall Young and his wife have devoted themselves to the good cause at Fort Wrangell, and will continue there in charge of the church and school. The Presby- rut: siTKAy aihuwelma). 63 i terian missions have the strongest hold on the coast, and the Catholics, who built a church at Fort Wran- gell, have given up the mission there, and the priest from Nanaimo makes only occasional visits to his dusky parish icjners. The steep hillsitle back of Fort Wrangell was cleared of timber during military occupancy, and on the lower slopes the companies had fine gardens, which remain as wild overgrown meadows now. In them the wild timothy grows six feet high, the blue- berry bushes are loaded with fruit, salmon berries show their gorgeous clusters of gold n'ul scarlet, and the white clover grows on long stems and reaches to a fulness and perfection one can never imagine. This Wrangell clover is the common clover of the Fast looked at through a magnifying glass, each blossom as large and wide-spread as a double carnation pink, and the fragrance has a strong spicy quality with its sweetness. The red clover is not common, but the occasional tops are of the deepest pink that these huge clover blossoms can wear. While the hillside looked cleared, there was a deep and tangled thicket under foot, the moss, vines, and runners forming a network that it took some skill to penetrate ; but the view of the curved beach, the ])lacid channel sleeping in the warm summer sunshine like a great mountain lake, and the ragged peaks of the snowy range showing through every notch and gap, well repaid the climb through it. It was a most perfect day when we climbed the ridge, the air as warm and mellow as Indian summer, with even its soft haze hung round the mountain walls in the afternoon, and from those superior heights we gazed in ecstasy on 64 SOUTH Kit X A LA SKA. the scene and pitied all the people who know not Alaska. When IVofessor Muir was at Fort Wrangell one autumn, he climbed to the summit of this first moun- tain on a stormy ni.ij^ht to listen to the fierce music of the winds in the forest. Just over the ridge he found a little hollow, and gathering a few twigs and branches he started a fire that he gradually increased to quite a blaze. The wind howled and roared through the forest, and the scientist enjoyed himself to the utmost ; but down in the village the Indians were terrified at the glow that illuminated the sky and the tree-tops. No one could exi)lain the phe- nomenon, as they could not guess that it was Professor Muir warming himself during his nocturnal ramble in the forest, and it was with difficulty that the minister and the teachers at the mission could calm the frightened Indians. On a second visit to Fort Wrangell on the IdaJio, there v^as the same warm, lazy sunshine and soft still air, and as connoisseurs we could the better appreciate the fine carvings and ornamental work of these aes- thetic people, who decorate every household utensil with their symbols of the beautiful. Mr. Lear, or " King I.ear," welcomed us back to his comfortable porch, and as a special mark brought forth his great horn spoon, a work of the highest art, and a bit of bric-a-brac that cost its possessor some four hundred dollars. Mr. Lear is that famous man, who "swears by the great horn spoon," and this elaborately carved spoon, made from the clear, amber-tinted horn of the musk ox, is more than eighteen inches long, wnth a smooth, graceful bowl that holds at least a pint. This 4 rilK si Ik AN AUCHlPELAdO, G5 spoon constituted the sole assets of a bankrupt debtor, who failed, ovviiif; Mr. Lear a large sum ; and the jocose trader first astonished us by saying that he had a carved spoon that cost him four huntlred dollars. The amateur photographers on shipboard raved at sight of the beautiful amber spoon with its carved luiiidle inlaid with abalone shell, and, rushing for their cameras, i)hotographed it against a gay back- ground of Chilkat blankets. Mr. Lear has refused all offers to buy his great horn spoon, nuiting one per- sistent collector by assuring him that he must keep it to take his medicines in. The skies were as blue as fabled Italy when the Idaho "let go" from Fort Wrangell wharf that glori- ous afternoon, and we left with genume regret. The Coast-.Sui ve\' steamer J/asslcr came smoking around the point of an island just as we were leaving Fort Wrangell ; and our captain, who would rather lose his dinner than miss a joke, fairly shook with laughter when he saw the frantic signals of the Ilasslfi; and knew the tempestuous frame of mind its commander was working himself up to. After gixingthe Hasslcr sufficient scare and chase, the IdaJio slowed up, and the mails that she had been carrying for three month.