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'…?º.· :}}§§$$$$$|-----§§§ ，§§§§§~ |-¿§§§§§§* · §§§§§§§ §§ ∞Ģ§§ §-ſ， ģeºķišķº， º. ¿§ Ř®£® |-§§§§%ț¢ ¿ĪĪĪĪĪĪĪĪĪĪĪĘ Œ~- - ------ .----№==========№\！} №ººººº！！！!！！！！!！！！！！!！！!！!！!！!！！！！！！！!！！！！ſae -{ ĶȚſ§-ſķfff;"¡¡¡¡¡¡¡---- - - - -*----- … • • • • ~ ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~. ~~~--~~~~ ~~~~^ —~~~~ .. w. - …« • • • • • • • • •*.*; Ņ}·}ſſſſſ|}}}|[[[[[[[[H[iſ[iſ][ÌÍÎÏļĪİſ|ſſ||lll|ſ|ſſſſſ!！! №√∞ -|-- - - - ----- # §%№ž **） №！！！-。！ x-r-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º- iſſiſſiſſiſi -º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º-º: | :HŘE 2% º \ The Gorge of the Homathco. THE INLAND SEA. ... 19 true bituminous coal gave an average of 629 per cent of ash and 1.47 per cent of water. Q Besides the carriage roads already mentioned, one is being cut to the summit of Mt. Benson, behind Nanaimo. $ The surrounding forests are of greatest interest to botanists, and wherever the rocks are uncovered they show the grooved and rounded carvings of a glacial garden. The carriage road is often a tunnel through the dense, dark foliage of the huge Douglas firs, and the last of the rich, red-barked madroña-trees or Menzies arbutus grow among the evergreens. There is an especially fine grove of madroñas on the knoll between the coal wharves and the block-house in Nanaimo. Ferns of many varieties and of gigantic size thrive—those 6 and 9 ft. in length being easily found at the end of summer—and among the many strange wild flowers there is a blue clover. Azaleas brighten the for- ests in May ; the sallal, thimble, salmon, and blackberries abound in August. Achlys trifillum, the Oregon sweet-leaf, or deer-foot, grows rankly everywhere, and Nanaimo children gather bunches of this en- duringly fragrant leaf for sale on steamer days. Sportsmen find deer, bear, and elk, or wapiti, in the wilderness. Grouse and Chinese pheas- ants, which have spread from the first birds imported by an Oregon club, abound. The smaller streams and lakes contain trout and malma; salmon will take a spoon at the least, and cod are easily caught in the harbour. Camping outfits for a stay in the wilderness may be secured at Nanaimo, and it is possible to reach many remote inlets by the smaller vessels that often call. The Lighthouse on the north end of Entrance Island, at the entrance of Nanaimo harbour is the last one on the British Columbia coast, and Nanaimo is the end of telegraph lines. On the Vancouver shore the Crown Mountains rise in a splendid line of peaks. Mt. Albert Edward (6,968 ft.) is due W. of Texada Island. Alexandra Peak (6,394 ft.) is next in line northward, followed by Crown Mountain (6,100 ft.) and by Victoria Peak (7,500 ft.), the latter lying due W. of Discovery Passage. The Upper End of the Gulf of Georgia. The Great Fiords and the Salish Villages. Sechelt Arm of Jervis Inlet contains a great tidal rapid whose roar is heard for miles, and which only needs to be exploited to obscure the fame of the Norwegian Malstrom and Salstrom. 20 ° THE INLAND SEA. Sechel; Mission in Trail Bay, across the gulf from Nanaimo, is a tidy village with a large Roman Catholic church, where excursion steamers often touch. A first representation of the Passion Play was given here in 1890, and native communicants from all parts of British Columbia assembled for the religious ceremonies, which occupied three days. These scenes from the life and crucifixion of Christ were re- peated at the mission opposite Vancouver City in 1891, and at Mission Junction on the Fraser in 1892. Phosphorescent seas of wonderful brilliancy are often witnessed in the Gulf of Georgia, and black whales may always be seen spouting singly or in schools. Texada Island is 27 miles in length and 4 in breadth, with Mt. Shep- herd (2,906 ft.) rising above its many ridges. There are large deposits of coarse magnetic iron-ore, containing only ‘003 per cent of phos- phorus, valuable for steel-making, and enhanced in value by the neigh- bouring coal-beds. Desolation Sound and Bute Inlet indent the mainland, the latter the most famous fiord along the gulf. It is 40 miles in length, often less than a mile in width, and the precipitous mountain walls rise from 4,000 to 8,000 ft. in height. Soundings of 400 fathoms have been made without bottom. and the clear waters are so darkly green as to be almost black. Dense forests clothe these walls; glaciers, snow-banks, and cascades gleam among the green. Lord Dufferin and the Marquis of Lorne began the praise of Bute Inlet as the scenic gem of the coast, and its reputation increases yearly. The Cape Mudge village marks the limit of the Salish tribes which inhabit the coast between it and the head of Puget Sound. The Salish are fast dying, and some have become extinct within a decade. They had a totemic organization, possessed many arts, permanent homes, seaworthy and graceful canoes, when the first whites came. Their black, shovel-nosed dug-out canoes make pictures in the still waters be- tween wooded shores, and the Chinook canoe is said to have given the lines for the American clipper ships of the China and East Indian trade. They are a superior people, differing thus from the canoe Indi- ans of South America, and quite as aggressive as the meat-eating tribes of the interior. Cape Mudge potlatches, or feasts, where the host divides all his property among his guests, are famous, one in 1892 rep- resenting an expenditure of $6,000 in the gifts distributed. In 1888 the neighbouring Cowichans had accumulated personal property estimated at $407,000. The British Columbia Legislature forbade potlatches, and in one year their wealth decreased to $80,000—the prohibition of potlatches quenching all their desire to accumulate. Before the THE INLAND SEA. 21 whites came the sign-language was used between the tribes. Since then the general medium of communication, with whites as well, has been the Chinook Jargon compounded by H. B. Co.'s factors from Salish, French, English, Russian, and Kanaka speech. It has a vocabu- lary but no grammar, and one quickly learns its simple arrangements from the printed manuals, and finds it a useful accomplishment on the coast. Siwash, the Chinook name for an Indian, is a corruption of the French sawvage. Klahowyah, the usual salutation, is the native equiva- lent for the “Clark, how are you ?” as a white trader was always greeted by arriving friends. Seymour Narrows or Yaculta Rapids—The Great Malstrom. Discovery Passage, 23 miles in length, separates Vancouver from Valdes Island, and the geological formations of its banks show how recently the two islands were one. Midway in the pass are the Seymour Narrows, named for the British admiral, but known to the natives as Yaculta, the home of an evil spirit, who lived in its depths and delighted to Snatch canoes and devour their occupants, and to vex and toss whales about. The Richards and Pender surveys reduced the fabled dangers to exactness. The Narrows are a mile and a half long and less than half a mile wide, and the ebbing tide from the Gulf of Georgia races through at a speed varying from 6 to 10 and 12 knots an hour. Ripple Rock lifts a knife-edged reef for 300 yards down the centre of the pass, with 13 ft. of water over these pinnacles, and depths of 100 fathoms around them. Ships are timed to reach the Narrows during the favourable quarter hour before or after the ten minutes of slack water, when the whirlpool boils and simmers mildly. The few who have inadvertently gone through with the racing tide have seen the whole gorge white with foam, waves rearing and break- ing madly, deep holes boring down into the water, fountains boiling up like geysers, and ships reeling, shivering, and staggering in the demon's hold. Ships steaming 12 knots an hour have made but a cable's-head- way in two hours, and have often been swept back to await the favour- able half hour in the many convenient coves near. Many vessels were wrecked before the pass was fully known. The U. S. S. Saranac, a second-rate side-wheel steamer of 11 guns, was lost in Seymour Narrows June 18, 1875. It entered the pass too late, was caught in the current, and struck broadside on Ripple Rock. It swung off, was headed for the Vancouver shore, and made fast with hawsers to trees; but there was only time to lower a boat with the pa- pers and a few provisions, when the Saranac sank 60 fathoms deep, 22 THE INLAND SEA. and the crew camped on shore while a small boat went to Nanaimo for help. In 1882 the U. S. S. Wachusett ventured within Yaculta's realm too late, was seized by the demon, drawn down in a big eddy and hurled against the rock with such force that its false keel was entirely torn away. In 1883 the little coasting steamer Grappler, returning with the pack and crew from northern canneries, took fire as it entered the Narrows. The hemp rudder-ropes burned; the frantic passengers leaped overboard as the boat careened and whirled in the rapids; the captain was sucked down in an eddy with his life-preserver belted on, and few escaped. The rings of floating kelp that drift in the race-way are said to be the queues of the 70 Chinese lost with the Grappler. The Norwegian Malstrom, lying between the most southerly islands of the Loffoden group, attains a speed of 6 knots an hour, only when a westerly gale aids the tide: and the greater Salstrom in behind Tromso has but a little stronger current at the ebb. The fortification of the shores at this point is part of the scheme of defense of Victoria and Vancouver. The Head of Vancouver Island. Johnstone Strait, 55 miles in length, and Broughton Strait, 14 miles in length, varying from 1 to 2 miles in width, continue the double panorama of forested slopes and bold mountain walls. The Alert Bay cannery, on the S. side of Cormorant Island, has drawn a village of 150 Kwakiutl Indians from the abandoned village of Cheslakee, at the mouth of the Nimpkish River. Missionaries have not been able to do anything with these people. The most southerly totem-pole, and the only one known to have been erected on the coast within ten years, is to be seen in front of the chief's house at Alert Bay. The graveyard is most interesting, with painted boxes, carved poles, many flags and streamers. The eccentric fashions in head-flatten- ing ceased with the Salish people at the line of Cape Mudge, and the Kwakiutl cranium was elongated, and drawn up into pyramidal shape. A few very aged people show the peculiar shapes of skull once in vogue, and fine specimens have been obtained from graves. The Alert Bay Indians will give the old peace and festival dances in cos- tume, if a sufficient purse is made up by their white visitors. Fort Rupert, an old H. B. Co. post, is in Beaver Harbour, 9 miles beyond Broughton Strait. The fort was built in 1849, and strongly de- fended because of the natives near it and the frequent visits of the Haidas and northern tribes. There was a heavy earthquake shock in August, 1865, and in 1867 the ranche was bombarded by H. B. M. S. Clio until the tribe surrendered some hidden murderers. Since then the Kwa- kiutls have been peaceable and their annals eventless. The young º |||ſiſ º #|º]}} bes | |liſ º º ſº ſº º W § § f * º , º - | g ill ll ||||Wººst |\; - § n ..ºl ºft||| - Itſ | º-ºº: ſº | §§...; ||||||| | '; Nº. ſº | g § | |||| | Héliº ºf || || º #"..." 'ſ | ... I ? i i º || h |}º º t|||ſ | ||| |||||||||||||| ſillºiſ; | r |ffl|º]}} #| || "|| #!" ſ | || || #| || | || || || t | || || r | ; "...i." 'ſ || || e- | º ºf | * lºº * . . . . | º ſ | . . . . . . '' º º i ºiſilliºn'ſºlº . . . . | ºft||| | | || Tº S:; Q QUEEN CHARLOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK SOUND. 23 men desert the village every summer, to work at mills and canneries. The block-houses and gateway of the old fort remain, and also the chief's house, a famous old lodge 100 ft. long and 80 ft. wide, resting on carved corner posts. The great potlatch dish, in shape of a recumbent man, holding food for 100 people, is shown. Coal-mines were worked by the H. B. Co. before the Nanaimo veins were discovered, and the cleared fields and gardens are still productive. Beyond the Broughton Archipelago there are several fine fiords, the narrow King Come Inlet having an 18-mile-long wall of snow-peaks; and McKenzie Sound vertical walls that almost shut the sunlight from the flooded gorge, that is only foreground and approach to the noble peak Vancouver, named for Sir John Philip Stephens, of the Admiralty. At the W. end of Galiano Island there is a spire of rock crowning a promontory 1,200 ft. high, which Admiral Phelps, U.S. N., and Hon. J. G. Swan argue to be “the great headland or island with an exceed- ing high pinnacle or spired rock like a pillar thereon " which Juan de Fuca saw. They show how easily the Greek may have sailed for 20 days behind Vancouver Island, and, believing the ocean beyond Queen Charlotte Sound to be the Atlantic, retraced his course from this pinnacle in good faith. From Queen Charlotte Sound to Milbank Sound, At Queen Charlotte Sound there is a 40-mile gap in the island belt. Captain Gray first charted the expanse as Pintard Sound, for the Boston owner of his vessel. Vancouver recharted it as named by Captain Wedgeborough, of the Experiment, in 1786. Sometimes the swell of the outer ocean may be felt, but more often it is a stilled ex- panse, where mists and fogs perpetually hover and play fantastic tricks among the ragged islands and the near snow-peaks. Piloting, which is all by sight along this coast, is often by echo along this reach, and the mariner's acute senses tell, as the sound is flung back, how the shores are trending, and have even detected, by a strange quality in the echo, the presence of another ship's sails. Feeling around its rocky edges, both of Vancouver's ships struck; and in July, 1889, the U. S. S. Su- wanee was lost on an unknown rock in Shadwell Passage. The Kuro Siwo strikes full against this entrance, on its recurved course, and its warm air, condensed by Mt. Stephens and the white host, lies in solid banks upon the water, in and out of which one passes as through a door; or the tips of a ship's masts sparkle in the sunlight of 24 QUEEN CHARLOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK SOUND. a high white plain, the hull invisible. Bands of fog pencil the hillside with Japanese conventional cloud effects; a gray canopy truncates the mountain pyramids; or filmy, downy tatters of clouds, mere mist trailers finer than cobweb, drift across green heights, are tangled in the forest, or gathered in still ravines. Every branch and twig sparkles with vivid greenness in this dewy air, washed clean with perpetual mists. The Kuro Siwo gives the British Columbia coast the climate of Ireland, of Devonshire and Cornwall, and fosters a far richer vegetation on shore, all ferns, bushes, and thirsty plants growing as in a hot-house. In forests as dense as any that Stanley describes, and choked with an undergrowth through which an explorer must cut his way, water- courses, and the paths made to them by bears, are the only possible footways below the level of a thousand feet. The Menzie and Merton spruces, and the Douglas fir, stand as closely together as blades of grass, and the eye sees only leagues and leagues of tree-tops on every slope and shore, their foliage so intensely green, when near at hand, blending and toning to the richest bronze, grey and olive in the dis- tance, and often glowing in the late afternoon as if the foliage reflected some concealed colour, or the slopes were clad in blooming heather. No forest fires darken the air beyond Vancouver's shores, and the scar of a land-slide or wind-break is clothed with green by a second season. A crevice in the rock for safe lodging, a handful of sand or gravel to cover its roots, and a young spruce will prick forth and spread its thin branches, until in time its own needles form a soil and support thick layers of moss. A whole forest thus thrives on air and rocks, the trees crowding one another in their growth, and, with no tap-root to steady them, they fall by acres before a storm wind. Their own weight often pulls the thin skin of earth from the rocks, and acres of perpen- dicular forest go thundering down into the bottomless channels, and Nature decorates the heights afresh. Madroños disappear, and the fa- mous yellow or Alaska cedars (Cupressis nutkakensis) of the Northwest coast show in the forest from Fort Rupert northward. Nakwakto Rapids. The Great Malstrom or Reversible Tidal Cataract. Belize Inlet is the strangest piece of glacial carving on the coast as it zigzags and straggles by many deep cuts to the foot of Mt. Ste- phens. It holds a malstrom twice the strength of Seymour Narrows, in the long, narrow gateway that gives entrance to its wonderland. There are Indian villages along those cañons, but it is only for ten min- utes at a time that a canoe can pass the Nakwakto Rapids to reach them. In the first narrows of Slingsby Channel, which are but 200 yards wide, there is a maelstrom where the tide makes 9 knots an hour at the turn. The cañon continues for 5 miles and widens to 400 yards at the Nakwakto Rapids, the Kahtsisilla of the natives, and the most QUEEN CHARLOTTE sounD TO MILBANK SOUND. 25 remarkable place of its kind on the coast. The ebb tide races out at a speed of 15 and 20 knots an hour, the waves running up the face of Turret Isle, which rises 80 ft. above the water in mid-channel. There is magnificent scenery in the labyrinth of farther inlets, and at the end of one arm there is a peak 5,000 ft. high which easily acquired the name of Perpendicular Mountain. The Coast of British Columbia. The Inside Passage through the Columbian Archipelago. Fitzhugh Sound, first in the line of channels separating the Co- lumbian Archipelago from the mainland of British Columbia, trends 30 miles due N. a smooth river running between mountain banks. Just within its entrance, on the shores of Calvert Island, is Oatsoalis or Safety Cove, a mariner's refuge since Duncan's time (1787). Wan- couver anchored and repaired ships there before returning to Nootka in 1792, and his men explored the neighbouring inlets in small boats. Mail steamers and canoes rest there when fog, storm, or darkness prevent their crossing the sound. In August, 1885, the P. C. S. S. Ancon broke her main cylinder on her way southward and was anchored in the cove for ten days, while Captain James Carroll made the 221-mile voyage to Nanaimo in a life-boat in four days and returned with help. The pas- sengers made it a gala season of adventure and exploration, and re- gretted leaving. Mt. Buxton, 3,430 ft., is the sharp-pointed peak on the Calvert shore. - Rivers Inlet, the next indentation of the mainland coast, pene- trates 20 miles inland, widening into loch-like expanses so sheltered by the precipitous ridges and ranges that it is clear and sunny within when the Sound is banked with fog. There are three canneries at the end, and the C. P. N. steamers call regularly during the summer season. The Bella Bellas’ village of Owikimo is near the larger cannery, but presents little of interest in the way of poles or graves. Two canoe- loads of Owikino seal-hunters were killed at Sorrow Island by the Kit- kahtlas, a Tsimsian tribe, in January, 1892, and a bitter Indian war re- sulted; war canoes carried chanting braves in paint and regalia up and down the channels seeking foes, and the constables required the aid of gunboats to suppress and settle the difficulty. Vancouver explored Burke Canal and its branches, Bentinck Arm and Dean Canal in 1793, his second season on the Northwest Coast. There is a large native village at the end of Bentinck Arm, 26 QUEEN CHARLOTTE SOUND TO MILBANK SOUND. 60 miles from the sea, where Sir Alexander Mackenzie completed the first crossing of the continent of North America in 1793. The Bildulas, or Bella Coolas, inhabiting these fiords, are an estray branch of the Sa- lish people, isolated in the heart of the Kwakintls country, and they re- ceived Mackenzie hospitably, and informed him that “Macubah " (Wan- couver) had just been there. Dr. Dawson says that the Bilgulas' trail to the interior and the upper Fraser has existed from time immemo- rial, and the Tinneh tribes called it the Grease Trail, because of the supplies of oulachon and other oil acquired in trade with the Bilgulas. There was a H. B. Co. post at this important point, and in Cariboo times many prospectors reached the diggings over the old Indian trail from Burke Canal. - Cascade Inlet, in Dean Canal, is the Geiranger of this coast, so strangely wanting in great waterfalls. The fiord is 11 miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, with innumerable waterfalls leaping from its tremendous cliffs. Vancouver wrote that these cascades “were extremely grand, and by much the largest and most tremendous we had ever beheld, their impetuosity sending currents of air across the canal.” One of Vancouver's men, Carter, died, and others were made numb and ill for days, from eating mussels in Poison Cove. Special provi- dence, far more than Duncan's or Caamano's charts, helped Vancouver to successfully navigate in this region, where a maze of water-ways, and hun- dreds of cul-de-sacs test the pilot's memory. One attractive little open- ing in Hunter Island is known as The Trap, and a vessel getting in can- not turn around nor make a tour of the blockading islet which is the bait to the trap, but must be pulled out backward. An English gunboat was once lost in this labyrinth region for two weeks; and when Mr. Seward visited Alaska, in 1869, his pilot also lost the way. The Bella Bellas have a bad name, and when they took one aboard to steer the ship through to Finlayson's Channel, a pile of silver dollars was put before the pilot as the reward for a safe passage, and pistols pointed at either ear promised other reward for any treachery. Jacobsen’s Inlet is named for the Tromso scientist, who has made large collections and long ethnological reports to the Bergen and Berlin museums, and once took seven Bella Coolas to Europe. There is a splendid waterfall 300 ft. high in this inlet. Lama Passage, named for an old H. B. Co. ship, is a beautifully wooded way, its northern shore broken at one place by a graveyard with kennels of tombs painted with totemic designs, and many flags and streamers flying from tall poles. In an opposite cove, on Campbell Island, the remnant of the Bella Bellas are gathered in a model village, with mission, church, school, store, and cabins shining with whitewash, and so dazzling one with their immaculate array that passers-by dis- credit the curdling tales of the past. They were long the most treach- erous, bloodthirsty, and turbulent tribe, and made the life of the H. B., FROM MILBANIK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. 27 Co. agents such a dangerous imprisonment that the post of Fort Mc- Loughlin was only maintained for a few years after its establishment in 1834. In 1868 the company tried it again, and the new fashions in Bella Bella have made life profitable and worth living. - From Milbank Sound to Dixon Entrance. The Great Scenic Region. There are only 8 miles of Milbank Sound to be crossed to re- gain the shelter of the great islands again, and it is so fringed with islets that a ship is often past it before its passengers have suspected any opening to the ocean. The finest scenery on the steamer's regular course through the Columbian Archipelago lies between Milbank Sound and Dixon Entrance, a double panorama of unbroken beauty 200 miles in length. The tourist cannot afford to lose an hour of this scenic watch. Green slopes are reflected in greener waters, every tree and twig growing double, and only bands of algae or tide-washed rock tell where reflections part. The shores rise almost perpendicularly for 1,000 or 1,500 ft., above which snow-clad ridges rise as high again, and the channels vary from an eighth of a mile to 2 miles in width. Tall trees climb and cling to these walls like vines, and cascades slip- ping out from the snow-banks flash among the green and go singing to the sea. The mountain contours tell where lakes must lie in rocky amphitheatres, and overflow in these roaring ribbons. Finlayson Channel is 24 miles in length, from 1 to 2 miles in width, with depths of 50 and 150 fathoms. Helmet Mountain on the W., and Stripe Mountain marked with the line of a great land-slide, are at the entrance of the channel. Bell Peak (1,280 ft.), on Cone Island, is commonly known as China Hat, from its outlines. The village of China Hat and fantastic graveyard are seen from the C. P. N. Co.'s steamers, which regularly call for mails. Sarah Island divides the channel's northern end. Its landmarks are two waterfalls that leap from the snow-banks and descend in full view to the sea. Tolmie Channel, W. of Sarah Island, is 15 miles in length, and from a half mile to a mile in width. The scenery increases in charm as the ships pass through Hiehish Narrows, a quarter of a mile in width at the head of Sarah Island, and enters Graham Reach, 17 miles long and less than a mile in width. McKay Reach continues the magnificent panorama for the next 8 miles 28 FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. The mountains rise more abruptly, granite cliffs tower perpendicularly, their front glistening with glacier polish and latticed over with fine cascades; more waterfalls and land-slides are reflected in the glassy reaches; great alcoves on the heights betray the hidden lakes, and side cañons, lesser Yosemites, lead away into the wilderness of Princess Royal Island. In McKay Reach and Wright Sound there is no bottom at 225 fathoms. At Wright Sound submerged peaks stand as islands; six diverg- ing channels open, and the tourist with an Admiralty Chart is as puzzled as were Caamano and Vancouver a century ago, to know which way leads on or out to the ocean. Gardner Canal or Inlet. Ursula and Devastation Channels, behind Gribbel Island, lead to the grand canal which Vancouver named for Vice-Admiral Sir Alan Gardner, who recommended that Vancouver be given charge of the expedition to Nootka and the Northwest Coast. Whidbey explored it in that summer of 1793, and reported that it was “almost an entirely barren waste, nearly destitute of wood and verdure, and presenting to the eye one rude mass of almost naked rocks, rising into rugged moun- tains, more lofty than any he had before seen, whose towering summits seeming to overhang their bases gave them a tremendous appearance. The whole was covered with perpetual ice and snow that reached, in the gullies formed between the mountains, close down to the high- water mark, and many waterfalls of various dimensions were seen to descend in every direction ”—a description that might as coldly de- scribe the Sogne Fiord, the Naerodal, the Yosemite, or any other rival cañon's walls. But Mr. Whidbey went the 50 miles of its length, “where it terminated, as usual,” and the explorer gave up getting into Hudson Bay by that route. Tourists consider the Gardner Canal, or Kitlup Cañon, the culmination of the scenery of the British Columbian coast, as it cleaves its narrowing way for 50 miles between gloomy walls, to where a great mountain blocks the end, with glaciers resting on its sides, cascades foaming down to join the sea, and cannery buildings dwarfed to toys at its base. - The Old Man, a conspicuous landmark on the cañon walls, rises perpendicularly 2,000 ft. from the water, and soundings at its base- line give a depth of over 1,400 ft. The Islander has been laid along- side, and passengers have gathered ferns from the seamed and over- hanging wall. Irving Falls, on the opposite wall, descend 2,000 ft. by successive leaps, and there is a fine frothy fall draining the glacier FROM MILBANK SOUND TO 1)IX.ON FNTRANCE. 29 above the Price cannery. The Kitlups, who inhabit the summer salm- on villages on the inlet and the oulichan village on the Kemano River at its head, have few legends connected with the fiord. Kitlup, in Tsimsian speech, is derived from Kit, “the people,” and lups, “sewed garments’ —some vague distinction of earlier days. The cannery was established by Coates, the Scotch thread manufacturer, in 1889. C. P. N. excur- sion steamers first visited the fiord in August, 1891. There is a village of Christian Indians at Hartley Harbour who were formerly members of Mr. Duncan's community at Metlakahtla, and who, without siding with their leader or the bishop, withdrew to their old home when the troubles began. They have a neat village with a church, school-house, and saw-mill, and the men find summer work at the canneries. Grenville Channel, the arrowy reach cutting northwestwardly from Wright Sound for 45 miles without bend or break, was named for the Right Hon. Lord Grenville, Secretary of State, who gave Vancou- wer his commission for the expedition to the Northwest Coast. Un- til Gardner's Inlet was exploited Grenville Channel was considered first of Columbian fiords, and the deep, glass-floored, echoing green lane is still a boasted show place on the Alaska route. Lowe Inlet is the only break in the wall, and the cannery is niched in a fold in the rocks, through which a salmon stream cascades from a high lake. Right Hon. William Pitt's Archipelago is W. of Grenville Channel, and, in Chatham Sound, Cape Ibbetson immortalizes another of Vancouver's friends in the Admiralty office. The Skeena River. Skeena River, the largest stream in the province above the Fraser, is navigable by small steamers for 60 miles above its mouth, and for 200 miles by canoes. Its name—Skee, “terror, calamity, trou- ble,” and Eena, “a stream ”—was given it because of poisonous shell- fish, which killed many canoe-loads of the first people who came around from Nass River. It is the greatest salmon stream of the Northwest Coast, and can- neries dot its shores for 20 miles. Vancouver was first to enter it, and named Port Essington for a naval friend; and the H. B. Co.'s post was built there in 1835, adjoining the native village of Spuksut. It is the most important settlement on the river, with a hotel, church, school, cannery, mill, and fish-refrigerating works, where salmon are frozen, hermetically sealed, and shipped to England. It was considered as a 30 FROM MILBANK sound To DIxoN ENTRANCE. possible terminus for the C. P. R., being 450 miles nearer to Asiatic ports than the towns at the mouth of the Fraser, and its distance from the United States boundary and immunity in case of war were also in its favour. Land acquired a great value with the prospect, and is still held at $100 and $300 an acre, as the owners believe that a branch of the present trunk line must soon come northward. The canneries at Port Essington, Claxton, Cascade, Aberdeen, In- verness, Standard, and Mumford Landing produce over 80,000 cases of Salmon each season. They are properly restricted by Government regu- lations, and officers are stationed on the river during the season to enforce them. Each fishing-boat pays a tax of $20 a season. The size of the nets is prescribed by law, and a weekly close season from Saturday to Monday allow a fraction of the salmon to reach the spawn- ing-grounds. Over 100 fishing-boats may be seen at once when the seines are being set or drawn, and more than $50,000 was paid in wages on the Skeena during the salmon season of 1892. The work is performed by Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, and Scandinavians, and many remain during the winter to work in the saw-mills. Lumber sells at fifty cents per thousand in this section. The Kwakiutls' empire ceases at the Skeena mouth, and the Tsim- sians, the greatest of the coast tribes, occupy the coast to the Alaska line. The Tsimsians have always held a monopoly of the inland trade, maintained a grease trail with the interior, and kept the Tinneh in ad- mirable subjection. The few of these mountaineers occasionally seen on the river explain why Fort Stager and Fort Hazelton, on the upper Skeena, remain the only H. B. Co.'s stockaded posts. There have been gold fevers and great diggings on the upper Skeena for 30 years. The Omineca excitement at the head-waters of Peace River in 1871 emptied Skeena camps, but in 1883–84 there was a boom on Lorne Creek, and fishermen dropped their nets, and loggers left for the mines. C. P. N. mail and excursion steamers do not go beyond Port Essing- ton; but while freight is being handled, tourists have often opportunity to take launches or canoes to the Hot Springs 3 miles across, or to the waterfall, 12 miles above. The Western Union Telegraph Co. built its lines to Telegraph Creek, 60 miles above the mouth of the Skeena River, in 1865, but the wires through the dense forest country were soon wrecked. FROM MILBANIK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. 31 The Tsimsian Peninsula. Metlakahtla-‘‘the open channel,” or “the channel open at either end"—is a half-ruined Tsimsian village, which for 27 years was the home of Mr. Duncan's colony of Christianized Tsimsians—an actual Arcadia, a living Utopia and model commune that proved much that political economists doubt. William Duncan was sent from England in 1857 as a lay worker for the Church Mission Society, in response to Admiral Prevost's account of the terrible condition of native life on this coast. Sir James Douglass and all the H. B. Co.'s agents tried to dissuade him from going to Fort Simpson, where there was the greatest number of the worst savages in the region. Within three years Mr. Duncan had learned the language, and so attached 50 of the Tsimsians to him that they went with him to this site of an abandoned Tsimsian settlement. They cleared, drained, and cultivated the land, built a village of tidy two-story cottages, a church, School-house, saw-mill, salmon cannery, and co-operative store. They had their own trading schooner, their brass band and fire brigade, and a village council of elders ordered municipal affairs. They learned to do carpentering, house-building, cabinet-making, shoemaking, coopering, tanning, and rope-making. The women were taught to weave shawls, blankets, and cloth from mountain goat wool, to sew and cook. It was a model industrial settlement, and there was evolved a community life more ideal than anything Plato or Bellamy has imagined. Every visitor, from Lord Dufferin to the roughest seafaring frontiersman, could but praise this “work that stands absolutely without parallel in the history of missions.” For 20 years the peace and prosperity of the 800 Metla- kahtlans were unbroken. In 1881 Bishop Ridley objected to the form of the simple religious services Mr. Duncan held, and the omission of the communion service; and the Society was disappointed at the few converts and baptisms reported. After continued criticism and inter- ference, Mr. Duncan resigned his mission. The bishop established himself in residence and failed to win the respect or confidence of the people. He quarrelled with the head men, he struck them with his fists, he carried a riſle, and called for a man-of-war to protect him. The people petitioned him to go away, and begged Mr. Duncan to re- turn. Church and state upheld the bishop; the community property was called church property. Mr. Duncan returned, and suggested emi- gration to the United States side. When ready to leave, the Canadian authorities prevented the pilgrims taking anything but their personal property with them, and their houses, mills, and works were left intact as church property for the 120 of 800 who remained with the bishop. The empty dwellings fell to decay, the clearing partly relapsed to un- derbrush, the large church was partitioned off to hold the handful of worshippers, and when a few years later the bishop departed, the ruin was complete. The nearly deserted village remains as a monument of misdirected religious zeal, of civil injustice and oppression, the shame and reproach of church and state. 32 FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. The Japanese employed in the Skeena River fisheries have built a little village of their own near Metlakahtla, and reproduced a corner of Japan. They have their own schooner and cannery, and have begun the manufacture of fancy woodenware for the tourist trade. They affiliate readily with the better class of natives, and, besides the resemblance in features and many customs, their use of the same car- penters' and carvers’ tools amazes the white residents. Port Simpson, the most important H. B. Co. post on the coast, is 16 miles beyond Metlakahtla. Rocks and ledges oblige ships to make a great detour to reach the wharf. In 1831 the H. B. Co. built a first post at Port Simpson, 40 miles up the Nass River, but as the Tsimsians firmly held their monopoly of trade with the interior, the profitless isólation only endured for three years, and the post was moved to this bit of Tongass ground on the N. shore of the Tsimsian peninsula. It retained the name given it in honour of Lieutenant Simpson, R. N., who was in charge of the company's ship-building, and who died at the first fort on the Nass. The Tsimsians had originally twelve villages on the Skeena for Salmon-fishing, twelve on the Nass for the oulachan-fishing, and twelve permanent winter villages on the coast near to halibut grounds. The beaches about Fort Simpson had been common camping grounds for all tribes for more than a century, and the Tsimsians, the greatest traders and grease merchants of the coast, did a large business at their spring fair, when the oulachan silvered sound and inlets for miles, and the waters were alive with canoes from every quarter. After the fort was built the May fairs were larger; 14,000 savages were often en- camped around the stockade; the beach was black with canoes, and perpetual revel and bedlam went on. The fort was often attacked; attempts were made to burn it, and when Sir George Simpson enforced prohibition in trade in 1842, the savages withheld their furs for the Boston ships, which continued to give rum. The fur-trade has now fallen to the merest fraction, the stockade and block-houses have been torn down, and the warehouses, where bear, otter, beaver, fox, mink, and marten skins used to dangle by the tens of thousands, are all but empty. The H. B. Co. fortress is only a general country store. The day of beads, red calico, and toy looking-glasses has gone by, and clocks, fancy lamps, sewing-machines, orguinettes, silk goods, chem- ical fire-engines, and marble tombstones are objects of Tsimsian pride. The Indian Village on the island wholly changed its appearance within the decade of 1880–90. The old lodges were replaced by cot- tages, and the totem-poles nearly all destroyed, only a balf dozen remaining from the forest that used to encircle the beach. The tribe paid $750 for the granite monument over the grave of their old chief, on which is chiselled: “In Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Chief of the FROM MILBANK SOUND TO DIXON ENTRANCE. 33 fºilshee Tribe. Died at Port Simpson, July 21, 1890, aged 85 years, He said: ‘Let me die in peace. Peace I leave with you.’” Methodist missionaries succeeded Mr. Duncan at Port Simpson, and the Rev. Mr. Crosby and his aids have almost parallelled the Met- lakahtla miracle, and the church, School, hospital, and museum are the points of great interest. The Salvation Army has a band among these Tsimsians. The village is governed by a municipal council of elders. They have their fire company and brass band, and during the small-pox epidemic at Victoria in 1892 all submitted to vaccination, and closed the bridge to the village whenever a Victoria steamer was in port. All the Dixon Entrance region is bathed in perpetual mists and rains, and the moist greenhouse atmosphere of summer forces a rank vegetation. The finest raspberries in the world are said to grow in the old H. B. Co. gardens—inch-long globes of crimson dew that melt at a touch—rose-red bubbles that have never felt dry air, a withering sun, or a dust particle. - Fort Simpson is confident of becoming the terminus of the next great transcontintental railroad line, the farthest city of the Canadian Northwest. Suburban tracts and wild timber lands are held at a pre- mium, and sites for round-house and car-shops have been discussed. The railway will follow the S. shore of Work Canal, which cuts south- ward to within a mile of the Skeena River. Mt. McNeil, on its N. shore, is a snowy, conical peak 4,300 ft. in height. The fiord, but 800 yards broad, widens into a lake-like expanse at the end, and the scenery along its walls is highly praised. Nass River, Observatory Inlet and Portland Canal. Nass River heads 100 miles inland, and its shores are historic ground to all the coast tribes, the scenes of half the myths and legends, the cradle of the native race. There are several canneries and mills along its banks, and an Indian mission. The site of the original Fort Simpson is almost opposite Echo Cove, the most picturesque cannery site on the coast. The scenery up to that point is wonderfully fine, and the cañons and gorges beyond offer every temptation to those con- templating any canoe trips. The salmon-fisheries of the Nass are regulated in the same way as those on the Skeena. The coming of the oulichan in March and April is occasion for the great fish festival of the year, and the tribes gather from all quarters to reap the Nass harvest. The Haidas bring their canoes to exchange for oulichan-oil; the Tinneh come down from the mountains with pelts and horns; and every Tsimsian man, woman, and least child help gather the living silver from the water. The oulichan (Thale- ichthys pacificus), or candle-fish, is most nearly like the Atlantic cape- lin, has a delicate flavour when freshly caught, and contains more oil than any other known fish. It melts like a lump of butter in the 34 THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. frying-pan, and when dried, threaded with a spruce wick, and stuck in a bottle, burns like a candle. A bunch of them touched to the fire furnish a sufficient torch. They exist in greatest numbers, and schools of them coming in from the sea fill the river and inlets from bank to bank. The natives rake, shovel, dip, and Seine them by canoe-loads, and either dry them and string them through the eyes, or press the oil and store it for winter use, as age cannot impair its qualities. A little oulichan has been smoked and salted for export, and ranks as a rival to herring as a whetter to dull appetites. Portland Canal separates Alaska from British Columbia for the 60 miles that it cuts into the heart of the Coast Range. Captain Gray was first to discover these waters, and after running into Portland Canal and Observatory Inlet was sure he had found Del Fonte's River. The Spanish commandant at Nootka gave Captain Gray's charts to Vancouver, and full reports of his voyage. The Englishman estab- lished an astronomical observatory here under Puget and himself, went with a yawl and two small boats on a reconnoissance that in- cluded the shores of Portland Canal, and the circumnavigation of Revillagigedo Island. He covered 700 geographical miles in twenty- three days. Portland Canal is walled by mountains 3,000 and 4,000 ft. high at the entrance, while those at the end of the fiord tower to twice that height. At the time of the Alaska purchase the surveyors named the heights on one side for distinguished Americans of that day, and Pea- body, Rousseau, Halleck, Adams, Seward, Johnson (Reverdy), and Lin- coln's name grace peaks and ranges that, guarding the still channel below, combine and compose themselves into as noble landscapes as can be seen in any of the broader fiords. Much careful surveying and exploration has been done in its reaches since the Alaska and British Columbia boundary line has become a subject of discussion. The Queen Charlotte Islands, The Queen Charlotte Island group lies off the island belt of the immediate mainland coast, placed much as the Loffoden Islands are with respect to Norway, and, like them, bordered with extensive cod banks. The islands are a half-submerged mountain range, the direct continuation of the Olympics and the Vancouver Island chain. The compact archipelago measures 180 miles from N. to S., and 60 miles across at the greatest width of Graham Island. The Kuro Siwo in its recurved course falls full upon the Queen Charlotte shores and gives THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 35 the islands a milder, moister, and more even climate than Port Simp- son or the Skeena River settlements enjoy. The west coast is a region of almost perpetual rain, the peaks rising sheer 2,000 and 4,000 ft. from the ocean's edge, catching and condensing all the clouds and va- pours borne with the warm ocean current. The eastern shores are less rugged, and, sheltered by the mountain barrier, enjoy a sunnier and drier climate. Cattle have been successfully raised for fifty years, and potatoes grown for a hundred years. All the islands are densely forested, and each a vast dead fall of timber. Log jams arch and dam every stream, and the wilderness is almost untouched. Although Juan Perez discovered these islands in 1774, Dr. George M. Dawson has shown how very possible it is that this is Del Fonte's Archipelago of San Lazario, where the men wore the skins of beasts and travelled in great canoes hewn from a single log; where there were river-ways vexed by rapids no greater than the tide rips and currents that race through the inlets to-day ; and Mynhasset and the name of Del Fonte's other village are as near to Massett and its rivals as Spanish recorders could come in 1640. After Perez, La Pérouse sighted the islands; and then Captain Gray, of Boston, visited them and named them for his ship, the Washington Islands. Next, in 1787, Captain Dixon, who was exploring for a London fur company, touched these shores, obtained a large number of sea otter skins which were then the common dress of the people, and named the group the Queen Charlotte Islands, in honour of his ship. Captain Dixon gives a full description of the shores and their people in his Voyage Around the World, and sums up the natives as dirty, thievish, impudent, and mur- derous cannibals. In 1791 Marchand came to the Northwest Coast, surveyed and explored along the W. coast, and in his Voyages says that the people were “good husbands, good fathers, . . . hospi- table, mild, intelligent, and industrious people, endowed with great good sense, to whom the useful arts are not unknown; who join to these even the agreeable ones, and who may be said to have already made considerable advancement towards civilization.” He recognized Aztec words and terminations in their speech, and resemblances to Az- tec work in their monuments and picture writings. For the next twenty years the islands were much resorted to by fur-traders, but when the sea otter became extinct they were passed by for a half cen- tury. The traders had given the people potatoes, and from fur fisher- men they turned to truck farmers, and took canoe-loads of potatoes to each Fort Simpson fair. In 1851 the H. B. Co.'s agent at Fort Simp- son showed the chief Edinso a piece of gold-bearing quartz, and asked him to look for such stones on his island. An old squaw showed where a great vein cropped out on the face of a bluff on Graham Isl- and, and in the next year the company established a post at Uttewas village, on Massett Inlet, and their employés worked the ledge at Gold 36 THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS, Harbour until it dipped down into the sea. Some miners, who char- tered a schooner and sailed for the new gold region, were wrecked on the coast and held as slaves until ransomed. Massett is reached by the C. P. N. Co.'s steamers on their irregular cruises from Victoria, and by small trading steamers from Fort Simp- son. Its old lodges are being abandoned, its famous totem-poles are tottering to decay, and the spirit of progress is fast eliminating every element of picturesqueness. Massett Inlet is the Clyde of the coast and canoe-making is always in progress. The Haida canoe has a curved bottom, flaring sides, a high round- ed stern, and a long, projecting prow. It is the lightest, most buoyant, graceful and cranky craft on the coast. The old war canoes were 50 and 60 ft. long, elaborately painted and carved, and often carried 100 warriors. The Haida family or travelling canoe, which one sees all up and down the coast, is a slender, graceful, gondola-like affair 20 or 30 ft. in length and 4 or 6 ft. wide. The hunting or otter canoes are cockle-shells 6 or 10 ft. in length, in which Haida experts go far to sea. All these crafts are hewn from the single log of red cedar, and are given their flare and graceful curves by being filled with water and hot stones until the steamed wood can be braced out to the desired width. Travelling canoes range in price from $75 to $150 at Port Simpson, and hunting canoes $30 to $50; but the canoe market has its fluctuations like any other, and there are often seasons of great bar- gains. The canoe requires constant care while out of the water. It must be protected from the sun's heat and always kept wet, and the draped canoes along a village beach are the most picturesque adjuncts of native life. There are large oil-works at Skidegate, where the livers of the dog-fish, which swarm in incredible numbers in winter and spring, yield an oil much valued by tanners. A soft, black slate is found on the banks of a creek at the head of Skidegate Inlet, and the Haidas carve from it miniature totem-poles, boxes, plaques, and pipes, often inlaying them with haliotis shell. The slate is soft and easily cut with a knife when first quarried, but quickly bardens, and will crack if exposed to the sun or heat before it has seasoned. There is a colony of Norwegian fishermen on the W. coast who catch and cure halibut and the famous black cod (Anoplopoma fimbria), a valuable food-fish which has a different name in each section of the Pacific coast. As Spanish mackerel it is little valued at San Francisco. It attains perfection farther N., and along the strait of Fuca ranks first with epicures as “beshow,” the popular Makah name adopted by the Fish Commission. The Haidas call it the skil, and catch it with wooden hooks attached to trawl-lines. The hook is steamed to the 4 Haida Totem-Pole. THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 37 shape of the letter U and set with an incurved barb. When not in use the ends of the hook are bound fast with thongs. When baited the ends are held apart by a little stick, and, as the skil nibbles the bait, it pushes out the chip and the hook closes upon him like a trap. The chip ascending tallies one skil caught; but as dog-fish and shark wait upon the trawl, the fishermen often pulls up only the hundred heads. THE HAIDAS. A church mission was established at Massett in 1876. Dr. Har- rison came to it in 1878, and has studied the language, made a vocabu- lary of 10,000 Haida words, translated hymns and songs, and rescued much of their folk-lore and tradition. The Haidas are fast dwindling. Mr. John Work recorded 6,593 inhabitants to the 31 villages visited in 1841. In 1878 there were but three permanent winter villages occu- pied—Massett, Skidegate, and Gold Harbour—and the Haidas num- bered less than 2,000. Only 700 Haidas were enumerated in 1891. The Haidas are the fine flower of the native races of the coast. They are taller, fairer, with oval faces and more regular features than any of the Columbian coast tribes, and are nearer to the Tlingit than to any other people. They are aliens to the Tlingits, and differ from all their neighbours physically and mentally, in speech and customs, and many similarities are more often the result of Haida influences. The Tlingits call them De-Kinyo,” “people of the sea”; and these Pacific Northmen rivalled the earlier Vikings in their journeys to distant shores. The Vancouver and Puget Sound country were their Britain and their Normandy, and coppery Erics and Harolds swept the coasts, attacking native villages, Hudson Bay Company posts, and white settlements. They once seized a schooner in Seattle harbour and murdered all on board, and Haida was a name of terror. Their origin is the puzzle of ethnologists. They have the tradition of a deluge and a sole surviving raven, from whom sprang Qu-a-eda, “the people,” as they call themselves, and from which came the Tsimsian word Haida. One tradition makes Forrester's Island, farther out in the ocean, the cradle of their race. Those who incline to Marchand's theory of an Aztec origin identify them as the descendants of those whom Cortes drove out of Mexico, and who wanished in boats to the N. Their legend of the thunder-bird is the same as the Aztecs and Zuñis. They have images and relics similar to silver images and objects found in Guatemalan ruins. They have modern Apache words in their speech, many of the same dances, masks, legends, and picture- writings as the Zuñis. Their resemblance to the Japanese is quite as marked, and as the Kuro Siwo touches so directly on the Queen * Franz Boas, Report of 1889 to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. 38 THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. Charlotte shores, more junks may have been stranded here than else- where, during those centuries when the Japanese built sea-going junks and travelled afar. They have Japanese words in their speech, they sit at all their work, they cut towards them in using tools that are the same as Japanese use to day. Like their aesthetic cousins over the Sea, they are imitative and adaptive rather than originative, and they improve, elaborate, and refine upon all they borrow. In many of their customs, in their bark weaving and their carved columns, they are akin to New Zealand and South Sea people. Whether they copied the totem-pole from those before the houses in the mysterious city sunk in the sea, from the New Zealand tiki, or from the Kwakiutls' simple heraldic pole, they have carried it to its finest development. Forests of these columns stand in their old villages, their only records and monuments of any past, brief pictographic chapters in Haida history, genealogy, and folk-lore—a rude and monstrous heraldry, an elaborate symbolism, a system of colossal hieroglyphs. The pure heraldic columns, the kechens or door-posts, formed part of the old houses themselves, and the in- mates entered by an oval hole hewn at the base of the column. The chat, or mortuary column, was a smooth pole surmounted with the great totem of the dead man, and as often with a box or a hollowed space containing the ashes. There are forty splendid poles at Massett or Uttewas village, as many more in the villages around the inlet; fifty- three poles at Skidegate; the finest collection of all at Laskeek on Tanoo Island, and many at Cumshewa and Skedaws. In 1878 Dr. George M. Dawson made a geological survey of the islands, examining the bituminous coal-veins on Graham Island, and the authracite deposit near Skidegate. His “Monograph on the Queen Charlotte Islands” was embodied in the Annual Report of the Director of the Canadian Geological Survey for 1879, and is a text-book for the islands and their people. An interesting paper on “The Haidas,” by Dr. Dawson, was published in Harper's Monthly, August, 1882. In 1883 Hon. J. G. Swan, of Port Townsend, spent several months canoe- ing around the W. coast and visiting the villages to study Haida tattoo, masks, carvings, and heraldic paintings for the Smithsonian Institution, which had published his earlier studies in that line as No. 267 of Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, January, 1874. In 1884 Mr. Newton H. Chittenden made an exploration of the islands for the Government of British Columbia, and his pamphlet, “Hyda Land and People,” contains a most interesting résumé of his work. º 009 Longitude 1549 East from Iſsº, Greenwich 72° 60 500 Iſº 10, ~ - - ~ I º ninent Stº E A S/T E R/N *lºw-º º º - --- … - - - - - º ºwnlº" - º º - "º's ſºlº Tº ºr ººk- º, sº -º- - - a --- fº. ºt. selkirk ( Ruins) º- - * : -- º - ... C. Elizabeth G. Uſ º asſemestº" º - - º K.**śyak gºren`s. ºcłowº, !. O F. - Fairweather ºw - AFOGN º Ak I. - CŞpº. M - º * \ºwanºon, i. 4. L 1 S. R A. Cros chic º º | - Sºs Ruce l. - Mo- Jºc. Greviſe | || salisbury Sº Orlovsk TKAL bak I. - -> TRINITY is, mane! c. 0 - , C I F P A | O o "chhikose 1. geniº B". Iphi - - º c. Adding". o ºwne, -> º º 'stands y or * Pool-E BRos., 1569 ENG, CHICAGo. 152° Longitude 1480 ºu º 50 1 H Scale of Miles, 1769 1809 Greenwich 110 o ALASKA. 39 ALASKA. (See General Map of Alaska.) Alaska itself is nine times the size of the New England States, twice the size of Texas, and three times as large as California. It stretches for more than 1,000 miles from north to south, and the Aleutian Islands trailing over into the Eastern hemisphere make the half-way point of the United States a little W. of San Francisco. The island of Attu is over 2,000 miles W. of Sitka, and the distance from Cape Fox to Point Barrow is as great as from the north of Maine to the end of Florida. Alaska contains 580, 107 square miles, with a coast-line of 18,211 miles, greater than the coast-line of all the rest of the United States. The 1,100 islands of the Alexander Archipelago have an estimated area of 31,205 square miles, and the Aleutian Islands comprise 6,391 square miles. The Cordilleran mountain system is merged in one great range at the Alaskan line, and a host of lofty peaks surround Mt. St. Elias, the highest mountain on the continent, and sentinel of the third highest range in the world. Curving down to southwestward a line of volcanoes joins those of the Kurile Islands and of Japan, and completes the Pacific's “ring of fire.” Low ranges and leagues of tundra stretch to the Arc- tic. The southeastern Alaska, which tourists know, is but the handle of a dipper, and residents “to westward”—i.e., Unalaska and beyond— hardly consider a visit to the Sitkan region as going to Alaska. The United States bought this vast country from Russia in 1867 for less than half a cent an acre. Dr. Dall’s figures* show that Alaska was a paying investment, returning a clear net profit of 8 per cent upon the first cost for the first five years. The two tiny Seal Isl- ands paid 4 per cent on the original $7,200,000, and in their first lease returned a sum equal to the purchase money to the Treasury. The gold-mines have since added an equal sum to the wealth of the world, and the salmon industry yielded $7,500,000 in six years, 1884 to 1890. It is the most sparsely inhabited part of the United States, averaging one inhabitant to each 19 square miles. Its lands were never subject to entry, save mineral claims, until 1898; it has no representation at Washington; Congress refuses to provide a suitable or efficient form of government; there are three military posts within its borders, and no telegraphic communication; but by the spirit of the people it gains slowly, and the last frontier is moving northward. * See Harper's Magazine, January, 1872. 40 CLIMATE OF ALASKA. The population of Alaska is classified as follows in the eleventh census (1890): Whites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............ 4,303 , Mixed (Russian and mative).............. ...... 1,819 Indians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23,274 Mongolians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,287 All others. . . . . . . . . . . . .......................... 112 Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31,795 The Indians are again divided as follows: Eskimo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 12,784 Tingit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,739 Athabaskan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,441 Aleut. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 968 Tsimpsean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 951 Hyda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23,274 By decision of the General Land Office, October 26, 1897, it was conceded that the natives, not having been distinctly exempted as na- tives in the Treaty of Cession, have the same rights as white citizens to prospect, locate, enter and receive patents for mineral lands. CLIMATE OF SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA. “BERLIN, September 5.—We have seen of Germany enough to show that its climate is neither so genial, nor its soil so fertile, nor its resources of forests and mines so rich as those of southern Alaska.”—WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Travels Around the World, Part VI., chap. v., page 708. In climate and all physical features southeastern Alaska is a repeti- tion of southern Norway, enjoying, however, a far richer forestation. In latitude, configuration, temperature, rainfall, and ocean currents it is identical. During the thirty-six years that the Russians kept meteor- ological records at Sitka the mercury went below 0°F, but four times. While St. John's, Newfoundland, is beleaguered by icebergs in summer and its harbour is frozen solid in winter, Sitka, 10° N. of it, has always an open roadstead, and only the ends of the longer fiords are ever closed by ice. Sitka Castle, lying 17', or 3 miles, N. of Balmoral Castle in Scotland, has a higher average winter temperature than the Highland home. Sitka’s mean temperature for the year is 43-3 against Ber- gen's 44-6. The snow rarely lies on the ground for any time at sea- level, mist and rains soon reducing it to slush, as in Kentucky or the District of Columbia, the isothermal equals of this region. The snow- line on the mountains is at 2,500 and 3,000 ft. Skating is a rare pleasure for Sitkans, and the Russian bishop told Mr. Seward how de- lighted he was to come and live in “such a nice, mild climate.” The winter of 1879–80 was the most severe known in the century; 3 ft. of snow remained on the level for three months, and the mercury fell to —70°, as in Dakota or Montana. OLIMATE OF ALASKA. 41 The mean temperature of the air and of the surface sea-water and the precipitation for each month of the year at Sitka are thus given by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in its Alaska “Coast Pilots’’ of 1883 and 1891: Temperature of | Temperature of * the air. º: sea-water, Precipitation. January. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 ° 4 39' 0 7-35 February. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32" 9 39° 0 6' 45 March. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35'7 39'5 , 5:29 April. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40' 8 42-0 5-17 May. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47' 0 46' 5 4 13 June. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52" 4 48° 0 3. 62 July. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55' 5 49° 0 4' 19 August. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55'9 50° 0 6'96 September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51°5 51 - 5 9-66 October. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44°9 48.9 11.83 November... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38: 1 44' 4 8-65 December. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33' 3 41 - 7 8' 39 Year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43°3 45' 0 81 69 The old residents insist that the climate is changing; that the sum- mers are warmer and drier than formerly; and that, allowing for the different hours at which Baron Wrangell and his successors took the temperature, the records show three degrees increase of average tem- perature since 1835. The rapid retreat of all the tide-water glaciers during even 20 years is offered as another proof, and there was only one of the old-style, perpetually rainy summers in the decade 1880–’90. The greater Gulf Stream of the Pacific and the loftier mountain ranges give southeastern Alaska a greater rainfall than southern Nor- way. Bergen's annual 72.25 inches and the Nordfiord's extreme 78 inches are exceeded by Sitka’s annual 81 inches, and Fort Tongass's 118-30 inches—all exceeded, however, by Cape Flattery's 1409 inches in 1885–86. There have been wet seasons in Alaska of 285 and 340 rainy days. This heavy precipitation gives the mountains their shin- ing crowns, feeds the glaciers, forces the luxuriant vegetation, brings every leaf and twig to its fullest perfection, and keeps the foliage so fresh and dewy that at times the green sparkles and almost dazzles one with its intensity. With all the down-pour or drizzle of days, there is nothing like that soul-piercing, marrow-penetrating dampness, that awful chill of the ocean that creeps into Atlantic cities far to south- ward. Guns do not rust; cigars and tobacco do not mould or mildew. Clothes dry under a shed on the rainiest days, even under awnings on shipboard; and the tourist finds that his gloves and shoes show no re- luctance in being pulled on on wet mornings. There is a blessed immunity from thunder-storms, and the rare dis- plays of thunder and lightning in the midst of winter hail and snow- storms frighten the Indians greatly. There are fine auroral displays in the long winter nights; but no one remembers seeing any such electric exhibitions as enlivened the early years of the century, when Langs- 4 42 CLIMATE OF ALASKA. dorff mentions the air being so charged with electricity that bluish green balls of fire—St. Elmo lights—danced on the bayonet tips of the muskets and the metal heads of the flagstaffs on the palisade. In this century one great earthquake at Sitka split off the front of Versto- voi, another razed the citadel, and slight tremblings have been felt at times, notably during great storms. Two great cyclonic storms have occurred since the transfer of the country. One occurred just after that ceremony when Sitka harbour was crowded with ships. All dragged anchors, two were wrecked, and the man-of-war bearing the U. S. Commissioners home nearly foundered off Cape Ommaney. The next great hurricane came October 26, 1880, 13 years to the day after the transfer cyclone. It was accompanied by heavy earth- Quake shocks. Captain Beardslee reported 14 revolving gales which passed up the coast during his command at Sitka, estray typhoons that belonged on the other side of the ocean. With Norway, Scotland, and Ireland to prove the contrary, it is often asserted that grain and vegetables cannot be grown in Alaska. Baranof cleared 15 kitchen gardens in 1805 and ripened barley and potatoes, and common vegetables, as has been done every year since. Fine grasses spring naturally on any clearing; wild timothy and coarser grasses grow 3 and 4 ft. high, and clover thrives unheeded. Vancouver found the natives cultivating potatoes and a kind of tobacco, and each family had its little plantations in sheltered nooks where they sowed their tubers like grain, and gathered them the next winter or spring. There were gardens on either side of the stockades at Sitka which provided fresh vegetables, and hot-house frames secured the Russians many delicacies. In United States days residents have successfully raised radishes, let- tuce, carrots, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, peas, turnips, beets, parsnips, and celery; and single potatoes have weighed 1 pound 5 ounces. Vege- tables are raised every year at Yukon missions and trading-posts. Hay has been cured in southeastern Alaska every summer since 1805, and by adopting Norwegian methods larger crops could be better cured. In Norway wheat is cultivated as far N. as 64°; rye up to the line of 69°; barley and oats as far N. as 70° ; apples, plums, and cherries to 64° and 65°; and wild raspberries, strawberries, currants, and goose- berries up to the North Cape, 71° 10'. The length of the summer days compensates for the lower temperature, and there is usually a fortnight or more of really hot weather in the Sitkan region each sum- mer—a fortnight of hot days 18 hours long, in 1891, with the mer- cury passing 80° every noon, and reaching 93° on board the U. S. S. Pinta. Norwegians long ago discovered that seeds and plants from southern Europe had to be acclimated for two or three years before yielding a good crop. Even maple-trees undergo a change when trans- planted from southern to northern Norway, the nightless days forcing the leaves to an enormous size, while the tree itself is low and stunted, and all common wild flowers attain unusual size and colour in the northlands. ALASKA-NATIVE RACES. , 43 THE NATIVE RACE OF SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA.—THE TLINGITS. The 11 tribes of Tlingits inhabiting the coast and islands of south- eastern Alaska were roughly estimated by the Russians as numbering from 25,000 to 30,000. General Halleck's estimate of 1869 gave 12,000 or 15,000. The census of 1880 enumerated 6,437 Tlingits; that of 1890 but 4,457. Epidemics of small-pox, black measles, and grippe, with the vices of civilization, have thus depleted their ranks. The word Tlingit is their name for “man,” “people.” The Rus- sians called them Koloschians, from the Aleut name Kalushka (little trough), for the labrette worn in the lower lip. There are as many separate traditions of a supernatural origin, a deluge, and a sole surviv- ing couple as there are tribes of Tlingits. There is no legend to point distinctly to trans-Pacific origin, but many tell of a migration from the S. E., the Nass River country. Their propitiation of evil spirits, their shamanism, their belief in the transmigration of souls, their worshipful regard for the spirits and ashes of their ancestors, are essentially Asiatic. Some of their myths, their carvings and constructions, and many words, are Aino; their methods, tools, and postures at work are Japanese. Their totem-poles are kin to the New Zealand tiki and the Easter Island images ; and there are many resemblances to Maori and South Sea people. Their sun-worship, their Nature-worship, with offerings to mountains, winds, and glaciers, are nearly Aztec, and the same Thunder Bird reigns from the Isthmus of Panama to the end of Tlingit land. They have the same dances and masks as the Zuñis, the same totems as the Hurons, Dela- wares, and Omahas. They are nearest to the Haidas, but have much in common with Tsimsians and Kwakiutls, and are greatly superior to the Salish. They are totally different stock from the interior or Tinneh tribes, of whom all Tlingits speak contemptuously as Stik Indians. Totemism is the base of their social organization, the totem or tribal mark distinguishing the dwelling and every belonging of these people. Only animal totems occur, and they live under the protection of and are inspired by these guardian animals, who are often believed to have been the ancestors of the race. The crow or raven, representing woman, the creative principle, and the wolf, the aggressive or fighting creature, are the great totems of the coast, and each are subdivided into clans. Men do not marry women of their own totem. The to- tennie is stronger than family or tribal bonds. Men often elect indi- vidual totems, usually the animal seen or dreamed of during their lonely fasts in the woods preceding their majority and their initiation into the rites and great ceremonies of the clan. These elective totems, added to the clan and family totems, account for the storied images on the totem-poles. The totem-pole has no religious significance, and is not an object of idolatrous worship. Its heraldic designs and quarterings are displayed in the same way and for the same reason that a Euro- pean parades his crest and scutcheon. The Tlingits understand the 44 ALASKA-NATIVE RACES. spread eagle to be the “Boston man’s ” totem, and the lion and the uuicorn the two totems of the “King George men.” Their bears, whales, frogs, and wolves are no more difficult to recognize in their rigidly conventionalized carvings than the griffins, dragons, and fleur-de- lis of European heraldry. Frazer's small volume, Totemism, Edinburgh, 1877, is a text-book, and those interested in pursuing the subject in its wide range will find it discussed in the following works: E. Clodd, Myths and Dreams; Encyclopædia Britannica (Frazer), Totemism and Sacrifice; Sir John Lubbock, Origin of Civilization; Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth; A. P. Niblack, The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia; Sayce's Introduction to the Study of Early Lan- guages; W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia; E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, Early History of Mankind. Tlingit speech has been studied and vocabularies made by Dixon, Marchand, Lisiansky, Wrangell, Weniaminoff, Furuhelm, Emmons, and Boas, with many notes of their idioms and constructions, translations and notations of their songs. The common speech is much corrupted by Russian, English, and Chinook. Lieutenant Emmons has found evidences of an older language, a classic to all Tlingits. Mr. Charles Walcott noted “the Japanese idioms, constructions, honorific, separa- tive, and agglutinative particles.” Like the Japanese, the Tlingits can- not pronounce l ; like the Chinese and the ancient Mexicans, they can- not pronounce r. Dr. Boas finds the labials all absent from Tlingit, which has no grammatical sex and no forms for plural. Captain Cook first noticed the many terminations like the Aztec tæl, more marked in Haida ; and Dr. Dawson employs in Haida words the Greek x to ex- press a stronger palatal than English affords. Tlingit is the harshest of all coast tongues. Horatio Hale has noted that all these harsher lan- guages cease at the Columbia, where the coast climate changes so mark- edly. The Northwest Coast is the rainiest part of the world with a climate of perpetual April or October, and these people spend their lives in canoes. “Their pronunciation is that of a people whose vocal organs have for generations been affected by continuous coughs and catarrhs, thickening the mucous membrane and obstructing the air- passages.”* It has been compared to the Del Fuegian speech of which Darwin has said: “The language of these people, according to our no- tions, scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat, but certainly no European ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds.” Any one attempting to record Tlingit words by phonetic signs is baulked by Sounds impossible of imitation, aspirates and gut- turals past conveyance by our signs. Charles Warren Stoddard has called Tlingit “a confusion of gutturals with a plenitude of saliva– a moist language with a gurgle that approaches a gargle, . . . and the unaccustomed ear scarcely recovers from the shock of it.” k Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Sci- ence, 1890. Tlingit Woman. ALASKA-NATIVE RACES. 45 In common with all Northwest Coast people, the Tlingits have in- herited a magnificent development of the shoulders, chest, and arms from generations of canoe-paddling ancestors, but the rest of the body is stunted and deformed, and all are bow-legged and pigeon-toed, shuffling, shambling, and moving as awkwardly as aquatic birds on land. Their mental superiority to the Tinneh of the interior and the plains tribes of the United States may be the result of their exclusive fish diet. It was never Tlingit fashion to flatten or elongate the skull, their mutilations comprising tattooing, and the wearing of labrettes, nose and ear ornaments. The Labrette was formerly the woman's badge of age, rank, and condition, but is only seen on older women now. Young girls are still, as formerly, “brought out ’’ and introduced social- ly as any debutante among Caucasians. The débutante's lower lip was formerly pierced and an inch-long copper or silver pin worn, until re- placed by a small bone or wooden stud after marriage, which gradually increased until dowagers wore a huge block or plug-‘‘a wooden bowl without handles,” La Pérouse says—that measured two or three inches across. Captain Cook’s men called him to see the Aleut who, having removed the labrette, was supposed to have two mouths. Captain O'Dowd told Langsdorff of a chief's wife in Chatham Strait who could conceal her whole face by a dexterous turn of the lip holding an enor- mous labrette. TLINGIT CUSTOMS. In earlier days painting and tattooing were universal. They paint now only for great dances and potlatches, but continue to black their faces as a summer protection from tan and insects. This coating of soot and seal oil has been mistakenly called a badge of mourning. Governor Swineford forbade face-blackening, and punished offenders, while Rangeley and Adirondack fishermen were permitted to use tar oil and fly ointment; and climbers of Mt. Rainier blacked their faces upon reaching the snow-line. There are often fine exceptions to the regulation flat, heavy-jawed, and high-cheeked faces; and women often show strong, eagle-visages of more regular mould. These family arbiters and tyrants are hardest of bargainers, and contemptuous of man's interference. Marriages are arranged by the elders for the best advantage of the clan and family, and while woman is supreme, all wealth and power descending through her, polygamy is practised. Upon a man's death his widows pass to the next heir in his mother's family. Younger brothers and nephews, inheriting such widows, may purchase freedom by blankets. The Tlingits have their political societies, with honours as often be- stowed upon humble worth. All of the totem contribute to the potlatches of their chief, working and saving for years to make an extravagant dis- play and division of wealth. The potlatch is usually given at the full of the moon, and the host's clan and totem do not accept any gifts. The seating and serving of the guests are as precisely ordered as at a court function, and bloodshed follows any oversights. Hospitalities are returned in kind, and the social ledgers of the totems regularly balanced 46 ALASKA-NATIVE RACES. In early times they were incessant dancers; songs, chants, and dramatic representations accompanied all welcomes, partings, feasts, fights, funerals, and visits. Trading was not a mere mercenary trans- action when a line of canoes advanced, circled, and manoeuvred around a ship ; painted men in ceremonial dress, powdered with the eagle-down of peace, chanted in chorus, and the chiefs delivered reci- tatives and obligatos. Boston traders gave them rum, and a deserter of a whaler's crew and a discharged United States soldier have credit for teaching them to distil hoochinoo, or native drink. They have many games of chance, the favourite being a crude fan tan played with 52 cylindrical sticks with different marks. The sticks are either drawn and matched, or players guess the position, number, or odd and even of the sticks the dealer hides under a mass of cedar shreds. Pools and individual stakes are made and sticks cashed by the winners by a regular tariff. The dealer chants, and the players join in ; and when all a Tlingit's wives, canoes, slaves, blankets, and tows are hang- ing in the balance, the whole lodge swells the frantic chorus. Playing- cards are much used, and in summer one may find poker parties play- ing all day on the beach and utilizing the midnight light. Their first tokens of wealth were the tows—curved copper shields ornamented with totemic cuttings, said to have come originally from the Chilkats, and said to be imitations of the copper plates nailed to conspicuous trees by the first Russian discoverers. A tow was worth $800 to $1,000 by the blanket scale—a “two and a half point ’’ H. B. Co. blanket counting for $1.50—and often sold for ten slaves. Hiaqua shells were retired from circulation when a Yankee had imitations made of porce- lain ; and the Russians for a long time gave a leather money. Coin only came to them after the transfer. Silver is highly valued, and stored in bulk or beaten into ornaments. The whites have had to yield to Tlingit ideas of justice and to- temic laws: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or a material equiv- alent, are strictly demanded. A blanket indemnity will solace any wound to pride, honour, or affection, and their logic foliows every loss and injury to first causes. The Tlingit who shot at a decoy duck made the decoy owner pay for the cartridges; the otter hunter, rescued from a broken and sinking canoe, demanded the value of the canoe when Sct ashore; the relatives even of a burglar made the owner of the stolen rifle pay for the burglar killed by its accidental discharge. White doctors pay for any dead patients whom they have treated; and when Baronovich accidentally shot his own child, he him- self had to pay the Whale totem, or his wife's clan, so many hundred blankets, or be killed himself to balance the account. .. In illness the Tlingit sent for his shaman or medicine-man, who, continuing his fasts alone in the forest throughout life, continued to receive inspiration from his guardian and familiar animal spirits. In frantic parades and dances about a village, a shaman bit live dogs and ate the heads and tongues of frogs, which contained a potent medicine. He performed his miraculous cures under the spell of his special totemic spirit, and an emetic of dried frogs and sea-water gave him a ALASKA-NATIVE RACES. 47 vision to perceive the soul leaving a man's body, ability to catch and replace it, and cast out the evil spirits which had possessed the patient. When the chant, dance, and hocus-pocus failed to cure, the shaman denounced some one for charming or bewitching his patient, and demanded his torture or death. Usually the infirm or the aged poor, slaves or personal enemies, were denounced and subjected to fiendish tortures. Captain E. C. Merriman, U. S. N., broke the power of shamanism in the archipelago by repeated rescues of those charged with witchcraft, by fine and punishment of tribe and shamans, and finally by taking the shamans on board his ship, shaving off and burning their long sacred hair and sending them out bald-headed, to be met with roars of Tlingit laughter. There have been few cases of witchcraft since. While all other Tlingits were cremated, so as to make sure of a warm and comfortable future, they believed that the shaman's body would not burn, and such were buried in sitting posture in little pavil- ions in remote and picturesque spots surrounded by the blankets, tows, masks, wands, rattles, and paraphernalia of his trade. Shamans' graves have yielded richest treasures for ethnological museums. Other Tlingits were cremated with elaborate ceremonies, the wailing, pyre- building, etc., always conducted by people of another totem, and the ashes and bones stowed away in a carved grave-box or canoe, or niched in mortuary columns. Personal possessions and food for use in the spirit-land were buried with the dead, and often a slave was despatched so as to attend his master beyond. The missionaries have effectually broken up the practice of cremation, on the grounds of heathenism, and inhumation is now practised. The Tlingits believe that after death the spirits take possession of the bodies of animals, revisit their homes, and teach the mysteries of life to fasting youths in the forest Earthquakes are caused by ghosts, and the aurora borealis is the ghost-dance of dead warriors who live in the plains of the sky, from which the earth was cut loose and fell to the sea. They have their lucky and unlucky numbers, their signs and marks for the propitiation of evil. They saw outlines in the constellations, and had their names and legends for these otter-skins and bailers in the sky. Their folk-lore, myths, and traditions reveal a poetry and richness of imagination not to be expected from these stolid people. The Crow, in whom lives Yehl, the great spirit and creator, first dwelt on Nass River, where, having created himself and the world, he turned two blades of grass into the parent race. The Tlingits increased and became a great people, and spread far and wide. Suddenly dark- ness came, and all life stopped. A Tlingit stole the sun and hid it in a box on Japonski Island, but the Crow found it, and, flying off with it, set it so high in the sky that none could steal it again. Again the Tlingits increased and spread abroad, but after many gen- erations there came a great flood, and all perished save two Tlingits who were long tossed about on a raft, until the crow appeared and car- ried this pair to Mt. Edgecumbe, where they lived until the waters fell. It is related in some versions that another raft of people was borne 48 THE BOUNDARY LINE. away to the southwestward by the flood and that they are the parents of the other races of the earth. Then, again, it is said that the two surviv- ors of the flood were supernatural creatures, one of whom descended through the crater of Mt. Edgecumbe and there stays to hold the earth up out of the water, while the other lives as the great Thunder Bird Hahtla, who dwells in the crater, the flapping of whose wings is the thun- der and whose glances are lightning, Hahtla is personated by the osprey, who rides the storms and seizes the salmon from the waters, and his inverted face glares from ceremonial blankets and carved boxes. The visit to heaven and the stealing or killing of the sun is common to all the Northwestern people, and Dr. Fraz Boas gives several variations of it current among the Kwakiutl and other British Columbian tribes. THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY LINE, “Fifty-four Forty.” Bodegay Quadra named the great strait Perez Inlet in 1775, but Vancouver preferred that it should be Captain Dixon’s Entrance, as named for and by that commander of the Queen Charlotte in 1787. It has also been known as Granitza Sound and Kygane Strait. It very evenly divides the Northwest Coast, and with its prolongations runs a natural water boundary far inland. At this entrance, 600 miles N. of Boundary Bay and the forty-ninth parallel, one re-enters the United States, the once northern boundary of the Oregon Territory becoming the southern boundary of Alaska. Suc- ceeding the Nootka Convention of 1790, the Northwest Coast became virgin soil open to free settlement and trade by any people, and three nations claimed it. The Russians asserted ownership down to the Columbia, and then withdrew to 51°, or to the north end of Vancouver Island. The British claimed the coast from the Columbia River to 55°, and the United States claimed all W. of the Rocky Mts. between 42° and 54° 40'. In 1818 the United States and Great Britain agreed to a joint occupancy of the region, and in 1819 the United States bought Florida from Spain, and with it acquired all of Spanish rights and claims on the coast N. of 42°. By the number of its trading posts and vessels regularly visiting the coast, the United States was virtually in possession of the region, but British fur-traders were pushing westward from the interior. The Emperor of Russia, by his ukase of 1821, forbidding all foreign vessels from approaching within 100 Italian miles of his possessions in the North Pacific, purposely brought about the conventions of 1824–225 to adjust the rival claims to North American territory and to regulate trade. By the treaty of 1824 with the United States, and that of 1825 with Great Britain, Russia agreed to 54° 40' as the southern limit of her possessions, and allowed the vessels of the other two nations to freely trade for a period of ten years. The useless and uninhabited interior was parcelled out in even thirds—Russia taking the north- *TEIE BOUNDARY LINE. 49 western or Yukon region, England the Mackenzie region and all be- tween Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mts., while the Oregon territory, all W. of the Rockies and N. of 42°, was claimed for the United States. In 1828 the joint occupation of the Northwest Coast by the United States and Great Britain was indefinitely extended. In 1837–38 socie- ties for emigrating to Oregon were formed in the United States, and in 1843 that great waggon train with a thousand people crossed from the Missouri River to the Columbia, and the country demanded the imme- diate settlement of the northwestern boundary. President Tyler, in his annual message to Congress in 1843, declared that “United States rights appertain to all between 42° and 54°40'’. Slave interests were then negotiating for Texas, and, to gain it without interference, Calhoun was discussing a settlement with the British minister with the forty- ninth parallel as the Oregon boundary, which the latter rejected, as his predecessor had in 1807 when Jefferson had proposed the same line. The Whigs and Henry Clay counselled moderation and compromise, but the Democrats raised the war-cry of “Fifty-four Forty, or Fight !” and elected Polk as the champion of that cause. In his inaugural mes- sage President Polk said, “Our title to the country of Oregon is clear and unquestionable,” and in his first message he declared for “all of Oregon or none.” Yet through party spite and bickerings, the hatred of Lewis Cass, who led the “Fifty-four Forty” party in Congress, President Polk and the Southern Democrats retreated from their posi- tion, and on June 15, 1846, Secretary Buchanan concluded the famous Oregon Treaty with Minister Pakenham on the same terms—the line of the forty-ninth parallel—as offered by Calhoun two years before and by Jefferson forty years before. Thomas H. Benton gives his own views and defence of this retreat from the first position of his party in regard to the Oregon Question in his Thirty Years in the United States Senate. The clearest summing up of the situation is given by Mr. Blaine in his Twenty Years in Con- gress, vol. i., chap. iii.; and later (chap. xiii.) he says: “Meanwhile, . . . we lost that vast tract on the north known as British Columbia, the possession of which after the acquisition of Alaska would have given to the United States the continuous frontage on the Pacific Ocean, from the southern line of California to Bering Strait.” By the treaties of 1824–25 the limits of Russian possessions are thus defined, and the same articles were repeated in the Treaty of Wash- ington of 1867: “Commencing from the southernmost point of the island called Prince of Wales Island, which point lies in the parallel of 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, and between the 131st and the 133d degree of west longtitude (meridian of Greenwich), the said line shall ascend to the north along the channel called Portland Channel, as far as the point of the continent where it strikes the 56th degree of north latitude; from this last-mentioned point the line of demarcation shall follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast as far as the point of intersection of the 141st degree of west longitude (of the same meridian); and finally, from the said point of intersection, 50 THE BOUNDARY LINE. the said meridian line of the 141st degree, in its prolongation as far as the Frozen Ocean. “IV. With reference to the line of demarcation laid down in the preceding article it is understood— “l. That the island called Prince of Wales Island shall belong wholly to Russia” (now by this cession, to the United States). “2. That whenever the summit of the mountains which extend in a direction parallel to the coast from the 56th degree of north latitude to the point of intersection of the 141st degree of west longitude shall prove to be at the distance of more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the line of coast which is to belong to Russia as above mentioned (that is to say, the limit to the possessions ceded by this convention) shall be formed by a line parallel to the winding of the coast, and which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom.” The boundary line from Mt. St. Elias to Portland Channel has not been surveyed nor determined. For the last twenty-eight years of Rus- sian ownership the “Thirty-mile Strip,” as it was called, was leased to the Hudson Bay Company, who paid an annual rental for the territory Canada now claims as partly her own. The recent growth of Alaska and British Columbia has made the international boundary a question of moment and interest, and “Fifty- four Forty” may again become a campaign slogan. During the Fisheries Conference at Washington in 1887–88 an in- formal discussion of the Alaska and British Columbia boundary was conducted by Dr. W. H. Dall, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Dr. G. M. Dawson of the Dominion Geological Survey, both scientists of first repute, and both personally acquainted with the regions under discussion. Dr. Dawson presented a new map showing the boundary line claimed by his Government, as drawn by Major-General R. D. Cameron, which narrows the thirty-mile strip to five miles in width in many places, and absorbs it entively as part of British Columbia in others. This Cameron line leaps bays and inlets; gathers in all of Glacier Bay, Lynn Canal, and Taku Inlet; takes all of the Stikine River, and, instead of following “along the channel known as Portland Channel,” it strikes to tide- water at the head of Burroughs's Bay and follows by Behm Canal and Clarence Strait to Dixon Entrance. By this arrangement, Revillagigedo, Wales, and Pearce Islands and the great peninsula between Behm Canal and Portland Canal, are annexed to British Columbia; also the islands of the Gravina group, on one of which Mr. Duncan's colony of Metlakahtlans have found refuge—the island which the United States used for a military post and then for a custom-house for twenty years, and even Mary Island, where the U. S. custom-house now stands. Claiming all of the Alaska coast up to 56° by this arrangement, the late Sir John Robson, Premier of British Columbia, suggested that the United States yield up the small remaining strip of mainland between 56° and St. Elias, for certain concessions in sealing matters. All Cana- dian maps are now drawn according to the Cameron line; and the Canadians, who are keenly alive to the advantages of possessing this THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 51 territory, have repeatedly called the attention of the United States to a matter which has seemed to be regarded with indifference on our side of the line.* The U. S. coast and Geodetic Survey has made careful sur- veys of the Portland Canal, Behm Canal, and St. Elias regions, and STATUTt Milts THE - §º ALASKAN BOUNDARY º from maps issued by the §§§º intº Depºdomº Can.1887 N §º And tria. Fº U.S. Coast Survey Sºft. es. º % ºftº: ... WN; marked the crossing of the line of the 141st meridian on the Yukon River; and late in 1892 Prof. T. C. Mendenhall was appointed commis- sioner on the part of the United States, and Mr. W. F. King on the part of Canada, to consider and determine the true line. The Southern Islands. Vancouver divided the island belt above Dixon Entrance into the Prince of Wales and the George the Third Archipelago. The two were as often known as the Sitkan Archipelago, and in 1867 * See Century Magazine, July, 1891 : “The Disputed Boundary between Alaska and British Columbia.” Also Extra Senate Document, No. 146, Fiftieth Congress, 2d Session, Report on the Boundary Line be- tween Alaska and British Columbia, and Century Magazine, May, 1895. 52 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. Professor Davidson suggested the present name of the Alexander Archipelago, in compliment to the Russian emperor. The military post of Fort Tongass was built on an islet between Wales Island and the mainland, facing the Tlekhonsiti Harbour of Rus- sian traders, as often called Clement or Crescent City. The buildings were on the bluff on the N. side of the island, 10 miles distant from Fort Simpson. The garrison was soon withdrawn, and a customs officer remained until 1889. The rainfall of 118:30 in. a year, and the splen- did cedar-trees 8 ft. in diameter, made it famous. The Tongass, Tumgass, Tamgas, or Tunghash tribe of Tlingits were only the remnant of a great people numbering 500 altogether in 1869, and diminished to 225 in 1890. A swampy trail leads a half mile across the island from the fort to their chief village, where 24 massive totem-poles guard the semicircle of ruined lodges. A tablet on one house reads: “To THE MEMORY OF EBBETTs, HEAD CHIEF OF THE TONGASS, who DIED IN 1880, AGED 100 YEARs.” Two fine totem-poles also record the honours of this Neakoot, who assumed the name of John Jacob Astor's Captain Ebbetts, as a compli- ment to that trader. There are beautiful views around the island, and a canoe can thread myriad forest-walled lanes, in one of which there is a ledge of slate glittering with superb garnet crystals. Vancouver named the small sharp point of the mainland for the Right Hon. Charles James Fox, and the bay beyond for Quadra, the Spanish commandant at Nootka. Salmon canneries were established at both places during the salmon boom of 1883–84, but the Cape Fox cannery was moved to Kichikan, in Tongass Narrows, and the Boca de Quadra was deserted after a few seasons. Mary Island Customs District. The first flag and light seen on the Alaska coast are at the U. S. custom house on Mary Island, a green dot named for the daughter of Admiral Winslow, who cruised past it with her father in the U. S. S. Saranac in 1872. This Government station was built in 1891, and one may see the white buildings from afar, or hear the siren wailing when mists or darkness brood upon these reef and rock strewn waters. Ships may enter and clear at Mary Island, and the deputy and a row-boat are expected to exert a sufficient moral force to prevent the Juneau whis- ky fleet from taking on contraband cargo anywhere across the British THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 53 line and scattering to northward by myriad channels. A few years ago there were 21 mossy old totem-poles, many ruined houses and picturesque graves over on Cat Island, where a large community used to dwell; but many of the venerable columns have been cut, stolen, burned, and wantonly defaced. The Gravina Islands were first seen and named by Caamano. Annette, the largest island of the group, is 17 miles in length and over 4 in width, and was named for Mrs. William H. Dall in 1880. It is mountainous throughout, and Mt. Tamgas, 3,684 ft. in height, retains its snow-cap throughout the year, and is easily distinguished from any side. Point Davison was christened by Vancouver in honour of Alexander Davison, owner of the fleet's storeship, and the Englishmen camped for a night at that place. Nicholls Pass, separating Annette and Gravina Islands, was named for Captain H. E. Nicholls, U. S. N., who first sur- veyed its dangerous ledges. He also named Port Chester, where he found the ruined houses and decaying poles of a Tongass community, whom the Chilkats had massacred sixty years before. New Metlakahtla, When Mr. Duncan's people sought a new home on the Alaska side, the site of this deserted village offered all that the native mind deemed essential—a good beach for canoes, sloping land for cultivation, a good salmon stream near by, water-power for a saw-mill, and nearness to the mail steamer's route. It is almost the only good canoe beach in the region; but the wind-swept pass, filled with reefs and tidal cur- rents, is the dread of steamers, and there is but a cramped anchor- age a half mile off shore. In bad weather, and whenever it is possible, the mail steamers leave their consignments at Kichikan, the distribut- ing station in Tongass Narrows, 12 miles distant, and tourists rarely see the actual marvel of New Metlakhtla, Mr. Duncan visited Eastern cities of the United States in 1886–87, and speedily enlisted friends to aid the Metlakahtlans. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. Phillips Brooks were especial champions of his cause, but all creeds and people assisted. Mr. Duncan was assured at Washington that his people would be protected in the ownership of any lands they might select, whenever, by the extension of the general land-laws to Alaska, that Territory was open to settlement; and the act of Congress, March 3, 1891, provided : * “(SECTION 15.) That, until otherwise provided by law, the body of lands known as Annette Islands, situated in Alexander Archipelago in 54 TEIE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. southeastern Alaska, on the N. side of Dixon's Entrance, be, and the same is hereby, set apart as a reservation for the use of the Metlakahtla Indians, and those people known as Metlakahtlans, who have recently emigrated from British Columbia to Alaska, and such other Alaskan natives as may join them, to be held and used by them in common, un- der such rules and regulations, and subject to such restrictions, as may be prescribed from time to time by the Secretary of the Interior.” Four hundred Metlakahtlans crossed to Alaska in the spring of 1887. Dedicatory services were held on the arrival of Mr. Duncan, August 7, 1887; the United States flag was raised and saluted by the tolling of the new church-bell, and a psalm chanted by the people. The old totem-poles were destroyed, save two given to the Sitka Museum, and, apportioning the town-lots according to their own rules of indi- vidual rank and precedence, the Metlakahtlans began building their present attractive village. The saw-mill was burned in 1889, but within six weeks it was rebuilt, and the new machinery was cutting 6,000 ft. of lumber a day. A second fire destroyed the mill in March, 1892, but it was again rebuilt; and in January, 1893, the mill and half the settle- ment were burned. The salmon cannery ships from 6,000 to 8,000 cases each year, and all the industries of the old Metlakahtla have been revived. They print their own newspaper; and the photographer, the silversmiths, the carvers, and bark-weavers do a large business on the occasional tour- ist days. The church and the octagonal school-house, the boys' and the girls' boarding-home, Mr. Duncan's residence, the cannery, the saw- mill, and the store, are the points of interest, and on steamer days the band plays on a platform built on the tall cedar stump. The Govern- ment day-school relieves Mr. Duncan of much of his old work, and Dr. Bluett having volunteered his services to the people, they have suit- able medical attendance. • The original Tsimsians, with the Haidas and Tlingits who have joined them, have all subscribed to and faithfully lived up to this code: METLAKAHTLA, ALASKA. DECLARATION OF RESIDENTS. We, the people of Metlakahtla, Alaska, in order to secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of a Christian home, do severally sub- scribe to the following rules for the regulation of our conduct and town affairs: 1. To reverence the Sabbath, and to refrain from all unnecessary secular work on that day; to attend divine worship; to take the Bible for our rule of faith; to regard all true Christians as our breth- ren ; and to be truthful, honest, and industrious. 2. To be faithful and loyal to the Government and laws of the United States. - - THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 55 3. To render our votes when called upon for the election of the Town Council, and to promptly obey the by-laws and orders imposed by the said Council. 4. To attend to the education of our children and keep them at school as regularly as possible. 5. To totally abstain from all intoxicants and gambling, and never attend heathen festivities or countenance heathen customs in surround- ing villages. - 6. To strictly carry out all sanitary regulations necessary for the health of the town. 7. To identify ourselves with the progress of the settlement, and to utilize the land we hold. .