^ were transferred to the Coast-Survey ship, while the skippers, who arc close friends and inveterate jokers, exchanged stiff and conventional greetings, mild sarcasm, and dignified repartee from their respective bridges. The pranks that these nautical people play on one another in these out-of-the-way waters would astonish those who have seen them in dress uniforms anrl conventional surroundings, and such experiences rank among the unique side incidents of a trip. 66 SOVrilKUN ALASKA. A boat-race of another kind rounded olf the day of my third and hist \ isit to Fort Wran<;ell, and the Indians who hail been waiting for a week made ready for a rerk the exhausted fields, and another year will probably find thcni in sole possession. VVh'le l!ie mines were at their best. Fort Wrangell w'as the ^reat pc^int of outHtting and departure ; and after tht troops vvere withdrawn, the miners made it more aral more a plaee of Tirunken and sociable hiber- nation, when t!!e .^eveie w either of the interior drove them down the river. Thev conirreiiated in irreatest numbers earl}- in the spring, many going up on the ice in ^^Jbruary or March, before the river o])ened ; although no mining could be done until May, and the water froze in tl^" sluices in September. The Cassiar .nmcs being in British Co'iimbia, the rush of trade on the Stikine River caused i. -my com- plications and infractions of t'.ie revenue laws of both coi itries, and grent license vas aiiovved. Fhe exact position where tiie boundary liiie crosses the Stikine has not yet been determined by the two govern- ments, and in times past it has wavered like the iso- thermal lines of the coast. The diggings at Shucks, seventy miles from Fort Wrangell, were at one time in Alaska and next time in British Columbia ; and the Hudson Bay Company's post, and even the British ' THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. 69 custom house, were for a long time on United States soil before being remo\'ed beyond the debatable re- gion. The boundary, as now accepted temporarily, crosses the river sixty-five miles from Fort Wrangell at a distance of ten marine leagues from the sea in a direct line, and, intersecting the grave of a British miner, leaves his bones divided between the two countries ; his heart in the one, and the boots in which he died in the other, Vancouver failed to discover the Stikine on his cruise up the continental shore, and, deceived ! y the shoal waters, passed by the mouth. It then remained for the American sloop /Ay/w/, Captain Cleveland, to visit the delta and learn of the great river from the natives in 1799. The scenery of the Stikine River is the most wonderful in this region, and Prof. John Muir, the great geologist of the Pacific coast, epito- mized the valley of the Stikine as "a Yosemite one hi idred miles long." The current of the river is so strong that while it takes a boat three days at full steam to get from Fort Wrangell up to Glenora, the trip back can be made in eight or twelve hours, with the paddle-wheel reversed most of the time, to hold the boat back in its wild flight down stream. It is a most dangerous piece of river navigation, and" there have been innumerable accidents to steamboats antl canoes. Three hundred great glaciers are known to drain into the Stikine, and one hundred and one can be counted from the steamer's deck while going up to Glenora. The first great glacier comes down to the river at a place forty miles above Fort Wrangell, and fronting for seven miles on a low moraine along the m Ml TO sou THE UN A LA 8 KA . . t river bank, is faced on the opposite side by a smaller glacier. There is an Indian tradition to the effect that these two i^^laciers were once united, and the river ran through in an arched tunnel. To hnd out whether it led out to the sea, the Indians determined to send two of th ,ir number through the tunnel, and with fine Indian logic they chose the oW<-st members of their tribe to make the perilous vayage into the ice mountain, arguing that they might die very soon anyhow. The venerable Indians shot the tunnel, and, returning with the great news of a clear passageway to the sea, were held in the highest es- teem forever after. 