* 8. Never to alienate, give away, or sell our land, or building- lots, or any portion thereof, to any person or persons who have not subscribed to these rules. The Na-a Country. Revillagigedo Island, first seen by Gray and Caamano, was named by Vancouver in honour of the Conde de Revillagigedo, Viceroy of New Spain, who sent out the expeditions of Quadra, Caamano, Galiano, and Waldes. Its Indian name Na-a, “The country of the dis- tant lakes,” arose from the chain of pools which are linked throughout its northern half. Measuring 50 miles from N. to S. and 25 miles across its greatest breadth, it is almost divided by the long inlet named for Captain James C. Carroll, which, opening from Tongass Narrows, cuts to within a couple of miles of Behm Canal, which almost encir: cles the island with its graceful loop. The island is mountainous throughout, and its deeply indented shores hold some beautiful scenery. The only settlements have been on the west shores. The cannery at Kichikan, or Fish Creek, in Tongass Narrows, is the post office and distributing point for the neighbourhood. In August this small stream is packed with humpbacked Salmon, and by follow- ing the trail from the beach for 200 yards the tourist may see one of the oft-described pools crowded from bank to bank with salmon, and watch the leaping of this saltatory species. The fall is some 15 ft. above the level of the pool at low tide, and the mass of salmon coming in with the flood wait until the waters rise their regular 12 ft. and shorten the jump. Impatient fish are always making the dash at the face of the fall, regardless of the tide. during the weeks when the hump- backs are running. Kichikan is a centre of a rich salmon country, and all the waters sparkle with leaping fish during their successive “runs.” Point Higgins was named by Vancouver for the Señor Vallenar de Hig- 56 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. gins, the President of Chile, and Clover Pass was discovered and sur- veyed by Lieutenant Richardson Clover, U. S. N., while in command of the coast-survey steamer Patterson. At Loring, at the entrance of Naha Bay, there is a large salmon cannery which has absorbed in the one establishment several smaller canneries and fisheries, and packs the catch of half a dozen streams of the neighbourhood. There is a post-office and trading-store in connec- tion with it, and a village of Tongass Indians have settled beside this permanent settlement. The wreck of the Ancon remains a conspicuous object on the rocky shore, where it was blown by a williwaw or “wool- ly ” as it was letting go from the wharf at high tide on August 25, 1889. The passengers walked down the gang-plank as the ship settled, and, with all the ship's furnishings removed to the cannery loft, living there for five days until the next steamer returned them to Port Townsend. THE PACIFIC SALMON. There are five varieties of the Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus, the hook-jawed). The Pacific salmon and the Pacific trout differ so from the Atlantic species that it is a fine question whether there are any true salmon or trout on that coast, and whether any game laws can be legally enforced under such names. Oncorhynchus chowicha, or king salmon, is the quinnat of the Co- lumbia, the Chinook and Taku farther N., but everywhere recognized as the tyee (chief). Averaging from 60 to 80 pounds in the Stikine, it facreases to 100 pounds in the Yukon. Its flesh is pale, and coming in pairs and not in great schools, it is not the whole pack of any one can- DePW. 'onormºus nerka, the red salmon, is the blue-back of Oregon, the sockeye of the Fraser, and the canner's favourite because of the toughness and the deep tint of its flesh. It averages 6 and 10 pounds in weight, and visits the coast in incredible numbers. Oncorhynchus kisutch, the silver salmon, is the most beautiful of its kind and the most spirited. It always chooses clear water, and leaps falls with agility. Its flesh is pale, and is unfit for canning within a few hours after landing. Oncorhynchus gorbuscha, the humpback, is most abundant of the species, and averages from 5 to 10 pounds. The pale flesh cooks soft in cans and is not desired for packing, although of fine flavour. The humpback is even more plentiful than the red salmon, and can outjump any other species. Their leaps have not been recorded, like that Dram- men River salmon in Norway that jumped 16 ft. up the face of a fall, but Lieutenant Niblack photographed one in the act of springing eight feet. The first run of tyees comes in the early spring. In June the red salmon come in by Dixon Entrance, closely followed by the silver salm- * TEIE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 57 on. In August the humpbacks appear, and in September there is a last run of tyees to the up-stream and mountain lake spawning-grounds. The young salmon seeks the sea with the high water in spring, and re- turns at the end of two years to its birthplace. The malma or Dolly Warden trout follow the salmon in from the sea to devour their eggs, and the crudest tackle baited with salmon roe will catch 1 and 5 pound fish of the most beautiful colouring. There is also the cut-throat trout, with the vivid red mark below the gills, and the large steel head, Gairdner or rainbow trout, so often classed as a salmon, and packed as speckled salmon at many canneries. Prof. David S. Jordan, the first authority on Pacific coast fish, says that any one who can count can tell the difference between a salmon and a trout. A Pacific salmon has from 13 to 16 rays in the anal or last lower fin, while a trout has but 9 or 10 rays. The original Atlantic salmon has but 10 or 11 rays in the anal fin. Fine distinctions as to parrs, charrs, smolts, and grilses are not weighed in Alaska. The canners desire only an abundance of firm, red- fleshed fish. The rivalry of Alaska canneries greatly injured the business on the Columbia. The 37 canneries in Alaska, representing an investment of more than $4,000,000, employ between 5,000 and 6,000 people and 100 steam-vessels. The pack of 1891, amounting to 789,000 cases of 48 one-pound tins each, so overstocked the market that a combination was formed, 29 canneries were closed, and the pack of 1892 reduced to 400,000 cases. Only 2 of the 17 canneries in southeastern Alaska were operated that year, those at Loring and Chilkat. In 1893 the pack was limited to 650,000 cases. SALMON CANNERIES. At Loring the best opportunity is afforded for watching the can- ning of salmon, which is in progress from June to September by a large force of Chinese contract workmen. The seining and outdoor work are done by white men, a few Indians being sometimes employed under them. While industrious to a degree, the Tlingit cannot be de- pended upon; and the native is too apt to strike, to start upon a pro- longed potlatch, or go berrying or fishing on his own account, in the height of the salmon run. In the skilful manipulation of the cans and machines within doors, neither he nor the white man can approach the automatic exactness and dexterity of the Chinese, who, being paid by the piece, take no account of a day's working hours, and keep the ma- chinery moving as long as there are fish in the cannery. The fish are thrown from the arriving scows to a latticed floor, or loaded directly into the trucks and rolled into the cannery. The cleaner seizes a fish and in two seconds trims and cleans it—-beheading, detailing, and rend- ing it with so many strokes of his long, thin knife. It is washed, scraped, cut in sections the length of a can, packed, soldered, steamed, tested, vented, steamed again, resoldered, lacquered, labelled, and boxed. The º is taken up in sheets, and an ingenious machine 58 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. punches, rolls, and fits the covers to the cans, which roll down an inclined gutter of melted solder which closes the edges. The experts can tell, by a tap of the finger, if each can is air-tight. If not her- metically closed, the contents rapidly change, burst the cans in transit “below,” or explode unpleasantly in distant markets. The Alaska canners are not held to any restrictions as in British Columbia, not taxed or hindered in any way. They may take any piece of ground they see fit in tracts of 160 acres, and receive a patent after paying $1.25 an acre and the cost of survey. There is no tax upon cannery boats, no limit to the size of net-meshes, no close season, and the Salm- on inspector, who is supposed to prevent the placing of weirs and traps in the streams, has no vessel at his command with which to en- force the laws. The canneries drain the country of their natural wealth; make no permanent settlements, nor any improvements; spend almost nothing of their profits in the Territory; and are a fruitful source of trouble and corruption among the native people. The Revillagigedo Lakes and Behm Canal. The famed beauty of Naha Bay is not apparent from Loring. There is a fine waterfall a quarter of a mile above the cannery, reached by a trail through the woods. Two miles above Loring the bay nar- rows and terminates in a cul-de-sac, where 10,000 salmon have been drawn ashore from a single cast of the seine. A sharp point of land separates this cove from the first in the chain of four lakes, and the connecting stream is less than 100 ft. in length. This Lake Adorable is more properly a lagoon, as it is 12 ft. below high-tide mark, and the cascading stream empties and fills the lake by turn, and the Seine is cast at either end of these rapids. Lake Adorable, as it was named in 1885, is 4 miles long and 2 miles across, with magnificent mossy forests closely surrounding it. It glitters with leaping salmon all summer long, as they cross it to run the gauntlet of the cascading streams that join lake to lake far into the heart of the island. Large salmon have several times taken trout-fiies from these shores and wrecked light rods. Greedy malma follow with the salmon, and may always be caught. Both black and cinnamon bears are found on the island. They are first seen in spring, when they come out to feed upon the skunk-cabbage (Lysichton Kamchatken- sis), which with its huge tropical leaves is like a banana-tree half buried. Four black bears have been seen at once pawing salmon ashore from the sedges along Lake Adorable, and in the dense salmon berry thickets and along the shores of the farther lakes they are less often frightened away by man. The old smoke-house on the stream TEIE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 59 connecting the first and second lakes has several times been used as a sportsman's camp, and touches upon the most complete wilderness, while near to a base of supplies. There is a small red deer on the island, but the skin-hunters threaten its early extermination in the region, as 25,000 skins were shipped from Loring in 1890. Wolves are numerous; geese, Swans, mallard, teal, and a so-called canvas-back duck flock by the farther lakes; and eagles always tempt shots when a sportsman has once seen the exquisitely fine and downy robes made from their breasts. Escape Point, at the northern entrance of Naha Bay, celebrates Vancouver's escape from the Indians who attacked his party in Trai- tors’ Cove, 3 miles beyond. Canoes had followed the white men from the bend of Behm Canal, and “the old vixen,” with the large labrette in her lip, who steered and commanded the largest canoe, was bent on hostilities from the start. While the three boats were separated, the vixen came alongside Vancouver's yawl, snatched the lead-line and made fast with it. Her crew donned wolf masks, jumped aboard and seized the muskets; five canoes closed in, their crews shouting and dancing. The commanding virago was plainly exhorting them to an attack, when Vancouver gave the order to fire with the weapons they had drawn from the arms-chest. Those in the small canoes rolled out and swam ashore. Those in the big war canoe cut the line, and all sprang to one side, careening the canoe so that its side shielded them as they paddled away. Two of Vancouver's men were wounded, and before they could proceed the swimmers climbed the sheer bluff and hurled rocks down upon the boats. Yess Bay, on the mainland shore opposite Traitors’ Cove, is a mere ship-way through the forest, navigable by large steamers for 2 miles to a point where the cannery is situated, and accessible only to canoes beyond that point. The narrow passage is exceedingly pictur- esque, and the brawling stream by the cannery leads to a lake of great beauty, where 60 pounds of trout have been lured by the commonest fly in two hours. The Coast Survey named the place McDonald Bay, but the local name having become well established in commerce before- hand, it is only alluded to as Yess Bay. Burroughs's Bay, at the mouth of the Unuk River, is a deep bowl in the mountains where Vancouver fished in August, 1793, and called his prizes “hunchbacked salmon.” “They had little of the colour and nothing of the flavour of salmon, and they were very insipid and indiffer- 60 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. ent food,” he wrote. The shores were covered with dead salmon then, as. they are now at the height of the run, when the retreating tides strand acres of fish on the river bars. A cannery was established at Bur- roughs's Bay in 1885, and while it was in operation the mail steamers regularly made the tour of Behm Canal *. There is placer gold in the bars of the Unuk River, a turbid, glacier-fed stream, which heads 100 miles inland. It is navigable for 70 miles by canoe, but hunters of the bear, mountain goat, and mountain sheep, which abound in this region, are warned by the surveyors of dangerous rapids and whirl- pools. The mainland shores are very abrupt all along Behm Canal, the way is narrow, and Commander Newell, U. S. N., who was among the first to carry a large steamer around Revillagigedo, declares the view northward from Point Sykes the finest in southern Alaska. The landmark in that stretch is the New Eddystone Rock, which rises like a ruined vine-clad tower 250 ft. from the water, with a circumfer- ence of less than 50 yards at the base. There are a few crevices in its side to maintain the green wreaths and plumes that permanently decorate it, and it could be easily scaled. Vancouver named it after breakfasting on its sandy base; and in 1879 the Coast Survey named the Rudyard Bay and the other points near it for engineers and oth- ers connected with the building of the famous Eddystone Light on the coast of England. Prince of Wales Island. Prince of Wales, the largest island of the Alexander Archipel- ago, is second in size to Vancouver Island, extending 200 miles from N. to S., with a breadth of 20 and 60 miles. It is a miniature conti- ment, with an island belt on the ocean coast sheltering a continuous Inside Passage, navigable by canoes and launches. It is mountainous throughout ; cedar groves dot its shores; fine salmon streams lead to scores of mountain lakes, and in climate it has been called the Lan- cashire of the coast. Because of its wealth of cedar and salmon, Con- gress was once asked to declare the island a government reservation of ship timber for the use of the navy-yards on the Pacific coast, and to * Named for Major Behm, commandant at the Russian port in Kam- chatka, where Cook's ships wintered under Captain King. George Vancouver was midshipman on this third and last voyage of the great navigator, James Cook. THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 61 lease the salmon-fisheries. The very mention of Alaska has always been sufficient to convulse the Congress at Washington ; and although the proposed reservation was larger than the State of New Jersey, and would have brought in a considerable revenue, the humorous legislators did nothing. The yellow cedar (Cupressis nutkakensis), which ranges from the Queen Charlotte Islands to Yakutat, is the most valuable timber on the Pacific coast. The tree reaches a diameter of 5 and 8 ft. and a height of 150 ft., growing in patches and small groves, and easily distinguished from the rigid, symmetrical spruces by its darker foliage, its ragged and uneven limbs with their plumy, willowy, tasselled tips. It has a pale-yellow colour and a close fine grain, exhaling a slight resinous odour when first cut. The Chinese valued it highly, and the Russians carried on a large trade in cedar logs. At Canton it was made into chests that passed as camphor-wood, and when carved and scented was palmed off as sandal-wood. It is as much the aversion of moths as are the other fragrant cedars. It is the one ship timber of the Pacific coast, the only wood which repels the teredo, and ships' tim- bers have been found to be sound and good after lying under water for thirty years. The few vessels built of yellow cedar have the best standing, since hulls of Oregon pine can only be insured as A. No. 1 for three years, and the average Puget Sound pile is eaten through in the same time. One million dollars a year is said to be spent in driv- ing and replacing piles in Puget Sound wharves, while the yellow cedar of Alaska is untouched, and the law forbids its exportation. Small lots of yellow cedar have been sold at Portland for $75 per thousand feet; local cabinet-makers have made much use of it, and Hon. Wil- liam H. Seward secured enough cedar during his visit to Alaska to finish the great hall of his Auburn residence. The natives use this wood for canoe and house building, for totem-poles and all carved work. The inner bark furnishes them with a tough fibre which re- places ropes or thongs, and, finely shredded, is woven into mats, sails, blankets, baskets, and hats. They destroy countless trees by this girdling, and ghosts of dead cedars show all along shore. All the S. and W. coast of Prince of Wales Island is historic ground. At Cape Chacon, or the traders' Musatchie Nose, Juan Perez landed in 1774, and finding a native with a Russian gun in his possession, marked the line of 54° 40' as the limit of Russian rule, and by the same token the northern boundary of Spanish possessions. The Haneagas originally claimed all the ocean shores, but one hun- dred and fifty or two hundred years ago they were driven northward by the Haidas from North Island of the Queen Charlotte group, a band of pirates and freebootors who successfully defied the neighbouring tribes, and terrorized the mainland coast. At last the other Haidas, combined with the Nass and Tsimsian warriors, attacked North Island, routed the 62 - THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. renegades, and destroyed their villages. The survivors put to sea, landed on the opposite shore of the entrance, and in time pushed their villages up to Tlevak Strait and around to Thorne Bay, on the E. side of the island. They drove the French flag from this coast early in the century by killing the native otter-hunters whom a French trader had leased from the Russian chief manager at Sitka. After indemnifying the Sitkans for their 23 dead relatives at $200 each, the Frenchman had 63 otter-skins worth $5 each to take to Canton. His experience deterred his countrymen from competing in the profitable fur-trade of the Northwest Coast. - These Tleviakans, Kaigahnees, or Prince of Wales Haidas, have their largest village at Howkan, in Cordova Bay, behind Dall Island. The Boston fur-traders used to anchor near the village in the harbour which Captain Etholin surveyed in 1833, and named American Bay. Howkan is a Stikine word meaning “fallen stone,” and the original howkan lies on the beach, whether myth or meteorite none know. The village is rarely visited by mail steamers, receiving its mail and consignments by small steamer from Mary Island or Fort Wrangell. A Presbyterian mission was established at Howkan in 1881. In 1883, when the writer first visited the village, it was a place of totemic delight. Tall totem-poles guarded houses, and skeleton ruins of houses, crowded to the water's edge, ranged back through the under- brush, and lined a farther beach where graves and ruins were en- tangled in a young jungle. Mosses and lichens half covered the faces of the crows and eagles, grasses and ferns flourished in every crevice of the carvings, and bushes and even young spruce-trees, 10 ft. high, grew on the tops of totem-poles. Skolka, the head chief, had a magnifi- cent column by his doorway, with two children with storied hats above his ancestral eagle and the image of a bearded white man beneath the bird. He read a sad chapter of his family history from this picture rec- ord. A woman of the eagle clan went to gather Salmon-eggs one day, and while she cut fresh branches to lay in the water, and filled her baskets, her two children played. When she was ready to return she called the children, but they ran and hid. She called again and again, but they answered her from the woods with the voices of crows, and for many moons the crows mocked her cries. It was believed that the white traders had stolen them. The lost ones never returned, and the story of the kidnapped children has frightened generations of little eagles. The same twins and trader ornament a pole in Kasa-an Bay, and exhort those small Kaigahnees of the eagle brand to civil speech and obedience. Skolka’s next-door neighbour in days of yore was an old chief, whose young and pretty wife found a big frog while search- ing in her liege's locks one day. The nine days’ wonder was recorded in the next tolem-pole erected, and there one may still see the old chief, the frog, and the moon-faced bride to prove the tale. The Kaigahnees, like every tribe, have a legend of a great flood and THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 63 a single canoe coming to rest with two survivors on the top of a moun- tain. In 1883 one ancient claimed to have the bark rope that held the anchor of the big canoe when it rested on the high mountain behind Howkan—a talisman of great power. They have a tale twin to ours of Lot's wife, but their Sodom and Gomorrah were on Forrester Island, and a brother and sister fleeing from a pestilence were both turned to stone, because the woman looked back while crossing a river. Their petrified bodies still stand in that river, and their petrified lodge may be seen on its bank. When Wiggins's storms were promised to all North America in March, 1882, a white man at Kasa-an Bay read and explained the prophecies to the Kaigahnees. The warning ran rapidly from village to village, and at Howkan all began moving their things to the high ground, and were carrying up water and provisions for one whole afternoon. They believed that the promised tidal wave was coming, and, at the time set for the storm, began to say, “Victoria all gone !” There was a heavy storm outside that March night, and the agent of the trading company, returning from the Klinquan fishery in a whale-boat, was drowned by a wave upsetting the boat as he let go the tiller to furl the sail. It was at Port Bazan, across Dall Island, that a Kaigahnee found the remains of Paymaster Walker, who was lost with the steamer George S. Wright, in February, 1873. The loss of the Wright was one of the tragedies of the sea, and is still a current topic in Alaska. The steamer left Sitka on its return trip to Portland with several army officers and their families and residents on board. It was last seen at Cordova Bay, on the south end of Prince of Wales Island, and, in the face of warnings, the captain put out to Sea in a heavy storm, as he was hurrying to Portland for his wedding. It is supposed that the ship foundered, or struck a rock on the Queen Charlotte shore. The most terrible anxiety prevailed as week after week went by with no tidings of the Wright, and the feeling was intensified when the rumour was started that it had been wrecked near a village of Kuergefath Indians, and that the survivors had been tortured and put to death. Two years after the disappearance of the Wright the body of Major Walker was found in Port Bazan, recognizable only by fragments of his uniform that had been held to him by a life-preserver. Other remains and bits of wreckage were found in the island recesses, and the mystery of the Wright was cleared, ,- In the Howkan and the Kaigahnee region everything has been named and charted three and four times, Cape Muzon itself was named Cape Muñoz by the Spaniards, and Vancouver copied the name incorrectly. Dixon had named it Cape Pitt before him, and Tebenkoff called it Cape Kaigahnee afterward. The original village of Kaigahnee was near this cape, but since its abandonment that name is as often applied to Howkan. Raigan is the Japanese word for strand or seashore, and its use in this connection gives great comfort to those who contend for the Asiatic origin of these people. The missionaries named the place Jackson, and the Post-Office Department sent blanks and cancelling stamps marked Haida Mission. Captain Nichols resisted all appeals to enter Jackson on 64 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. the Coast Survey charts, and the Board of Geographic Names made Bowkan the legal and official appellation. This is only one of many similar incidents in the naming of the region. The Howkan Mission has a saw-mill beyond American Bay, and the A lawak cannery and mill are niched in the far end of Bucarelli Bay, that picturesque, cedar-lined reach where Bodega and Maurelle took possession in the name of Spain in 1775. Mail and excursion steamers never visit this shore, and the Klawak cannery runs its own Schooners to San Francisco, and steam launches to Howkan, or Fort Wrangel, for mails. A mission and a Government school care for the Hanegas, who inhabit this W. coast, a tribe quite as untamable for a century as the Kaigahnees. There is an inside passage from Dixon Entrance to Sumner Strait, and a large cannery and saw-mill at Shakan, or Chican, off the N. end of Prince of Wales. That saw-mill was doing a large business in cedar shingles with San Francisco in 1889, when the zealous timber agent descended, a cargo was confiscated, a large fine levied, and the mill was silenced. Vancouver sighted the “very remarkable barren, peaked mountain.” on the N. end of Prince of Wales, which he named for his friend Captain Calder, of the navy; but other navigators briefly describe Mt. Calder as a volcano, and tell of its eruption towards the close of the last century. The northern and eastern shores of the island down to Thorne Bay are claimed by the Stikines, and their first village is in Red Bay, the Krasnaia of the Russian traders. The dreaded Eye-opener, or Shoo- Fly Rock, is off its entrance, and by a sharp turn a ship runs into a small opening that narrows until it can barely pass. Beyond this gateway the bay rounds out into a placid reach, with magnificent trees crowding to the water's edge. There was a small saltery.there in 1884, and another at Salmon Creek, E. of Red Bay. Rasa-an Bay, on the E. coast of Prince of Wales Island, pene- trates some 17 miles in a westerly direction, and several fine salmon streams empty into its arms and inlets. Skowl's old village, the original Kasa-an, is on Skowl Arm, which opens Southwardly near the entrance. At the time of Skowl's death his village held 17 great lodges, and the threescore totem-poles constituted the finest collection of their kind in Alaska. This chief of the eagle clan was an autocrat of the old school, ruled his people with a rod of iron, held them to the old faiths and customs, and gave missionaries no welcome. A totem-pole in his village showed the image of a priest, an angel, and a book, and was intended as a derisive reminder of the efforts made to convert him. THE SOUTHERN ISILANDS. 65 There is an interesting old graveyard on the N. shore, half-way up Kasa- an Bay, near the Baronovich copper-mine, which was much exploited twenty years ago. The Baronovich Fishery is in a cove of Karta Bay, at the extreme end of the opening, and was established at the time of the transfer by a Russian trader who married Skowl's daughter. It was a headquarters of smuggling operations during the first years of United States owner- ship of Alaska, and Baronovich was one of the first of pelagic sealers or rookery raiders, returning with 9,000 fur-seal skins from a mysterious cruise in a small schooner in the summer of 1868. In 1885 the customs officers found over $40,000 worth of prepared opium at this fishery, packed in barrels and ready for shipment below as salt salmon. Since that event the fishery has been abandoned, and the catch of Kasa-an, Tolstoi, Thorne, and Salmon Bays on the E. coast of Prince of Wales Island, are towed in scows to the Loring cannery. Cholmondeley Sound, which extends inland for 16 miles, was named by Vancouver, and Dora Bay, its scenic boast, with Mt. Eu- dora, 3,500 ft. high at its end, were named for Mrs. Richardson Clover. Moira Sound, another of Vancouver’s discoveries, and the northern arm reaching almost to the base of Mt. Eudora, is much lauded for its scenic combination. Niblack anchorage was named for Lieut. A. P. Niblack, U. S. N., who conducted the surveys in this region and gathered the ma- terial for his valuable work on The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia, published as part of the Report of the U. S. National Museum, 1887–88. It contains the fullest explanation of the arts, customs, and social organization of these interesting people. This report, and the other U. S. Government publications referred to, cannot be purchased, but can be obtained for any United States citizen who makes proper application to a Senator or Representative in Congress from his State. Fort Wrangell. Vancouver's Duke of Clarence Strait is 107 miles in length, and at its northern end is sensibly discoloured by the fresh water of the Stikine River. Fort Wrangell, on the island of that name off the mouth of that river, was the second settlement in southeastern Alaska after Sitka, and commands a broad mountain-walled harbour that lies 80 miles in from the open ocean. This gives it warmer and drier sum- mers and colder winters than places on the outer coast, the mercury often rising above 90° in July, and remaining above 80° for a fortnight at a time. The winter average of 28°3° leaves the harbour open, and extreme cold is rarely known. John Muir has highly extolled its bland, 66 THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS, soothing, “ poultice like atmosphere,” and greatly praised the mountain panorama unrolled to one who climbs the hill behind the old fort. The first settlement on Wrangell Island was made by order of the chief manager, Admiral-Baron Wrangell who sent the captain-lieutenant, Dionysius Feodorovich Zarembo, down from Sitka, in 1834, to erect a stockade-post, and with the aid of a corvette prevent the Hudson Bay Company from re-establishing trading-posts on the Stikine River. This Redoubt St. Dionysius was built on the first point of land below the wharf, and with the hostile threats of the natives Zarembo succeeded in driving off the British ship. This hindrance to the free navigation of the Stikine was a plain violation of the Treaty of 1824, and after five years of diplomatic controversy it was settled by Russia paying £20,000 indemnity and leasing all the Thirty-mile Strip from Dixon Entrance to Yakutat to the H. B. Co., first for a term of ten years, and then by re- newed leases until the transfer of Russian America to the United States. Sir George Simpson considered all the British possessions in the interior, adjacent to the Thirty-mile Strip, as worthless, unless it were leased to them. He named the new post Fort Stikine, and his men led an exciting life there, their fierce neighbours attacking and besieging them, and several times cutting their foot-bridge and the flume that carried water to the fort. After the discovery of gold on the river and the influx of miners, fur-trading languished, the river posts were aban- doned, and there was little loss to the company when its lease ended with the transfer of Russian America to the United States. A new site was chosen for the United States military post of Fort Wrangell in 1867, and the large stockade was first garrisoned by two companies of the Twenty-first Infantry, that remained until 1870, when the post was abandoned, the ground and buildings sold to W. King Lear for $600. The discovery of the Cassiar mines, at the head-waters of the Stikine, and sent a tide of new life into the deserted street, and a company of the Fourth Artillery occupied the barracks from 1875 to 1877, when the Government withdrew its troops from all posts in Alaska. During the second occupation the tenants fixed the rent of the prop- erty, and paid the protesting landlord a tenth of what he might have received at that time. In 1884 the Treasury Department took posses- sion of the buildings, on the ground that the sale of 1870 was illegal, and installed the deputy-collector in the fort. Twenty years after Mr. Lear's purchase of the property, the Sitka court decided that, as the original sale was illegal and unconstitutional, Mr. Lear was entitled to his $600 with interest, and the cause célèbre was ended. As the old buildings went to ruin, they lent Fort Wrangell a certain interest and picturesqueness. The old quarters are used by the civil officers—a deputy-collector, commissioner, marshal, postmaster, and superintend- ent of education. During the Stikine-Klondike boom of 1898 a com- pany of infantry were encamped on this parade ground, but want of ground space necessitated the use of the broad C. P. R. wharf for drill and parade ground. With the abandonment of the mining regions up the Stikine, Fort THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS. 67 Wrangell's trade fell to almost nothing, and the saw-mill represented its chief industry, until the revival of navigation upon the Stikine, dur- ing the Klondike excitement of 1897 and 1898, made it a busy post. The Stikines do a large curio business in the summer season, and the traders' stores overflow with coarse carvings, baskets, and native silver- work. A few furs are brought from the Stikine country. Specimens of dark-gray mica slate, sprinkled with large almandite garnets, are brought from a ledge near Point Rothsay for sale. There is an old river-boat on the beach, so built over and grown with weeds that only the line of the guards suggests its original estate. This Rudder Grange cleared $135,000 each season its stern-wheel beat the Stikine flood, and when its machinery gave out beyond all re- pair, it was floated ashore, and was a profitable venture as a hotel. Then it fell to the mission of a bakery, whose Chinese proprietor gather- ing his kind about him made it headquarters for those Celestials who patiently worked abandoned placers. As late as 1883 a forest of totem-poles rose by the great lodges in the Stikines’ village. In 1893 only a half dozen remained, and the show pair guard a bay-windowed cottage which replaces the ancestral lodge. One of these relates the legends of the builder's family, the other that of his wife. The wife's pole is surmounted by her clan- totem, the eagle. The image of a child, a beaver, a frog, an eagle, a frog, and a frog, continue to the ground. This frog is the crest of a sub-family, the insignia of a medicine-man, a pestilence, a miraculous cure, big medicine, or as the food of the eagle naturally represented with it—all according to as many interpreters. The builder's pole is covered with his own image, the two-storied hat indicating two great potlatches or degrees in greatness. Beneath is his own mother totem, the crow, and at the base of the pole the eagle, the totem of his wife, and hence of his children. The finest of these poles were destroyed or injured by fire in 1898. The wolf and the whale, from two famous medicine-men's grave, ornament the old parade-ground. Shakes's Grave, on the point reached by a foot-bridge, is an object of interest. Shakes and his rival, Qualkay, were in evidence when Sir George Simpson visited Fort Stikine in 1841. Qualkay long ago suc- cumbed and was set away in charge of his totemic guardian, but Shakes cumbered the earth for another forty years, causing and spilling much bad blood, foraging the lower coast to far Nisqually, opposing the mission- aries, brewing hoochinoo, and quarrelling with the other village chiefs as long as the breath was in him. He was a chief of the old school, like Skowh, and when he died there was a wake and a funeral that paled all potlatch tales of old. His body was laid out in state trap- pings. The carved chests were piled high. There were furs and blank- ets galore; tows past envious counting; gangs of slaves, and last the precious heirloom and insignia of his line—a stuffed grizzly with cop- per claws and eyes, and movable jaws that assisted at great dances and ceremonies, and, being possessed by the body of a man, took part in theatrical representations that depicted the great family legends. In 68 THE STIKINIE RIVER, deluge-time Shakes's ancestors took the bear into their canoe and saved him from drowning. When the canoe grounded on a mountain, the bear brought them food, and from an alliance with this bear were de- scended all his people. One bear column shows the footprints of the bear that crawled to the top of the tree whence he was rescued by Shakes's ancestors; and when Shakes was laid away in a balconied pa- vilion on the Point, a bear was put on guard. * Kadashan has inherited the orca-staff that rules the tribe and a fine war canoe. For a sufficient purse he and a rival tyee will muster crews of thirty-two and paddle a spirited race. They paddle to a chant, the fierce old war-song of the “northern Indians” that spread terror on the lower coast. Shustacks Point was the home of another chief, who long defied the missionaries' efforts, but who was laid away in his ornamented grave soon after Clah, the Christian Tsimsian, acceded to the Sti- kines' request and opened a school in their midst. Mr. Seward and General Howard had vainly appealed to mission boards, but the letter of a private soldier describing the pathetic efforts of these people to do for themselves made most impression, and in 1877 the Presbyterian Board sent Rev. Sheldon Jackson to investigate. He found the won- derful Clah teaching in a dance-hall leased from the miners, and, guarded by the chief Toyatt, opening his school with hymn and prayer. A teacher was left for that winter, and the next year Mrs. McFarland opened a girls' boarding-school, which, after its own building was burned, was united with the Sitka school. A Catholic chapel was built during garrison days, and receives periodical visits from the Jesuit father at Juneau, but as the Tlingits have been given in charge of the Presbyterian Board, the Roman church does not attempt any evangel- ical work among them. A Methodist and a Presbyterian church and Government day school are the forces at work, and are judged suffi- cient and satisfactory. The pre-emptor of the old company gardens beyond the fort has proved in these later days that vegetable and poultry raising are more certain and profitable ventures in Alaska than mining. Cabbages and mangel-wurzel reach prodigious size; cauliflowers measure 18 inches around; and peas, beans, lettuce, celery, rhubarb, and radishes thrive. This enthusiastic planter believes that he could have ripened wheat during two dry summers, and perhaps corn. Wild timothy grows 6 ft. high in old clearings, and clover-heads are twice the size of Eastern clover, each blossom wide-spread, as red and fragrant as a carnation pink. - The Stikine River. There is a salmon cannery at Labouchere Bay, 2 miles from Fort Wrangell, on the north point of the island. A trail through the woods connects the two settlements. This spot is better known as the Point Highfield of Vancouver, and commands a view of the mouth of the Stikine River and the high peaks surrounding its delta. THE STIKINE RIVER, 69 Although Vancouver's men, in reaching this point, were surrounded by the grey-green and turbid flood of the great stream, they did not dis- cover it, the third great river of the coast which they almost entered unawares. Captain Cleveland, of the American sloop Dragon, and Cap- tain Rowan, of the Eliza, visited the delta and learned of the great stream in 1799. Hudson Bay Co. employés knew the head-waters, soon after their repulse by Zarembo at Fort Dionysius. Mr. Robert Campbell tells of his discovery of its sources in a letter to Senator M. C. Butler, dated Riding Mountain House, Manitoba, November 30, 1881: “Being an employé of the Hudson Bay Co., I was for a series of years employed by it in exploring, trading, and extending the trade in the till then unknown part of the Rocky Mountains, and especially in search of rivers, or sources of rivers, flowing from the west of the mountains. - “In summer, 1838, I ascended to and established a trading post at Dease's Lake (since then a gold field), and soon after, in July, I crossed the mountain and came to the head-waters of a river, which with a party of two Indian boys and a half-breed I followed for some time, and came to a tributary which we crossed on Terror Bridge, a very shaky structure over a foaming torrent. About 15 miles beyond the bridge we came on a very large camp of Indians assembled there for the double purpose of catching salmon, which abounded in the river, and of trading with the then notable chief ‘Shakes,' who ascended there from Fort Highfield, a large trading station of the Russians, es- tablished at the mouth of the river, on the Pacific coast. From these Indians I was glad to learn that the name of the river was ‘Stikene.” “I gave notes to some of the Indians, to be delivered at any Hudson Bay Co. post, relating the result of my discovery thus far, and as the object of my trip was now attained I wished to retrace my steps without delay; but it was with no little difficulty that we got away from the camp of the savages. We owed our safety to the Nahany chief, and the tribe we came first in contact with in the morning. This discovery, which made no small noise at the time, led in a great measure to the Hudson Bay Co. leasing from the Russians a stretch of country along the coast, for purposes of trade.” The Hudson Bay Co. first established Fort Mumford, 60 miles up the river from Fort Wrangell, at the supposed Russian boundary line, and Fort Glenora, 126 miles up river, at the head of canoe navigation. When the miners came with steamboats, fire-arms, and blasting powder, game was frightened away, and the Indians found more lucrative pur- suits than hunting and trapping. In 1878 the company abandoned the river posts, the mines failed, and the region relapsed into a wilderness. The scenery of Stah-Keena, the Great River, will revive the for- tunes of the region when increasing tourist travel makes it better known. Prof. John Muir, who canoed its length in 1879, epitomized its finest reach as “a Yosemite 100 miles long.” Three hundred living gla- 70 THE STIKINE RTVER. ciers drain directly into the Stikine, and Prof. Muir counted 100 from his canoe. The river is very shallow at the mouth, with a current running 5 miles an hour, but in the upper cañons the current is terrific. Steam- ers were withdrawn from the river in 1883, but a relic continued to navi. gate until 1891, although canoe travel was and is still more satisfactory to those who can give a fortnight to the excursion. The dozen power- fully-engined boats put on the river in the spring of 1898 were nearly all withdrawn at the end of three months. The fastest trips were made in 30 hours up stream (tying up overnight) and 9 hours down stream. Itinerary of the Stikine River. . The first object of interest is the Popoff, or Little Glacier, 10 miles above Point Rothsay. At the Big Bend, a few miles above, the Iskoot River opens a valley Southward, its course defined by the sharp needle peaks of the Glacier Range. The natives, following the Iskoot cañons for 50 miles, reach a table-land from which they descend the Nass River to Fort Simpson. Besides scenery of the wildest description, peaks, precipices, and glaciers that defy Zermatt climbers, the Iskoot region is a great preserve of big game. Grizzly, cinnamon, and black bears, mountain goat and mountain sheep, deer and elk, roam undis- turbed, grouse abound, and mosquitoes surpass in numbers and vo- racity any others of their kind. The same condition as to game and insects exists all along the Stikine. The International Boundary Line, as temporarily accepted, is a few miles beyond the Popoff Glacier, a U. S. Custom-House, a Canadian Custom-House and barracks of mounted police, collecting duties and preserving order on the river. The Great, or Orlebar Glacier, 20 miles above the Little Gla- cier, and 40 miles from Fort Wrangel, is often visited in chartered steamers, when mail steamers are delayed at the latter port for a whole day, and offers an interesting excursion. The glacier descends through a mountain gateway less than a mile in width, and spreads out in a broad, rounded, fan slope measuring 3 miles around its rim. A terminal moraine half a mile in width lies between it and the river, a place of sloughs and quicksands cut by the milk-white Ice Water River, and scores of streams through which the pilgrim wades to the foot of ice-cliffs rising abruptly 500 and 700 ft. The glacier slopes back easily and disappears in fine curves behind mountain spurs. Its surface is much broken, but it has not been explored nor its motion recorded, Two young Russian officers once came down from Sitka to THE STIKINIE RIVER, 71 explore this glacier to its source, but they never returned with its secrets. Old miners and river traders say that it has shrunk and retreated much since those good old days when “the boys,” with their bags of flour gold, and nuggets, used to congregate at Buck's Bar (Choquette's) on the opposite bank, and, while boiling themselves in the Hot Springs baths, contemplated the great ice stream over the way. A smaller gla- cier faces the Great Glacier on the Hot Springs side, and there is an Indian tradition to the effect that these two glaciers were once united, and the river ran through in an arched tunnel. To find out whether it led out to the sea, the Indians determined to send two of their number through the tunnel, and with fine Indian logic they chose the oldest members of their tribe to make the perilous voyage into the ice moun- tain, arguing that they might die very soon anyhow. The venerable Indians shot the tunnel, and, returning with the great news of a clear passage-way to the sea, were held in the highest esteem forever after. Near a bend in the river known to the miners as the Devil's Elbow, the Mud or Dirt Glacier pours through a defile and spreads along the river bank like a high terrace for 3 miles. Next, the Flood Gla- cier descends from a hidden neve. Every summer something gives way in the glacial fastness and a flood bursts out with a roar, the river rises several feet and races with a swift current, while the unknown reservoir empties itself. Caution has kept miners and Indians away, and no scientist has investigated to see how and where the ice spirits build their dam. Beyond it is the dreaded Little Cañon, a gorge a half mile long, narrowing to a width of 100 ft., where ascending steamboats struggle for nearly an hour before they can emerge from the frightful defile. Steamers often tie up for days, waiting for the furious current to slacken. Next is the Kloochman's or Woman's Cañon, where the noble Stikine, exhausted by paddling or tracking his canoe through the preceding cañon, leaves the cares of its naviga- tion entirely to his wife. Here he crosses the backbone of the Main or Sawback Range, and here are summer camps by that fine salmon stream the Clearwater. The Big Ripple, or the Stikine Rapids, offer the last difficulties for canoemen, and then the country opens out into more level stretches, and a dry and wholly different climate causes Shakes's, Carpenter's, and Fiddler's Bars, where men picked up for- tunes 30 years ago, to Scorch in dry summer heats. At Glenora, 540 ft. above the sea, steamers discharge their cargoes and start on the wild sweep down the river, Canoes can ascend an. '72 THE STIKINIE RIVER, other 12 miles to the mouth of Telegraph Creek, where the surveyors decided that the Western Union wires should cross, and where the Great Cañon of the Stikine begins, a rocky gorge 50 miles long that no craft can traverse, but which in winter offers a level ice highway and a snow-shoer's short cut towards Cassiar. The wagon and railway route to Lake Teslin and the Yukon is de- scribed in the chapter at the end of the book. MINING REGIONS OF THE STIRINE. H. B. Co. agents disclaim any previous knowledge of the existence of gold along the Stikine River, and deny any exchange of gold dust ounce for ounce for lead bullets as with the natives on the Fraser. In 1861, Pierre Choquette and Carpenter his partner discovered gold on a bar near Glenora. Camps quickly dotted the river's length, and in 1873 richer fields were discovered in the Cassiar regions, at the head-waters of the river, by Thibert and McCulloch, two trappers who had made their way overland from Minnesota. Ten thousand miners reached the diggings in 1874, and the yield was estimated at $1,000,000. The new camps were 300 miles from Fort Wrangell and 150 miles from Glenora. The centre of trade was at Laketown, on Dease Creek, near Dease Lake. The Omineca region at the head of Peace and Skeena Rivers was deserted. Four ocean steamers ran regularly from Vic- toria, transferring to six river steamers at Fort Wrangell. Freights from the latter place to the mines ranged from $20 to $80 and $160 per ton, the last half of the transit being by pack-mules or on men's backs over the roughest mountain trails known. While the mines were paying, Fort Wrangell was the winter resort of the miners, and the liveliest as well as the most important town in Alaska. Travel turned inland in February, miners travelling by Snow-shoes and with hand-sleds on the ice until well into March. Active work began in May, and the freezing of the sluices in September closed the season. When the placers were exhausted and machinery was needed to work the quartz claims, the miners left. Chinese for a long time worked abandoned river bars and Cassiar placers. - The returns of the Cassiar mining district, as given by the British Columbian Minister of Mines, show the quick decrease in the bullion yield : ~. Number of Number of YEAR. miners. Gold product. YEAR. miners. Gold product. 1874. . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000 $1,000,000 || 1882........... . . . . . . . $182,800 1875. . . . . . . . . . . . 800 830,000 || 1883..... . . . . . . 1,000 119,000 1876. . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500 556,474 || 1884. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101,600 1877. . . . . . . . . . . . 1,200 499,830 || 1885... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50,600 1878. . . . . . . . . . . . e & e º is sº 519,720 || 1886. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63,610 1879. . . . . . . . . . . 1,800 405,200 || 1887. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60,485 1880. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297,850 1881, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198,900 $4,886,069 SUMNER STRAIT TO PRINCE FREDERICK sound. 73 THE INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY LINE ON THE STIKINE. The leasing of the Thirty-mile Strip to the H. B. Co. did away with the necessity of precisely marking the boundary line on the river, and the Russians felt no concern in the matter until the gold discoveries of 1862. It was provided in the Russian American Company’s lease that all mineral lands should belong to the crown; and the Czar, who had been brooding much over the mineral possibilities of his American province, ordered Admiral Popoff to send a corvette from Japan to see if the British miners were on Russian soil. Prof. William P. Blake, the geologist, accompanied Captain Bassarguine on the Rynda from Hakodate in 1863, and his report, with the Russian officers' maps, were the first authentic geographic and geologic information. Since their survey five different places have been designated as the boundary, ranging from the Little Glacier to the crossing of the Sawback Range. The report of the Dawson-McConnell survey of the river is included in the Annual Report of the Geological Survey of Canada for 1887. The report of the Special U. S. Treasury Agent, W. G. Morris, in Extra Senate Document No. 59–Forty-fifth Congress, third session, gives a full account of the attempts to determine some limit during Cassiar days and the necessity for some settlement of the question. From Sumner Strait to Prince Frederick Sound via Wrangell Narrows, - Sumner Strait extends 80 miles from the mouth of the Stikine River to the open ocean, and on its N. shore, 19 miles from Fort Wrangell, a narrow river of the sea leads to Prince Frederick Sound, the next great transverse channel in the archipelago. Wran- gell Strait, more commonly known as Wrangell Narrows, is 19 miles in length, at times not 100 yards in width, and in the course of its windings presents features that entitle it to being one of the most famous landscape channels on the regular tourist route. Vancouver’s men entered its mouth, but, believing it another inlet, turned back. It was long considered navigable only for light-draught vessels at the highest tide, and Government transports went outside from Fort Wrangell to Sitka, until the perils of Cape Ommaney, the fogs, storms, and currents of the ocean induced Captain R. H. Meade to sur- vey a way for the U. S. S. Saginaw, in 1869. Captain J. B. Coghlan, U. S. N., voluntarily surveyed and buoyed the channel in 1884, and 74 SUMNER STRAIT TO PRINCE FREDERICK SOUND. later the Coast Survey made soundings. The tender of the Thirteenth Lighthouse District, which includes all of the United States shores be- tween the Columbia River and Cape Spencer, inspects and replaces the buoys each summer. The tourist should not miss any part of this scenic passage; the near shores, the forested heights, and the magnificent range of peaks around the Stikines delta, composing some of the noblest landscapes he will see. The sunset effects in the broad channels at either end are renowned, and the possessor of a Claude Lorraine glass is the most fortunate of tourists. He who has seen the sunrise lights in the nar- rows has seen the best of the marvellous atmospheric effects and colour displays the matchless coast can offer. It is a place of resort for eagles, whose nests may be seen in many tree-tops, and is a nursery for young gulls who float like myriad tufts of down in the still reaches. A hedge of living green rises from the water's edge, every spruce twig festooned with paler green mosses. At low tide, broad bands of russet sea-weed (algae) frame the islets and border the shores, and fronds, stems, and orange heads of the giant kelp float in the intensely green waters. The tides rushing in from either end meet off Finger Point, whose two red spar buoys are prominent in the exciting naviga- tion. The tide-fall varies from 14 to 23 ft., and salmon, entering with the tide, turn aside at the red spar buoys, clear an islet, manoeuvre to the foot of a fall, leap its 8 ft. at high tide, and swim to a mountain lake. - Along Prince Frederick Sound. Prince Frederick Sound won its name from the meeting of Whidbey and Johnstone on its shores on the birthday of H. R. H. Frederick, Duke of York, in 1794. Vancouver lay at anchor at the time in Port Conclusion, just within Cape Ommaney, while these two lieutenants made their final search for some opening on the mainland coast. Landing on the Kupreanoff shore, they took formal possession of the country, and dealt out double grog to their men. This ended the actual exploration, the fruitless search for the mythical straits of Anian, and “with no small portion of facetious mirth” they remem- bered that they had sailed from England on the 1st day of April to find the Northwest Passage. These lieutenants made plain to their chief the “uncommonly awful” and “horribly magnificent” character of the scenery along the Prince Frederick shore; and Vancouver began the lavish use of adjectives which is in vogue in Alaskan narratives to-day. "…??????) wºpwºnº/J. wo ºg/?nII · N ·s·n ‘ſociąN ‘a ‘w &q qdulºoqoqa |×，|-. SUMNER STRAIT TO PRINCE FREDERICK SOUND. 75 The Devil's Thumb, a dark spire rising 1,600 ft. from the rim of an amphitheatre 7,000 ft. above the sea, was named by Captain Meade because of its resemblance to a similar thumb or monolith on the Greenland coast. This great landmark shows from the upper half of Wrangell Narrows, and looms from every quarter as the ship boxes the compass in its varied course. It is a finger-board to the tourist's first Alaskan glacier which is a prominent feature in the long panorama along the N. wall of Prince Frederick Sound. This glacier, named Patterson for the late Carlile Patterson, chief of the Coast Survey, pours over and down a great slope, showing a beautifully blue and rumpled front. In Vancouver's time it dropped icebergs from the cliffs to the water. A fine waterfall decorates the front of Horn Cliffs at the foot of the glacier. The Thunder Bay Glacier. The first tide-water glacier on the coast, latitude 56° 50' N., is hidden at the end of Hutli + (Thunder) Bay, and sends out the myriad bergs that sparkle along the sound. It is picturesquely set, debouch- ing grandly from a steep cañon cutting at a right angle from the head of the bay, and the walls are forested close to the glacier's edge. The Hutli is a pure white, deeply crevassed ice-stream half a mile in width; and the ice-cliffs, rising 100 and 200 ft. above the waters, are always top- pling and crashing with the glacier's rapid advance. The bay is seldom navigable, because of the ice-floes, which are either packed solidly or whirling with the tides. San Francisco ice-ships loaded from this gla- cier as early as 1853, and halibut schooners often put into the sound for ice to pack their catch. Lying at 56° 50' N. latitude, it shows all the features of a Greenland glacier, but its wonders were unheralded until John Muir visited it in 1879. The Stikines claim to remember a time when the glacier reached nearly to the mouth of the bay, and Wan- couver's description supports them. GLACIAL THEORY OF THE NATIVES. The Stikines, hearing the mysterious roars and crashes from within this bay, believed it the home of the Thunder Bird, and Hutli's rough syllables stand for that mythical creature, the flapping of whose wings causes the rolling noises heard. All Tlingits believe that in the begin- ning the mountains were living creatures, grandly embodied spirits, whom they long worshipped. The glaciers are the children of the * Since named by the Coast Survey Le Conte Bay and Le Conte Glacier. 76 SUMNER STRAIT TO PRINCE FREDERICK sound. mountains, and these parents hold them in their arms, dip their feet in the sea, cover them with deep snows in the winter, and scatter earth and rocks over them to ward off the summer sun. Sitth is their gen- eral name for ice, and its whispered sibilants suggest the Tlingits’ horror of cold, even their dull imaginations conceiving a hell of ice—a place of everlasting cold as the future state of those buried in the ground rather than cremated. Sitth too Yehk is their ice spirit, an invisible power of evil, whose chill breath is death, who manifests himself in the keen, peculiar wind blowing over glacial reaches; whose voice is heard in the angry roar of falling bergs, and in the hiss, the crackle, and tinkle of singing ice-floes. He hurls down bergs in his wrath, he tosses them to and fro, crushes canoes, and washes the land with great waves. When the ice-wind dies away and the glacier's front is still, Sitth too Yehk sleeps or roams under ice labyrinths, planning further destruction. The natives speak in whispers, for fear of rousing or offending this evil one, and refrain from striking his subjects—the icebergs—with their canoe-paddles. When they must make a journey across a glacier, they implore the mercy of Sitth too Yehk with much big medicine and incantations, speak softly, tread lightly, and neither defile nor offend it with crumb or odour of their food. The hair-seals are the children of the glacier, and proof against all this magic. They may ride on the ice-cakes with impunity, and in under the Hutli’s and Rlumma Gutta's (Taku's) front the man-faced seals live, terrible creatures whose spell can only be broken by one's pouring some fresh water into the sea. All the flats between Hutli and Point Highfield are visited by flocks of ducks that offer sportsmen unrivalled opportunities. The Baird Glacier shows its upper slopes just west of the Patterson Glacier, but the finer view of its full front and long reaches is obtained from Thomas Bay, which, commanding views of other glaciers, of waterfalls and spler.did cliffs, has been much extolled as the scenic gem of the sound. . Cape Fanshawe is the great landmark of the sound, a storm- king and cloud-compeller that, fronting to southwestward, gathers to it all the storms that drift and draught in from Cape Ommaney. Canoes are storm-bound for weeks, and ships labour heavily to round this promontory when the great winter winds blow ; but in summer the waters ripple away to clear emerald and pearly reaches. The sound is a favourite breeding-ground of whales, and in these safe, deep waters one may see the leviathans frisking, and infant spouters taking their first lessons. They were once snapped in the act by Lieutenant Niblack, whose ready camera had already caught the flying eagle and the leaping Salmon. SUMNER STRAIT TO PRINCE FREDERICK sound. 77 Rupreanoff and Kuiu Islands, The Land of Kakes. Less is known of Kuprean off and Kuiu Islands—the Land of Kakes—than of the others of the archipelago, because of the bad name of that tribe inhabiting them. The Kakes frightened Wan- couver's men by their manners, and are dreaded by other Tlingits, who say that they are outcast Sitkans. They were the most dreaded of all the “northern Indians” who devastated the lower coast. In 1855 several canoe-loads were driven from place to place in Puget Sound, and ordered to go home by the U. S. S. Massachusetts, which served a final notice to those encamped on the spit opposite Port Gamble's mills, and then opened fire. The Kake chief and several of his men were killed, and the Massachusetts took the Kakes as far as Victoria, and once more told them to go. Two years later a war party of nearly a thousand arrived at the sound, and, landing on Whidbey Island in the night, called out and shot Colonel Eby, collector of customs. They mounted his head and those of three other whites on poles in their canoes, and paddled away in triumph. No retaliation was attempted, but some years later Captain Dod, of the Beaver, visited a Kake village, and bought Colonel Eby's scalp for six blankets, six handkerchiefs, and two bottles of rum. In 1866 the Kakes seized the schooner Royal Charlie, anchored near a Kuiu village, murdered the crew, and scuttled the ship. The finding of a few relics during the Kake war of 1869 cleared the mystery of that craft. They divided honours with the Haidas and Stikines in piracy and murder down the coast, but were looked down upon by both those superior people. The famous “Kake War” of 1869 arose from the Kakes murdering two Sitka traders in revenge for the shooting of a Kake by a Sitka sentry. Captain Meade took the U. S. S. Saginaw and destroyed three villages by fire and shell. These three villages were in bays on the northern end of the island, and it was many years before the Kakes attempted to rebuild them. They roamed the archipelago as waifs and free-lances, creating trouble wherever they drew up their canoes. Their visits were dreaded by . natives and whites. A few of the better-disposed Kakes were toler- ated at Killismoo for a time, but their reputation effectually kept fishermen and mineral prospectors away from their shores. The mili- . tary census of 1809 estimated the inhabitants of Kuiu and Kupreanoff Islands at 2,000. Petroff's census of 1880 numbers them 568. The enumeration of 1890 gives but 236 Kakes, and notes but the two vil- lages of Port Ellis on Kuiu and Port Barrie on Kupreanoff Island. In 1891 a Government school was established at Hamilton Bay at the north entranee of Keku Strait, and in January, 1892, the teacher, C. H. Edwards, was killed by two men who came in a small sloop, as he believed, to sell liquor to the Kakes. Reku Strait, connecting Sumner Strait and Prince Frederick Sound, was long suspected to afford a safer and more direct ship-channel than Wrangel Narrows, and more scenic beauty is claimed for it, 78 CAPE FANSHAWE TO TAKU INLET. Kuiu Island is the most extraordinary arrangement of forest- land ever scattered upon Alaskan waters. Map-makers' favourite but unpleasant comparison is to a mass of entrails surrounded by flies. The island is over 60 miles in length and 30 miles across at its widest point, but it is such a mass of peninsulas, isthmuses, and inlets fringed with tiny islets that the ordinary statement of dimensions cannot describe it. Its shores are least surveyed of any in the archipelago, and mail steamers have only touched at the cannery at Vancouver's Point Ellis in the Bay of Pillars. Dense groves of yellow cedar may be seen on its shores, and in both 1874 and 1876 the Alaska Lumber and Ship-build- ing Company prayed Congress to grant it or to sell it 100,000 acres of timber lands on Kuiu Island, binding itself to establish mills and yards, and build a vessel of 1,200 tons burden within two years. The franchise was refused, and Kuiu remains a wilderness, From Cape Fanshawe to Taku Inlet, Shucks and Sum Dum Bays, Mt. Windham, 2,500 feet in height at the N. entrance of Windham Bay, marks the beginning of Stephens's Passage, 25 miles above Cape :Fanshawe. The mining-camp of Shucks, the Shuk'hte of the Tlingits, lies at the end of Windham Bay, 8 miles from the entrance. Gold was discovered at this place in 1875, and in the centennial year 30 miners were at work. In 1879 Professor John Muir visited the camp, and the miners put him on the trail of more glacial game than he had anticipated. After the Juneau discoveries Shucks was abandoned for ten years, when a company took up the basin and began hydraulic mining on a large scale. Their pipe-line and flume lead to the Uncle Sam Basin, 1,000 ft. above the bay, whence it is a short climb to the crest of the divide between Shucks Bay and the southern arm of Sum Dum Bay. The higher meadows, thickly carpeted with dwarf laurel, violets, daisies, anemones, buttercups, lilies of the valley, and that royal flower, the black Kamchatka lily (Fritillaria Kamschat- Æensis), are rich botanical ground, and to the sportsman the region pre- sents the greatest attractions. These are the chosen pastures of the mountain-goat; and the mountain-sheep, keeping usually to the second and interior ranges, comes to the coast between Cape Fanshawe and Taku. Shucks is the accepted site of the “Lost Rocker,” the standard romance necessary to each mining region. In that dim time of mys- tery and fable “before the transfer,” two Stikine miners found pockets of nuggets in a lone bay near Cape Fanshawe. They were attacked by Indians, and one miner killed. The other, left for dead beside his rocker, managed to crawl and paddle away to a settlement, and died CAPE FANSEIAWE TO TAKU INLET. 79 while describing the place where the rocker full of nuggets was left. For a quarter of a century prospectors have searched for the phantom rocker. Jo Juneau admits of having thought of it, and the tradition, dear to the Alaskan heart, has been dramatized, and every season “The Lost Rocker' draws crowds to the Juneau Opera-House. Sum Dum, the bay whose long-drawn Tlingit syllables express in sound and meaning the noise of falling ice, was named Holkham Bay by Vancouver. The broad bay is seen from the steamer route with the great Sum Dum Glacier sloping down from the snow-fields beyond Mt. Harrison. It divides into the Endicott Arm, extending 25 miles in a southeasterly direction, and the Tracy Arm cutting N. and then E., some 22 miles altogether. It is a great glacial trough, soundings giving no bottom at 200 fathoms; is set with pinnacle rocks and reefs, and contains but one anchorage. Strong tidal currents and floating ice further oppose navigation. No large steamers enter the bay, and Juneau launches proceed with extreme caution. There are three small tide-water glaciers in inlets of Endicott Arm. One of these cañons is known as Ford's Terror, in honour of the draughtsman of the Patterson, who rowed in at slack water to look for ducks. The tide turned with a roar, and the 5-mile cañon, less than 100 yards wide in places, was a stretch of rapids and whirlpools in which small bergs from the glacier raced and ground to- gether. The sportsman was a prisoner for six hours, when he was able to make his escape with the last of the ebb-tide. There are many such reversible cataracts within the bay, and gloomy cañons that only need their Hugo, their Verne, and their Doré to immortalize them. - The most remarkable glacial exploit on this coast was that of Cap- tain J. W. White, U. S. R. M., who took the Wayanda into the bay while on an exploring cruise in 1868. Seeing a great arched opening in the face of one tide-water glacier, he steered his gig into a vast blue grotto, and was rowed 100 ft. down a crystalline corridor. The colouring of roof and walls and water was marvellous, the air was pure, palpitant Sapphire, and in the shadowy indigo alcove at the end the boatmen poured out libations to the ice spirits. They emerged safely, unsuspect- ing the perils they had braved. The finest scenery of all is reported in Tracy Arm, and the camp in Roaring Inlet was visited by Prof. John Muir in 1879. He found two splendid tide-water glaciers in that magnificent fiord, one a mile and the other a half mile wide, and common Swiss or Alpine glaciers fronting on terminal moraines filled every ravine. The Sum Dum mining camp was deserted for a decade after Ju- neau's discoveries, but recently the claims have been relocated, and a * *mill will do its feeble grinding beside the primeval mills of the gods. 80 CAPE FANSHAWE TO TAKU INLET. Port Snettisham gives promise of importance, when its ledges of gold and silver are worked; and prospectors report the Speel River cañons at the head of the bay as rivalling any others in point of scenery. - In Taku Harbour, or Locality Inlet, as Sir George Simpson named it, the remains of the old H. B. Co.'s Fort Durham may be seen. The Takus drove the traders away at the end of three years, and the com- pany secured their furs by annual visits of their steamers. The Takus Several times seized these ships and looted them, and were much dreaded by all the whites. Most mercenary of all Tlingits and sharp- est of bargainers, the Takus are called “the Alaska Jews,” and in view of the financial advantages resulting did not oppose the coming of miners. They were never a totem-pole people; their villages are un- interesting, and they have too quickly assumed the outer habits of the whites. They were estimated as numbering 500 in 1869, but in 1880 only 269 Takus were counted; and in 1890 they had fallen to 214, with their largest village at Juneau. Taku Mountain, 2,000 ft. high, a most symmetrical and densely forested cone, and Grand Island, 1,500 ft. in height, are the two most conspicuous landmarks. Above them is the Taku Open, a water cross- roads, where Stephens's Passage, Taku Inlet, and Gastineau Chan- nel come together—a broad and treacherous reach where canoes are threatened by winds from the four quarters. Taku Inlet is the cradle of squalls, and Taku Open their playground. In winter, fierce willa- waws or “woolies” sweep from the heights, beat the waters to foam, and drive the spray in dense, blinding sheets; but in summer it Smiles and ripples in perfect peace, sparkles with little icebergs, and is a point of magnificent views. Taku Inlet and the Taku Glaciers. Taku Inlet extends 18 miles in a N. E. direction from Stephens's Passage, widening to a basin where the Taku River, a tide-water, and an Alpine glacier discharge their floods. It is one of the show places on the Alaska coast, and is regularly visited by excursion steamers. The Taku Glacier was christened the Schulze Glacier in 1883, in honour of Paul Schulze, of Tacoma, and in 1891 was renamed the Foster Glacier, in honour of the then Secretary of the Treasury; but locally to geologists, tourists, and navigators it remains the Taku. The native name is Sitth Kluni, Gutta, “the CAPE FANSHAWE TO TAKU INILET. 81 spirits' home.” It is Sitth too Yehk's, the ice spirit's, very palace of delight, and the fabled man-faced seals with their human hands live and frolic in its clear blue grottoes and crystal dells. The ice-stream, a mile in width, fills its cañons from wall to wall, and its squarely broken front rises from 100 to 200 ft. above the water. It is one of the purest and cleanest glaciers, without medial or apparent lateral moraines, and deeply fissured and crevassed for the 5 miles of its course which is visible from the water. Because of its purity, ships prefer to fill their ice-boxes in this basin, and the process of lassoing the icebergs and hoisting them on board is an interesting feature in ship life. On the north shore of the inlet there is a large glacier of the Swiss type, two ice-streams joining and sweeping in a broad fan slope to a terminal moraine a mile in width. A forest has grown upon the west- ern edge of the moraine, and the sandy level is cut by many water- courses and covered with beds of crimson epilobium. A landing is sometimes made, and tourists are given opportunity to visit this glacier, which the natives call Sitth Kadischle, the Spaniards’ Glacier. The Kadischle was christened the Norris Glacier in 1886, for Dr. Basil Norris, U. S. A., and in 1891 was named the Windom Glacier, in honour of the late Secretary of the Treasury. To tourists and scientists it is most commonly known as the Norris. It is more broken than either the Mer de Glace or the Aletsch Glacier, and is six times the width of the former and three times the width of the latter at the last gateway, where it spreads out into the great rounded front. Whidbey and his men were doubtless the first whites, the supposed Spaniards, to enter the inlet, August 10, 1794. From Vancouver's ac- count, the rapid retreat of these glaciers may be estimated. “From the shores of this basin a compact body of ice extended some distance nearly all around ; and the adjacent region was composed of a close connected continuation of the lofty range of frozen mountains, whose sides, almost perpendicular, were formed entirely of rock, excepting close to the water-side, where a few scattered dwarf pine-trees found sufficient soil to vegetate in ; above these the mountains were wrapped in undis- solving frost and snow. From the rugged gullies in their sides were projected immense bodies of ice that reached perpendicularly to the surface of the water in the basin, which admitted of no landing-place for boats, but exhibited as dreary and inhospitable an aspect as the imagination can possibly suggest.” The Takus claim that their fathers remembered a time when the Kadischle (Norris-Windom) Glacier broke off into the sea, and that the Kadischle came at that time. None of these glaciers have been explored or mapped, nor their mo- 82 CAPE FANSHAWE TO TAKU INLET. tion measured, although the basin is the most accessible and convenient place for a geologist's Summer camp. John Muir says that he only “glanced ” at the Taku glaciers in 1879. In 1889 Wiscount de la Sabbatière and his comrades of the French Alpine Club camped here, but mainly as sportsmen. In 1890 the Coast Survey charted the WaterS. The Taku River, leading to the interior, was known to the H. B. Co. and its head-waters were carefully explored by the Western Union Telegraph Company’s parties, 1865–67. Prospectors have followed the Taku since, reporting it navigable for canoes for 60 miles, but plagued with mosquitoes. In 1891 Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka and Dr. C. Willard Hayes ascended to the head-waters and crossed to an affluent of the Yukon, by which they reached Fort Selkirk and proved the exist- ence of an easy route to the northern mines. The Harris Mining District.—Juneau and its Vicinity. Gastineau Channel, named for an old H. B. Co. ship, which was named for the Gastineau River near Quebec, Canada, separates Douglass Island from the mainland above the Taku Open. It narrows from a mile and a quarter at the entrance to a half mile above the Juneau wharf, and the precipitous mountains on the eastern side are over 2,000 ft. in height, with many cascades slipping down those vel- vety green precipices with continuous roar. * Juneau, the largest town in the Territory and the centre of mining operations, is situated on the north or mainland shore of Gastineau Channel, 10 miles above its entrance. It has a population of 1,500, which in winter is largely increased by the miners who come in from distant claims and prospecting tours. It has a court-house, several small hotels and lodging-houses, 3 churches, 3 schools, a hospital, an opera-house, a weekly newspaper, a volunteer fire brigade, a militia com- pany, a brass band, and, in 1891, 22 Saloons. A village of Taku Indians adjoins it on the E. below the wharf, and an Aukvillage claims the flats at the mouth of Gold Creek. A few interesting graves are on the high ground back of the Auk village, many ornamented with totemic carv- ings, and hung with valuable dance-blankets and other offerings to the departed spirits which no white dares disturb. The town-site covers the slope of Chicken Ridge, separated from Bald Mountain by Gold Creek. Numbered avenues running parallel with the beach terrace the slope, and are intersected by Gold, Lincoln, Seward, and Harris Streets. At Third and Seward Streets is the heart of the town, and the Indians hold a daily open-air fish, berry, vegetable, and curio market there, in addition to the curio market on the wharf on steamer days. There are 'wpºwn º CAPE FANSHAWE TO TAKU INLET. 83 several curio shops along Water or Front Street, and on Seward Street, and the finest display of seal, otter, beaver, bear, fox, wolf, mink, er- mine, squirrel, and eagle skins will be found at the largest trading stores. A path leads from the top of Seward Street to the Auk village and to the cemetery across Gold Creek. The eminence between the town and the Auk village is known as Capitol Hill, and Juneau citizens are confident that the future Legisla- ture of Alaska will convene on that hill. Juneau miners wrested from Congress the few political advantages the Territory enjoys. They once sent a delegate to Washington, and even had a clause moving the capi- tal from Sitka to Juneau considered in Congress. There is bitter ri- valry between the capital and metropolis. In 1879 Indians brought bits of gold quartz from Gastineau Channel to Captain L. A. Beardslee, commanding the U. S. S. Jamestown at Sitka. In 1880 Mr. N. A. Fuller, a Sitka merchant, “grub-staked ” Joseph Ju- neau and Richard Harris and sent them to search “the largest of three creeks lying between the Auk Glacier and Taku Inlet.” They beached their canoe on October 1st, and broke rich specimens from the “Fuller the First " claim in the Basin at the head of the creek three days later. Returning to the beach, they held a meeting, with Joseph Juneau in the chair, organized the “Harris Mining District of Alaska,” and made Rich- ard Harris recorder. When the discovery was made known, there was a stampede for “the Taku Camp,” and hundreds reached Miners’ Cove that winter in order to be on the ground in the spring. A guard of marines from the U. S. S. Jamestown maintained order during the first year, but when withdrawn, an era of lawlessness succeeded, which was slightly quelled by the vigilance committee of 1883-'84. With no land. laws, and no Government recognition or protection, the miners could not effect much until the passage of the organic act, in 1884, gave them title to mineral claims, since which the region has rapidly progressed. The new camp was named Pilzbury, for the first assayer who came; then Fliptown, as a miner's joke; next Rockwell, for the marine officer of the U. S. S. Jamestown ; fourthly, it was called Harrisburg; and fifthly, Juneau. This last name was formally adopted at a miners' meeting held in May, 1882, and at the same time all Chinese were or- dered to leave the camp. There were anti-Chinese riots in 1886; Chinese cabins were blown up by dynamite, and the Chinese in town and at the mines on the island were driven on board a schooner and set adrift without provisions. The town-site was surveyed and patented in 1892. The Silver-Bow Basin Mines. The mines in the Silver-Bow Basin, at the head of Gold Creek, are reached by a well-built waggon-road, 33 miles in length. The old trail may be seen zig-zagging across the hillside behind the beach, but 84 CAPE FANSEIAWE TO TAKU INLET. is so overgrown on the Basin side that its use is impracticable. There is a road along either side of the creek, that on the southern or Juneau side affording the finest views of the opposite Yosemite walls. Snowslide Gulch, on this Juneau side, usually bars the pathway with deep snow-banks throughout the summer. “Coulters,” or the Taku Union mill, is half-way up the cañon, and on the northern side a wire tramway brings buckets of ore from a claim high on Bald Mountain, among bryanthus meadows where the mountain-goat browses. Granite Creek, a clear blue mountain stream, joins Gold Creek at the entrance to the Silver-Bow Basin, which a party of Montana miners named for their last camp in that State. This deep bowl in the mountains has long received the débris ground from the perpendicular walls, and was the rich placer-ground worked in those first years when a half million in gold dust and nuggets was carried out by the miners each season. When these placers were worked as low as their water system would allow, the claims were abandoned. Over 50 old placer claims, all the level floor of the Basin, are owned by the Silver-Bow Basin Mining Company, of Boston, which has driven a tunnel 3,000 ft. in length in from Charlotte Basin below, and made an upraise of 90 ft. to pits where two hydraulic giants are washing out the banks by many acres each season. Work is continued night and day from May to October by the use of electric lights. The same company have acquired many of the quartz claims surrounding the Basin, and their 20-stamp-mill disposes of many tons of ore daily. The Silver Quiver, a vast cataract of foam, in outline like an arrow-case, hangs high on the farther wall, its 300 ft. fall dwarfed by its gigantic surroundings. The Eastern Alaska Mill is driven by this waterfall, and the ore comes to it in buckets moving on a wire tramway from the tunnel, 1,000 ft. above. Sheep Creek, 4 miles S. E. of Juneau, holds a waggon-road which leads by steep and picturesque shelves to a small basin where rich sil- ver veins crop out. A mill was erected and the ore successfully worked for two seasons, 1890–91. The ore averaged $40 per ton, and beauti- ful specimens of ruby-silver, averaging 75 per cent silver, were found. The same veins crossing the ridge reappeared on Grindstone Creek, on the Taku Inlet side. The Sheep Creek Basin is the most pictur- esque of such high mountain valleys, its floor a vast flower-bed, and its perpendicular walls support gleaming glaciers. Lemon, Montana, and Salmon Creeks, on the mainland shore above Juneau, hold large gravel-beds, which it is proposed to work with hy- CAPE FANSHAWE TO TAKU INLET. 85 draulic giants. The upper reaches of Gastineau Channel were not navi. gable in Vancouver's time, because of the floating ice from the great Auk Glacier,” the Sitth Klee Chanaje (the place where beef or meat is found). The Auks gave it this name because they were always sure of finding mountain-goat on the pastures around its nevé. The glacial débris has now filled out the channel, until it is only navigable to canoes at high tide. These Auks, who claim Douglas Island and the shores fronting it, are said to be outcasts from the Hoonah tribe, and have always had a bad name. They numbered 800 in 1869, in 1880 they were-counted for 640, and in 1890 there were but 277 found by census enumerators. When Vancouver's men hurried away from the trumpeting Chilkats they fell among the Auks. Their canoes trailed after and surrounded Whidbey's boats. With daggers lashed to their wrists, the warriors landed in advance, and danced on the beach, spears in hand. Mr. Whidbey became nervous, and considering it more “prudent and hu- mane" not to disturb them, whiled away the night in his boats, and then returned to the fleet at Port Althorp. The Largest Quartz-Mill in the World.4 Douglas Island, 25 miles long and averaging from 5 to 8 miles in width, is as much a treasure-island as the Pribyloffs. One mine, the Treadwell, has yielded more gold than was paid for all of Alaska, and while a few prospectors have crossed the island, they have only scratched its shore-line in their search for minerals. Vancouver named the island for his friend the Bishop of Salisbury. It was an untouched wilderness until 1881, when miners, who came too late to stake off anything on the Juneau side, made a camp opposite the tiny Juneau Isle. John Treadwell, a San Francisco builder, unwillingly took the original Bean and Matthews claim on Paris Creek as security for the loan of $150. After it had fallen to him, he bought the adjoining claim of M. Pierre Joseph Ernsara, or “French Pete,” for $300. Messrs. Frye, Freeborn, and Hill, of San Francisco, and Senator John P. Jones, of Nevada, became equal partners with him. Mr. Treadwell remained on the ground, and personally held and defended his prop- erty from lawless squatters, who washed off the surface of his lode, and could not be driven off until the organic act secured his title. * The Auk Glacier was named the Mendenhall Glacier by officers of the Coast Survey in 1891. + There are single mining corporations in Hungary and South Africa employing as many stamps, but in Separate buildings and plants. 86 CAPE FANSEIAWE TO TAKU INLET. Over $800,000 has been spent upon the Treadwell works since then; $100,000 was spent on a ditch 18 miles long, and $300,000 in experimenting with different processes of chlorination before a satis- factory one was found. The one mill of 880 stamps, the largest of its kind in the world, has never stopped night or day, summer or winter, save to set new machinery. Two thousand eight hundred and sixty tons of ore is milled each day, averaging from $3 to $7 per ton in value, and milled at a cost of $1.25 per ton. The ore is quarried in open pits, and, falling through ore-shoots to cars in the tunnels below, is moved by gravity through every process. The heavy plume of smoke from the Treadwell’s chlorination works has killed vegetation for a mile up and down the island's edge. The mill-owners make no objection to tourists visiting the establish- ment, but as they cannot undertake to suspend work nor to station guards or guides, visitors are urged to exercise great caution in enter- ing tunnels, where trains are always moving; pits, where blasts are be- ing fired; and the mill, where no voice can be heard to warn them of belts and cogs. By following the path around to the left of the mill, one may reach the edges of the two great pits, and by following the pipe-line up to the reservoir, a quarter of a mile from the wharf, he reaches a meadow of dwarf laurel and countless strange wild flowers. The ditch and flume furnish a pathway through the heart of the forest, following the convolutions of the hillsides to a point 8 miles above the mill in air-line, but 18 miles distant by the flume. The Mexican mine, adjoining the Treadwell on the east, is owned by the same stockholders, and further claims assert the extension of the same mineral vein nearly to the foot of the island. The Bear's West mine, adjoining the Treadwell on the west, is owned by German and English capitalists, and, owing to disagreements between mining engineers and stockholders, the big mill was never op- erated after its completion in 1888. Its promise built up the adjacent Douglas City, which held but 300 inhabitants in 1890, with a street of stores, a saw-mill, a church, and a School-house. - The U. S. Geological Survey has never made examination of this mineral region. The enormous deposit of low-grade ore on the Tread- well claim is a fault or freak, a mere pocket or chimney of quartz not parallelled elsewhere on the channel. The most experienced min- ing superintendents confess themselves puzzled in this country, geo- logically unlike any other. The country rock, the general formation, is slate, which, with granite, holds the quartz veins, but the veins are broken, confused, thrown in every way, often without distinct walls, and a large party contend that there are not any true fissure veins in the country. Dr. George M. Dawson visited the Treadwell for his own geological satisfaction, and wrote in “The American Geologist,” Au- gust, 1889: “It presents none of the characters of an ordinary lode or vein, being without any parallel or arrangement of its constituents, and showing no such coarse crystalline structure as a lode of larger dimen- sions might be expected to exhibit.” Miners' wages range from $2 per day for Indians, and from $3 per 'L ‘º ‘purºſºl ssolfino， ‘auſae ſamppº， ºnſ I, ADMIRALTY ISLAND. 87 day upward for white men, with board and lodging provided by the em- ployer. The cost of provisions averages more than $1 a day for each man in the larger establishments. Beef cattle are brought up from the Sound and slaughtered at Juneau, which is the only place in Alaska en- joying a regular supply of fresh beef. With the abundance and cheap- ness of venison, duck, salmon and other fish, the prospector lives bet- ter with less exertion and cost than in any other known mining region. Ten-pound salmon may be bought for five and ten cents in the summer, halibut as cheaply in the winter, and a whole deer for $2 at any season, and the miner has less to contend with than in Arizona, Montana, or other new countries. Every condition of life in those regions is re- versed, however. All travel is by water, the canoe becomes his pack- mule, and water-courses are his only trails. He has to cut his way through an unbroken forest from the moment he leaves his canoe, sink- ing knee-deep in the thick moss or sphagnum, and a camp-fire built on such ground gradually burns a deep well-hole for itself. A tent and a Sibley stove are necessary in this region of frequent rains. Admiralty Island, Admiralty Island, 100 miles in length, with an average breadth of 30 miles, is unsurveyed like the other great islands, save as the prospectors have followed the shores and the water-courses. Kootz- nahoo Inlet cuts it nearly in two, and is an inland sea embracing a small archipelago of its own, sheltered in the lieart of the little Ad- miralty continent. Glass Peninsula, on the eastern side, is a considerable island itself, and only joined to the parent shore by a spongy isthmus, over which the Auks drag their canoes. Hawk Inlet almost cuts loose the north- ern end of the island, which is as large and considered as rich miner- alogically as the opposite Douglass Island. A snow-capped mountain range fills the interior. Marble bluffs front for miles on the western shore, and coal has been found in Kootznahoo Inlet, and on the south- eastern shore. Gold quartz veins were found on the northern shore, and this “Tel- lurium Group' promises to build a second Juneau in the picturesque bay named for Captain Robert Funter, an early navigator of the North- west Coast. Killisnoo, on Kenasnow (“near the fort’”) Island, holds Koteosok Harbour between it and the Admiralty shore, and is the site of large oil and guano works. There are a post-office, Government school, and Russian chapel at this place, and a village of Kootznahoo Indians, under command of their great chief Kitchnatti, or Saginaw Jake. 88 ADMIRALTY ISLAND. The first post of the Northwest Trading Company was established here in 1880 as a shore station for whaling. The explosion of a bomb harpoon killed a great medicine-man in 1882, and the company re- fused the Kootznahoos' demand of 200 blankets as indemnity. The natives held a white man as ransom, but discovering him to possess but one eye they returned him as cultus (worthless), and demanded a whole and Sound man as an equivalent for their dead shaman. Their threats to murder the whites at the station were answered by Cap- tain Merriman, the naval commander at Sitka, who hurried over in a revenue cutter, held a council, and bombarded the village of Angoon, the Bear Fort of the Kootznahoos in the great inlet. Much indigna- tion was vented by Eastern editors at the occurrence, and sad pictures were drawn of the natives left shelterless among “the eternal ice and snows of an arctic winter.” The mercury stood 20° higher for the month than in New York and Boston, and the Kootznahoos, securing front seats on the opposite shore, watched the bombardment and cheered the neatest shots. The tribe saved their winter provisions and all their belongings, save what pilferers took during the bombard- ment. They paid a fine of 400 blankets, and have since kept the peace. - FISHERIES OF THE REGION. The cod which abound in Chatham Strait were for a time packed at Killisnoo, the natives receiving two cents apiece for the 8,000 and 10,000 fish of 5 pounds’ average weight which they brought in daily from their trawls. The cod were dried artificially, and an excellent quality of cod-liver oil was made, but this factory could not compete with the Shumagin fleet which controlled the market at San Francisco. The herring, “which has decided the destiny of nations,” next made the fortunes of Killisnoo. From September to May all these waters are visited by great schools of herrings, and once in August the mail steamer passed through one school for four hours—the water silvered as far as could be seen, many whales and flocks of gulls attracted by this run of plenty. The matives rake them from the water with a bit of lath set with nails, and a family can fill a canoe in an hour. Spruce branches are laid in shallow water along the shore, and the herring roe deposited on them are stored in cakes for winter use. The factory's crews net from 300 to 600 barrels of herring at a single haul. Often 1,000 barrels are seined at once, and 1,500 barrels were recently taken by one cast of the seine in Sitka harbour. The same machinery and processes are used at Killisnoo as at the menbaden factories in the East. Each barrel of fish when pressed yields 3 quarts of oil, valued at 25 and 35 cents a gallon. The refuse of 50 barrels of fish, dried and powdered, furnishes one ton of guano, worth $30, and is much in demand for Hawaiian sugar plantations and Cali- fornia fruit ranches. - *. One hundred whites and 50 natives are employed, and the factory is a model of neatness and order, despite the odours. Its gardens are worthy of a visit. ADMIRALTY ISLAND. 89 THE KOOTZNAHOOS. Saginaw Jake is a chief object of interest to tourists. His people, the Kootznahoos, whose name has been spelled in fifteen ways, claim to have come from over the seas, and deny any common origin with the Tlingits. They first manufactured the native spirit, hoochinoo, which carries more frenzy in each drop than any other liquid, and is dis- tilled in old coal-oil cans from a mash composed of yeast and molasses or sugar, mixed with flour. They made hostile demonstrations to Van- couver's men, and Whidbey believed it “more humane and prudent” to leave before tempted to hurt the Kootznahoos. They murdered traders and prospectors as soon as the Russians left, and in 1869 Com- mander Meade, U. S. N., went in the Saginaw, shelled the village in the inlet, took Kitchmatti prisoner and conveyed him to Mare Island, Cal., where he was confined on the Saginaw for a year. The result of this arrest rendered it unnecessary to transfer the garrison from Sitka and build a post on Admiralty Island, as had been contem- plated. The tribe, reduced to 470 souls in 1890, one half the number reported in 1869, are peaceable followers of this old chief, who wears a gaudy uniform, and posts this scutcheon over his log-cabin door : “ KITCHNATTI.” “By the Governor's commission, And the company’s permission, I'm made the Grand Tyhee Of this entire illabee. “Prominent in song and story, I've attained the top of glory. As ‘Saginaw 'I'm known to fame, Jake “is but my common name.’” A young demagogue, a common Kootznahoo politician, has lately set up as a rival and successor of Jake, displays a bombastic couplet on his door-post, and matches every move the great man makes. There is a large lagoon opposite Killisnoo, reached by a rocky pass at high tide and by carries at low water, where herring swarm in their time, malma swim in the tourists' season, and luck always attends a fisherman. Killisnoo is an admirable headquarters for sportsmen, who can here charter launches and find native guides and canoemen. Kootznahoo Inlet can busy sportsmen-explorers for more than 8, month, and is a maze of islands, inlets, bays, coves, lagoons, creeks, and lakes. The narrow entrance is 3 miles above Killisnoo, and just within there is a reef-strewn pass, where the tide runs out with great bverfalls and roars, attaining a speed of 12 knots an hour—the equal of Seymour Narrows. At the Second Rapids, Captain Meade an- chored the Saginaw at slack water in 1869, but with the ebb of the tide the whirlpoº and overfalls caused the vessel to keel over, to 90 ALONG CHATHAM STRAIT AND LYNN CANAL. sheer violently and nearly snap its cables before it could get away. He named the place Hell's Acre. The large village facing this watery acre, although deemed a secure retreat in all attacks, was strongly forti- fied, and the older lodges and the graveyard are interesting. Weins of bituminous coal at the head of the inlet were discovered by Lieutenant Mitchell, U. S. N., in 1868, were visited by Mr. Seward the following year, and have been regularly rediscovered every season since. As first tested, it burned quickly, produced great heat, but rapidly destroyed grate-bars and boiler-iron. Many interesting fossil plants and shells and larger remains have been found in the shales, clay, and sandstones of these formations, and the supposed collar-bone of a pterodactyl, exhumed here by Rich and Willoughby, was long ex- hibited at Juneau. Bear, deer, wild fowl, Salmon, malma, and trout reward those seeking them, and artists are promised landscape re- wards. Along Chatham Strait and Lynn Canal, Chatham Strait and its northern continuation, Lynn Canal, afford the noblest water-way in the archipelago, a broad highway run- ning almost due N. and S. for 200 miles, with an average width of 5 miles. Geologists easily recognize it as the bed of a great glacier. Colnett and the early fur-traders knew it and named it before Wan- couver arrived, and the latter wrote that “the sea-otter were in such plenty that it was easily in the power of the natives to procure as many as they chose to be at the trouble of taking.” The free fishing which Russia allowed for the ten years after the conventions of 1824– ’25 exterminated the precious animal. Chatham Strait is a playground of inferior whales, great totemic creatures whom the Tlingits believed were once bears, but, going to sea, wore off their fur on the rocks and had their feet nibbled off by fishes. A demon, or the all-mischievous raven, often creeps down the whale's throat, and causes such agony that the whale rushes to shore and vomits the intruder on the beach. Paintings and carvings showing the demon in the whale's body are often assumed as proof that the Tlingits have a Jonah legend and direct Asiatic descent. The Chatham Strait whales are credited with the same aggressive disposi- tion as the cinnamon bear, attacking and destroying canoes. A few years ago, a duck-hunter, who unintentionally wounded a frolicking whale, was attacked, and only escaped by reaching shallow water. Halibut-fishing may be followed with success anywhere in the strait, and the crudest tackle with a bit of salmon or a herring for bait will decoy “chicken halibut” of 30 and 60 pounds while a Steamer waits at Killisnoo wharf, - ALONG CHATHAM STRAIT AND LYNN CANAL. 91 Lynn Canal, the grandest fiord on the coast, was named for Vancouver's native town in Norfolk, England, and Point Couverden at its entrance celebrates his own country estate. It extends for 55 miles to Seduction Point, where it divides into the Chilkat Inlet on the W. and the Chilkoot Inlet on the E. It has but few indentations, and the abrupt palisades of the mainland shores present an unrivalled pano- rama of mountains, glaciers, and forests, with wonderful cloud effects. Depths of 430 fathoms have been sounded in the canal, and the conti- nentāl range on the E. and the White Mountains on the W. rise to average heights of 6,000 ft., with glaciers in every ravine and alcove. The Eagle Glacier shows first on the mainland shore above the Auk Glacier. “It is surmounted by a rocky crag, which resembles our national bird so much more than does the figure on the new dollar, that we christened it the Eagle Glacier,” wrote Captain Beardslee in August, 1879. The Cameron Boundary Line * crossing from Point Whidbey to Point Bridget would cut the fiord in two and give to Canada Ber- ner's Bay, where the Tucknook placers and the Seward City mines give great promise. Captain White, who found rich sulphurets at Funter Bay in 1868, took the Wayanda into Berner's Bay and found “numerous quartz veins containing sulphurets,” which he had also found “occurring in similar formation along the N. E. shore of Admi- ralty Island, and on the mainland as far as Taku Harbour, 60 miles S. E. of Berner’s Bay.” William Henry Bay, on the opposite shore, is a nook commend- ed to sportsmen by Captain L. A. Beardslee, whom the struggling salm- on tripped up as he attempted to wade the stream; who found many bear-tracks, and evidences of the best duck-shooting. Fifty spider crabs were speared by his companion in a few hours, a crab whose claws measure 5 ft. from tip to tip, and whose 7-inch shell is packed with a fine, delicious meat. Seduction Point was so named by Vancouver because of “the ex- ceedingly artful character” of the natives inhabiting it. Several canoe-loads of Chilkats met Whidbey at this point, seemed most friendly and hospitable, and led the way up the western arm, but grew hostile when the Englishmen refused to cross the bar and ascend the river to the village where eight chiefs of consequence resided. All were arrayed in ceremonial dress, wearing the fringed markheen, or Chilkat dance-blanket, with tall head-dresses, and one flourished a * See map on page 51. 