7'his great glacier is from five hundred to seven hundred feet high on the front, and extends back for many miles into tiie mountains, its surface broken and seamed with deep crevices. Two young Russian officers once went down from Sitka to explore this glacier to its source, but never re- turned from the ice kingdom into which they so rashly ventured. Further up, at a sharp ben.l of the river called tiie Devil's Elbow, there is the mud glacier, which has a width of three miles and a height of two hundred or three hundred feet where it faces the river from behind its moraine. Beyond this dirt-covered, boulder-strewn glacier, there is the Grand Cafion of the Stikine, a narrow^ S^'*S"^' two hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, into which the boiling current of the river is forced, and where the steamboats used to struggle at full steam for half an hour before they emerged from the per- pendicular walls of that frightful defile. A smaller cafton near it is calleil the Klootchtnans, or Woman's CaAon, the noble red man being always so exhausted THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO. 71 I by poHn<2^, paddling, and tracking his canoe through the Grand Canon as to leave the navigation of the second one entirely to his wife. The Big Riffle, or the Stikine RajMds, is the last of these most danger- ous places in the river; and at about this point, where the summit line of the mountain range crosses the river, the mythical boundary line is supposed to lie. The country opens out then into more level stretches, and at Glenora and Telegraph Creek, the steamboats leave their cargoes and stcrt on the wild sweep down the river to T^'ort VVrangell again As the boats are no longer running on the river, future voyagers who wish to see the stupendous scenery of this region will have to depend on the Indian canoes that take ten days for the journey up, or else feast and satisfy their imaginations with the thrilling tales of the old Stikine days that can be picked up on every hand, and st!K j the topography of the region from the maps of Prof. Blake. 72 SOUTHERN ALASKA. CHAITKR VI. WRANGKI.L NARROWS AND lAKU C.LACIKRS. IF there were not so many more wonderful places in Alaska, W'rangell Narrows would y;i\c it a scenie fame, and make its fortune in the coming centuries when touiists and yachts will crowd these waters, and poets and seafaring n(nt.'lists tlcscrt the Scotch coast for these n(,rth western isles. Instead of William Black's everlasting C)l)an, and Stalfa, :i.nd Skye, and heroines with a buir in their speech, we will read of Kasa-an and Kaigan, Taku a:. 1 Chilkat, and maidens who lis[) in soft accents the deep, gur- gling Chinook, or the older dialects of their races. Wrangell Narrows is a sinuous channel l)etween mountainous islands, and for thiity miles it is iiard to determine which one of the perpentlicular walls nt the end of the strait will finally stop us with its impassa- ble front. There are dangerous ledges un. vtend'ng back some forty miles, and measuring four miles across the fnmt, that faces the water and the iermmal moraine it has built up before it. The great glacier is known as Patterson Glacier, in honor of the late Carlisle Patterson, of the United Str.tes Coast Survey, and is the first in the great line of glaciers that one encounters along the Alaska coast. Under the shadow of a cloud the glacier was a dirty and uneven snow field, but touched by the last light of the sun it was a frozen lake of wonderland, shim- mering with silvery lights, and showing a pale ethe- ''\ k s ^ 74 SOUTHERN ALASKA. real green, and deciJ, pure bluL'. in all the rifts and erevasses in its icy front. With the ai)i)earance of this first glacier, and the presence of ice floating in tlie waters around us, the conversation of all on l)oard took a scientific turn, and facts, fancies, and wild theories about glacial origin and action were advanced that would have struck ixmic to any body of geologists, lieing all laymen, there was no one to expound the mysteries and ^peak with final authority on any of these frozen and well-established truths ; and we floundered about in a sea of suppositions, and were lost in a labyrinth of lame conclusions. A long chain of snow-cajjped mountains slowly unrolled as the ship emerged from Wrangell Nar- rows, more glaciers were brought to view, and that strange granite monument, the " Devil's Thumb," as namerl by Commander Meade, signalled us from a mountain top. Farther up, in Stephens Passage, flc^ating ice tells of the great glaciers in Ilolkam or Soundoun l^ay, and bes'CH.: the one great Soundoun glacier flowing into the sea, there are three other glaciers hidden in the high-walled fiords that open from the bay. ()ne of the first and most adventurous visitors to the Soundoun glacier was Cai)tain J. W White, of the Revenue Marine, who anchored the cutter Liiicohi in the bay in iirits of the ice king- dom. In 1876 golfl was discovered, and th^ Soun- doun pkicers were the first ones worked in Akiska. Professor Muir visited the glacier and mines of Soun- tloun Bay in i