92 CHILKAT COUNTRY AND PASSES TO THE YUKON. brass speaking-trumpet with great effect. When Whidbey returned from this cruise, Vancouver abandoned all hope of finding the North- west Passage : “From the close connection and continuation of the lofty, snowy barrier, little probability can remain of there being any navigable communication, even for canoes, between such waters (Hudson Bay) and the North Pacific Ocean, without the interruption of falls, cata- racts, and various other impediments,” and for 90 years explorers halted at the foot of this great barrier, the “firm and close connected range of stupendous mountains forever doomed to support a burden of undissolving ice and snow.” The Davidson Glacier, which sweeps superbly from a gorge in the White Mountains and spreads out in a broad, evenly ribbed fan front, is the most imposing and symmetrical ice-stream of its type in the region. It is named for Prof. George Davidson, the astronomer, who explored its lower slopes during his visits to the Chilkat country in 1867 and 1869. It has built a terminal moraine far out into the channel, and a half-mile-wide forest belt encircles the three-mile curve of the glacier's foot. The moraine is channelled with streams and is swampy throughout. The base of the glacier presents a chaotic mass of grimy ice-blocks, and it is a tortuous mile up the ice cliffs and be- tween crevasses to the line of the mountain gateway, where Prof. Davidson found the ice-level 645 ft. above the channel. Steam- launches can be chartered at the canneries to convey tourists to this glacier, and a tolerably dry path has been found leading to the ice. The finest view of the glacier is had from the ship when directly abreast of it in the morning. From Pyramid Harbour the ice mass seems to project in air and overhang its base. The Chilkat Country and the Passes to the Yukon. There is a small glacier in the cañon behind Pyramid Harbour which lies at the foot of the precipitous mountain named for the H. B. Co.'s ship Labouchere. This remarkable mountain rises as straight as a mason's wall for 2,000 ft. above the beach, “subtending an angle of more than 30° as seen from the shore of the harbour,” and shad- owing a ship at anchor. It has been climbed in two hours by an approach from the west side, but its forests contain many bears, whom the climber must be prepared to meet. The cannery and trading station at Pyramid Harbour were established in 1882, and have been successful, save in the season of 1891, when a spring avalanche wrecked the can- nery and cabins. There is usually a large camp of Chilkat Indians be- 59° *>. 22.3%. 22% ºz. : 2.2%, 2 A. g *** * * s 2 º %3%|\\ : Š: SN 407 Unexp/one aſ Aregºſo/7s % % º % § 'iſ'. . : S 3% º Žº * šº º ſº * % - § § !/52 Z/ * §º N. 2:... * ass; ğ. £º: º - - §§ ăs ºği ޺ § h §ºs- ...? ŽS-S ---. - sº § ºRS:X sº * /27/2,~2/ - f º iſſiº ty zº | ra:ſ. §3 ºf $32: < $ $ - . . * - r g š. * § 3 ºff § gºš ºš §§§. º, V § º ޺ º, º- 3: % *f; ~Y/Z, *N. 2. ºš *: f 23 Žº ź w §s, Ø% § Nº. E:ºxºS :3: N 3S $ºS$º: Zik– West of Greenwich > * Fºº- (/n exp/oped £, “ Aegſons To. Scale 1: 650,000. Chilkat and Chilkoot Bays, 12 miles. CHILKAT COUNTRY AND PASSES TO THE YUKON. 93 low the cannery, and, in addition to baskets, spoons, and curios, they often make a flower market with the wild roses and iris which attain wonderful size and colour in this Alpine valley. Wild strawberries are found on the flats, together with the salmon-berries and thimble-ber- ries of the coast. The little Pyramid Island, off Pyramid Harbour, has been also known as Stony, Sandy, Farewell, and Observatory Island. The native name is Shlo-hatch. It is the U. S. astronomical station, its posi- tion 59° 11’ north and 135° 26' west, and is the tourist's farthest north, where he exposes photographic plates, and reads fine print, at midnight in July. Chilkat, a rival cannery and trading station, was built on the op- posite side of the inlet in 1884, and as a point of departure for Yukon travellers this Chilkat has become quite a village. The Chilkat can- nery is one of the largest in southeastern Alaska, and its catch of king and red salmon busies a large force of whites and Chinese. The na- tives were not altogether pleased with the canners’ invasion, and there have been many troubles. The rivalry of the canneries once raised the price of a single salmon from two to fifteen cents, and when the two establishments agreed upon a common price for the next season the Chilkats rejected their terms. Once fifteen cents, always fifteen cents, they insisted. Chinese and whites were sent for, and there has been trouble nearly every summer since. The Chilkats naturally ob- jected to this invasion of their own-fishing grounds, the seining of the river of every salmon, and the great waste and destruction of other fish that are their main food supply; but each time the Governor and the man-of-war are summoned, and the Chilkats are bidden to let the white poachers and their nets alone, on pain of punishment. A trail a mile and a half long leads through the miry woods across to the site of the mission station of Haines, on Chilkoot Inlet, whence Yukon miners canoe to the end of Dyea Inlet. Dr. and Mrs. Willard abandoned the mission a few years ago because of the hostile and sus- picious actions of the Indians after the death of a child to whom they had given medicines. This Chilkoot and the Chilkat and other trails to the Yukon are fully described in the chapter at the end of the book, THE GREAT TRIBE OF THE TLINGIT NATION. The Chilkats and the Chilkoots, really one tribe, are the great people of the Tlingit nation. Captain Beardslee says, that “their legend is that originally all the Tlingits lived in the Chilkat country; 94 CHILKAT country AND PASSES TO THE YUKONI. that there came great floods of ice and water, the country grew too poor to support them, and many emigrated south.” No geologist takes exception to this legend. They have always been great grease-traders and middle-men, and possessed more wealth than any other tribes. They were opposed to any white interference with their trade with the Tinnehs, or interior tribes, and for fifty years successfully resisted the attempts of traders and miners to cross the passes to the Yukon basin. The Chilkats' fur- trade was most valuable to the H. B. Co., but its agents never saw or traded directly with the Tinnehs, who furnished the pelts brought to . them at Mt. Labouchere. The Chilkats met the Tinnehs at the divide and bought their furs. . º The Tinnehs never attempted to pass the line, and the few brought as guests were overpowered with the sights of the great villages, the war canoes, and the traders' fire-ship, smoking like a huge pipe, and moving without paddle or sail. The H. B. Co. sold flint-lock muskets for as many marten-skins as could be piled between stock and muzzle, and the fashion in gun-barrels progressed until the huntsman's weapon was as tall as himself. The white men made a profit of a few hundred per cent on these sales, and the Chilkats cleared a few thousand per cent when trading with the Tinneh. A Boston brig visited Lynn Canal in 1807, and in an attempt to board and loot her 70 Chilkats were killed. They were dreaded by the smaller tribes below them, and fought all the villages between their homes and the Nass River. The Chilkats “mustered about 2,000 ° in 1869, in 1880 there were 988, and in 1890 only 811 of the tribe, the enumerators finding that one whole village had been wiped out by la grippe. Their winter homes are in three villages up the Chilkat River—Hindasetukee, or Tondustek (“the village on the east bank of the river”), or Doniwak's village, is at the mouth of the Chilkat River, where only canoes can go. Kut- kwuttlu-lu, “the place of gulls”—and no gull could speak it more plainly—is next on the river, and then comes the capital, Klukwan, “old town,” where Kloh-Kutz lived and ruled; where every house was fortified with bastions and port-holes; where each totem had a splen- did feast-house, with massive carved columns inside; and the grave- yards are still an ethnologist's paradise. In summer these villages are depopulated, the people flocking to Chilkat and Pyramid Harbour to sell curios and spend what little they may acquire in debaucheries. Saloons were openly kept in 1892, the Chilkats were able to buy liquor by the barrel, if they wished, and the end of the great tribe is at hand. Kloh-Kutz, Chartrich, or Hole-in-the-Cheek, their great head-chief, was a hero worthy of Cooper, and of the best type of Chilkat warriors. His father was one of the band that went over and destroyed the H. B. Co.'s Fort Selkirk, on the Yukon, in 1851, because of interference with their trade; and Kloh-Kutz drew for Professor Davidson the first map of the passes leading from the Chilkat country to the Yukon. The great astronomer first knew him in 1867, and when he returned to observe the total eclipse of the sun in 1869, Kloh-Kutz made the party his guests, and established them in the council-house at Klu-Kwan. CHILKAT COUNTRY AND PASSES TO THE YUKON. 95 Mr. Seward spent eclipse-day (August 8, 1869), at Klu-Kwan, escorted up and down the river by war canoes manned with the flower of Chilkat chivalry. These people commanded the admiration of all whites who knew them before the canneries and miners came, and contact with civilization wrought their ruin. Professor Davidson brought first word of them, and made a vocabulary of their dialect. Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood visited them in 1877, and recorded much of interest in his “Among the Thlinkits in Alaska’’ (Century Magazine, July, 1882), not- ing their rope-duel, the counterpart of the Scandinavian beltespannare. Ensign Hanus's report of his peace mission of 1880 is a valuable ethno- logical contribution, and is reprinted in the census report of 1890. The Drs. Krause came from Berlin to study them as finest and least cor- rupted of Tlingit tribes, and their “Die Thlinket Indianer” is the most valuable publication of its kind. Lieutenant Emmons learned much of them before their decadence, and as proof of their friendship was per- mitted to buy Kloh-Kutz's ancestral narkheen or dance-blanket after the chief's death. - The Chilkats long knew the art of forging copper, and many fine specimens of jade have been obtained from them. They were great hunters as well as traders, and bear and mountain-goat were their espe- cial game. The latter, the “wool-bearing antelope” is found through- out their country, and they have the credit of first weaving the elaborate markheen, or dance-robes, known as Chilkat blankets, but made by Hai- das and Tsimsians as well. They wove them a century ago, but few are made to-day, reduced size, coarse weaving, and traders' dyed yarns ren- dering the modern ones poor imitations of the originals. The old blan- kets, over 2 yards in width, 1 yard deep, with a yard-long fringe border- ing three sides, were woven of finely spun goat-wool on a warp of fine cedar threads suspended from an upright loom and tautened by weights. The designs were combinations of totemic figures, rigidly convention- alized and balanced, that recorded the legends of the wearer's family. The claws and the inverted eyes found on nearly all blankets are those of Hutli, or Hah-tla, the thunder-bird; the full face is the bear and the whale's profile easily recognized. Each piece and part of the design is woven separately, as in Japanese tapestry, connected by occasional brides, and the even satin stitch over and beneath every two threads gives a smooth, fine surface. Black, white, yellow, and a soft greenish- blue are the colours employed, and in a particularly fine blanket belong- ing to a Nass River chief, a rich dull red was employed with fine effect. The black is made from soot, charcoal, or lignite ; the yellow from sek’ hone, a sea-weed found on the rocks; the greenish-blue from boiling copper and this sea-weed together; and the red from spruce-juice, berry- juice, and ochre. To the Yukon River and Mining Camps. Either the Chilkat or the Chilkoot Inlet leads to passes over the continental range, by which the head-waters of the Yukon River may be reached. The Drs. Krause, Dr. Everette, U. S. A., and Mr. E. J. 96 CHILKAT COUNTRY AND PASSES TO THE YUKON. Glave have explored the head-waters of the Chilkat and Alsekh Rivers. Mr. Glave descended the Alsekh to Dry Bay on the ocean-coast one season, and in 1891 took pack-horses over the Chilkat, and proved the feasibility of a pack-trail to the Yukon and the existence of suitable pastures for such animals. His “Pioneer Pack-horses in Alaska,” Cen- tury Magazine, September, 1892, describes the regions traversed. The Chilkoot Trail, used by miners since 1880, begins at Haleys, 26 miles from Chilkat Cannery; in 12 miles it ascends to the pass, and in 11 miles more, or 23 miles in all, drops to Lake Linderman in the bush country, beyond the range. There is a magnificent view over the lake country northward from the summit of the pass. This Shaseki Pass of the natives, Chilkoot of the miners, Perrier of Schwatka, and Dyea of Ogilvie, is 3,500 ft. above the sea, Chilkat Pass 3,100 ft., and White Pass 2,400 ft. The Lewis River flows from the chain of lakes, and at Fort Selkirk, 357 miles from Lake Linderman, unites with the Pelly, and forms the Yukon, which flows thence 2,000 miles to Bering Sea, the third river in size in North America. At the junction of the Porcupine River the Yukon touches the Arc- tic Circle, the true “Land of the Midnight Sun.” Skagway and Dyea, chief points of departure for the Upper Yu- kon and Klondike, are fully described in the chapter at the end of the book. The following is the table of distances to the Yukon mines, as given on the U. S. C. and G. map, No. 3100: Wła, Chilkoot Pass. Via St. Michaels and Yukon River. STAT. MILES, STAT, MILES. Seattle to Dyea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,115 San Francisco to Dutch Harbour. 2,345 Dyea to Dawson...... . . . . . . . . . . 527 | Seattle to Dutch Harbour..... . . . . . 1,955 & e ‘g wº & Dutch Harbour to St. Michaels. , , , 750 TVäa. Ståkºne River. St. Michaels to mouth of Yukon... 97 Seattle to Wrangell... . . . . . . . . . . 854 § { Dawson... . . . . . . . . . 1,260 Wrangell to Telegraph Creek... 140 { % Stewart River. . . . . . 1,321 Telegraph Creek to head of Tes- { % Fort Selkirk...... . . 1,425 lin Lake... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 { % Tiye Finger Rapids, 1,491 Head of Teslim Lake to Daw- { { Teslin River... . . . . . 1,612 SOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 { { White Horse Rapids 1,697 Small steamers have ascended to the foot of White Horse Rapids. The Alaska Commercial Company, of San Francisco, chiefly controls the fur-trade within United States lines from its ocean post at St. Michaels. Steel steamers on the small lakes and a fleet of river boats give quick connection with ocean steamers at St. Michaels. The country is almost destitute of game, forest fires started by miners hav- ing driven animals back from the river; and the herds of moose and reindeer were rapidly exterminated after 1867, when the natives first obtained good rifles and fired at everything from pure wantonness. The river tribes are of Athabascan stock, poor and degraded. There are Roman Catholic missions at Kosoriffsky and Wulato, and an Epis- copal mission at Amvik. King salmon 5 and 6 ft. in length, and weighing as much as 120 pounds, are reported as crowding the Yukon; 1() % -o% º ɺ % % ..& & o 59, 10 ! % º * º %- s º tº:- 㺠%, id § %. idg *S Wºlff %. , $4%; * %. .." %; ** *ADRAKE MAfele 5á * A |. * ; \ i ( o fº A fº tº Y *Tº ity \ K w * w -y t * G J/ t #4 t t ; : ! i ; i y A * ºf | f : t ! ſº ! ! ;4 a - * A ...?” Ž23; .* 7. *: . Wº &ºt, 2 *\%-º/# : 'a 'i' 50 --> 0) ..". % Š: * : G. º. $.” - "illºšhºw º *Tºº º, v. %, ºff} sFRANCIS I. tº ºv" º %,” •; it },Fº SKETCH MAP OF . GLACIER BAY AND MUIR GLACIER, By HARRY FIELDING REID. scALE of MILES . 5 㺠$%.:- ''', w º s' trium ºxº- a twº .** - •: cy K}} -- ºwlſº ISLANDS sº º sº s' WILLOUGHBY, i. 'an, • ‘ºilº 2.2//fſ - * ºf º %. !” \\ *** * * a. Zeitus' 2. gº) & § rº, } wº; - o Šºš8, %30 LOW, WOODED LAND *6ustavus Icy Stražt QUt/S 136° 30' 136° GLACIER BAY. 97 red salmon attain great size, and wild fowl gather on the flats in in- credible numbers. The head-waters of the Yukon were first discovered by H. B. Co. men in 1840. The W. U. T. Survey explored the region in 1865, and Dr. W. H. Dall and Frederick Whymper, who wintered there, have fully described it in their works. Captain Raymond, U. S. A., made a mili- tary reconnoissance in 1867, when he obliged the H. B. Co. to remove to British territory. A pioneer prospecting party crossed the Chil- koot Pass in 1880, and miners have gone in increasing numbers each season since. Lieutenant Schwatka crossed the Chilkoot and rafted his way to the sea in 1883. In 1889 the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey despatched the Turner and McGrath parties to definitely deter- mine the line of the 141st meridian, the International Boundary Line. McGrath placed his monument a little W. of the mouth of Forty-mile Creek, and 13 miles farther E. than the Canadian monument erected by William Ogilvie in 1887. * - Glacier Bay. Captain Beardslee’s Glacier Bay, the Sitth-gha-ee, or “great cold lake’” of the Hoonahs, indents the northern shore of Icy Strait, ex- tending over 50 miles from N. W. to S. E., and is from 5 to 10 miles wide. There are strong currents in the strait and the line of a termi- nal moraine forms a bar off the bay's mouth. Steamers often anchor for the night in Excursion Inlet, a few miles E. of the entrance, or at Bartlett's Bay, just within Point Gustavus. The cannery established at the latter place in 1883 was closed for many seasons, but there is a Hoonah salmon camp on the beach each summer. There is another summer fishing camp in Berg Bay, 10 miles above Point Carolus, on the W. shore. The natives only visit the upper reaches in search of the hair-seal, which delight to ride around on the ice-cakes. Bears are abundant in the forested regions, and have exterminated the deer, as in the Chilkat country, and the big white mountain-goat is found on all the heights. No salmon are found beyond the islands. DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION OF GLACIER BAY. Vancouver's ships were anchored at Port Althorp, on the N. W. shore of Chichagoff Island, while Whidbey and Lemesurieur explored the region. They camped at Point Carolus, and reported that to the N. and E. of that point “the shores of the continent form two large open bays which were terminated [July 12, 1794) by compact, solid moun- tains of ice rising perpendicularly from the water’s edge, and bounded to the N. by a continuation of the united, lofty, frozen mountains that extend eastward from Mt. Fairweather. In these bays also were great 98 GLACIER BAY. quantities of broken ice, which, having been put in motion by the springing up of a northerly wind, were drifted to the southward.” The “frozen mountains,” as he termed glaciers, were uncompre- hended then, and his scarcely indented coast-line was retained in Te- benkoff's later charts. The Russian traders named Icy Strait, and, dreading its currents and icebergs, kept close to the S. shore, and never knew the bay. In 1869, Kloh-Kutz told Prof. Davidson of a great bay full of glaciers lying 30 miles to westward of the Davidson Glacier, one day's journey on snow-shoes. In 1877 Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood, while seal and goat hunting after the forced abandonment of Mr. Charles Tay- lor's plan to climb Mt. St. Elias, canoed about this “great bay 20 miles S. E. of Mt. Fairweather,” and crossed by the Muir Glacier to Chilkat.* In October, 1879, the glaciers were really discovered and made known to the world by John Muir, the California geologist, who had before that discovered the residual glaciers of the Sierras. He ca- noed its length with the Rev. Hall Young, and spent a few days 4 near the Pacific Glacier, and lectured that winter about “the Fairweather glaciers.” In September, 1880, Mr. Muir returned alone and spent sev- eral weeks exploring and enjoying the glacier afterward named in his honour. In July, Captain L. A. Beardslee, U. S. N., had entered . the bay in the trading steamer Favourite, accompanied by Cozian, the famous Russian pilot, who had never heard of the bay before, and by Dick Willoughby, who was living in a Hoonah village in Cross Sound. Captain Beardslee went as far as Willoughby Island, when fog shut down and the owner of the chartered steamer insisted on returning. He charted the lower part of the bay, and by dint of persistent argu- ment had the name of Glacier Bay accepted by the Coast Survey. He gave a tracing of his chart to Captain James Carroll; who took the mail steamer Idaho up the bay in July, 1883, found the glacier John Muir had described, and named both inlet and ice-stream for him. Tourists have been taken to Muir Glacier by that same course every summer, and the next discoveries in the bay were made by Cap- tain Carroll in August, 1892, when he, took the Queen to the front of the Pacific Glacier, and found the picturesque and unsuspected Johns Hopkins, Rendu, and Carroll Glaciers as named by Prof. Reid. The Coast Survey has not yet (1893) charted the bay. INDIAN TRADITIONS, The Hoonahs could not tell anything of the glacier that the scored hillsides, the windrows of old terminal moraines, whether as islands or shoals, did not more plainly declare. They feared and kept away from the region fraught with terrors and dangers, and only seal and goat hunters ventured near. They say that in their “fathers' time”— * See Century Magazine, July, 1882. # See N. P. folder Alaska, by John Muir; Century Magazine, June, 1895; National Geographic Magazine, April, 1896. GLACIER BAY. 99 an indeterminate period, as often 50 as 250 years before—the ice reached to Bartlett's Bay. About 1860 it was in line with Willoughby Island. “Long, long ago’’ the glacier advanced and swept away Klemshawshiki, “the city on the sand at the base of the mountains,” where the Beardslee Islands now rise. “It came down in a day and it did not go away in ten years,” they say, telling how the ice floods de- scended, plowed up their fields, destroyed their houses, as the Gorner glacier once devastated its valley. Again, a great wave rushed in from the ocean, swept away the village near Bartlett Bay, mowed down the forests with icebergs, and left no living thing. They remember, too, that a glacier once crept down and dammed up their best salmon stream. Two slaves were offered up, and Sitth-too-Yehk relented, the barrier melted, and the tyee gaily leaped again. SCIENTISTS' CAMPS. In 1886, Prof. G. Frederick Wright, of Oberlin, Ohio, Rev. J. L. Patton, of Greenville, Mich., and Mr. Prentiss Baldwin, of Cleveland, camped for a month on the E. moraine, two miles below the ice front. By observations made on pinnacles of ice fixed in memory, Prof. Wright figured an advance of 70 ft. a day, and included the results of his studies in the first chapters of The Ice Age in North America (D. Appleton & Co., New York). In 1890, John Muir camped for three months on the east moraine, joined by Prof. Harry Fielding Reid, of the Case School of Applied Sciences, Cleveland, Ohio, who had associated with him Messrs. H. P. Cushing, H. M. McBride, R. L. Casement, C. A. Adams, and J. F. Morse. They built a substantial cabin a half mile below the ice wall with a noble chimney of glacier-cut stones cemented with glacier mud, and from this home station explored every part and arm of the glacier. They mapped the glacial region by plane table from the higher stations.” Prof. Reid measured his base-line on the west moraine and trian- gulated the heights of his stations; a line of red and black flags was set across the living stream, and sets of observations taken from sta- tion E on the ridge of Mt. Wright and from K on the opposite spur, 3 miles apart. The result of this careful work reduced the glacier's pace to about 7 ft. a day in mid-stream. The little company were a board of geographic names and aptly baptized the landmarks found on the map, and their work is accepted as final and exact by all scientists and specialists. In 1891 a pleasure party of seven, including the artist, T. J. Rich- ardson, Mr. C. S. Johnson, a hunter of big game, two ladies, a maid * See “Studies of Muir Glacier in Alaska,” by Harry Fielding Reid, National Geographic Magazine, March, 1892. “Notes on the Muir Glacier,” by H. P. Cushing, American Geologist, October, 1891, and March, 1893. + The Mer de Glace advances 33 inches a day, the Aletsch 19 inches, the Svartesen 12 inches, and the Selkirk Glacier 12 inches, e ‘º *e e © e Q © e º 0 © © º * e O • * *e © & Q @ º º O º © tº * º © Q Q © e ſº 100 GLACIER BAY. and small boy, made the cabin a summer home. In 1892 Prof. Reid devoted another season to mapping, exploring, and studying ice move- ment. Itimerary of the Bay and Inlet. The shores of Glacier Bay are densely forested for 20 miles above the entrance. The Beardslee Islands, crests of so many terminal moraines are low, green gardens that successively illustrate the stages of afforestation. Willoughby Island, a solid limestone mass 3} miles long, from a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, and 1,500 ft. high, named for the old Alaska prospector, marks the gateway to the glacial region. Francis Island, named for the Govern- ment pilot, and the site of palaeozoic fossil remains, lies N. W. of Wil- loughby Island, close to the same western shore. Geikie Inlet, which opens from the W. shore just above Francis Island, holds the Geikie and the Wood (Lieut. C. E. S.) Glaciers at the end of its long rock cutting. Mt. La Pérouse, 11,300 ft., Mt. Crillon, 15,900, and Mt. Fair- weather, 15,500 ft., are visible from the entrance of the bay, and the snows of the Crillon and Fairweather summits feed the great glaciers that slope from their heights to the bay. Mt. Fairweather shows the same summit outline as Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Elias, and this triple-crowned peak, the sharply cut Gable Mountain and the attend- ant white host, with every foot of their elevation from sea-level to summit visible, complete one of the sublimest mountain views in the world. Of the great glaciers pouring to the upper bay, the Geikie, the Hugh Miller, and the Pacific were named by their first visitor, John Muir, and the Wood, the Charpentier, the Johns Hopkins, the Rendu, and the Carroll Glaciers by Prof. Reid. This end of the bay is usually so blocked by ice that canoes rarely, and only one steam- er, have navigated it. There is a large bay on the E. shore, below the mouth of Muir Inlet. The last forest may be noted at this point, a moss-hung, dark, mysterious place, among whose venerable spruces John Muir found his richest botanical field. Muir Inlet and the Great Muir Glacier. Muir Inlet, 5 miles long and 1% to 3 miles wide, opens on the E. shore 20 miles above Bartlett Bay. It stretches due N. and S., the Muir Glacier walling the end with a line of ice-cliffs 9,200 ft. or 13 mile in length, rising 100 and 250 ft. from the water, and extending, f • * © º © e e e º • * * © © ºsô„ºqºoy ſous osyo : vºs ºſ y ſwą wagwº 994 ôvąºnoſº ºwºgopſ) wºn.JŲ ſo ſuo， GLACIER BAY. 101 it is believed, some 900 ft. below the surface of the sea in a long, plough- shaped forefoot. The vast ice plain slopes back at a grade of 100 ft. to the mile to the mountains, 10 and 13 miles distant from the inlet. The Muir Glacier, 58° 50' N., and 136° 5' W., drains an area of 800 square miles. The actual ice surface covers about 350 square miles, the mass of it 35 miles long and 10 to 15 miles wide, lying but a few hundred feet above sea-level. It is fed by 26 tributary streams, 7 of which are over a mile in width. If all their affluents were named and counted, as in Switzerland, the Muir might boast 200 branches or glaciers in its system. The mountain gateway, 2% miles wide, through which it pours to the sea, is formed by spurs of Mt. Case (5,510 ft.) and Mt. Wright (4,944 ft.) on the E., and a spur of the sharply cut Pyramid Peak on the W. All the mountains immediately surround- ing the glacier average from 4,000 to 6,000 ft. in height. The main stream of the Muir flows from the N. W., rising in nevés 40 miles distant. The main current of this magnificently crevassed and broken ice pours through the great plain at a rate of about 7 ft. a day. All efforts to cross it within 10 miles back from the water front have failed, but many believe it possible.” ” Seven medial moraines stretch away in dark fan-rib lines from the front, rising in terraces on the ice and indicating the course and source of chief tributaries. Lateral moraines extend in crumbling bluffs and gravel terraces for 3 miles down either side of the inlet. Ships do not approach the ice wall nearer than an eighth of a mile, because of the masses of ice falling from its face with terrific noise and agitation of the water, and of submarine bergs detached from the sunken forefoot and rising to the surface with tremendous force. Soundings of 86 and 120 fathoms have been made within 100 yards of * Of the Norwegian glaciers, which may be most fairly used for comparison with the Muir, the Jostedalbrae, the largest glacier in Eu- rope, lies 3° N. of the Muir, at an elevation of 3,000 ft. above the sea, and covers 470 square miles. It is an ice-cap on the top of a range, with five arms flowing down and one reaching within 150 ft. of sea-level. The Svartisen, the show glacier of the Norway coast, 8° N. of the Muir, and on the line of the Arctic Circle, is an ice mantle 44 miles long and 12 to 25 miles wide, occupying a plateau 4,000 ft. above the sea. The arm in Meló, visited by North Cape tourists, does not reach tide-water. The Swiss glaciers, all lying from 4,000 and 6,000 ft. above the sea are like those of Mt. Rainier, and in no way to be com- pared to the Muir, 20 of whose arms each exceed the Mer de Glace in S128, . - - - - - -- - 102 GLACIER BAY. the ice wall. Every break reveals surfaces of intensest clear blue ice, which quickly weathers to opaque whiteness and coarse granular snow. The enormous pressure condenses the original snow-flakes to this clear, transparent ice, which is often umber and darkest green with morainal matter. Bergs 200 ft. in length, 50 and 70 ft. high, only one seventh of a berg being visible, are often seen near the front, but break apart and grind together as they sail down the bay, and avalanches of loose particles cover the bay with “mush ice” for miles.” Steamers usually anchor one fourth of a mile below the E. end of the ice wall. P. C. S. S. Co.'s ships usually remain six or eight hours, taking advantage of the tide in entering and leaving the bay when possible and landing their passengers. Vessels of British register can- not land passengers, owing to U. S. customs regulations. A well- built trail and board walk lead over the bluff and the quicksands of glacial mud in the moraine to the surface of the ice, which is there a rolling white prairie, over which a regiment of cavalry might deploy, and where future tourists will travel on sleds, or even horses. There are no dangers to require the ice-axe, rope, creepers, or extraordinary costumes, unless the traveller goes out of his way and seeks them in the crevassed regions of mid-stream. Rubber shoes are a necessity, but are quickly cut by the sharp ice crystals. The Dirt Glacier, filling the cañon between Mt. Case and Mt. Wright, is a treacherous place full of sink-holes and quicksands of glacier mud, where boulders reel and sink beneath one, and the fine “mineral paste and mountain meal” make a sticky, slippery com- pound that hardens like cement. It is worth walking far out on the ice to see the splendid White Glacier, 4 miles long and a half mile wide, sweeping from the E. side of Mt. Case with a black serpent of a medial moraine curving down its dazzling slope. The eastern arm has almost no motion, and melting 20 ft. of its surface each year is fast uncovering nunataks, or islands in the ice. t The slate knobs peeping through the ice abreast of Mt. Case, 3 miles from the beach, are known as the “ Dumplings”; the red granite nunatak, a mile beyond, at the edge of the swift-moving crevassed ice, is the tourist’s “Mouse,” 800 ft. in height. The “Rat,” 4 miles across, on the opposite bank of the raging ice torrent, is 1,855 ft. Both are easily climbed by crevices or caſions in their sides and command mag- * Captain C. L. Hooper notes that in the Pacific arctic, off the Si- berian and Alaska coast, 20 ft. is the average of the highest ice met, GLACIER BAY. 103 nificent views of the glacier, its branches, the surrounding mountains, and the inlet. The Mouse is easily reached on steamer days by good walkers, who, keeping well to the right until past the Dirt Glacier, may follow an air-line to its base without having to turn aside for a crevasse. There are lakes, blooming epilobium, and tattered driftwood in its recesses. The whole surface is brilliantly polished, and ava- lanches of pebbles are frequent. A cairn on the highest point is Prof. Reid's flag station H, and cards of climbers will be found in tins and bottles. A field glass will show the ancient spruce-trees grow- ing on Tree Mount, 2,700 ft., and 9 miles due E., a “Foret,” correspond- ing to the “Jardin’” of the Mer de Glace. The triple-crowned Mt. Young is 16 miles distant, and on its other side are the feeders of the Davidson Glacier in Lynn Canal. Endicott Lake at its base, and Berg Lake N. of it, are miniatures of the glacier's inlet front, replicas of the Margellen Zee in the Aletsch Glacier which moved Prof. Tyndall to such raptures. These lakes are not seen from the Mouse, but a glass shows the Girdled Glacier. The extraordinary moraine with two ends and no present beginning runs from the Dumplings to the brink of the ice-cliffs on Berg Lake, a glacial phenomenon discovered by Prof. Muir. Snow Dome, Red Mt., Black Mt., and Gable Mt., are easily identified on the N., and magnificent ice falls, chains of nunataks and eddies over uncovering islands, may be studied, while at one's feet is the broken, tempestuous ice-stream, so evidently in action that one listens for its roar and to see the great ice waves comb over and scat- ter their spray. The silence is profound, and the north wind that blows perpetually with the current of the ice-stream makes no sound. The Morse, Cushing, McBride, Casement, and Adams Glaciers were named by Prof. Muir as a deserved recognition of the excellent work of those members of his staff of 1890 in exploring these main tributaries of the Muir. The Lateral Moraines. It is an easy walk up the east beach to the base of the ice-cliffs, whose wings override the gravel-bed of an older moraine, and hold many spruce and alder twigs. As falling bergs send great waves across the inlet, it is a little dangerous to follow the beach at high tide. Six Hoonah hunters were swept from the narrow footway by a berg wave a few seasons since, and incautious visitors have many times been drenched knee-deep, There are quicksands at the water's edge, and 104 GLACIER BAY. the crumbling bluffs and melting ice-cliffs launch tons of sand, boulders and ice-blocks without warning. A roaring torrent emerges from an ice cañon at the end of the beach and prevents (1891–92–'93) access to caves at the base of the ice wall as formerly. Many subglacial streams boil up at the base of these cliffs, and these fierce torrents fill the air with a steady undertone like the boom of the Yosemite Fall. The tide-fall of 15 ft. leaves a dark-blue base-line by which one may esti- mate the heights above. A considerable stream, the East River, drains the extreme flank of the glacier, and reaches the inlet a half mile below the ice. On its farther bank there is a large flat covered with driftwood, mainly spruce, and in hollows in the gravel terraces there are the stumps of large spruce-trees, whose fringed fibres tell of an oversweeping ice sheet. Streams are uncovering other buried spruce groves, and one such is disclosed on the beach below high-tide mark. Shrimps, shells of spider crabs, and sea-weed are found on this beach. The whole perpendicular front of Mt. Wright is scored and grooved to a height of 2,000. ft., which, with the spruce and alder stumps found in the older moraine beneath the ice-wings, prove that the glacier has ad- vanced and receded in times past with different climatic conditions. The whole glacial basin was possibly once a forest, and salmon streams frolicked in all the tributary cañons. At another time there was one vast sea of ice over all the region, and the battlemented summit of Mt. Wright was but a nunatak. - On the West Moraine the draining stream is much larger, and a tributary has uncovered a buried spruce forest whose stumps are 10 and 15 ft. in height. The rounded arch of the tunnel from which the stream flowed in 1883 has fallen in, and it is a long and wearisome ap- proach to the surface of the ice on that side. THE RATE OF RECESSION. Rain weathers and breaks away the ice most rapidly, and during a close watch maintained by the writer in July and August, 1891, it did not seem that the stages of the tide had any connection with the fall of ice. On many warm, clear days, when a hot sun fell upon the ice front for 16 and 18 hours continuously, there was no sound. After days of silence came tremendous displays, one quarter and one third of the long wall falling away at once. These falls often occurred in the middle of the night and frequently at daybreak, contraction in the colder hours seeming to free most bergs. - By photographic evidence the glacier receded more than 1,000 yards GLACIER BAY. 105 between Prof. Wright's visit of 1886 and Prof. Reid's first camp in 1890. Photographs taken by the writer in 1891 showed a retreat of 300 yards in the next year. Prof. Muir recognized a retreat of a mile between his visits of 1880 and 1890, and the writer was as much be- wildered by the marked changes occurring between 1883 and 1890. In 1894 and 1896 the ice was still retreating. The Ascent of Mt. Wright, to the Hanging Gardens and Mountain-Goat Pastures. By crossing the East River, following the tributary stream that de- scends the steep ravine on the right, and climbing by the boulder-filled crevices on its north wall the tourist may reach the long spur of Mt. Wright. Professor Reid's cairn and flag Station E, at the brink over- looking the glacier's front wall, command a magnificent view. Station E may be reached in two and a half hours from the landing, when the bridge near the cabin allows East River to be crossed at that point. An easy slope through knee-deep lupin-beds, over acres of bryanthus, butter- cups, forget-me-nots, violets, blue-bells, gentians, geums, asters, and golden-rod leads from Station E to a 3,000-foot terrace extending south a couple of miles and commanding views of all the inlet and lower bay, out to the Chichagoff shore. This region is the favourite pas- ture of mountain-goats; hoof-marks and tufts of wool are seen all the way, ptarmigan run beside one, and marmots whistle on every side. During the weeks the writer spent at Muir Glacier in 1891, the hunters kept the camp larder well supplied from this lofty game preserve. The view from this second terrace (3,000 ft.), Flag Station W, is best in the early morning, when Mts. Crillon, La Pérouse, and Fairweather are clearly cut on the western sky. The Fairweather group hides any view of Mt. St. Elias, 100 miles distant. Station E commands the finest view of Mt. Case’s dark, red-purple, slate mass, its velvety patches of vege- tation and its jewelled glacier gleaming high on its shoulder. By photographs taken from Station E, in 1890–91–92, Professor Reid has been able to note very closely the rate of recession. Tourists sufficiently interested in glacial phenomena to climb to that outlook with cameras may assist this study by forwarding such pictures, with dates attached, to Professor H. F. Reid, care of Secretary of National Geo- graphic Society, Washington, D.C. Photographs from W, from M, on the beach close to Muir's cabin, and from A B on the bluff S. of the mouth of West River on the west side of the Inlet, will also assist in the record, Auroras, * and the Phantom City.—Brilliant auroral displays 106 GLACIER BAY. are often witnessed in August, and mirages frequently appear. By refraction the ice-floes are often magnified into ice-cliffs 1,000 ft. high, apparently barring a ship's retreat southward. The so-called Phantom or Silent City was a hoax of Dick Willoughby's in 1889. Thousands of prints from a cloudy negative of Bristol, England, were sold, upon his statement that he had seen and photographed the city from Glacier Bay. Amateur photographers will find it almost impossible to secure a sharp negative of a mirage. The lines of glimmering ice-cliffs leave no definition or shadow, waver and fade quickly. The reflected light from these glaciers and snow-fields misleads even professional photog- raphers to over-expose their negatives. The smaller stops in a lens are often sufficient for an instantaneous exposure, and such exposures may be successfully made with ordinary stops on cloudy days. In weak sunlight the lens should be stopped down, and in the developing- room the bromide should be in hand. On the Mainland Shore of Cross Sound. Dundas Bay and Taylor Bay, W. of Glacier Bay, contain tide- water glaciers and are favourite sealing-grounds of the natives, who bitterly resented the incursion of Tsimsian seal-poachers in 1880. The Tsimsians were driven off, but threatened to return with 90 canoes and exterminate the Hoonahs. By the intervention of Captain Beardslee, U. S. N., and Dr. Powell, Indian Commissioner for British Columbia, an impending war of all the coast tribes was averted, and the Tsimsians were threatened with severe punishment if any more poaching should be reported. The glacier in Taylor Bay was visited by Mr. Charles Taylor and Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood in 1877, and explored by John Muir in 1880. Its front and slope are seen at long range from ships passing through Cross Sound. The Chichagoff Island Shores. Chichagoff Island, named for the Russian navigator who first attempted to find a Northeast Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is least known of the greater islands of the archipelago. It is about 70 miles long, with an average breadth of 40 miles. Cross Sound, lead- ing in from the ocean on the N., was named by Captain Cook on Holy Cross Day, May 3, 1778. Port Althorp, within its entrance, was Wan- couver's anchorage for several weeks in 1793. Idaho Inlet, E. of GLACIER IBAY. 107 Port Althorp, was discovered by Captain James Carroll, July, 1883, upon Dick Willoughby's assurance that it was a broad forty-fathom channel leading to the open ocean N. of Salisbury Sound, frequently traversed by himself. The Idaho ran aground a few miles from the entrance in waters alive with salmon and flounders, between shores where deer wandered in plain sight, and many bear-tracks could be seen. A saltery built in 1884 was closed after a few years. The Hoonahs (Hoon, “the north wind,” and wah, “lake"), inhabit- ing Chichagoff Island and the shores of Icy Strait, have been longest preserved from contact with white civilization. They have had a bad name from earliest times. In 1862 they seized the H. B. Co.'s ship Labouchère at Swanson's Harbour, imprisoned the captain and crew, and looted the vessel completely. It was not the H. B. Co.'s policy to retaliate and injure the fur-trade, and they passed by Hoonah anchorages for several seasons. Ambassadors besought the resump- tion of trade, and when the “fire canoe’ came again the whole tribe joined in the water parade, the songs and dances of peace, filled the air with the eagle down of peace, and carpeted the deck with potlatch otter-skins. In 1867 the chief in his war-canoes met the U. S. revenue cutter Lincoln, but was not allowed on board. “You come Icy Strait. Me give you big fight !” the chief bawled in Chinook as he left. The Hoonahs numbered about 1,000 in 1869. In 1880 there were 908 enumerated, and in 1890 only 590. Their chief village of Kom- tokton in Port Frederick, has been known as Hoonah P. O. since the mission and Government day school was established. It numbered 438 inhabitants in 1890. The smaller village of Klookukhoo has but 15 inhabitants. Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood, in the Century Magazine, July, 1882, and Captain Beardslee, in his Forest and Stream letters of 1878–79, have given interesting descriptions of Komtokton, the Hoo- nahs, and their legends. The finest halibut grounds in the archipelago are those off Point Adolphus. - As soon as the ice breaks, in March, a hundred canoes are seen fishing among the floes. Captain Beardslee and one other angler caught 47 halibut averaging 40 pounds each in one hour in July, after the regular halibut season. One Hoonah managed the canoe, clubbed and gaffed the fish, caught with salmon bait and native tackle. Tlin- git halibut hooks, lines, and clubs are most ingeniously and often richly decorated. The lines are made of the giant kelp (mereocystis), which often grows to a length of 300 ft. in tide-swept channels. It is soaked and bleached in fresh water, and then stretched, dried, smoked, and worked until it is as firm as leather but pliable as silk. The foot-long hook is cut from the heart of spruce or cedar roots— 108 FROM CEIATHAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. for the halibut can detect the taste of resin–and this hook as well as the club are carved with the owner's totem and other significant de- vices bound to ensure the fisherman’s luck. With such tackle, a lone fisherman can haul up and quiet even a 200-pounder ; but chicken halibut, weighing 30 or 40 pounds, are the choice, and 70-pounders the average. There is a canoe portage from Port Frederick to the Tenakee Pas- sage, leading into Chatham Strait. There are hot sulphur springs on the passage, long resorted to by the natives, and a chosen winter camp- ground of miners. There are also hot sulphur springs on the W. coast of Chichagoff, between Cape Edward and Lisianski Strait, strong sulphur water bubbling up in natural rock pools on the beach. From Chatham Strait to the Ocean by Peril or Po- gibshi Straits, Peril Straits, the Tlingits’ Koo-le-tchika (a dangerous channel), 40 miles in length, bend in a great bow from Chatham Strait to Salis- bury Sound, separating Chichagoff and Baranof Islands. It is a famous landscape reach, and at the two narrows there are strong tidal rapids. The east half of the straits is a broad, smooth water-way for 18 miles, narrowing beyond the opening of Hoonah Sound on the north shore. Deadman’s Reach is the smooth stretch on the Baranof side before reaching Poverotnoi (Turnabout) Island, a symmetrical green island that blocks the pass. On one side of it is the true Po- gibshi, or Peril Point, and opposite is the Poison, or Pernicious Cove, where one hundred of Baranof's Aleut hunters were killed by eating poisonous mussels in 1799. For this reason the Russians as often called them Pagoobnoy, or Pernicious Straits. For the next 3 miles the half-mile-wide channel is swept by strong tidal currents, the tides from Chatham Strait and the open ocean meeting at these First or North- ern Rapids. A half hour of slack water intervenes between the hours when the tides race at eight and ten knots an hour, and vessels are timed to pass within that limit of safety. The straits widen beyond the Rapids, and inlets open magnificent vistas from the main cañon, whose steep shores are densely forested from tide-line to the snow-line of the mountains. At the Second or Southern Rapids, 12 miles beyond, the channel “at its narrowest part is scarce 100 yards in width, and is rendered very dangerous by the sunken rocks over which the tide rushes in its strength with the FROM CHATEIAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. 109 sound of a roaring cataract, the current often running more than ten knots an hour. . . . For 8 miles the navigation is the most dangerous of any in Southeastern Alaska, except Kootznahoo Inlet, owing to the strong tide and the sunken rocks that obstruct this passage.” Baranof traversed these straits in 1804, and Langsdorff wrote an account of his exciting run with the tide in 1805. These straits were surveyed and buoyed by Captain Coghlan in 1884, and since then there have not been any such disasters as befel the U. S. S. Wayanda and the mail steamer Eureka. Tourists going through at high-water slack, when the current boils slowly, do not see nor hear the bore 4 ft. high rushing by, eddies sucking down, waves boiling up, spar-buoys borne under, and kelp snapping in the current, as at the turn of the tides. Salisbury Sound was named for Portlock's friend, the noble Marquis of Salisbury, in 1787. The Spaniard Galiano anchored there, in the Puerto de los Remedios, in 1775. Captain Cook called it the Bay of Islands in 1778, and the Russians named it Klokacheff Strait. The peak of Mt. St. Elias has been seen from its mouth. St. John the Bap- tist Bay, at its eastern end, holds beaches and bluffs of marble and a vein of lignite discovered by Professor Blake in 1867, Neva Strait, leading from Salisbury to Sitka Sound, was little used in Russian days because of the sunken rocks and ledges in White- stone Narrows, and vessels went around Kruzoff Island to avoid them. Surveys have made the course plain and safe, but as it can only be run at a certain stage of the tide by large steamers, a few hours' anchorage is sometimes enforced. Nakwasina Passage surrounds Halleck Island, and is a great resort of winter sportsmen. It was recommended as a site of a new military post to which the garrison of Sitka should be removed. Qvassinsky, “the place where quass was brewed,” is the local name for the level meadows and the hay ranch maintained by the Russian Company, and occupied since 1867 by American settlers. Beehive Island is an un- mistakable landmark at the southern entrance of Nakwasina. The entrance to Katliana Bay is 2 miles S., and within it there is another hay ranch and a cabin resorted to by sportsmen for bear, deer, duck, geese, grouse, and Swan shooting in the winter. This Kat- liansky camp is 3 miles in from the entrance, and there is a sharply cut pyramidal peak as landmark at the end of the valley. The Bay of Starri Gavan, or Old Sitka, 2 miles below Katliana Bay, is the site of Baranof's first settlement, the Fort Archangel Gabriel established in 1799 and destroyed by the natives in 1802. It is 3 miles 110 FROM CHATHAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. N. of the present Sitka, on the E. shore of Sitka Sound, which is 14 miles long and from 6 to 7 miles broad, an island-studded expanse sheltered between the Kruzoff and Baranof shores. Baranof Island and the Russian Settlements. Lisianski, who first surveyed them, named Baranof, Chichagoff, Kruzoff, and Jacobi's Islands, and charted them in 1805 as the Sitka Islands. Baranof, best known of any island in the archipelago, is over 120 miles long and about 30 miles wide. All its shore-line has not been surveyed, the interior is unknown, and no one has yet (1893) crossed it. There is a cannery at Red Bay on the S. W. shore, but the only other settlements are in the immediate neighbourhood of Sitka. The Russians reached the Pacific shores of Siberia in 1639, Vitus Bering, by commission of Peter the Great, discovered the strait sepa- rating Asia and America in 1728, and in 1741, at the behest of the Empress Anne, started to find Vasco da Gama’s fabled land. His two ships separated in a storm and fog about latitude 46°N. Bering sailing N. E. reached Kayak Island on St. Elias Day, July 17, 1741, saw and named the great mountain, touched at the Shumagins, and was ship- wrecked on the Comandorski Islands. The commander died, but the scurvy-stricken crew survived, reached Kamschatka with the pelts of the sea-otters on whose flesh they had lived, and stimulated traders to con- tinued voyages in search of such furs. Tschirikow, reaching the coast near Sitka, sent a boat's crew in to reconnoitre the bay; at the end of six days sent a search party for them, and left after a three weeks' stay short of fourteen men and all their boats. The defiant behaviour of canoe-loads of natives that paddled out to the ship, the din on shore and columns of smoke, pointed to some savage sacrifice at the base of his Mt. St. Lazaria. In 1783, Gregory Shelikoff, a rich Siberian merchant, established a post on Kadiak Island, and joined to him Alexander Baranof, a Rus- sian merchant who had entered the Siberian trade and been ruined by the loss of his caravans. Baranof pushed the enterprise in every way, and in May, 1799, reached Sitka Sound and built a stockaded post 3 miles N. of the present town. An imperial charter with monopoly of . the American possessions for twenty years had been obtained by Resanof, the son-in-law of Shelikoff, and a court councillor, and Bar- anof was made chief manager of the Russian American Fur Company, in which nine rival Siberian firms were consolidated and members of the imperial family were stockholders. The fort at Sitka was destroyed in 1802, and all save a few Rus- sians, who found refuge on a British trading-ship, were murdered. Baranof was absent at the time, but returned in August, 1804, with 800 Aleut and Chugach hunters. The natives fled at sight, and he FROM CHATHAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. 111 went back through the archipelago destroying villages everywhere. The Sitkans entrenched themselves on Katlean's Rock, or the Kekoor— “a hill at the end of a peninsula”—and at the mouth of Indian River. Captain Lisiansky had arrived meanwhile with a man-of-war, and in two days captured the Kekoor, and four days later the river fort ca- pitulated, the occupants fleeing in the night, however, killing dogs and strangling babes lest any sound betray them. By Baranof's advice Re- sanof went to Japan and vainly attempted to open trade to secure Sup- plies for the new colony. Baranof contemplated building a fort on the Columbia, but through Resanof opened trade with the Spanish colonies in California. Resanof, whose wife had died, paid court to Donna Concepcion Arguello, daughter of the alcalde at San Francisco Bay; they were betrothed, and Resanof died in Siberia while on his way to Petersburg to obtain the Czar's consent to the marriage. Baranof was suspicious of John Jacob Astor's fort on the Columbia and his many ships, and distrusted the New York trader's offer of a perma- nent alliance of interests, which was cut short by the War of 1812. Baranof established an agricultural colony at Bodega Bay in the redwood country north of San Francisco, and the mills and lands were tended until sold to General John A. Sutter for $30,000, a few years before the discovery of gold in California. An Hawaiian colony pros- pered for a time, and Baranof planned the annexation of those islands, but, after eighteen years of Service, he was summarily deposed, his son-in-law, a young naval officer, took charge, and until 1864 the chief managers were naval officers, who filled five-year terms at a salary of $5,000 a year, with a residence and many perquisites furnished by the company. Baranof, Nanok, or the master, as all Tlingits called him, died in Batavia on his way home to Russia, April, 1819. Resanof in his journal, Langsdorff, Lisiansky, and Washington Irving have pic- tured this able tyrant and his surroundings, and the wretched condi- tion of the Aleuts he impressed as hunters, and the promyschlniks or indentured Siberian labourers whom he kept so deeply in debt that they were never free to leave. None of the chief managers succeed- ing Baranof were able to make as large returns as he, and after re- newed leases the company saw the advisability of closing out, and the Russian Government the disadvantage of holding such remote depend- €DC16S. The Russian chief managers were: Gregor Shelikoff, August 3, 1784, to July 27, 1791. Alexander Baranof, July 27, 1791, to January 11, 1818, Lieutenant Yanovsky for Captain Hagemeister, January 11, 1818, to January, 1821. Captain Mouravieff, January, 1821, to January, 1826. Captain Chistiakoff, January, 1826, to January, 1831, Baron Wrangell, January, 1831, to January, 1836. Captain Kupreanoff, 1836–1840. 112 FROM CHATHAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. Lieutenant-Commander Etholin, 1840–1845. Captain Michael Tebenkoff, 1845–1850. Lieutenant-Commander Rosenberg, 1851–1853, Captain Voevotsky, 1854–1859. gº Captain Furuhelm, 1859–1864. The military governor, Prince Demitrius Maksoutoff, 1864, to Octo- ber 18, 1867. Baron Wrangell, the arctic explorer, was a diplomatic agent to Mexico as well as chief manager at Sitka; and after Captain Moura- vieff, Captain Etholin was the great constructor and most enterprising manager. His was the golden age of the colony. Captain Tebenkoff made thorough surveys; and Kadin, an Aleut from the parish school, drew the 38 charts, and Terentieff, another Aleut, engraved on copper the maps of the great atlas of 1848, which is authority where not suc- ceeded by the U. S. Coast Survey’s recent work. Prince Maksoutoff, the only “governor,” was detailed toward the end of the fur company’s last lease, when their unwillingness to continue the charter under the same burdensome conditions made it probable that the Czar would have to govern this like his other provinces, instead of farming it out. The approaching expiration of that profitable lease caused him to seek a purchaser for these remote possessions, so impossible to defend in case of war, and so directly adjoining British territory. THE PURCHASE OF RUSSIAN AMERICA. In 1844–45 the Emperor Nicholas offered Russian America to the United States for the mere cost of transfer, if President Polk would maintain the United States line at 54° 40', and shut England out from any frontage on the Pacific. In 1854 it was offered to the United States, and again in 1859, when $5,000,000 was refused. From 1861 to 1866 survey parties of the W. U. T. traversed Alaska, choosing a route for a telegraph line to Europe via Bering Strait. The success of the Atlantic cable in 1866, after the failure of 1859, ended the project, and the line completed to the Skeena River was abandoned. A California commercial syndicate proposed the leasing and then the purchasing of the country in 1864 and 1866, and the project was informally consid- ered at St. Petersburg. Secretary Seward deeply appreciated Russia's tacit alliance in sending its fleets to the harbours of San Francisco and New York in 1863, and keeping them there at that critical time when France and England were on the point of recognizing the Richmond government. Upon an intimation that the Czar wished to sell Russian America to any nation but England, Secretary Seward opened negotia- tions with Baron Stoeckl in February, 1867. A treaty of purchase was sent to the Senate March 30, 1867, reported April 9th, ratified May 28th by 30 yeas to 2 nays, and proclaimed by President Johnson June 20, 1867. Senator Charles Sumner, who especially championed the pur- chase, suggested Alaska—the name the natives gave to Captain Cook FROM CHATHAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. 113 —for the name of the mainland. It was intended to make General Garfield a first Governor of the Territory, and later divide it into six Territories. THE TRANSFER OF RUSSIAN AMERICA TO THE UNITED STATES. Immediate military occupation was decided upon. General Lovell H. Rousseau, as commissioner on the part of the United States, and Captains Pestschouroff and Koskul on the part of Russia, met at Sitka, October 18, 1867. Three men-of-war, the Ossipee, Jamestown, and Resaca, and General Jefferson C. Davis and 250 regular troops were in waiting, and at half past three o’clock that afternoon Prince Maksoutoff and Vice-Governor Gardsishoff and the commissioners met the United States officers at the foot of the Governor's flag-staff. Double national salutes were fired by the men-of-war and the land battery as the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised. Captain Pestschouroff ad- vanced as the Russian flag fell, and said: “General Rousseau, by au- thority of his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, I transfer to you, the agent of the United States, all the territory and dominion now possessed by his Majesty on the continent of America and in the adja- cent islands, according to a treaty made between those two powers.” General Rousseau accepted, with similar brief phrases, and his young son raised the new flag slowly. Prince Maksoutoff gave a dinner and ball that night, the shipping was dressed, and fireworks were displayed. There was an immediate exodus of all Russians able to leave, the Government offering free transportation to and homes in the Amoor settlements. The Julian gave way to the Gregorian calendar over- night, and a day was dropped from Sitka's records to right the difference of twenty-four hours between the Russian day coming eastward from Moscow and our day coming westward from Greenwich. During the summer of 1867 Prof. George Davidson and eight scien- tists made a reconnoissance of southeastern Alaska, and their report with Senator Sumner's speech, were the strongest arguments Secretary Seward offered in his “Russian America” (Fortieth Congress, second session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. 177), submitted at the con- vening of Congress in December. There was bitter opposition to ap- propriating the $7,200,000 gold equal to $10,000,000 in paper at that time, to pay for the territory so summarily taken possession of ; but on July 14, 1868, the House agreed by a vote of 98 against 49, and the draft was handed Baron Stoeckl. Corruption in the purchase was alleged, and a winter of investigation followed the winter of contest and ridicule. In 1869 ex-Secretary Seward visited Alaska, was first a guest of Mayor Dodge, and went off to Prof. Davidson's observatory in the Chilkat coun- try. Returning by way of Kootznahoo, Mr. Seward was the guest of General Davis on the Kekoor, and addressed the citizens in the Lutheran church. He visited the Taku Glacier, the mining camps on the Stikine and Fort Wrangell, and was more than ever convinced of the great ad- vantages gained by the purchase of Alaska. Lady Franklin reached Sitka by the troop-ship Newbern in 1870, and with her niece Miss 114 FROM CHATHAM STRAIT TO THE OCEAN. Cracroft was a guest of the commandant on the Kekoor. The dis- covery of gold in 1871 lent an excitement to garrison life, and army pay-vouchers were sunk in mining experiments at Sitka as profitlessly as navy pay-vouchers were poured into Juneau prospect-holes ten years later. -- - Alaska was at first a separate military department, General J. C. Davis commanding, with garrisons at Sitka, Fort Tongass, Fort Wran- gell, Kodiak, Fort St. Nicholas in Cook's Inlet, and a detail on the Seal Islands. Eight officers succeeded General Davis at Sitka, after Alaska became a part of the Department of the Columbia, and June 14, 1877, Sitka, the last garrison, was vacated, and “all control of the military department over affairs in Alaska’’ ceased. In 1897 a military post was established at St. Michaels, in 1898, at Dyea and on the Yukon. AN ABANDONED TERRITORY. Within a few months after the troops left Sitka, the Indians had de- stroyed all Government property outside the stockade and threatened a general massacre. Appeals to Washington for protection were un- heeded. The residents were besieged in the old fur warehouse in February. H. B. M.'s Osprey, Captain Holmes A'Court, was at Esqui- mault, when a last desperate appeal came to Victoria, and without orders or instructions hurried north, arriving from the ocean as a great war party was coming in from Peril Strait for the final attack. The residents attempted to raise the British flag and implore annexation and protection by England, but were prevented by Michael Travers, Duke of Japonski, an ex-sailor of the United States navy. Captain A’Court remained until a revenue cutter and a man-of-war arrived. A man-of-war has been continuously detailed to service in South- eastern Alaska ever since, and until the establishment of civil govern- ment such commanding officers were virtually naval governors and the ships Jamestown, Wachusett, Adams, and Pinta the seat of government. Captain Lester A. Beardslee, whose reports (Forty-sixth Congress, second session, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 145, and Forty-seventh Congress, first ses- sion, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 71) are the most valuable contributions to Alaskiana since the transfer, was succeeded by Captains Glass, Merri- man, Coghlan, and Nichols. Thirty bills providing a form of government for Alaska were intro- duced between the transfer and the passage of Senator Harrison's bill, May 13, 1884, which gave the nondescript tract the skeleton of civil gov- ernment; a governor, district judge, marshal, clerk, and commissioners; with right to enter mineral claims, but distinctly withholding the general land laws. Attempts toward securing representation at Washington failed, and the invitation to join in the Columbian Exposition on a foot- ing with other Territories was the first civil recognition given the so- called district, and the admission of delegates to the National Conventions at Minneapolis and Chicago in 1892 the first political privilege. “Alas- ka for the Alaskans’’ is vehemently claimed as a fit rule in executive appointments. The general land laws were extended to Alaska in 1898. The Territorial Governors have been : John H. Kinhead, of Nevada, SITECA AND WICINITY. 115 May, 1884, to September, 1885; A. P. Swineford, of Michigan, Septem- ber, 1885, to June, 1889; Lyman E. Knapp, of Vermont, June, 1889; James Sheakly, June, 1893; John G. Brady, of Alaska, June, 1897. The Russian archives, manuscript journals, records, logs, and ac- count-books were transferred from Sitka to the State Department at Washington in 1867, and, with Tikhmenieff’s history of the colony, offer much of interest to those reading Russian text and script. Sitka, the Capital of the Territory of Alaska. Sitka, the capital and seat of government of the Territory of Alaska, is situated on the W. coast of Baranof Island. It is the official resi- dence of the Governor, United States District Judge, and other Territorial officers, and had a population of 1,188 in 1890, composed of 298 whites, 859 natives, and 31 Chinese. Sitka is the home port for the U.S. man- of-war detailed for protective duty in these waters, and its marines are quartered on shore. The town is built on level land at the mouth of Indian River at the foot of Mt. Verstovoi (3,216 ft.). Lincoln, the main street, extends from the Government wharf to the old Russian saw-mill, and the Gov- ernor's Walk, a beach road built by the Russians, continues to the Point, a half mile distant. A large parade-ground fronts the harbour. A gran- ite monument at its centre is the U. S. Astronomical Station (latitude B7°02' N., and longitude 135°19'W.). Mail steamers remain twenty- four hours, and excursion steamers make shorter stay. Ships' time is one hour in advance of local time, which tourists should remember. The chief objects of interest are the ruins of the “Castle,” or old residence of the Russian Fur Company's chief managers, destroyed by fire in March, 1894, the Greek cathedral church, the Indian village, the block- houses and Russian cemetery, the Sitka Mission and Industrial School, the Sitka Museum, and the Park along the banks of Indian River. There are several traders' stores with curio departments, and private dealers in curios offer interesting and very expensive souvenirs. The Alaska totem spoon was designed by the late Frederick Schwatka, and two native sil- versmiths make unique silver trophies. The spoon mania has always flourished in Alaska, and the Haidas' carved goat-horn spoons are real works of art. Spoon-polishing is a fashion of every tourist season. The Barracks and Custom-House at the right of the wharf were built by the Russians, and the barracks building is the Territorial jail and court-house, with apartments above for civil officers. A long flight of steps leads to the Castle, as Americans have called it since 1867, crown- 116 SITEA AND WICINITY. ing a rocky eminence 80 ft. in height. Baranof first occupied a leaky two-roomed cabin at the foot of Katlean's Rock, where the barracks or jail kitchens stand. Later he built a block-house on the height, which was burned. Governor Kupreanoff built a large mansion, which was nearly completed at the time of Sir Edward Belcher's visit, 1837. It was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1847, and rebuilt on the same plan. Lisiansky, Lutke, and Whymper have given pictures and descrip- tions of these three citadels protected by stockades, bastions, and bat- tery of forty pieces, and with Sir George Simpson have described its social life. It is a massive structure, measuring 86 x 51 ft., built of cedar logs, joined with copper bolts and riveted to the rock. It is three stories in height, with a glass cupola, which was formerly the light-house of the harbour, the lamp standing 110 ft. above the sea. It was richly fur- nished and decorated when transferred to the U.S. military commandant in 1867, but after the departure of the troops was looted of every be- longing, wantonly stripped, and defaced. No repairs were made until 1893, and just after the completion of the repairs the castle was de- stroyed by fire, March 17, 1894. Baranof's daughter, Mme. Yanowski, was the first hostess on the Rekoor (1805–221), but the Baroness Wrangell (1831–36) was first to leave any social fame. Mme. Kupreanoff (1836–40) crossed Siberia on horseback to accompany her husband to this distant post. Mme. Etho- lin (1840–45), a native of Helsingfors in Finland, was the Lady Boun- tiful of blessed memory who did most for the colony. She established a school for creole girls, dowered them, and gave them wedding feasts in this home. Sir George Simpson has described her refined hospitality, the banquets of 30 and 50 guests, the costly plate, and appointments. Mme. Furuhelm (1859–64), a Petersburg beauty, was long remembered for her accomplishments and kindness. The first Princess Maksoutoff (1864), an Englishwoman, died soon after her arrival, and was buried in the Lutheran cemetery on the knoll in line half-way between the two block houses. The second Princess Maksoutoff was young and beautiful, with great tact and charm, and made life on the Kekoor one round of gaiety until the day when with streaming eyes she watched the Russian flag flung down and the United States colours run up on the citadel's flag- staff. It was the residence of the successive military commandants from 1867 to 1877, and Lady Franklin and Mr. Seward were entertained there. Two young officers of the U. S. S. Adams and the purser of the Idaho manufactured a ghost story to meet the demands of the first pleasure travellers in 1883, who insisted that the deserted and half- wrecked castle must be haunted. A Lucia di Lammermoor, condemned to marry against her will, killed herself, or was killed by a returned lover, in the drawing-room, the long apartment on the second floor, north side, adjoining the ball-room, where she walks at midnight, SITEA AND WICINITY. 117 General Davis cleared away the old ship-yard, and filled in and made the present parade-ground. The officers’ quarters that fronted on two sides were nearly all burned by the natives between 1872 and 1877, the one nearest the sea-wall and native village being used as residence by the territorial governors. The heavy stockade around the settlement was torn down piecemeal after the troops left. The Sitka Historical Society was organized in time to preserve the two block-houses. The large log building next the Custom-House, occupied by the Sitka Trading Company, was the old fur warehouse, and often held pelts to the value of $1,000,000 in Russian days. Russian Orthodox Church of St. Michael. Baranof built a small chapel in 1816, but when Ivan Veniaminoff was made bishop of the independent diocese of Russian America he built this cathedral, occupying a quadrangle midway in the main street. It was dedicated in 1844. Wenjaminoff, then Metropolitan of Moscow, sent rich vestments, plate, pictures, and altar furnishing to the church, which was also under the special protection of the imperial family, who filled it with gifts. The chime of six bells in the cupola was sent from Moscow. The interior is richly decorated, and is open to visitors on steamer days for a small admission fee, which goes to the poor fund of the parish. There are no seats, the congregation standing or kneeling, and a male choir chanting throughout all services. The interior is finished in white and gold, and the inner sanctuary, where no women may enter, is separated from the body of the church by elaborate bronze doors. The picture of the Ascension over these doors was formerly in the chancel of the Lutheran church. Massive candlesticks stand at either side of the doors, and the screen holds full-length pictures of St. Michael and St. Nicholas in armour and robes of beaten silver, with jewelled halos and helmets. The chapel and the altar in the right transept are dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The chapel of St. Mary on the left is used for winter services, and the altar picture of the Madonna and Child, their sweet Byzantine faces shadowed with heavy silver draper- ies, is much admired. The church treasury contains many rich vestments, jewelled crowns, crosses, caskets, and reliquaries; a fine baptismal bowl, illuminated breviaries and missals with jewelled and enamelled covers. The bish- op's mitred cap and the crowns used in the wedding ceremony are very ornate. The bishop's see was transferred to San Francisco in 1868, and the great diamond cross, and a Bible whose silver covers weighed twenty-seven pounds, were taken there, together with the richest vest- ments. In the following year discharged U. S. soldiers robbed the church of the Czar's jewelled Bible and many valuable pieces of plate, a few of which were recovered in a mutilated condition. The Czar of Russia, as temporal head of the Greek Orthodox 118 SITRA AND WICINITY. Church, maintains the 17 churches and 92 chapels in Alaska, and the chapels in Chicago and San Francisco, at an expense of $60,000 a year. He transferred the bishop's see from Sitka to San Francisco, and then to Unalaska, and back to Sitka, partially restoring at last some of its glory to this Cathedral of St. Michael. The bishop resides in the long, green-roofed dwelling on the Governor's Walk, and there is a tiny Chapel of the Annunciation off his drawing-room whose altar shines with many fine silver icons. The Chapel of the Resurrection, built into the stockade near the present Marine Barracks, was used for the native communicants until the transfer. It was once seized and used as a fortress during an up- rising of the natives. It fell to ruin and was destroyed some years ago, and all communicants now worship together at St. Michael's. The Lutheran church, built by Governor Etholin in 1840 for the Swedes and Finns employed in the foundries and ship-yards, was the gar- rison church after the transfer, later was abandoned, and finally torn down. Prince Maksoutoff sent all the plate and furniture back to the mother church in Finland in 1867. Lieutenant Gilman rescued and re- paired the wrecked organ, that afterward found a place in the museum. The ponderous log building on the S. side of the church, occupied as a general trading-store, was formerly the head office and counting-house of the Russian-American Fur Company. The deacon's house and other dwellings, which are church property, face on the N. side. The Officers' Club-House at the corner of the quadrangle was a richly appointed building in Russian days. It was the club-house of the U. S. military officers, but only a tenement-house since the garrison left. A small spruce-tree growing from the crevice of a boulder, beside the engine- house facing the club-house, is one of the regular sights of the town. The eminence N. of the church, formerly the tea-gardens and race- track of the Russians, is reserved as site for a Governor's mansion. A path continues to the Russian Cemetery overlooking Swan Lake, which at one time furnished ice for a large ice-house whose stone foundations remain on the point of land S. of the church. A railway connected the lake with the ice-house, and shipments were made to San Francisco. The winters proving too mild, and the ice too thin and porous, operations were conducted at Gloubokoe Lake, or the Redoubt, then transferred to Kodiak, and finally suspended upon the perfecting of ice-machines. Foundries once occupied the land between the church and the saw- mill. Ploughs and farm implements were exported to Pacific colonies, and the bells of nearly all the mission churches in California were cast here. These works and the ship-yards, being the only ones of their kind on the Pacific shores until after the gold discoveries in California, made Sitka the rendezvous of all ships and fleets. The “Blarney-Stone,” a square block on the beach opposite the Mission, is believed to dower the one kissing it with a magic tongue. ºpºſſºs “ſºyuoſ fiu,1987-wowuqos. SITECA AND WICINITY. 119 Baranof is said to have spent many fine afternoons sitting on it. There is a Russian inscription on the face, and each U. S. man-of-war or rev- enue cutter used to cut its name on it as imperishable record of entry. The Sitka Mission and Industrial School was established by the Presbyterian Board in 1878. In 1884 the Indian appropriation bill provided “ $15,000 for the support and education of Indian children of both sexes at industrial schools in Alaska.” An allowance of $120 per capita was made for each pupil enrolled. In 1888 this educational fund was transferred to the Board of Education, and the Indian Bureau ceased to have any connection with the natives of Alaska. There were 164 pupils in 1890–91, and the group of buildings include dormitories, school-rooms, work-rooms, a hospital, church, museum, cooper, car- penter, blackSmith, and shoemakers' shops. The laundry and industrial school building were the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot F. Shepard, of New York. There is a model settlement of school graduates beyond the Mission. Exercises are held in the school-rooms on steamer days. The Mission band plays there, and usually as a farewell at the wharf. Chief Michael's village, destroyed by Lisiansky in 1804, occupied the Point Koloshenskoy at the mouth of Indian River. Afterward the Swedes and Finns in the Russian Company’s employ built their group of cottages, and traces of the ruins may be found in the park- like reach. The Indian River Park. Kaloschinskaia Retscha, or Indian River, has been admired by every visitor of the century. It rises in the valley that opens behind the town, and is fed by the snow-banks of Verstovoi and the Three Brothers, or Valley Mountains. In Sir George Simpson's time (1844) it was so crowded with salmon that a canoe could not be forced through. Malma trout are the best catch of summer weeks now, and salmon swim occasionally. By Executive proclamation of June 21, 1890, a strip of land 500 ft. wide on the right bank and 250 ft. wide on the left bank of Indian River, between the falls and its mouth, were re- served for a public park, and 10 acres of land beyond the Mission grant was reserved for a naval and military cemetery. It is a beautiful natu- ral park, and contains much of interest to the tourist—thickets of devil's club 20 ft. high, thickets of salmon-berry and thimble-berry bushes, and a wealth of strange ferns and mosses. One path leads from the Governor's Walk through the model village beyond the Mission to the river's bank, and two other paths lead from the Governor's Walk 120 SITEA AND WICINITY. to the bridge spanning the stream above its mouth. Many side paths diverge from the main path along the left bank, which extends from the falls to the beach. At the latter point are the graves of Lisian- sky's men who were killed by ambuscaded Indians while obtaining water for the ship in 1804. The path continues thence to Jamestown Bay. On the right bank near the falls, the prostrate trunk of a cedar 10 ft. in diameter, with a group of young trees growing on its mossy ter- race, lies beside the path. The rustic seats, bridges, and the cleared path are part of public improvements made by Lieutenant Gilman, U. S. M. C., in 1884. His rustic bridge at the falls was destroyed by wood- cutters, who allowed untrimmed trees to float down and jam above it; and the lower bridge was destroyed by flood. The Davis Road con- nects the old brewery above the falls and the Governor's Walk, cross- ing a high swamp covered with blueberry bushes and moroshkies (Rubus chamavorus), a small ground berry. The Cemetery Road joins it near the beach. The Indian Willage. The native village fronting on the harbour N. of the wharf has been transformed since 1880, and does not contain one of the original lodges or great communal dwellings of old. Captain Glass had the village cleaned in 1881, and the houses numbered, for record and sanitary inspection. An ambition to display the highest number has caused each one to raise the figures on his doorway since such discipline was relaxed. The silversmiths and basket-weavers often have choice pieces of their work in reserve, and the tourist readily pays a higher price for the privilege of purchasing on the premises. Mrs. Tom, who is not a princess, but of commonest Yakutat stock and of an inferior totem, is possessed of great wealth in silver dollars, and is one of the shrewdest and largest traders in the Territory, owning schooners and branch stores. Extensive advertising has made her famous and raised the prices of her goods, but few of the romantic histories current have any foundation in truth. A trail leads up the beach to the sawmill, and another across to Swan Lake. Gavan, or Harbour Hill, N. of the village, is 2,200 ft. in height. - THE SITELANS AND THEIR RECORDS. General Halleck’s census of 1869 estimated the Sitkans at 1,200 Captain Glass's winter census of 1881 found 840. The official census ºpºſąg S ‘?omoņ8.，3,4 %).JŲ ſo ºſpa） pºwo ºnqo.cºm/ſ) （193.19 ºsnowº.co.ae unae p10 anſ）; SITEA AND WICINITY. 121 of 1890 recorded 814 villagers in July, but residents say that there are always more than 1,000 living in the ranch in winter. The Sitkans are of mixed and common stock, descended from out- casts, renegades, malcontents, and wanderers of many tribes. The original word “Sheetka”—sh or sha, a mountain, and tukwan, a village— is freely translated as “the people living at the base of the mountain'' (Verstovoi), and the true Sheetka was the fortified village of 800 people destroyed by Baranof and Lisiansky at the Point. All other Tlingits looked down upon them at that time, and a Hoonah or Kootznahoo child was most insulted when called “as great a blockhead as a Sitkan.” An old Kootznahoo told Lisiansky that long, long ago, in a bay (Kat- liansky) near Old Sitka, two orphan brothers of unknown origin lived alone in a world of plenty until Chat, the younger, ate a sea vegetable like the prickly cucumber. The elder knew it was the one forbidden fruit; the abundance ceased, and the two nearly starved. The bay was common hunting-ground to all tribes, and some visiting Stikines, pitying them, left them Stikine wives of the Crow clan to teach them how to live in the changed world. All Sitkans.of the Kaksatti, or Crow totem, are descended from this pair. The Kaksattis and the Kokwantons, or Wolf clan, about evenly divide the tribe now, the latter a band of mixed Auk and Chilkat stock, who came over from the Kootznahoo country in Baranof's time. Until 1821 the Indians were not allowed to settle on the fort shore, and they kept to the harbour islands. Lutke (1827) first described the present ranch, the vast lodges with the totem's effigy before the door, and the feasts and dances that went on at these signs of the Crow, the Wolf, and the Bear. Although the fort was strongly defended, 3,000 warriors once appeared, demanded blankets, and began a dance that frightened the Russians into compliance. In 1836 an epidemic of small-pox began, lasted for four years, and reduced all the tribes to one half their number. Long before the Russians came the great Crow had sent the same fatal disease as punishment for the continual wars among the Tlingits; but the medicine-men ascribed this epidemic to the white priests and doctors, and, like the Salish, viewed baptism and vaccination as rites of evil effect. In 1855 the Sitkans attacked the fort, but were quickly subdued. They were displeased at the change of flags, puzzled by the lax rule of the new owner, and Katlean told General Davis to put his soldiers in canoes if he expected to control the Tlingits. When the troops left they enjoyed a season of lawlessness, but were quickly brought around by the man-of-war government. Schools and prosperous trade have transformed them, and they are but frontier fishermen, loggers, or boatmen, differing only in complexion and occasional speech from the average white backwoodsman. Their canoes are the only picturesque thing left them, and the winter dances are fast taking on the nature of historical plays, representations of ancient times and customs. The berry feast in midsummer is often celebrated with spirit, and a water procession of decorated canoes carries the whole tribe off on a picnic to gather almºne on favoured shores, 122 SITEA AND WICINITY. Lisiansky made a vocabulary of the Sitkan dialect, and Dixon re- corded several of their songs. Baron Wrangell wrote much of them, and Veniaminoff compiled a valuable ethnological work. He recorded their legends and folk-lore, and described their customs in detail. Since the transfer the only ethnological work has been that of Lieutenant George T. Emmons, U. S. N., whose collections in the Museum of Natural His- tory, Central Park, New York, and for the Alaskan section in the Co- lumbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, embody all of Tlingit art, and his note-books contain all of Tlingit record and lore resulting from nine years' systematic study. The Ascent of Werstovoi. The ascent of Werstovoi is the most profitable day's excursion around Sitka. The first shoulder, the Mountain of the Cross (2,597 ft.), com- mands as fine an outlook as the very tip of the Arrow-Head peak, and may be reached by either of two trails, in two and a half or three hours from the wharf. No climber should attempt it alone or unarmed, as the way puzzles woodsmen, and bears are numerous in the salmon season. The old Russian Trail starts from the ford of Indian River at the end of the wood-road leading past the cemetery. It was cleared in the last decade of Russian rule, when an energetic Alpine Club member scaled and planted crosses on all the heights around the bay. During this official's stay there was an epidemic of mountain-climbing, and the Russian women took part in the many picnics and dances on the heights. The trail is now overgrown and blocked in many places, and is longer than Koster's Trail from Jamestown Bay. The climber may be rowed to the water-trough in Jamestown Bay, where Koster’s Trail begins, or follow the path leading from the Lisi- ansky graves on Indian River through to the bay. At low tide short cuts may be taken across the thick, slimy beds of sea-weed covering the rocky beaches. The same Executive proclamation that reserved the banks of Indian River, reserved a tract of land 250 ft. wide on either side of the little stream feeding the U. S. S. Jamestown's water-trough. The trail is about two and a half miles to the Cross, a steep and steady ascent, first following the stream to the logger's cabin. The dense underbrush ceases at about the level of 800 ft., and beyond every- thing is covered with moss. At the timber-line are beds of yellow vio- lets and acres of heathery bryanthus and cassiopea, daisies, buttercups, anemones, and cyclamen. The view of the Baranof mountains, Silver Bay, the ocean, sound, and Mt. Edgecumbe, with Sitka at one's feet, well repay the climber who reaches the tall wooden Cross, SITEA AND WICINITY. 123 Verstovoi, named because the summit was thought to be one verst distant from the Castle, has also been known as Popoff Mountain, the Pouce, the Arrow Head, and Anchor Peak—the latter because a snowy anchor is seen from the N. outlined near the summit. The Werstovoi peak cannot be reached from the Jamestown side. The climber must circle around the snow-fields on the valley side to reach the small plat- form 3,216 ft. above the bay. A record was left by the W. U. T. sur- veyors who reached the top and took observations in 1865, and the Jamestown's officers erected a flag-staff, which each climbing party re- plants. The peak is said to have been split by an earthquake in the last century, exposing the smooth, triangular mass shaped like an arrow- head. By climbing the slippery grass and bryanthus beds on the Cross side to the hanging hemlock grove, one may see the great tent roof of Mt. Crillon and the triple peak of Mt. Fairweather lying a hundred miles due N. Excursions in the Bay and Vicinity of Sitka. No other settlement in Alaska offers so much in its immediate neighbourhood as Sitka. The ascent of Verstovoi is the only land excursion possible from the town. All other trips involve cruises in canoe or in sail-boat, unless a launch is brought from Juneau or Killis- noo. Shumakoff, Clements, Frobese, and other local guides will under- take all arrangements for sportsmen, naturalists, or pure pleasure-seek- ers. The usual rates are $2 a day for a canoe, and an additional per diem for each oarsman. Sail-boats with covered cabins cost $5 to $10 a day. The regular day's wages for camp hands and others is $2. The guides expect more. The Harbour Islands.-It is possible to make a canoe or fish- ing trip among the harbour islands during the steamer's regular wait. Japonski, opposite the Indian village, is the laßest of the 130 Har- bour Islands. It measures a mile in length and is a half mile in width. Its name, “Japan,” was given because of the residence there of the crew of a Japanese junk wrecked at this point in 1805. It was the site of a large native village in Baranof's time. In 1840 Captain Etholin built a magnetic and meteorological observatory, and records were kept until the day of transfer. General Davis reserved all the harbour isl- ands for military use, and Japonski was garrison, stock-yard, and naval coal station in turn. Michael Travers, “Duke of Japonski,” lived there and cultivated vegetable gardens and hay-fields, until the recla- mation of the land for Government use in 1890 drove him insane, and a special agent was sent from Washington, D. C., to convey him to St. Elizabeth's Asylum near that city, the only refuge of the kind available to Alaskan patients. The coal-sheds and powder-magazine are the only buildings besides Travers's cabin. Etholin's observatory was burned by the Indians when the troops left. 124 SITRA AND WICINITY. Barbour Island lies S. of Japonski, and contains several Indian caches often mistaken for shamans' graves, and Aleutski Island beyond is the site of truck-gardens of a retired marine. The ship channel lies between Aleutski and Kutkan islands, the latter the home of a chief converted and baptized by Veniaminoff, and who related to the latter much of the legend and folk-lore he recorded. Makhnati (Rugged) Island is the landmark for ships from the ocean. It was chosen for a light-house site in 1867, and Captain Beards- lee's wooden beacon on the seaward bluff is often taken for a shaman's grave. Signal Island was the place for bonfires to light and lead ships in Russian days. The firing of a gun caused the beacon on the citadel roof to flash out, and men were in waiting to light the signal-fires that marked the course into the harbour. Departing ships were blessed by the Russian bishop in full canonicals, and deck, mainmast, flag, and crew were sprinkled with the jewelled holy-water brush. All small boats rowed three times round, singing a farewell, and nine cheers sped the ship as the sails filled. Sea bass may be caught at each flood tide off the N. shore of Ja- ponski, and on the S. shore between it and the bold bluffs of Charcoal Island. Cod, flounders, and sea trout reward the angler, and any na- tive boatman knows the best fishing-banks and trolling-grounds and the times and places for salmon “runs.” Between Japonski and Sasedni Island, next beyond, W. of it, is a sea garden worth floating over to admire. The growths of sea-weed and submarine plants are of tropical luxuriance. Fronds as large as a banana or lysichtoa leaf crowd stems 80 ft. long; kelp lines 100 and 200 ft. long are coiled on the surface, and their “orange heads” float in groups. Coral and sponges are found in the bay, the teredo is as destructive as in the tropics, and strange drift is left by the ocean currents. Sasedni, W. of Japonski, is the most beautiful of the islands—the “black beach " on the S. W. shore com- manding the finest view of Mt. Edgecumbe. Beds of large blue-bells and thickets of salmon-berries are found on all the islands, and they are nesting-places of the olive-backed thrushes, whose song is a repeated “Te Deum. / Te Deum. / Te Deum. / "in ascending notes of entrancing sweetness. Crows, the red-footed “oyster-catchers,” sidle over all Alaska beaches in search of clams, but find abalones on these islet shores, pry them off and carry them to the tree-tops to devour. These scavengers are guardian spirits and the great Crow is tutelary genius of the region. Deceased shamans and illustrious ones of the Crow clan are supposed to assume this form, and this reincarnation saves them from native shot or snare. - The Ascent of Mt. Edgecumbe. The climbing of this extinct volcano on Kruzoff Island involves an indefinite time, as one reaches its base by launch or sail-boat after crossing waters open to the heaviest swells when southeast winds blow. Fogs are frequent, and the waters are full of sunken rocks. Landing ºpºſts 'syſop.t.toº può ºſſ sp.) ºsmoſ-vuoqsmo SITRA AND WICINITY, 125 on the Sitka side, there is a hard tramp for 5 or 7 miles through a swampy forest to the actual slope. In favourable weather a better landing may be made in a cove on the ocean side, whence it is only 2 or 3 miles to sloping ground. Once out on the open lava and scoriae it is but an easy walk up an incline, and the crater is entered by a gap in the southeast rim. The Snow leaves the slopes and crater entirely in midsummer. Steam rises from many sulphur-crusted vent-holes, and beautiful specimens of sulphur, lava, and volcanic glass are obtained. Several women have made the ascent in recent years. After Tschirikow charted this mountain of St. Lazaria it was next seen by Maurelle, the pilot of Heceta and Bodega y Quadra's expedition sent out by the Spanish Viceroy Bucarelly. He entered “the great bay among mountains "St. Jacinth's day, August 16, 1775, named the peak San Jacinto and the bay Guadalupe. La Pérouse next saw this peak of St. Hyacinth, and then Cook, May 2, 1778, named it Mt. Edgecumbe, and the bay the Bay of Terrors. Dixon called the bay Norfolk Sound, and Marchand (1791) took his predecessors to task for this renaming. “Que gagneroit la Géographie à ce changement de nom? qu'y gagneroit l'immortel Cook’? he exclaimed, when the natives made him understand that the bay was Tchin-Kitane (a useful arm). He did not record the native name—Tºugh, or sleeping mountain. Two Kadiak hunters climbed the mountain in 1804 and reported the crater filled with water. Lisiansky and Lieutenant Powalshin as- cended in 1805, and found “a basin 2 miles in circumference and 40 fathoms deep filled with snow,” July 23d. Lisiansky estimated the height at 8,000 ft., with forest reaching to within a mile and a half of the top. Lutke was told (1827) that the mountain was in eruption in 1796 and 1804. In 1867 Professor Davidson estimated its height at 2,855 ft. In 1886 Professor William Libby, Jr., of Princeton College, climbed to the crater's rim and gave its height as 3,782 ft. The whole mountain, according to Prof. Libbey, is only a parasitic cone on a greater volcanic mass of which the Camel's Back, N. of Edgecumbe, was the chief vent-hole. The oval crater in the Camel's Back is 5 miles long and 3 miles wide, a basin 1,500 ft. deep, with an internal slope of about 60°. The level floor is covered with forests and open parks, with sev- eral lakes. The Camel's Back rose from the sea cycles ago, and built around it the terraced platforms constituting Kruzoff Island. Edge- cumbe was formed on its inert slopes only a few score centuries ago. Sportsmen find many attractions within the 18-mile limits of the Kruzoff shores. There are bear and deer. There is a lake on the Sitka side where rainbow trout may be caught. There are many clam beaches, and a bay where Captain Beardslee found as many soft-shell crabs as in those exceptional seasons when Massett Inlet and Prince of Wales bays have been edged with broad windrows of cast-off shells. 126 SITEA AND WICINITY. Silver Bay and the Sitka Mining District. Silver Bay, or Serrebrennikof Bootka, as named for a Siberian ex- plorer killed at Copper River, is the Kakeite, or “lake belonging to black fish-men" of the natives. It opens at the south point of James- town Bay, 23 miles below Sitka, and extends for 6 miles with a width of less than half a mile between mountains rising precipitously 2,000 ft. and more. Lakes on the south foot of Werstovoi feed Saw-mill Creek. The remains of the Russian crib dam and flume are on the bank a quarter of a mile from the mouth. The mill was burned by the In- dians after the departure of the troops. Malma or Dolly Warden trout are to be caught below the dam, and in the farther waters the rarer beauties with the rainbow speckles abide. Round Mountain, at the turn of the fiord, is a symmetrical green landmark, with a lofty cave on its east side into which a canoe may be . rowed at high tide. Kalampy's Land-Slide, on the opposite mountain wall, marks where a Russian hunter in chasing a deer encountered a bear just as the earth trembled and the crust of the mountain slipped down into the water. The deer was caught by the branches of a tree at the water's edge, and Kalampy, while hanging on the next tree, saw the bear drown. Bear Bay, the first indentation on the east shore and home of a famous grizzly, holds a magnificent landscape cañon, three massive peaks ranging in echelon on one side with a massive broad- armed cross outlined by the snow on Kupolinaia's summit—a symbol seen from the farthest end of Sitka Sound. A waggon-road leads up the cañon to a group of mines. - At the extreme end of the bay the Silver Creek Fall shoots down 300 ft. in long rapids, the last leap of 60 ft. bringing it to tide-waters. From the wharf of the Stewart mine a road leads to the mill and tun- nels of a valuable group of mines. There is fine fishing in Salmon Creek, and trails lead to several mines, those of the Great Eastern Group lying on the divide between Silver Bay and Gloubokoe Lake at an elevation of 5,500 ft. The Gold Mines.—The Russian Fur Company's officers never wanted to discover and made but half-hearted search for precious minerals, their charter providing that any lands containing minerals should be- long to the crown. Mining has been most disastrous to fur-trading interests, and opposed by such everywhere. Baranof is said to have knouted a promyshlenik who brought a piece of gold quartz from Silver Bay, and discouraged prospecting for all time. Prof. Blake reported to Mr. Seward, in 1867, that there was little promise of precious metals “in the hard conglomerate or grit passing into argil- THE BARANOF SHORE SOUTH OF SITEC.A. 127 lite” in the immediate neighbourhood of Sitka. In 1871 Edward Doyle found float gold in the Silver Bay shores, uncovered a quartz stringer on Round Mountain, and another on Indian River. The Haley and Rodgers lode, on Salmon Creek, was the first worked by garrison officers. The Stewart Mill, on the neighbouring claim, was built in 1877, and the Bald Mountain claims were worked for a few years. The Juneau discoveries drew miners away, and the district was vir- tually abandoned. Governor Swineford's energy caused a revival of mining interests in 1885; other mills were built and work pushed, but a second lull ensued when he left, and for several seasons only pro- specting and assessment work was done. Differences among stockhold- ers and want of means have prevented any of the mines being thor- oughly and systematically worked for any time. The tons of high grade ore taken out, and the rich specimens obtained, prove the ex- istence and quality of the lodes, and the prosperity of the region is but a matter of time. The Baranof Shore south of Sitka, The tourist can visit The Redoubt, or Drashnikoff settlement, in the Toyon's, or Ozerski Bay, 12 miles S. of Sitka, and return in a day by canoe; or one may go through to the Hot Springs in one day's canoe trip, stopping at the Redoubt on the way. From Sitka the course leads for 8 miles through a maze of wooded islets to the mouth of the bay, that extends 4 miles as a narrow cañon or rock cutting to the natural dam holding the waters of the Glou- bokoe Lake, or the “Deep Sea.” Drashnikoff Peak rises at the end of the bay perpendicularly from the water 1,500 ft. The Russians had a fortified settlement and jail here, and cured their winter Sup- plies of salmon. There were 2 flour-mills, a saw-mill, tannery, church, and residence buildings, within a stockaded post, and substantial weirs in the rapids between the lake and bay. Lutke visited and described the Redoubt in 1827, and Sir George Simpson in 1844. The buildings were burned by the natives after the troops left Sitka, and the stockade destroyed. The pioneer Alaskan cannery established at old Sitka in 1878 was moved to the Redoubt, but closed in 1890 and for several seasons, and work conducted at Red Bay, 20 miles below, where the catch of several salmon streams could be centred. Gloubokoe Lake, 8 miles long and less than three-quarters of a mile wide, has a depth of 50 fathoms, and is chiefly fed by a large stream at the N. E. end. The stream may be ascended 3 miles, and trails lead from the banks to the mines on Bald Mountain and down the range, and over the divide to Salmon Creek and Silver Bay. There 128 THE BARANOF SHORE SOUTH OF SITRA. is a fine glacier on the mountain at the E. end of the lake, and the mountain walls rise precipitously on either side of the flooded cañon. From the S. E. end of the lake a portage of a mile crosses a low divide to Hot Springs, or Klukacheff Bay. The Redoubt is an admirable headquarters for sportsmen or anglers, and permission may be had to use some of the abandoned cannery buildings for shelter. The White Sulphur Hot Springs. At the highest tide, a chain of intricate passes may be used by canoes, and several miles saved in the voyage from the Redoubt to Hot Springs Bay. It is worth several hours' delay to thread these labyrinths through the trees and rocks, and it furnishes the ideal water trip of the archipelago, bringing more of landscape beauty in range than any other three hours of canoeing. The Hot Springs cura- t we qualities were long known to the natives, and the bay was neutral ground where all tribes met, but none built a permanent village. Lisiansky discovered or explored the bay in 1805, and spent a week there. Lutke mentions his visiting the one house at the springs in 1827 and in 1837 Captain Belcher spoke of the saw-mills at “Les Sources, or warm springs, which serves as a sort of Harrow- gate to the colony.” Sir George Simpson enjoyed his stay in the comfortable quarters at the hospital. In 1852 the natives attacked the settlement, burned the buildings, and drove the invalids to the woods. All of them reached Sitka, although compelled to cross the mountains in the dead of winter. The new stockaded post contained a hospital, chapel, residences for two doctors, and a pharmacist, and there was daily communication by steam-launch with Sitka. There were gardens and hay-fields on the great cleared hillside, and the sub- terranean heat still forces a rich vegetation. The buildings were all burned by the natives after the departure of the troops from Sitka. By an oversight, the Hot Springs were omitted from the list of lands reserved for Government use, and this tract was taken up by a Sitka merchant, who has built a group of cottages and a rude bath-house. Arrangements for the use of these cottages may be made in Sitka, where the keys are kept. A charge of 50 cents a night is made for each person sleeping in the hay-filled bunks of the cottages, using the cooking-stoves and fire-wood. - The White Sulphur Spring bubbles from a gem-like pool and crevices among the rocks, and has a temperature of 155° Fahr. The other spring has a temperature of 122°, and both are impregnated with sulphur, iron chlorine, and magnesia. They are sovereign for “To westwarD" FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. 129 rheumatism and skin diseases, and are said to be the most valuable springs medicinally of any N. of the Harrison Hot Springs on the Fraser River. The extensive meadows and gardens cleared by the Russians are relapsing to wildernesses again, and mosquitoes are as many and venom- ous as in Lisiansky's day. There is a Tlingit legend that the mosquito was originally a giant spider, but an evil spirit threw him in the fire, where he shrivelled to his present size and flew away, with a coal of fire in his mouth, with which he retaliates upon mankind. Humming- birds nest in the trees, and thrushes call from island to shore. The mountains behind the bay are full of game, and the black-tailed deer may be easily found, or lured by the low, wailing sound made by blowing on a blade of grass held between the thumbs. Sportsmen have had bear-hunting in the dense berry thickets, and there are sev- eral trout streams near. One of the finest views of Mt. Edgecumbe is from the Hot Springs hillside, the hyacinthine peak seeming to float enchanted beyond the long, island-dotted water foreground. The ball of the July sun drops evenly within the crater's edges, with the most superb colour pano- rama that northern skies and sea can summon, and not an hour of the long-drawn summer sunsets should be missed by those who visit the steaming hillside by the ocean. “To westward” from Sitka to Unalaska, along the Continental Shore, A steamer of the North American Commercial Co. leaves Sitka for Unalaska upon the arrival of alternate mail steamers from the Sound during seven months in the year and on or about the 13th day of June, July, and August, when possible. The P. C. S. S. Co. allow stop-over privileges to those holding its excursion tickets, and the opportunity is given the tourist to see Mt. St. Elias, a different scenic panorama, and the strange life in the farthest and most out-of-the-way region of the United States. The steamer calls at Yakutat, Orca, Nuchek, Kadiak, Karluk, Unga, and Sand Point, giving tourists opportunity to see everything of interest on or near the route, within the 27 or 30 days scheduled for the round trip of 2,500 miles from Sitka. The fare, $120 for the round trip, includes meals and berths going and coming, board and lodging at the N. A. C. Co.'s house at Dutch Harbour, Unalaska, and the trip to Bogoslov beyond Unalaska. The steamer is staunch and well offi- 130 “To WESTWARD" FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. cered, and all the accommodations for the 22 cabin passengers are above deck. In midsummer Smooth passages may be expected. The Kadiak and Unalaska regions contain the oldest Russian settlements, but they had no regular communication with the rest of the world until the establishment of this mail route in 1891. Up to that time even criminals were sent to Sitka for trial by way of San Francisco. The tourist ser- vice was inaugurated in 1893. Passage can be engaged only from the N. A. C. Co.'s agent at Sitka. From Sitka to Yakutat. The westward steamer's course is directly out from the harbour to the open ocean and around Mt. Edgecumbe. Mt. St. Elias has been seen from Salisbury Sound, at the N. end of Kruzoff Island, and on any clear day is visible 160 miles at sea. There are but two indentations in the plateau bordering the ocean from Cross Sound to Yakutat Bay, and these, Lituya Bay and Dry Bay, have no commercial importance. * The plateau supports four great peaks—Mt. La Pérouse (11,300 ft.), Mt. Crillon (15,900 ft.), Lituya Mt. (10,000 ft.); and Mt. Fairweather (15,500 ft.). The Crillon and La Pérouse Glacier join and front on the ocean for 2 miles just N. of Icy Cape, Lituya Bay, 40 miles N. of Cape Spencer, cuts in 6 miles to the base of Lituya Mt. in T-shape, and the cross-piece is 8 miles in length. It presents the greatest dangers to navigation. The tide enters in a bore, and it can only be run at slack water. La Pérouse lost two boats' crews in this bore in 1786, and erected a wooden monument to their memory on Cenotaph Island within the bay. Dr. Dall surveyed the bay in 1874, described his entering with the tide as “sailing down-hill,” and epitomized its scenery as “a sort of Yosemite Valley, retaining its gla- ciers, and with its floor submerged 600 or 800 ft.” Lieutenant G. T. Emmons explored it, and crossed overland to Dry Bay. He then learned the native legend of “the two men of Lituya,” who, assuming the shape of bears, sit at either side of the entrance holding a sail-cloth just be- neath the surface, and rudely tossing any incautious canoeman who paddles across it. Placer mining has been successfully conducted on the shores of the bay since 1889. Dry Bay is a shallow lagoon at the delta of the Alsekh River, which rises near the Chilkat's source and flows in behind Mt. Fair- Photograph by Prof. I. C. Russell. Mt. St. Elias, from End of Samovar Hills. “To WESTWARD" FROM SITKA TO UNALASKA. 131 weather through the depression noted by Captain Cook. It was ex- plored from source to mouth by the Frank Leslie Expedition of 1890, along the old trail used by Klohkutz's Chilkats. This glacial river is crowded with salmon in their season. Yakutat Bay, 45 miles above Dry Bay, is only an indentation of the coast curving inward some 20 miles, and the whole force of the north Pacific sweeps into it, rendering landing difficult and dangerous at all times. The bay always contains much floating ice from the gla- ciers at its head, and a heavy surf beats on the St. Elias shore. There is an Indian village, trading-store, and Moravian mission at Port Mulgrave, opposite Khantaak Island, where Baranof established a colony of Siberian convicts. Several ships were built there, but the natives burned the fort and massacred the settlers. There was great excitement in 1880 at the discovery of gold in the black-sand beaches, and in 1883–86–88 there were considerable mining camps. By using the same rotary hand amalgamators as on Californian gold beaches, as much as $40 a day to the man was realized. The Yakutat chief ex- acted licenses and royalty from the unprotected miners. A tidal wave heaped the beach with windrows of dog-fish, which, decaying in the hot summer sun, soaked the sands with oil and the mercury could not act. The miners moved to a new beach; a tidal wave washed all the blacksands away, and the camp was abandoned. The sea has since been restoring the black sands. A vein of good coal was found a mile and a half in- land and 300 ft, above the bay, and, but for the difficulty of loading ships in that bay, the coal problem would be solved for all the Sitkan region. Yakutat village contains some original Tlingit lodges, and the Yakutat women are the finest basket-weavers on the coast. In 1890 Captain C. L. Hooper, U. S. R. M., pushed into the head of Malaspina's Disenchantment Bay, 60 miles beyond the point where the Spanish explorer represented the water-line as ending, and discovered the Dalton and Hubbard tide-water glaciers. In 1891 Prof. Russell ex- plored the bay farther in a canoe, and found it bending sharply south- ward and extending for another 60 miles to a level prairie country at the foot of Mt. Fairweather. Prof. Russell charted the bay and named Mts. Unana, Ruhamah, and Pinta. 132 “To WRSTWARD" FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. Mt. St. Elias. Since Bering sighted the Bolshoi Shopka (“great peak”) on St. Elias day, 1741, it has been the goal of many navigators and explorers, and their records of its height, latitude, and longitude are: Height and Position of Mt. St. Elias. * Date. Authority. Height. Latitude. Longitude. 1778 Cook +........ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1786 || La Pérouse........... . . . . . - 12,672 ft 60° iff' 007/ 140° 10' 00// 1787 | Portlock and Dixon *... . . . . . . . . . . .......... . . ......... 1788 Douglass *. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1791 || Malaspina. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17,851 ft. 60 17 35 140 52 17 1794 | Vancouver................] ...... gº 60 22 30 140 39 00 1837 | Belcher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... 1847 Russian Hydrographic Chart, 1378... . . . . . . . . . . . 17,850 ft. 60 21 00 141 00 00 1847 | Tebenkof (Notes) . . . . . . . . . 16,938 “ 60 22 36 140 54 00 1849 |Tebenkof (Chart VII)..... 16,938 “ 60 21 30 140 54 00 1872 | Bach. Can. Inselm......... 16,758 “ 60 17 30 140 51 00 Fº Admiralty Chart 2172. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,970 “ 60 21 00 141 00 : 00 1874 | U. S. Coast Survey. . . . . . . . 19,500+400 “ 60 20 45 141 00 12 1877 | Prof. Chas. Taylor, Lieut. C. E. S. Wood t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1886 Lieut. F. Schwatka, Prof. William Libby, Jr., A. W. Seton-Karr f... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1888 W. H. Topham, Edwin Topham, William Wil- (estimated) liams, George Broke . . . . 18,500 ft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1890 Mark B. Kerr, topogra- - *: pher | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,850 “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1891 | Prof. I. C. Russell (for National Geographic So- Ciety) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18,100+100 “ 60 17 51 140 55 30 1892 | Turner, McGrath (U. S. Coast Survey)... . . . . . . . . 18,110+100 “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1894 | U.S. C. and G. McGrath.. 18,024 “ 60 17 85 140 55 47 1897 | Prince Luigi, of Savoy.... 18,086 “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * No observations made. + Indians obliged them to turn back. f New York Times Expedition. Reached Chaix Hills. No observations made. R | National Geographic Society’s Expedition, commanded by Prof. I. C. UISS011. It was reported as emitting smoke and vapour in 1839, and in 1847, at the time of the great Sitka earthquake, flame and ashes came from its summit. Prof. Russell and Prince Luigi found sufficient geologic evidence to prove that the peak is not volcanic. The ascent of Mt. St. Elias offers the longest snow-climb in the world outside of arctic or antarctic regions. The line of perpetual snow is at 3,000 ft. Fuel and supplies must be carried from the start, and weeks spent in tents on the ice. º tax * == 24&#º jºr ‘s." V . . .\ \, \! Z--\ \\ \\ w ſº §ºšº SS - Zºrº S ss===#. - SSS * NJ ~ 2. º:wº ſ 21 • 3 & o º 2 2 - 2 ; 2. 2 2. ; IRVING SKETCH MAP OF MTS'ſ ELIAS REGION ----Route of Maz, Gºog. Soclºpediæon of 1832 *- yy gº * * Wy p y w a * 1891. É|Moranes. EºPorests Variation of Compass 27°19′E. É 622ciers. “To WESTWARD " FROM SITKA TO UNALASKA. 133 The members of the Topham Expedition were all experienced Alpine Club climbers, and were first to stand on Mt. St. Elias slopes. They ascended from Icy Bay to the rim of the crater on the S. E. side, a point 11,460 ft. by aneroid measurement. Mr. Williams, of New Lon- don, the only American of the party, left a tin box containing a United States flag as a record at that point. The expedition of the National Geographic Society of 1890, under Prof. I. C. Russell, crossed Yakutat Bay and reached a height of 9,500 ft. on the E. face of the mountain on the Newton Glacier. In 1891 Prof. Russell was sent again by the same society. Six lives were lost in landing in the surf at Icy Bay, and Prof. Russell reached the elevation of 14,500 ft. on the N. side of the mountain, when driven back by storms and scarcity of provisions. He explored the plateau of the Malaspina Glacier from Icy Bay to Disen- chantment Bay on the return. Prince Luigui Amedeo, of Savoy, three companions, and six Italian guides made a successful ascent in 1897, fol- lowing the route of Prof. Russell. The climb up from the Malaspina Glacier was accomplished in 30 days, the descent in 10 days, without the least delay or accident from start to finish of the well-planned excursion. The observations of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey party in 1892 were for the purpose of continuing Messrs. Turner and McGrath’s work on the international boundary line, and establishing the longitude of Mt. St. Elias. It is now definitely accepted as beyond the United States lines, but as a natural corner-stone or monument sufficiently marking the line of the 141st meridian, although overtopped by the neighbouring Mt. Logan (19,539 ft.), now accepted as the highest peak on the North American continent, unless the newly-discovered Mt. McKinley, far north of Cook's Inlet, should prove taller. The peak of Orizaba, formerly the highest peak of the New World, is reduced to 18,314 ft. by latest measurements (1892). The full accounts of the later expeditions to Mt. St. Elias since 1867 will be found in the following publications: FILLIPPo DE FILIPPI, Dr. Revista Mensile del Club Alpino Italiano, November, 1897. Translation, by Dr. Paolo de Vecchi, in Sierra Club Bulletin, January, 1898. KARR, H. W. SETON. “Shores and Alps of Alaska.” London: Proceedings of Royal Geog. Soc., London. Vol. IX, 1887. KERR, MARK B. Scribner's Magazine, March, 1891. LIBBEY, Prof. WILLIAM, JR. Bulletin Am. Geog. Soc., N. Y., 1886. RUSSELL, Prof. ISRAEL C. Century Magazine, April, 1891, and June, 1892. Natl. Geog. Soc. Magazine, Washington, D. C., May 29, 1891. Am. Journal of Science, March, 1892. Thirteenth Annual Re- port, Director of U. S. Geol. Survey, 1892. ToPHAM, H. W. Alpine Journal, London, August, 1889. WILLIAMs, WILLIAM. Scribner's Magazine, April, 1889. Wood, C. E. S. Century Magazine, July, 1882, 134 “To westward” FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. Continental Alaska. While the steamer waits at Yakutat, there is in full view the mag- nificent line of the St. Elias Alps towering in the sky above the low, green forest land. Upon leaving, the ship skirts along the front of the Malaspina Glacier, which borders the ocean for more than 60 miles, with the sea breaking fully on its ice-cliffs in places. Mt. St. Elias, Mt. Cook, and Mt. Vancouver are easily distinguished by their great height. . There is no break in the mainland mountain panorama from Edgecumbe to Makushin, 1,250 miles, and in this respect the voyage is unparallelled. The Copper River region was believed to be an El Dorado by the Russians, but their efforts to explore it failed. Rufus Serrebrennikof and his men were murdered before they had explored the river's mouth. General Miles's first expedition under Lieutenant Abercrombie, U. S. A., in 1884, failed to ascend the river and come out by the Chilkat country. A second expedition, in 1885, was led by Lieutenant H. T. Allen, U. S. A., who ascended the Copper, crossed the divide to the Tenana, sailed down that stream to the Yukon, and explored the Koyukuk River before returning to San Francisco via St. Michaels. His report (Forty-ninth Congress, second session, Senate Executive Document, No. 125) gives a detailed account of the trip; of the magnificent Miles Glacier, which fronts in ice-cliffs for 6 miles on the banks of Copper River; of Wood's Cañon, 40 yards wide, with perpen- dicular walls; and of the smoking cone of Mt. Wrangel, which he re- duced from fabled height to an actual 17,500 ft. No mountains of pure copper were found, nor anything to induce others to run the risk of starva- tion in the almost uninhabited country. In 1891 Lieutenant Schwatka and Dr. Hayes came out to the sea by Copper River, after their great circuit of the interior from Taku Inlet to the Yukon and White rivers. IPrince William's Sound and its Great Glaciers. Nuchek, or Port Etches, is at the entrance of Prince William's Sound, as Captain Cook named the Chugach Gulf when he keeled and mended his ships at Snug Corner Bay, 1778. Shelikoff came in 1783, and Baranof built the ships that took his first expedition to Sitka. The Russian trading-post was known as the Redoubt Constantine, and the furs of the Copper River country are brought to Nuchek, where there is a salmon-cannery and trading-post. In 1892 the Victoria sealing fleet rendezvoused off Nuchek to meet their supply steamer Coquitlam, revictual, and transfer their catch of Pacific sealskins before venturing into Bering Sea. Captain C. L. Hooper, with the revenue cut- Fort Sel |65° West of Greenwich |35° Scale 1: 22,000,000. 620 miles. Chief Routes of Alaskan Explorers. “To WRSTWARD" FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. 135 ter Corwin, surprised them in the act, and the Coquitlam, with her valu- able cargo, was seized and taken to Sitka for a violation of U. S. revenue laws in transferring cargo without authority of the customs district. Orca, near the entrance of the Sound, has become a considerable settle- ment, as landing-place for those crossing by Valdes Pass (30 miles) to the Copper River mining regions, and via the Tanana River to the Yukon. The Chugach Alps surrounding Prince William's Sound hold some of the grandest scenery of the Alaska coast, and the tide-water glaciers in the recesses of the sound even surpass those of southeastern Alaska. Vancouver describes the gloomily magnificent sound, and Mr. Whidby felt the ground shake when 6 miles away from the falling ice. Prof. Davidson had a glimpse of the ice falls in 1867, and Russian offi- cers told him of one glacier that showed a peculiar rose-red tint in a certain light. Dr. Dall visited the sound in 1874, and declared the gla- cial landscapes the finest of their kind. Mr. Seton-Karr makes reference to them in his “Shores and Alps of Alaska.” The dangers of navigation deter large vessels from attempting cruises in the unsurveyed waters, and the floating ice menaces canoes, so that the number, size, movement, and general features of these Chugach ice streams await exploration. Cook’s Inlet and the Kenai Peninsula. Cook’s Inlet extends inland 160 miles between the Alaska or Chignik range and the mountainous Kenai Peninsula. Sheltered by the great barrier on the west, its shores enjoy a different climate from any of the coast region south of it, and the warm, cloudless summers won Cook’s Inlet the name of the Summer-land from the Russians. The best agricultural land lies along the Kenai shore of the Inlet, and the Russian company established five colonies of their pensioners in this gar- den spot, where they raised crops and cattle, and still continue to do so. The Inlet is renowned for its scenery, which Captain Cook was first to extol. He discovered the great estuary during his search for a pas- sage to Hudson Bay, passing the south point of Kenai Peninsula on the birthday of the Princess Elizabeth, May 21, 1778. The mainland point, 40 miles across from this Cape Elizabeth, was named for Dr. Douglass, Canon of Windsor. Captain Cook took possession in the name of His Majesty, and buried coins and records in a bottle at Possession Point at the head of the Inlet, and Vancouver searched for these records in vain. Cook did not name the place on his map, referring to it as the Great River in his text. Lord Sandwich wrote in “Cook's River” after the great navigator's death. Cape Elizabeth is 550 miles from Sitka and 1,670 miles from San Francisco, - 136 “To WESTWARD" FROM SITEA TO UNALASKA. Coal-Fields.-Portlock mentioned the coal-veins in Graham or Eng- lish Harbour, near Cape Elizabeth, in 1787, and the Russians afterward worked them on a considerable scale, and exported much of this lignite to California previous to the discovery of the Vancouver coal. Tram- ways, stone piers, and decaying buildings are memorials to the im- mense sums sunk by the Russian company and some San Francisco merchants who shared in the enterprise at Coal Harbour in Chugachik or Kachemak Bay. Recently, interest in these coal-mines has been re- vived, and also in the old works near Fort Kenai, where the equal of Nanaimo coal was promised. * Fort Kenai, the old Redoubt St. Nicholas, was garrisoned by U. S. troops for a few years after the transfer. There are two trading stations and three canneries in the Inlet, and king salmon weighing 100 pounds are often caught. Gold was found in small quantities by a Russian engineer in 1855; and prospectors, searching for ten seasons, made such rich discoveries in 1895 that a rush of more than 2,000 miners occurred the following spring, - The Wolcanoes.—Cook’s Inlet is the finest Alaskan pleasure- ground for scientists, sportsmen, anglers, artists, and yachtsmen, and its climate enhances all attractions. A chain of active volcanoes ex- tends along the W. shore. Iliamna, the great volcano of the Inlet (12,066 ft.), was named Miranda, the Admirable, by the Spanish navi- gators. It is snow-clad, but steam and smoke issue from two craters near the summit, and when arrested for any time frequent earthquakes are felt. Iliamna was ascended by a party sent from the Imperial Acad- emy of Sciences at St. Petersburg in 1852, and by several parties of U. S. officers while the garrison was maintained at Fort Kenai, 40 miles distant across the Inlet. There was an eruption in 1854, and in 1869 climbers found running lava near the lower crater, a vast oval bowl full of sulphur crystals, and were driven from the upper crater by the volumes of dense black smoke. Many hot springs occur on the slopes, and the heat furnishes a luxuriant growth of trees in the valleys and ravines. The natives have many superstitions concerning it. Goryalya, or the Redoubt (11,270 ft.), stands N. of Iliamna, and smokes and steams on a lesser scale. It was in eruption in 1867, and ashes fell to a depth of one inch and a half on Kadiak ſsland, 165 miles away. Augustin, on an island near the mouth of the Inlet, is a sym- metrical cone whose fires are extinct. A trail leads from the native village in Kamishak Bay, S. of Ili- amna, for 7 miles through a gap in the mountains to a chain of lakes “To WESTWARD" FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. 137 discharging at the end of 15 miles into Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska. Iliamma Lake, 90 miles long and from 30 to 40 miles wide, is an inland reservoir or hatchery of king salmon, who use the Kvichak River as their highway to Bering Sea. This chain of water- courses and the short portage are used by hunters who come over from Bristol Bay to the sea-otter rookeries along the Cook Inlet and Sheli- koff shores. Either shore offers unlimited opportunities to sportsmen. The only herds of wild reindeer remaining in Alaska are in the regions along the Alaskan and Kenai ranges. The big brown bear of Cook's Inlet has world-wide fame, and these monsters are the great-prizes of native hunters. Moose, caribou, mountain-goat, mountain-sheep, and deer are found. There are many trout streams besides the Salmon rivers on the E. shore, and wild fowl haunt the marshes in that same region. The finest waterfalls in Alaska leap from the cliffs along the Inlet, and the alternation of snow-peaks, volcanoes, forested slopes, and fer- tile prairies continually charm the eye. There are glaciers in the mountains on either shore of the Inlet. Those facing the Kachemak Bay coal-mines were explored and named by the Russian scientists in 1852, and their map showing the Grewingk, the Wossnessenski, the Doroshim, and the Süd glaciers is included in the Gletscher-Karte, of Berghaus's Physikal Atlas. TIDES. The Inlet is swept by tremendous tides, and there are strong tide rips at the entrance and at the Forelands beyond Fort Kenai. In Turnagain Arm, or Resurrection Bay, there is a tide fall of 20 and 27 ft., and the tide enters in a huge bore or wave. Expert canoemen take advantage of and ride the bore safely, and are swept rapidly on their way by its aid. The natives, the Chugachs, like the inhabitants of Prince William Sound, are Indians of Athabascan stock. They are not a canoe peo- ple, and differ as much from the Tlingits on one side as from the Es- quimaux on the other. Kadiak and the Great Salmon Canneries. The dense forests of the Northwest Coast finally cease at the line of the Kenai Peninsula, and there are but scattered groves on the Kadiak Islands. Beyond that line the shores are covered with grasses, shrubs, and thick mosses, that, freshened by perpetual fog and rain, are so brilliantly and intensely green as to dazzle the eye. The dug-out banoe disappen; at this forest edge, and boats of sea-lion or walrus 138 “To WESTWARD » FROM SITKA TO UNALASKA. hide stretched over driftwood frames replace them. The bidarka, a narrow shell pointed at either end, carries one or two men, who sit each in a small hatch furnished with an apron that fastens around his body, and these bladders ride the roughest seas safely. Women and children are even packed beneath the oarsmen’s feet for short voyages. Lutke called these bidarkans the “Cossacks of the sea,” and Billings wrote, “If perfect symmetry, smoothness, and proportion constitute beauty, they are beautiful beyond anything that I ever beheld.” They have also the oomiak, or large open walrus-hide boat, as a family and trading canoe, and these two craft, with slight modifications, are in use from Kadiak around to the arctic coast. In 1850 three Russian sailors deserted from Kadiak and reached Shoalwater Bay, Wash., in bidarkas. In 1884 two Danes went from Kadiak to San Francisco in a bidarka 19 ft. long, making the 1,600 miles to Victoria in 105 days’ paddling, with frequent camps at night along the coast. In 1892, a 12-ton schooner was blown off Karluk in a storm, and the one man navigated the 2,000 miles to San Francisco in 20 days, a feat which matches the bidarkans’ record. Lisiansky was told that the Kadiak Islands were once separated by only the narrowest pass from the peninsula's shore. A huge Kenai otter attempted to swim through and was caught fast. Its struggles widened the Shelikoff Strait, and pushed Kadiak out to its present pos- session. By tradition, the original inhabitants were descended from a dog. There is one legend of a man and a dog being set adrift on a stone that finally turned to an island. Another tells that the daugh- ter of a great chief living north of “the peninsula of Alaxa” was ban- ished in wrath with her dog husband and whelps. The dog tried to swim back but was drowned, and the pups fell upon their grandfather, tore him to pieces, and ruled in his stead. Lisiansky found the Ka- diakers in the lowest stages, sitting on the roofs of their sod huts or on the beach, like herds of animals, gazing at the sea in stupid silence. The want of oral intercourse proved their estate, but the courteous ex- plorer said that “their simplicity of character exceeds that of all other people.” He built ice hills for the Christmas of 1804, the Aleuts and Kadiakers went crazy over toboganning, and the natives came from the farthest points to watch. Afognak, the northern island of the group, was declared a Fish and Timber Culture Reserve, by Executive proclamation of Dec. 24, 1892. The steamer calls on both E. and W. trips at the headquarters of the N. A. C. Co. for the Kadiak region on Wood Island near St. Paul. The furs of Copper River and the Kenai region reach those warehouses. There are large ice-houses on the island, whence cargoes were shipped to San Francisco previous to the perfecting of the ice-machine. The “To WESTWARD" FROM SITKA To UNALASKA. 139 owners of the latter paid the Kadiak company a subsidy to withdraw from competition, but ice was regularly stored year after year, and the agent ruled patriarchally over a model village, virtually surrounded by a park and game preserve. St. Paul (population, 495), on the N. E. shore of Kadiak Island, was the first headquarters of Shelikoff’s and Baranof's fur-trade, and, as their early capital and older home, was the boast of the Russians in Sitka's better days. It is the headquarters of the A. C. Co. in this region, and furs to the value of $300,000 are shipped yearly. There was a garrison of U. S. troops here for a few years after the transfer. The Greatest Salmon Stream in the World. Karluk is another important port of call on both trips of the mail steamer. Two-thirds of the entire salmon pack of Alaska are furnished by the ten canneries on the Kadiak Islands, which are almost entirely supplied from the Karluk River. This stream, on the W. coast of Kadiak, is 16 miles long, from 100 to 600 ft. wide, and less than 6 ft. deep. These figures give the dimensions of the solid mass of salmon that used to ascend the Karluk to a mountain lake before canners came with traps and gill-nets in 1884. The largest cannery in the world is at Karluk. There were 1,100 employés altogether at the Karluk can- neries in 1890, and over 200,000 cases of 48 one-pound tins contained the 3,000,000 salmon packed. A single haul of the seine has beached 17,000 salmon, yet each ebb tide then left thousands of stranded fish to die on the banks and bars. The canners enjoy their monopoly without tax, license, or any Government interference. The nearest civil official is the U. S. Commissioner at Unalaska, 700 miles away, or the customs deputy at Sand Point. Stores, employés, and pack are conveyed to and from San Francisco in the canners' own vessels, and the hundreds of Chinese, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Americans constitute the most untrammelled communities anywhere under one flag from May to Sep- tember of each year. There is much agricultural land on these islands and cattle graze the year round, the thermometer never recording zero, and Snow lying on the ground but for a short time. The Shumagin Islands and the Cod Fisheries. . Bering landed on this group in 1741 to bury Shumagin, one of his crew; and Steller, the naturalist, who accompanied that expedition and first classified the Pacific fishes, mentions the cod. Captain Cook and 140 “To WESTWARD" FROM SITRA TO UNALASKA. other navigators referred to the cod; and Senator Sumner laid great stress on the value of these cod banks in his farewell speech, thereby causing several New England cod-fishing communities to protest against the purchase of Alaska. Prof. Davidson reported the Shumagin cod banks—since named the Davidson Banks—in 1867, and twenty years later the Fish Commission steamer Albatross began its work of sounding and mapping the banks on either side of the Aleutian Islands. Over 10,000 square miles of cod banks were surveyed in three years. Popoff Island, opposite Unga, is the headquarters of the cod-fishing fleet, and there are large warehouses at Humboldt Harbour and Pirate Cove for salting and storing fish. The industry is conducted by San Francisco fish-dealers, and the cod are taken there to be cured. The dry California climate is said to be the reason for that process not resulting as satis- factorily as on the Atlantic coast. A colony of Gloucester fishermen rounded the Horn after the troubles on the Great Banks in the Atlantic, and many others have followed, but the immediate profits of sealing over- shadow cod-fishing for the time being. The extinction of the fur seal will give the cod-fisheries a greater following and importance; men will depend upon more certain wages and employment, and cod will in- crease in numbers, as each seal is said to consume in one summer cod equalling in value the price of a raw sealskin. The pack of Shumagin cod for 1890 was valued at $500,000, and for all the seasons from 1867 to 1890 at a total of more than $3,000,000. A coal-mine on Unga Island furnishes fuel for local consumption here and around Kadiak, and the Apollo Gold Mine, on the same island, has been a paying concern from the start. The outer shores of the Shumagins are haunts of the sea-otter. The Aliaska Peninsula. From Cook's Inlet to the beginning of the Aleutian chain the E. shore of the Aliaska Peninsula is a precipitous mountain range rising abruptly from the sea. These dangerous shores are haunts of the sea- otter, and in several places Salmon streams connect with mountain lakes. There are canneries and trading stations at Chignik Bay, Wrangell, Portage, and Pavloff Bays. A railway 13 miles in length connects Portage Bay with Herendeen Bay and the Bering Sea shore, and brings coal from the mines owned by the Alaska Commercial Company to ship- ping wharves. This is regarded as the most valuable coal deposit in Southern Alaska. - TEIE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. 141 Belkofsky, at the foot of the volcano Mt. Pavloff, is the centre of the sea-otter trade. The village of 185 people maintains a handsome Greek church, and there is a Government school. A century ago sea-otters were plentiful along all the Alaskan coasts, but persistent hunting has nearly exterminated them, and they now take refuge on the stormiest and most dangerous shores, and live in beds of floating kelp. The hunters lie in hiding on the rocks for days in order to creep upon or surround their game, or they may happen upon an otter while it sleeps floating on the water. Only natives were allowed to hunt otter, and firearms were thus prohibited on the otter-grounds until 1878, when the Secretary of the Treasury allowed white men mar- ried to native women to be considered natives in regard to the privileges of hunting, which “put otters at a discount and women at a premium.” The native spear and arrow are no longer used. Steamers and schoon- ers carry contract hunters to the best otter-grounds, where they camp until called for by those vessels. All the tide-water shores from Prince William's Sound to the Aleutian Islands are otter-grounds, and the peninsula coast near Belkofsky, the outer Shumagins, and the Sannakh Islands are the richest grounds. Otter-skins have increased enormously in value, and a single one of these purplish-brown pelts sprinkled with delicate silver-tipped hairs is worth from $150 to $300. It is the court fur of Russia and China, and at one time laws prevented commoners from wearing it. The Aleutian Islands, The seventy islands of the Aleutian chain lie like natural stepping- stones from the point of the Aliaska Peninsula for 1,000 miles toward the Kamchatka shore, and Attu, the last in line, lies beyond the one hundred and eightieth meridian and within the Eastern hemisphere. They are of volcanic origin, and many craters still smoke along the chain. Only one island, Unalaska, contains a white settlement; and only one island, Amchitka, is seen from any established route of com- merce. The Canadian Pacific steamships often sight the low, green shores or see the reflected glow of the volcano on Amchitka on their course from Vancouver to Yokohama. They are natural stations for the proposed trans-Pacific cable route from British Columbia to the terminus of the Siberian Great Northern telegraph lines. The islands are treeless, but covered with grass and mosses, and in summer with a wealth of wild flowers. They are capable of cultivation, and afford excellent pasturage. The temperature varies little from Sit- ka's averages, and fog and rain are almost constant during the summer. “The wolf's long howl” is not heard, but several islands are blue fox ranches, and great care is taken to increase and improve the quality of 142 THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. pelts from such preserves. Over two hundred blue fox skins are shipped from Attu each season. Cod banks border the islands, and salmon and herring swarm, yet through improvidence the natives of some remote villages barely manage to exist through the winters. The Aleuts numbered but 900 altogether in 1890. They are now of mixed Russian descent, but the original Aleuts were a gentle, intelligent people when impressed by the first fur-traders, and in their speech and customs showed resemblance to the Ainos of northern Japan. Baranof literally enslaved them, took 1,000 Aleut hunters with their bidarkas to Sitka in 1804, and often leased them under contract to British and American traders for otter-hunting on the lower coast. Their damp, half underground houses and the native qvass have been sufficient rea- son for their rapid decline in numbers. Despite the introduction of foreign liquors, only one murder was committed by Aleuts in fifty years. They are quick to improve educational advantages, and Aleut women of the better class possess many accomplishments. The older women weave exquisitely fine baskets, cigar-cases, etc., from the dried grasses and fibres, but the supply of this work diminishes each year. Unimak Island, the first of the Aleutians, contains two volcanoes, Shishaldin (8,953 ft.), and Pogromnaia, or Destruction (5,525 ft.). Shishaldin is the most symmetrical and perfect cone along the whole “Pacific Ring of Fire,” tapering evenly from sea-level to the sharpest point, from which a smoke pennant always floats. The sea beats at its base, and the snowy cone retains its white covering to within 2,000 ft. of the surf the year round. It was in eruption in 1826, and in 1827 opened a new crater and rained ashes far and wide. The perpet- ual mist and vapour in the atmosphere defeat photographers' efforts to secure sharp negatives from a moving ship. Unimak Pass and Akutam Pass are the usual ships' entrances to Bering Sea. Between the two lies the island holding the volcanic peak of Akutan, 3,988 ft. in height. Unalaska, the most important island of the Aleutian chain, is mountainous throughout, with the volcanic mass of Makushin, 5,961 feet, at its northwest end. Dutch Harbour, on the north shore, fronting Akutan Pass, is the headquarters of the North American Commercial Co., and tourists by their mail steamer from Sitka wait here while the vessel refits for the return cruise. Captain Cook twice repaired his ships at this harbour in 1778, and here met Ismyloff, commander of the Russian factory on the other side of the island. He gave the great navigator much information as to local names, which the latter received with caution. Here Cook wrote: “They (the Aleuts) call it by the same name Mr. Staehlin gives to his ''/?/?/?/?/???/S '//'ſ "IN ‘I’s ‘n “hualpwougl "Iºw &q qdm） ſonoqae THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. 143 great island, that is Alaschka. Stachtan Nitada, as it is called on the modern maps, is a name quite unknown to these people, natives of the islands, as well as Russians, but both of them know it by the name of America.” Then later Cook wrote: “I have already observed that the American continent is here called by the Russians as well as by the islanders Alaschka, which name, though it properly belongs only to the country adjoining Unimak, is used by them when speaking of the American continent in general, which they know perfectly well to be a great land.” Iliuliuk, “the curving beach,” more commonly known as Una- laska, population 317, one mile below Dutch Harbour, is port of entry for all ships passing in or out of Bering Sea and the metropolis of all the region “to westward.” The U. S. commissioner and deputy-col- lector reside here. The Greek church is second in size and importance to the cathedral at Sitka, and the bishop for a time resided here. Be- sides the Russian parish school, there are a Government day-school and a Methodist mission. It is headquarters for the Alaska Commercial Co., which occupies the old fort of the Russian Company. The ships of the Pacific arctic whaling fleet call here for water, coal, supplies, and mail, transship cargo, leave and receive news of the ice line, the position, and catch of each whaler. In 1891, 1892, and 1893, during the modus vi- vendi, it was headquarters of the United States and British fleets en- gaged in the Bering Sea patrol, and lines of captured sealers often waited at anchor. There is direct communication with Sitka, 1,250 miles, by monthly mail steamer, from April to October, and frequent communication with San Francisco, 2,100 miles, by traders' supply steamers, which take pas- sengers under certain conditions. Excursions from Unalaska. Mrs. Shepard’s “Cruise of the Rush" shows how agreeably time may be passed on this northern isle, and suggests minor excursions to the miniature forest, the waterfall, and the cave near Dutch Harbour. The wealth of wild flowers carpeting all the hillsides is the delight of every visitor, and none weary of the beautiful harbour and the landscape wealth around. Those travelling by the Sitka steamer will find them- selves the guests of the N. A. C. Co. at their Dutch Harbour establish- ment, and every arrangement is made for those wishing to hunt, fish, botanize, or climb. Bogoslov volcano, with its sea-lion rookeries, is the great point of attraction, and a day's excursion to this island of St. John the Theo- 144 THE BERING SEA ANTD SHORES. logian is included in the tour from Sitka by the N. A. C. Co.'s vessel. It lies in Bering Sea some 40 miles W. of Unalaska harbour, and rose from the waters in 1796 after a day of rumbling, thunder, and violent explosions, accompanied by much sulphurous gas and dense Smoke. The rocky mass grew after a similar demonstration in 1805. It con- tinued to grow for a quarter century, often showing a light at night and darkening the sun with its smoke by day. There were disturbances in 1883, the year of Krakatoa's great eruption, and showers of fine ashes fell from concealing clouds that finally lifted and disclosed a second peak joined to the first by a sandy isthmus. Ship Rock, 86 ft. high, stood on the isthmus. The earthquakes of 1889–90 left only a thread of this isthmus, and in 1891 it had sunk beyond soundings, Ship Rock had wholly disappeared, and a new peak was in action. The upper parts of these peaks have been too hot for one to climb, and the intense heat and steam are rotting away the rocks, that drop continually. Sea-lions swarm on the rocks and ledges along shore, and myriads of birds have their nests on the warm rocks. A landing is usually made and oppor- tunity given for all to gather specimens and souvenirs of the visit, cook eggs over the steam-jets, and put the volcano to other practical uses. Opportunity sometimes offers for a circuit of the island by sea, and is an excursion much enjoyed. Makushin Harbour, on the W. coast, where Glottov and his Russians first landed in 1757, is some 30 miles from Unalaska. The great mountain is easily climbed from that side. Prof. Blake, Lieutenant Hodgson, and Dr. Kellogg, of Prof. Davidson's expedition, climbed Makushin, 5,961 ft., September, 1867, and found “a crater 2,000 ft. broad by estimate, and filled with Snow, in the north- western portion of which was an orifice giving vent to clouds of smoke and sulphurous fumes.” The volcano of Vsevidoff, 8,000 ft., on Unimak Island, S.W. of Una- laska, attracts attention. Borka, on the little island of the same name at the N. E. end of Unalaska Island, is an Aleut village of as extraordi- nary neatness and cleanliness as the show villages of Holland. The Bering Sea and Shores, The Nushegak and Kuskokwim Rivers. Bering Sea was described by Prof. Davidson as “a mighty reser- voir of cod,” and a large cod bank extends all along the W. side of the great peninsula. The Nushegak River reaches the sea at Bristol Bay, on whose shores are four large salmon canneries, and the king salmon of the Kvichak and Nushegak average from 40 to 60 pounds' weight. On this side of the peninsula all the coast people are Innuits or Esqui- THE BERING SEA AND SHORES. 145 maux (ces qui miaux), differing entirely from Aleut, Tlingit, and the Tinneh or Athabascan tribes of the interior. They live in under- ground huts, wear the loose parka or hooded Smock, and skin boots, and use dogs as draught animals. The Russians made few attempts and had no success in civilizing or Christianizing them. There is now a Moravian mission at Carmel on the Nushegak, and one at Bethel on the Kuskokwim, with Government contract schools at both places. Ruskokwim Bay is the Fundy of this coast, the tide rising 50 and 60 ft., and rushing in in a great bore or wave. The Kuskokwim is the second great river of the Territory, and navigable for 900 miles from its mouth. Well-populated Esquimaux villages line its banks, and the natives have an abundant food supply in the salmon, white-fish, seals, and beluga, or white whale. Prospectors have found gold on all these Western rivers, and the fur-trade is considerable, the Kuskokwim country furnishing the finest black bear skins in Alaska. Moravian missions have been established on this river. The Pribylov or Seal Islands. These four volcanic islands lie 220 miles N. W. of Unalaska, veiled in perpetual mists and fogs of the summer season, and ringed round with drift ice in the winter. They are treeless, covered with moss and grass, and brilliant wild flowers in their season. The odours of the rookeries, where hundreds of thousands of seals gather annually, and of the slaughter-grounds, where millions of seals have been killed for a century, are perceived far at sea, and, with the barking of the animals, are often the mariner's only guide in those dense and protracted fogs. Only Government vessels are allowed to approach or enter the har- bours. St. Paul, the larger island, is 12 miles long and from 6 to 8 miles wide, and its village is the headquarters of the N. A. C. Co., leasing the seal fisheries. St. George, 30 miles N., is a little smaller, and between them lie the tiny Otter and Walrus Islands. The 400 Aleuts inhabit- ing the islands are gathered in tidy villages, with Greek churches and school-houses. The islands are a Government reserve, and are leased for terms of twenty years by the U. S. Treasury Department. For over a century they have yielded more wealth than any gold-mine, but with the settlement of the Northwest Coast their prosperity has dimin- ished, and the seals will be exterminated as ruthlessly as those of the antarctic. - 146 THE BERING SEA AND SHOREs. For forty years Siberian traders hunted for the fabled island of Amik, where they believed the “sea bears” lived. In 1786 Gerassim Pribylov heard the barking through the fog and found the fur-seals' summer home. Two million seals were killed within a year, and the reckless slaughter so nearly exterminated the herds that Resanof or- dered killing stopped for five years, when the rookeries regained their numbers. Baranof used the Pribylovs as a bank. The sealskin, then valued at $1 Mexican, was the unit of currency, and regularly taken in payment for any commodity by American traders, who exchanged them at Canton for silk and tea. In 1835 the islands were ringed with ice into midsummer, the seals could not land, and the pups born in the surf died with their mothers. The herd was again nearly extinct, and Baron Wrangell stopped the killing until the rookeries had regained their numbers. Sir George Simpson (1844) found the company taking 200,000 and 300,000 skins annually, and the market so overstocked that the skins did not pay for carrying. In similar situations before as many as 700,000 and 1,000,000 skins were thrown into the sea to keep prices up, and in Baranof's time improperly cured skins were thrown away in as great numbers. THE SEAL ISLAND LEASES. The value and importance of these islands were not appreciated at the time of the transfer. No protection was afforded in 1868, and seven concerns enjoyed free sealing that season. In 1869 they were declared a Government reserve and guarded by soldiers, and in 1870 the islands of St. Paul and St. George and the seal-fisheries were leased for twenty years to the Alaska Commercial Co., of San Francisco, which had previously bought all the buildings and the good-will of the Russian American Fur Co. throughout Alaska. They were per- mitted to kill 100,000 seals each year, 80,000 on St. Paul and 20,000 on St. George, for an annual rental of $55,000, a tax of $2.62% on each skin, and 55 cents on each gallon of seal-oil. The lessees fur- nished fuel and certain rations to the Aleuts, provided schools and med- ical care, and paid them 40 cents for each skin taken. A special Treas- ury agent resided on the islands each season to protect Government interests, and guards prevented any killing on Walrus or Otter Islets. At the expiration of their lease the A. C. Co. had paid $5,956,565.67 to the Treasury, or 4 per cent interest on the sum paid for all Alaska. The A. C. Co. was believed to have divided from $900,000 to $1,- 000,000 profits each year between 12 original stockholders. Holding also the lease of the Comandorski Islands from Russia, they controlled the sealskin supply of the world; and having 36 other trading stations in Alaska, they monopolized land furs as well. Salmon canneries and coal-mines added to the profits of this most remarkable commercial company, whose preserves were not invaded nor monopoly threatened until toward the end of the Pribylov lease. By their management salted sealskins rose in value from $2.50 to $3 in 1868, to $10 and $18 in 1884, and to $30 in 1890. In 1890 a twenty-year lease was awarded to the North American THE BERING SEA AND SHORES. 147 Commercial Co., of San Francisco, for an annual rental of $100,000, a tax of $9.62 on each of 100,000 skins taken, the islands then to return over a million a year to the Government, or 14 per cent on Secre- tary Seward's investment. Pelagic sealing and rookery raiding by the Victoria fleet had so diminished the herd that the lessees were only permitted to take 20,000 skins the first season, and ſor three seasons while the seal question was a matter of diplomatic discussion only the few seals sufficient for a food supply for the natives were killed. CALLORBINUS URSINUS, THE FUR SEAL. For half the year the Aleuts and foxes have their islands undis- turbed. In May the “sea bears ” swim through the Aleutian passes after a six months' circuit of a kite shaped track whose lower loop is in the latitude of Los Angeles. They are followed as they sweep close along the Northwest Coast by the increasing fleet of sealing schooners, whose hunters secure about one seal out of ten shot. At the rooker- ies, polygamous families herd in little groups on the rocks, and the patriarch stays at home with the little black pups all summer, while the mother seals swim even 200 miles in search of their daily 10 and 20 pounds of cod or salmon. They are timid creatures, and at any strange noise they rush to the water. The keeping of a pet dog lost one Russian manager $100,000 in one season by the depopulation of a rookery. No fire-arms, whistles, or bells are allowed on the island. The seal's fur is in best condition immediately on arrival, but he assumes a new coat in August, which is in fine condition when about to leave at the end of September. Only male seals from two to four years of age are killed. These bachelors herd alone, and the Aleuts running between them and the water in the early morning drive them slowly to the killing-ground, where they are despatched by a blow on the head, quickly bled, and the skins taken to the salting-house. Ex- cept as the Aleuts make use of the flesh and blubber, the carcass goes to waste. The cool, moist climate prevents these killing-grounds from causing an epidemic, and by the next spring the hollow, bird-like bones are lost in the grass and earth. The salted skins are sent to London, the fur-market of the world, auctioned off, and prepared for use. These perfect “Alaskas” com- mand first price, and “Victorias”—the poachers’ riddled, torn, and slashed skins—inferior prices. Seven London firms, employing some 10,000 workmen, finish sealskins at a cost of 7 shillings each. No machines have been able to supplant the many hand processes requir- ing the greatest skill and nicety. The skins are worked in sawdust, cleaned, scraped, washed, shaved, plucked, given from 8 to 12 coats of dye with a hand-brush, washed, and freed from any remaining grease by a bath of hot sawdust or sand. The Chinese began plucking and dyeing fur-seal over a century ago to furnish an imitation of sea-otter. French furriers have insisted on the darker dyes, but the strong nut- gall and acid render the skins less durable than when dyed to the bright brown of 30 years ago. Finished skins pay a duty of 20 per cent on re-entering the United States, 148 THE BERING SEA AND SHORES. THE BERING SEA QUESTION. As sealskins rose in value and the seafaring population increased on the Northwest Coast, pelagic sealing and poaching had their rise. A first poacher went from San Francisco in 1872. A revenue cutter was soon detailed to cruise in Bering Sea and seize such craft. The sealers then took out British papers and made Victoria their home port, and by 1879 brought in and reported 12,500 skins to the Cana- dian officials. In 1886 they brought in 38,907 skins; the rookeries were openly raided; three Canadian vessels were seized; the British minister at Washington protested, and the Bering Sea Question arose. In 1887 six Canadian vessels were seized, and in the brief and argu- ment prepared by A. K. Dulaney, U. S. District Attorney at Sitka, the first formal plea was made that Bering Sea was an inland water, a mare clausum—no part of the Pacific Ocean; and that the United States and Russian boundary line from Bering Strait to Attu Island enclosed protected seal waters within which the United States had com- plete jurisdiction by virtue of rights obtained from Russia. In 1890 over 100 schooners trailed the Pribylov herd up the coast; and while the lessees of the islands could only take 20,000 skins, 50,- 000 skins were brought into Victoria. Schooners boldly raided the rookeries, and the Aleuts battled with the crews. - June 15, 1891, after every schooner had cleared from Victoria, Great Britain agreed to the modus wivendi proposed by the United States, whereby all sealing in Bering Sea by citizens of either national- ity should cease. The joint patrol of gunboats and cutters warned 73 and seized 6 schooners in Bering Sea. Commissioners from the United States and Great Britain visited the islands and met in confer- ence at Washington, in February, 1892. The modus wivendi was re- newed for another season, and a treaty of arbitration negotiated. The seizure of the supply steamer Coquitlam off Nuchek prevented the Victoria fleet from invading Bering Sea to any extent during 1892. The tribunal of arbitration met in Paris, March 23, 1893. Its mem- bers were: Justice John M. Harlan and Senator John T. Morgan, arbi- trators for the United States; Lord Hannen and Sir John Thompson, for Great Britain; Baron de Courcelles, for France; Gregers Gram, for Sweden; and the Marquis Venosta, for Italy. Hon. John W. Fos- ter appeared as agent for the United States; Hon. E. J. Phelps, J. C. Carter, Frederick Coudert, H. W. Blodgett, and R. Lansing, as counsel. Hon. C. H. Tupper appeared as agent for Great Britain, and Sir Charles Russell, Sir Richard Webster, Mr. C. Robinson, and Mr. W. H. Cross as counsel. The arbitration covers the following points: 1. What exclusive jurisdiction in the sea known as the Bering Sea, and what exclusive right in the seal-fisheries therein, did Russia assert and exercise prior and up to the time of the cession of Alaska to the United States ? 2. How far were these claims of jurisdiction as to the seal-fish- eries recognized and conceded by Great Britain 2 3. Was the body of water now known as Bering Sea included in the THE BERING SEA AND SHORES. 149 phrase “Pacific Ocean "as used in the Treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia, and what right, if any, in Bering Sea was held and exclusively exercised by Russia after said treaty ? 4. Did not all the rights of Russia as to jurisdiction and as to the seal-fisheries in Bering Sea, east of the water boundary, in the treaty between the United States and Russia of the 30th of March, 1867, pass unimpaired to the United States under that treaty? 5. Has the United States any right, and, if so, what right of pro- tection of property in the fur-seals frequenting the islands of the United States in Bering Sea, when such seals are found outside the ordinary three-mile limit 2 - The tribunal rendered a decision adverse to the United States, refus- ing to consider that the United States had entire property rights in the seal herds, or to consider the question of damages to United States property by pelagic sealing. The effect of the decision made the United States liable to damages for seizure and detention of sealing schooners. The Secretary of State and the British ambassador, in 1895, fixed upon the sum of $425,000, as covering all such damages, but Congress re- fused to appropriate that sum in settlement, deeming the amount exor- bitant. In 1896, Congress authorized a commission of one British, one United States, and one Swiss citizen to examine and recommend such claims for damages. The tribunal instituted such regulations as it judged sufficient to protect the seal herds from extermination by pelagic sealing, but as these proved wholly insufficient, the seals rapidly decreased, thousands of young seals starving to death on the beaches each summer, and Con- gress long discussed the Dingley bill, which provided that the lessees should kill every seal that landed on the islands, and the Bering Sea question thus be forever ended. After examining all evidence at Victoria, the Claims Commission, December 16, 1897, rendered an award to Great Britain for $294,000, with interest, which, added to it, amounted to $463,000. A Seal Conference was held at Washington in October, 1897, in which delegates from the United States, Russia, and Japan participated, Great Britain declining to be represented. At this conference it was determined that the seal herds were threatened with extermination, and that the nations concerned should enter into a conference for the adop- tion of regulations for their better protection; and the three Govern- ments invited Great Britain to unite in a convention for that purpose. Great Britain again refused its concurrence. In November following, a conference of expert naturalists, representing the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, met in Washington after having made a thorough investigation of conditions of seal life on the Pribylov Islands. These experts reached a series of conclusions in which they all joined, show- ing that— 1. The seals had steadily declined in numbers since 1884 (when the effects of pelagic sealing first began to be felt). - 2. That the herd was at present only from one third to one fifth of its former proportions. 150 THE BERING SEA AND SHORES. 3. That pelagic sealing, resulting in indiscriminate slaughter, was the cause of this decrease. 4. That the killing of seals on the Pribylov Islands was unobjec- tionable. • - 5. That the pelagic sealers had observed the regulations in good faith. - 6. That while there was no danger of extermination of the herd as long as it was protected on land, yet the business had already ceased to be profitable either to the lessees of the islands or to pelagic sealers. Negotiations are now (1898) pending between the United States and Great Britain for a revision of the regulations upon the basis of the conclusions of the expert conference. Further regulations, absolutely prohibiting pelagic sealing, also pro- hibited the importation and sale of pelagic skins after December 20, 1897, and the law was rigorously executed at all the custom-houses of the United States. Other Islands in Bering Sea. Less than 300 Esquimaux manage to exist on St. Matthew and St. Lawrence, and nearly all the inhabitants of the latter island died of starvation in 1878–79. Polar bears come down to these islands on the ice-floes, and their glossy winter-killed skins, averaging from 12 to 15 ft. in length, bring from $30 to $50 in trade. Ft. St. Michael’s, on an island in Norton Sound, 70 miles N. of the Yukon's mouth, is commercial headquarters for the Yukon and Arctic regions, and was created a U. S. military post and reservation in October, 1897. Miners and freight exchange from ships to light- draught river steamers, as with its many mouths no navigable ship- channel into the Yukon was found until the survey of 1898, and bars extend for 100 miles from shore. There are 1,370 miles of navigation between St. Michaels and Forty-Mile Creek, at the crossing of the inter- national boundary line on the Yukon. There are a Swedish mission and school in Norton Sound, and a Congregational mission and school at the large Esquimaux village just below Cape Prince of Wales. The Bureau of Education, in order to provide a future food sup- ply for the natives, has established a reindeer farm at Port Clarence, bringing the domesticated animals from the Siberian side and train- ing Innuit boys to care for them. Bering Strait. Bering Strait, dividing the continents of Asia and North Amer- ica, is 36 miles wide between East Cape and Cape Prince of Wales, IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 151 with the three Diomede Islands standing midway. The shallow water and upward current prevent any great icebergs floating down through this strait, and the ice to northward has rarely been seen to exceed b0 ft. in height above the water. There are no glaciers on either the Bering or Arctic coast, hence no icebergs, but only packs and floes. The Jeannette passed through this strait in 1879 and sunk off the Siberian coast; and Nordenskjöld brought the Vega successfully through from the Atlantic in 1880. Eugène Sue's Wandering Jew is described as standing on the Siberian promontory and conversing across the waters with the unknown female on Cape Prince of Wales; and tele- graph cables and railway bridges have been planned to connect the continents at this point. In the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic Circle is drawn across the water just above the capes, and the true Land of the Midnight Sun is entered. The shores of Kot- zebue Sound are the same marsh and tundra, covered with summer wild flowers, as seen along all the coast from the point of the Aliaska Pen- insula. The Pacific Arctic is the last whaling-ground left. The Pacific whaling fleet, which numbered 600 vessels a century ago, includes but 50 now. There are 10 steam whalers, and they obtain fuel from the coal-veins at Cape Lisburne, discovered and used by Captain C. L. Hooper during his arctic cruises in search of the Jeannette. The aver- age whaler is a dilapidated bark or brig, which with difficulty obtains a crew and can seldom be insured. A few of these whalers have wintered off the mouth of the Mackenzie River, in order to be on the ground in the spring. The crew go on shares, each man on board taking a per- centage of the season's catch on his return to San Francisco. Oil is not the prize sought now, and the bowhead, or Kadiak whale, ranks the sperm, since whalebone commands $6 a pound, and a single bowhead yields from $5,000 to $7,000 in bone. The whalers trade with Sibe- rian and Alaskan natives, and a revenue cutter patrols the Arctic each season to see that liquors and fire-arms are not introduced; to aid and rescue whalers when necessary; to give them communication with the world below, and to administer justice. Point Barrow, named by Beechey in 1826, which corresponds in latitude to the North Cape of Norway, is 600 miles E. of Bering Strait, and the most northern point of Alaska and of the continent. A U. S. 152 IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. signal station was maintained there for two years, as one in a chain of Arctic stations maintained by European governments for magnetic and meteorological observations. A refuge station was next built, 50 out of 87 whalers having been wrecked near that point, and the crews of 12 whalers preferring to go down with their ships in 1877, than to chance the slower death in Small boats or on shore. A Government school and Presbyterian mission was built in 1890 to care for the Es- quimaux settled around the station. It is visited and revictualled an- nually by the revenue cutter. The refuge station was closed by the Government in 1896 and the supplies sold, the whalers having made no request for its maintenance when circulars requesting opinions were sent to them. In the winter of 1897–'98 eight whaling vessels were “nipped ” and sunk off Port Barrow; and the crews, forced to camp on shore, were rescued from starvation by driving 500 reindeer across from the Government reindeer station at St. Lawrence and donating them as a food supply until relief vessels could reach them the follow- ing July. A first pleasure tourist visited the arctic whaling ground in 1891, a New York yachtsman paying $25,000 for the three months' cruise in a Japanese steamer chartered at Yokohama. Its presence created almost as great an excitement as the Confederate privateer Shenandoah when it appeared among the New Bedford fleet in 1865, captured and burned 35 whalers, and sent three to San Francisco as cartels. The Shenan- doah made but one port in the thirteen months after leaving Glasgow. It was the only vessel that carried the Confederate flag around the world, and carried it for six months after Appomattox. It visited every ocean save the Antarctic, carried its anchors at its bows for eight months, ran 38,000 statute miles, and never lost a chase. A Melbourne whaler warned and saved many Yankee ships, and the Shenandoah hunted for the Australian ship in vain, else Shenandoah claims might have aggre- gated more than $6,000,000. Demarcation Point, 600 miles E. of Point Barrow, is the inter- national boundary line, where “the meridian line of the 141st degree in its prolongation reaches the Frozen Ocean.” . Beyond lie the Northeast and the Northwest Passage, in search for which two generations of explorers sacrificed their lives. The country “beyond the north wind” still lures, and scientist, mariner, and fireside tourists dream of the place where latitude stops, longitude centers, time ends and time begins, and where the sun circles around the sum- mer sky brooding above the pole. THE YUECON MINING REGIONS. 153 The Yukon Mining Regions, Rlondike, Forty Mile, Mynook, etc. THE upper and lower Yukon regions were discovered separately. For a long time the unity of the two great streams was unknown, and they remain to a degree separate regions now, one belonging to the United States and the other to Canada. The mouth of the great river was explored by Glasnoff in 1835, and by Zagoskin in 1842, under the name of the Kwichpak, but it was not until 1863 that the Russians ascended to the boundary line of their possessions at the crossing of the 141st meridian, the fur-trade of which section was controlled en- tirely by the H. B. Co., and its chain of forts reaching eastward to Hud- son's Bay. H. B. Co. employees on the Mackenzie River had heard of the river long before Mr. Robert Campbell (in 1840), in exploring and extending trade to the westward of the Rocky Mountains, reached the Pelly River. In the same letter, quoted at page 69, he further wrote: “The rascally Chilkat Indians from the Pacific coast were in the habit of making trading excursions to Pelly. They ascended by Lynn Canal, thence crossed over the mountains to the head of Lewis River. Descending this river they came to the Pelly, where oftentimes, when strong enough, they pillaged and massacred the Pelly Indians, than whom there could be no more honest men.” - In 1846 Mr. J. Bell, of the H. B. Co., went over from the Mackenzie River, descended the Porcupine to a great river which the Indians called the Yukon, and he first attached that name to the stream. Ft. Yukon, at the mouth of the Porcupine River, was built by the H. B. Co. in 1847, and in 1864 they built a new fort a mile lower down, for convenience in landing. As it was always known that these stockades were on Russian ground, the H. B. Co. paid a regular rental. F. Yukon was supplied by the chain of forts reaching from York Factory on Hudson's Bay to the mouth of the Mackenzie and the upper Porcupine. Ft. Selkirk, farther up the Yukon, built in 1849, was about to be abandoned when the Chilkats attacked it in 1851, drove out the occupants, and plundered and burned the buildings because of the H. B. Co.'s interference there with their overland trade from Lynn Canal. In 1866 Messrs. Ketchum and Lebarge, of the W. U.T. Co.'s sur- vey parties, reached Ft. Selkirk from the sea, and Dr. W. H. Dall and Frederick whºver passed the winter of 1865–66 near Nulato. 154 THE YUKON MINING REGIONS. M. Byrnes, of the W. U. T. Co. Survey, coming northward from the Stikine River to the head-waters of the Taku, followed the lakes and the Hootalinqua River to the Lewis, and camped on the Tako Arm of Tagish Lake in August, 1867. With the success of the Atlantic cable the W. U. T. Co. abandoned its survey, and no further exploration was made in that region until the mineral discoveries near Sitka from 1871–77, and the tide of Cassiar miners drifting northward discussed the Yukon as a next possible gold field. Ocean steamers from the south connect at Ft. Wrangell with the few to the British side of the boundary line; but no other evidence of United States possession was given until the first miners came over from the Chilkoot Pass in 1878–79–80, and the Schiefflin brothers arrived from St. Michaels in 1882. The first white man to cross the divide between Lynn Canal and the head-waters of the Yukon, according to Chilkat and local Alaskan tradition, was a red-headed Scotchman in the employ of the H. B. Co., who, reaching the ruins of Ft. Selkirk in 1864, started alone along the old “grease trail” to the sea. He hid from the trading parties of In- dians all the way, crossed the pass, and was seized and held until ran- somed by Captain Swanson, of the H. B. Co.'s ship Labouchere, when he came to trade at Pyramid Harbour. Believing that he was a Shaman, because of his long red hair, the Indians treated him well. Dr. Daw. son discredits this story of the lone Scotch pioneer, for the reason that Ft. Selkirk was in ruins at that time. George Holt, an old Cassiar miner, claimed to have made his way across the pass in 1872, and again in 1874, when he left his Chilkoot escort and went down the Yukon to the point where he crossed, by a Russian trail, to the Kuskokwim River, and reached the sea. In 1874, Arthur Harper, coming over from the Cassiar by way of Mackenzie River and the Porcupine, reached the Yu- kon and ascended to the White River, on which he, with two Compan- ions, wintered, and for the two open seasons prospected for copper with poor results. They prospected the Forty-Mile Creek as vainly; ob- tained provisions from St. Michaels, wintered near the Koyukuk, and in 1875 joined, the traders McQuesten and Mayo, who had opened a post at Ft. Reliance, 6% miles from the mouth of the Klondike River. In 1877 Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood went to Chilkoot, intending to cross and explore continental Alaska, but was prevented by the Indians. In 1878 George Holt crossed with a trading party of Chilkoots, went THE YUIKON MINING REGIONS. 155 with them as far as Ft. Selkirk, and returned safely; Rath and Bean, two Sitka miners, being refused the privilege at the very same time. In 1880 Captain Beardslee, U. S. N., took the case of the prospectors in hand, and by his diplomacy and guarantees Bean and 19 miners, who promised not to interfere with the fur-trade, were guided across to Ft. Selkirk, finding fine gold and large gravel deposits all the way. A trader who slipped in in the wake of the prospectors, was detected by the Indians, brought back, and his life saved only by Captain Beards- lee's most active intervention. The Bean party divided at Ft. Selkirk, one party prospecting as far as Ft. Yukon and returning to Chilkoot, the others ascending the Pelly and crossing to Dease Lake and the Cas- siar region. As this pioneer party went in, they met James Wynn of Juneau coming out, and he claims to have also gone over the pass in 1879. The Indians, finding that the packing of miners’ supplies over the pass was more remunerative than the diminishing fur-trade, lifted the blockade. Small parties of miners crossed the pass in 1881; an or- ganized party of Arizona miners crossed in 1882. In 1883 James Du- gan led a party that made a permanent camp and remained all winter; and also, in 1883, Lieutenant Schwatka crossed the pass and made a quick raft journey down to the sea, renaming all the peaks, passes, lakes, and rivers, to the great confusion of geographers, map-makers, and miners. In 1882 the Schiefflin brothers, of Tombstone, Arizona, took their own river steamer, launches, supplies, etc., to St. Michaels, and for more than a year prospected the Yukon banks for a thousand miles. They discovered the placers on Mynook Creek, found good prospects in many places, but because of the long winters and the remoteness from the base of supplies decided that mining would not be profitable there, and returned. In 1886 coarse gold was found on Forty-Mile Creek at the supposed boundary line, and stimulus was given to the steady influx of miners from Juneau. - In 1890 Mr. E. J. Glave explored from Chilkat Pass to the head- waters of the Alsek River and to Dry Bay, and in 1891 took the “pio- neer pack-horses” over, and with his camp-hand, Jack Dalton, found pasturage and an easy trail through the rolling bush country beyond. In 1891 rich discoveries were made on Birch Creek, and Circle City was established on the banks of the Yukon, 200 miles below the bound- 156 TEIE YUKON MINING REGIONS. ary line, and connecting by an 8-mile portage with the head of Birch Creek. This settlement was supposed to be on the line of the Arctic Cir- cle when named, but has been determined as lying 75 miles southof it. In 1895 there were further discoveries on Mosquito Creek at the head of Forty-Mile Creek, and in that year a detachment of 20 Cana- dian Mounted Police went in by way of St. Michaels and established Ft. Cudahy, at the mouth of Forty-Mile Creek near the boundary line, and instituted a regular Canadian mail service via Dyea to Victoria. On August 12, 1897, the richest gold field along the Yukon was dis- covered by George Carmack, of California, on Bonanza Creek, an affluent of the Klondike River which empties into the Yukon some 70 miles above or east of the boundary line. Upon the news of his great find, and succeeding pans of $200 and even $300 in value, the country went wild, and the other camps and towns along the Yukon were emptied in that winter's rush to the Klondike. Harper and Ladue, traders from F. Selkirk and Sixty-Mile, removed at once to the mouth of the new river and laid out a town site named for Dr. George M. Dawson, of the Canadian Geological Survey. By the spring of 1897 the excitement had reached the Pacific Coast cities, and with the arrival in July of sev- eral ships freighted with miners, their dust and nuggets, the fever was communicated to the Atlantic coast, Europe, and Australia. There re- sulted a wild rush of ill-advised and ill-provided gold seekers and adventurers, hundreds going by way of St. Michaels, and, because of low water, spending the winter frozen in on the lower Yukon, and thou- sands attempting the passes from Lynn Canal, where the trails became blocked and impassable, and many abandoned their provisions and tools in order to reach Dawson before winter set in. Dyea and Shkagway, on Chilkoot Inlet, were made United States sub-ports of entry, and the Canadian Government stationed mounted police at the foot of Chilkoot Pass and at the head of Tagish Lake. A supposed Scarcity of food at Dawson City moved the United States Congress to appropriate $100,000 for a relief expedition to these new Canadian mining camps in the winter of 1897–98, where it was sup- posed great suffering had resulted. Five hundred reindeer were im- ported from Lapland, and every arrangement was completed by the 1st of March, when the relief expedition was abandoned. An equal sum was appropriated for the long-deferred survey of the mouths of the Yu- kon River. Ft. Michael was made a military post, and a military recon- naissance was ordered to choose site for a garrison in the Yukon Valley. THE YUIKON MINING REGIONS. 157 The general land laws of the United States were extended to Alaska, and measures providing for the establishment of commissioners, courts, land offices, and post routes in the Yukon Valley, all resulted from the discovery of gold in Canadian territory. Rich discoveries on an arm of Lake Atlin caused a stampede from Skagway and Dyea late in 1898. The Yukon Gold Fields are reached from four main points of departure along the Alaskan coast. The Stikine Route. The Canadian Pacific Railway Co. maintains a line of ocean steam- ers from Victoria and Vancouver to Ft. Wrangell, connecting there with a line of light-draught, stern-wheel, river steamers, which ply between Pt. Wrangell and Glenora, or at high water proceed to Telegraph Creek, 12 miles beyond. (Fare from Vancouver and Victoria to Ft. Wrangell, including meals and berths on steamship, $25 first class, and $13 sec- ond class. From Vancouver and Victoria to Glenora, $40 first class, and $25 second class.) Independent miners may easily ascend the Sti- kine in the winter on the ice or in summer in canoes. Detachments of Canadian mounted police are stationed at the boundary and Glenora on the Stikine and at Lake Teslin. - The overland trail and wagon road from Glenora to Lake Teslin is 145 miles in length, and will soon be paralleled by a railway. The route is through an open and rolling country where there is pasturage for a limited supply of stock. A steamer has been placed on Lake Teslin, which is from 2 to 15 miles wide and 100 miles long, and in the 562 miles of lake and river navigation between Teslin and Dawson the only obstructions are the easily passed Rink Rapids. The Stikine River is open for navigation from the first of May to the end of October, and Lake Teslin opens a fortnight later in the spring. The itinerary of the Stikine has already been given at page 68. The approximate distances by the Stikine route are: Vancouver or Victoria to Ft. Wrangell....... (ocean) 700 miles. Ft. Wrangell to Glenora...................... (river) 125 “ Glenora to Lake Teslin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (trail or wagon) 145 “ Teslin to Ft. Selkirk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (lake and river) 400 “ Ft. Selkirk to Stewart River... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (river) 105 “ Stewart River to Dawson City................. (river) 67 “ Total distance from Vancouver and Victoria to Daw- son City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,542 miles. The Taku Route. Independent miners have gone from Juneau by canoe or steam launches to Taku Inlet and up the shallow Taku River for 40 miles and 158 - THE YUIKON MINING REGIONS. then by one of three routes to the lakes: 1. By the South Fork or Ink- lin River to the wagon-road from Glenora to Teslin. 2. By the Middle Fork or Nakina River and over a low pass to Teslin Lake, 3. By the North Fork and a short portage to Lake Atlin, and by portage to Tagish Lake. The Skagway Route. The bulk of Yukon travel has gone from Skagway on the east shore of Chilkoot Inlet over the White Pass to Lake Bennett. Ska- gway, a town of 5,000 to 8,000 inhabitants, suddenly sprang into exist- ence and was made a sub-port of entry in the summer of 1897, when the first rush began to the Klondike. It has better wharves, nearer anchorage and landing facilities than the other ports of Lynn Canal, and the easy grade over the low White Pass assures its permanence. It was swept by fire in 1898, but soon rebuilt. It has hotels, water- works, electric lights, tourist bureau, freight and transportation com- panies, and outfitting shops of every description. White Pass being reported, was first explored and surveyed by Captain Moore, of Mr. W. Ogilvie's survey of June, 1887, and named for Hon. Thomas White, Canadian Minister of the Interior. The railroad surveyed to Ft. Selkirk and Dawson was completed from Skagway to the summit of White Pass at the end of 1898. The wagon-road to Lake Bennett is 52 miles in length, crossing low bottom land for 4 miles, ascending to the summit of White Pass (2,600 ft.) in the next 13 miles, and dropping thence by easy stages for 35 miles to the head of Lake Bennett, where it unites with the Dyea Trail. From that point there is navigation for small boats the length of the Yukon, impeded only by the dangerous Miles Cañon and the White-Horse Rapids, where a portage of 2 miles is necessary. Small light-draught steel steamers were placed on these lakes in 1898, and convey passengers to the head of Miles Cañon. At the other side of White-Horse Rapids steam navigation is resumed, and is continuous for the 1,600 miles to St. Michaels. There are saw-mills on Lake Bennett, and boats may be built or purchased. The Canadian Custom-House and station of Mounted Police was at Tagish Houses, between Tagish Lake (a continuation of Lake Bennett) and Marsh Lake, but during the year 1897 the custom-house was tem- porarily removed to the summit of White Pass, and another estab- lished at Chilkoot Pass in February, 1898. Duty is levied on outfits not purchased in Canada, and only the immediate personal effects, tools, and provisions of miners are exempt. THE YUKON MINING REGIONS. 159 The Dyea Route. This route follows the original Chilkoot trail of the natives used by the pioneer prospectors, and still preferred by lightly equipped travellers, as being the shortest trail over the range to the lakes. Dyea, lying 4 miles beyond Skagway, has the same harbour difficulties to contend with. Ocean steamers anchor 5 miles out, and cargo is landed in light- ers. An ačrial tramway, carrying passengers and freight in cages trav- elling on a steel cable suspended from a line of posts and towers, now crosses the pass. This tramway is the application on a larger scale of the simple arrangement of buckets and wire ropes by which ore is brought down from difficult and inaccessible mine openings in mountainous countries. The trail from Dyea crosses the Dyea Creek seven times in the first 13 miles. Seven miles of this distance up the valley to the forks of the creek may be made in canoes. Sheep Camp, 5 miles beyond, marks the timber line, and there the real ascent begins, the path rising 1,800 ft. in the next 3 miles, 1,000 ft. of that ascent accomplished in half a mile ; for which reason the pass is not available for pack-horses or vehicles beyond the first few miles, and all goods must be packed on the back, and even in winter packed to the summit of Chilkoot Pass, 3,500 ft., and then lashed to sleds and drawn or tobogganed down on the other side. The descent of 1,320 ft. from the summit to Lake Linde- man is accomplished by easy trail in 154 miles, and at the foot of the next, or Bennett Lake, the Dyea and Skagway Trails meet. The 27 miles of navigation on Lake Bennett, succeeded by 17 miles down Lake Tagish, bring the miner to the Canadian custom-house, where duties are levied on all American-bought goods save the immediate tools, clothing, and provisions of the traveller. There are 19 miles of navi- gation on Marsh Lake, succeeded by the Fifty-Mile River, half-way in which the dangerous Miles Cañon and White-Horse Rapids necessitate a portage of 2 miles, and the miner risks only his empty boat through the fury of waters. River steamers can navigate from the foot of White-Horse Rapids to St. Michaels, and more frequent and regular steam communication from this point to Dawson is maintained each season. Navigation on these upper lakes and streams does not open usually before the middle of May or the first of June, and closes by the end of September. tº Q :* -: © e e?e • Q @ sº "e • * * * * * • * , Q º º tº º © ‘º º 40 • 3 e º 160 THE YUKON MINING REGIONS. The Chilkat Route, Dalton and Bound Trails. There are three routes from the head of Chilkat Inlet to the Yukon River at Ft. Selkirk, or to the Nordenskjold River and Rink Rapids, 70 miles above that settlement. The old Indian trail to Chilkat Pass, 3,100 ft., was first explored and mapped by the Drs. Krause, of Bre- men, in 1882, as far as Lake Arkell, and then traversed in part by Mr. E. J. Glave and his camp assistant Dalton with pack-horses in 1891. The present Dalton Trail from Pyramid Harbour follows the west bank of Chilkat River and then its west fork, crossing the mountains 45 miles from the coast at a lower elevation (3,000 ft.) and to the west of the old Indian trail, and following across a low, rolling bush country to Dal- ton's House on the Krotahin River, and thence due north over the same hilly country to Ft. Selkirk, or to Rink Rapids, where boats and barges are taken for the journey to Dawson and the mining camps. This route of 415 miles from Chilkat to Ft. Selkirk is used by pack trains of horses, mules, and dogs, and is suggested for the route of winter rein- deer express service, since the reindeer moss has been reported as grow- ing at one place near Chilkat Pass; and for many seasons droves of cattle and sheep have been driven in over this trail to Ft. Selkirk. The old Chilkat Trail, now the Bound Thail, follows the main branch of the Chilkat River up to the Chilkat Pass 3,100 ft., and de- scending past the shore of Lake Arkell follows directly north to the Mordenskjold River and Rink Rapids on the Yukon. The distances by the Dalton Trail, which is used entirely after navi- gation closes, are estimated as MILES Chilkat to Ft. Selkirk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 “ “ Dawson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600 { { “ Circle City.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 { { “ Mynook... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000 { { “ St. Michaels....................... 1,600 The distances by these routes from Lynn Canal are thus given by U. S. C. and G. Survey on Chart No 3100: Via Chilkoot Pass. Via St. Michaels and Yukon Rive?”. STAT. MILES. STAT. MILES. Seattle to Dyea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,115 | San Francisco to Dutch Harbour... 2,345 I)yea to Dawson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 *H. Fº *ś els.... łº, to cºº ;oyan, utch Harbour to St. Michaels. . . . 750 TVåa, Sökåne Rive?”. St. Michaels to Mouth of Yukon... 97 Seattle to Wrangell.............. 854 § { I)awson.... . . . . . . . . 1,260 Wrangel] to Telegraph Creek. , 140 { { Stewart River...... 1,321 Telegraph Creek to head of Tes- { { Ft. Selkirk. . . . . . . . . 1,425 lin Lake... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 { { Five-Finger Rapids. 1,491 Head ºf Çeşin Lake to Daw- § { Teslin River. . . . . . . 1,612 son f: . . . . . . . . . . . ... 525 { { White-Horse Rapids 1,697 • * s * •es ". .* - Longitude 116 West from 1|| Greenwich 11.2 11.1 110 --~~~ 2. - º mpart/House *~ º º & Lº /* - º E. - Grea ºh ſ E. - Lake £ º inter Houses Cath MENTA z- j." "Sº PA - MAP OF Batzulnetas K. s * > KLONDIRE IRIVER Tº *ena ºf zºº ` and Vicinity ºf-A-- - scACE OF STATUTE MILE8 9 & 3" | * - Zºº_º ſº nº s.ſ ſº - Z's Indian Houses - º s MAP OF Beave! *Old Nºssº - 62 GOLD REGION Reid House Šg. C. A. N. A. D. A. - | `s Showing Routes to it from Ga -> -º-º-º-º: DYEA, SKAGUAY AND FORT YUKON º .2 SCALE OF STATUTE MILES ºS 7 cº-ºº: 20 40 6ſ) 8ſ) tº gº Routes to Klondike - - º - º &. w Lake º: - *Tsº º >º sº; / º - Pº w - aºilº & / º \ º - 3. Mt. Watay ſ - * . f ޺imºiºn Vº º jº White Horse *(Rapids O F - *Jan º ºrda. -- A. L. A. S. K. A Cape Fairweather º 61 Longitude THE YUKON MINING REGIONS. 161 Ft. Selkirk, at the junction of the Lewis and Pelly Rivers, which there unite to form the Yukon, was a H. B. Co. post from 1849 to 1851, when it was destroyed by the Chilkat Indians. With the increase of travel over from Alaska it became an important camping-place, and the stores and houses of traders have made a considerable settlement there and an important place in steamboat navigation. Ogilvie, at the mouth of Sixty-Mile Creek, gives access to that im- portant mining centre. - Dawson City, on the north or right bank of the Yukon at the mouth of the Klondike, or “Throndvik” (water full of fish), occupies a low, boggy site between the hills and the river. It was established by Joseph Harper, of Ft. Selkirk, and Joseph Ladue, of Sixty-Mile, who removed their trading stocks from those places immediately upon the receipt of the news of Carmack's discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek in August, 1896. There is a station of mounted police at Dawson City, and the Canadian Government maintains perfect control and order over the thousands of rough and lawless ones, criminals, and adventurers of every kind who flocked to the Klondike in the excitements of 1897 and 1898. There are land, assay, and post offices, and a Government treas- ure-house for the safe keeping of miners' nuggets and dust. The Ca- nadian Government will purchase such treasure, and give bills of ex- change payable at any Canadian bank. The Government has also established branch treasure-houses in each mineral district, and at stated intervals furnishes police escort to the boundary line for miners going out over the passes with their treasure. In less than a year after the entry of the town site Dawson had over 2,000 inhabitants, with hotels, stores, and wharves, and from 5,000 to 20,000 people were gathered there during the summer of 1898 when a disastrous fire occurred. Its boggy soil caused much ill health, and the two hospitals were not able to accommodate all the typhoid patients of that first open season. Improper food was responsible for the scurvy that also attacked so many miners. The thermometer has a range of 180° between the extreme summer and winter temperatures at Dawson, standing at 90°, 100°, and even 110° in the blazing, nightless days of midsum- mer, and falling to — 60° and — 70° in the dark winters. The ice breaks up in the river about the middle of May, begins to freeze over in September, and is closed fast by November. September, October, and November are the months recommended for the visits of pleasure travellers. With the thawing of the spongy, mossy surface of the 162 THE YUKON MINING REGIONS. ground each year the whole land is afloat and steaming, and mosquitoes and gnats swarm more thickly than in the tropics. Klondike River is navigable for canoes for 40 miles above Daw- son, and heads 90 miles above that point. With its chief affluent, Bonanza Creek, and its tributaries, Boulder, Adams, Eldorado, Victoria, McCarmack and Whipple, Last Chance, Hunker, Gold Bottom, and Too- Much-Gold Creek, all the banks are staked off into claims, and work is prosecuted the year round—the miners thawing out or sinking prospect holes at the rate of one foot a day, and taking out the gravel and earth in the winter and washing it out in sluices during the summer. Quartz claims have been located on Klondike River as on Forty-Mile Creek, Cone Hill on the latter stream being claimed as a solid mountain of this same gold-bearing rock. A continuous system of gold-bearing rock is said to run across Bonanza, Eldorado, Gold Bottom, and Hunter Creeks on the Klondike, and across Miller, Glacier, and Forty-Mile Creek. Coal of a poor quality, thin lignite veins, crops out in this region and at many places along the lower Yukon. - . Eagle City, opposite Dawson, has caught the overflow of its population, and Ft. Reliance, 6 miles below Dawson, has lost its im- portance since the Klondike excitement. Forty-Mile and the opposite Ft. Cudahy, the station of Mounted Police at the mouth of Forty-Mile Creek, are within 10 miles by land or 30 miles by the windings of the river from the international boundary line. The head-waters and rich mineral regions of Forty-Mile Creek are mostly within Alaska lines, and with interests so nearly touching, and the mining population increasing so rapidly, the establishment of this police station near the chief supply town of the upper river was made imperative in 1895. In 1897 Forty-Mile was almost depopulated, in the rush to the Klondike. Circle City, 230 miles below Forty-Mile, which grew by the dis- covery and necessities of the Birch Creek mining district, was almost. depopulated in 1897, but is recovering in numbers. At Ft. Yukon there are large stores and warehouses of the trading companies engaged in Yukon purveying, and it is the great depot, chief supply and steamboat station on the Alaskan section of the Yukon. . Mynook, at the mouth of the creek of that name, first prospected by the Schiefflin brothers in 1882, and exploited by the rich discover- ies of 1896 and 1897, has become an outfitting and supply station of great importance. Mymook is 70 miles from the mouth of the Tanana ºſºº4,0 opowoplºſ '81 wuqon;) wo qno "suºquouº y uaduwh, ſą ºraesi ºhuſuſ doºn'& Iſſº ºwº º, uaduw H tuou） |-|--（~~~~ （. THE YUKON MINING REGIONS. 163 River, whence travellers from Orca by Waldes Pass and Copper River trail reach the Yukon. The Copper River Trail. Ocean steamers landing at Orca station, in Prince William Sound, give miners the chance of reaching Copper River, by a 30-mile trail over Waldes Pass, at a point above the Miles Glacier and the other dan- gerous stretches near the mouth of that stream. Rich placer regions have been found along the Tonsino Creek, which empties into Copper River about 100 miles from the sea. The route up the Copper River across a low divide to the Tanana and down that stream was explored and first followed by Lieutenant Allen, U. S. A., in 1885. Cook Inlet Route. This route up the Sushitna River and across to the upper Tanana is said to be feasible, and is suggested as the certain route of a railway line from tide-water to the middle Yukon. Only a few independent miners from the Cook Inlet camps are known to have attempted it. St. Michaels Route. Ocean steamers from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma convey passengers to St. Michaels, where the transfer is made to light- draught stern-wheel river steamers, which are able to ascend the Yukon from May to October, shoal waters and early freezing sometimes closing navigation by September. A survey of the mouth of the river in 1898 is expected to make known some channel navigable for large vessels, avoiding the delay in transshipment at St. Michaels and the danger of navigation by flat-bottomed river boats across the 80 miles of rough and open water between St. Michaels and the river. Navigation is maintained during the open season from St. Michaels to the foot of White-Horse Rapids by the steamers of United States and Canadian companies. The estimated distances by this line are— Victoria to St. Michaels (ocean)................ 2,800 miles. St. Michaels to Dawson City (river)............ 1,650 “ 4,450 “ From 35 to 40 days are occupied by this journey, 16 to 20 days being the time of the usual river trip from St. Michaels to Dawson under favourable circumstances. The fares from Victoria to Dawson are $300 first class, and $250 second class. BOOKS OF REFERENCE. THE following list contains the more easily accessible books con- cerning Alaska and the Northwest Coast: EARLY Voy AGES. BEECHEY, F. W. Narrative of a Voyage in H. M. S. Blossom in the Years 1825–28. London, 1831. BELCHER, Sir Edward. Narrative of a Voyage in H. M. S. Sulphur during the Years 1836–42. London, 1843. Cook, JAMEs. The Account of his Third and Last Voyage in the Years 1776–80. By James King. Dixon, George. Voyage around the World in 1785–88. London, 1789. LANGSDORFF, GEORGE H. von. Voyages. London, 1813. LA PáRouse, JEAN FRANÇors. Voyage around the World. London, 1798. LISIANSKI, IMRI FEoDoRowICH. Voyage around the World, 1803–’6. London, 1814. - LUTKE, FEoDoR PETRow ICH. Voyage autour du Monde. Paris, 1835. MARCHAND, ETIENNE, Voyage around the World. Written by C. P. Fleurien. MEARES, JoHN. Voyages. London, 1790. Poole. Queen Charlotte Islands. London, 1872. PoRTLoCK, NATHANIEL. Voyage around the World. London, 1789. SIMPson, Sir GEORGE. Narrative of a Journey around the World. London, 1847. - (Sir George Simpson was Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and in 1840–743 visited all the stations of his company, the Spanish colonies in Cali- fornia, the Russian settlements in North America, and returned to Europe by way of Siberia.) WANcouvBR, GEORGE. A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and around the World, performed in the Years 1790–’95. London, 1798. (Prof. Dall has called attention to the fact that there is no biography of Vancouver. The date of his birth is not known. He was midshipman with Captain Cook on his third and last voyage. While superintending the publi- cation of his voyages in London, Vancouver was challenged by a young officer whom he had disciplined during a cruise. Old and feeble, he was unwilling and unable to meet him, nor did he think the exercise of naval authority war- BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 165 ranted a duel as defence. His assailant meeting him in Bond Street after the refusal to fight, struck Vancouver in the face and publicly insulted him. The old officer, humiliated and chagrined, failed rapidly, and died May 10, 1798, just before his voyages were published. He is buried in the churchyard at Ham, near Richmond, Surrey, Dr. Dall has found reference to the challenge to the duel in a story of Charles Reade, “What has become of Lord Camel- ford's Body ?”—Harper's Weekly, May 6, 1876). Won STAEHLIN, J. Account of the New Northern Archipelago. Lon- don, 1774. * (This is the first published account of Bering's, Tchirikow’s, and other Rus- sian discoverles on the coast of North America.) WILKES, CHARLEs, U. S. N. Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expe- dition, 1838–42. r BADLAM, ALEXANDER. The Wonders of Alaska. San Francisco, 1889. BALLou, MATURIN M. The New El Dorado, Boston, 1888. BANCROFT, HUBERT HowL. Works. History of the Northwest Coast, vols. xxvii and xxviii. History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, vol. xxxi. History of British Columbia, vol. xxxii. History of Alaska, vol. xxxiii. BEARDSLEE, LESTER A. Letters in Forest and Stream in 1879, signed “Piseco.” Report on Affairs in Alaska, Congressional Document. BELL, W. H. The Stickeen River and its Glaciers. Scribner's Monthly, April, 1879. BRIGGs, HoRACE. Letters from Alaska. Buffalo. CoLLIS, MRs. SEPTIMA M. A Woman's Trip to Alaska. New York, 1890. DALL, WILLIAM H. Alaska and its Resources. Boston, 1870. The Coast Pilot of Alaska, 1883. Partial List of Books, Maps, and Charts relating to Alaska and the Adjacent Region. (A quarto volume of 210 pages, cataloguing the literature of the region down to the year 1882.) DAVIDSON, GEORGE. Coast Pilot of Alaska. 1869. DAWSON, GEORGE M. Monograph on the Queen Charlotte Islands in Annual Report of Dominion Geological Survey. ELLIOTT, HENRY W. Monograph on the Seal Islands. Census Report, 1880. Our Arctic Province. FINCK, HENRY T. The Pacific Coast Scenic Tour. New York, 1890. GLAVE, E. J. Pioneer Pack-Horses in Alaska. Century Magazine, September and October, 1892. GREENHow, RoBERT. The Northwest Coast. (Mr. Greenhow was Librarian of the Department of State at the time the Oregon question rose to prominence, and his book is almost the argument of the United States case, containing a résumé of all the early history of the region.) HALLOCK, CHARLEs. Our New Alaska. New York, 1886. HINE, C. C. Alaska Illustrated. Milwaukee, 1889. 166 BOOKS OF REFERENCE. gº. " IRVING, WASHINGTON. Astoria. (Contains a sketch of life at Sitka during Baranof's time.) JACKson, Rev. Sheldon, Alaska. (A brief sketch of the first mission work.) KARR, H. W. SETON. The Shores and Alps of Alaska. London, 1887. Proceedings of Royal Geographic Society, vol. ix, 1887. MAYNE, R. C. Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver's Is- land. London, 1862. MILTON, CHEADLE. The Northwest Passage by Land. London, 1865. MUIR, John. Picturesque California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. J. Deming. New York and San Francisco. NIBLACK, ALBERT P., U. S. N. The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia. Report of U. S. National Museum 1887-'88. - Nicholls, HENRY E., U. S. N. U. S. Coast Pilot of Alaska. 1892. PETROFF, Ivan, Population and Resources of Alaska. (A volume of the Eleventh Census Report, 1890.) Internal Commerce of the United States. (Published by Bureau of Statistics, U. S. Treasury Depart- ment.) U. S. Census Report, 1880, and U. S. Census Report, 1890. (Mr. Petroff gathered materials for H. H. Bancroft's History of the North- west Coast and Alaska, and wrote a part of the History of Alaska in that series down to the year 1841.) PIERPOINT, EDwARD. From Fifth Avenue to Alaska. New York, 1883. RAy, R. C., U. S. N. The Coast of British Columbia, U. S. Hydro- graphic Office, 1891. - RECLUS, ELISéE. Geographie Universelle, Boreal America, vol. xv. REID, HENRY FIELDING. Studies of Muir Glacier. National Geo- graphic Magazine, March, 1892. Rollins, ALICE WELLINGTON. Palm to Glacier. New York, 1892. RUSSELL, ISRAEL C. An Expedition to Mt. St. Elias. In National Geográphic Magazine, May, 1891, and Thirteenth Report of Director of U.S. Geological Survey. (See also Century Magazine, April, 1891, and June, 1892.) SCHwaTKA, FREDERICK. Along Alaska's Great River, New York, 1886. SCIDMORE, ELIZA RUHAMAH. Alaska: Its Southern Coast and the Sit- kan Archipelago. Boston, 1885. Alaska, in Reports of Director of the Mint, 1883 and 1884. Monograph. Census Report, 1890. Harper's Weekly, August 30, 1884, March 28, 1885, May 14 and July 23, 1892. Century Magazine, July, 1891. Wide Awake, March, 1885. Northwest Magazine, June, 1891. New York Times, October, 1884. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1883 and 1884. SESSIONS, FRANCIS C. From Yellowstone Park to Alaska, New York, 1890. BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 167 SHEPHERD, ISABEL. The Cruise of the Rush. San Francisco. SPROAT. Scenes and Studies of Savage Life. London, 1868. SwAN, JAMEs G. The Northwest Coast. New York, 1857. ST. JoHN. The Sea of Mountains. London, 1877. VICTOR, Mrs. FRANCES IULLER. (Mrs. Victor assisted in gathering materials for H. H. Bancroft's histories, and wrote the volumes pertaining to Oregon.) WARDMAN, GEORGE. A Trip to Alaska. Boston, 1884. WEBB, SEWARD. Yellowstone Park and Alaska. New York, 1890. WELLCOME, HENRY. The Story of Metlakahtla. New York, 1887. WELLs, Ensign RogFR, U. S. N., and JoHN W. KELLY. English-Eskimo and Eskimo-English Vocabularies. U. S. Bureau of Education—Cir- cular of Information No. 2—1890. WHYMPER, FREDERICK. Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska. London, 1868. WINTHROP, THEODoRE. Canoe and Saddle. WooD, C. E. S. Among the Tlingits in Alaska. Century Magazine, July, 1882. WooDMAN, ABBy M. Picturesque Alaska. Boston, 1889. WRIGHT, G. FREDERICK. The Ice Age in North America. 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