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 PEERLESS ALASKA 
 
 OUR CACHE NEAR THE POLE 
 
 By 
 CHARLES HALLOCK, M.A. 
 
 Founder of Forest and Stream, and Dean of 
 Jlmerican Sportsmen 
 
 ILLUSTRATED FROM SKETCHES BY 
 GEORGE G. CANTWELL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 BROADWAY 'PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 1908
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1908, by 
 
 BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
 
 A FOREWORD. 
 
 To the Public: 
 
 As the founder of American churches, schools and 
 civil government in Alaska, and for thirty-one years an 
 active worker in its development, I take pleasure In 
 calling public attention to the excellence, reliability and 
 completeness of this book of Mr. Hallock, so aptly indi- 
 cated by its sub-title as "Our Cache Near the Pole." 
 
 Alaska is a country of which the half has not been 
 told or even surmised. To write so that the reader can 
 see and in some measure comprehend what it is like re- 
 quires an author of special gift, and this Mr. Hallock has. 
 As a naturalist and sportsman, he has been trained to 
 close observation. As a scientist, he defines, adapts and 
 applies. As an editor for fifty-five years in and out, he 
 has had long practice in the art of putting things. He 
 appeals irresistibly to one's sense of appreciation. Fur- 
 thermore, as the author of half a dozen popular books 
 on natural history and sport, and a purveyor for many 
 years to lovers of outdoor life through the "Forest and 
 Stream," which he founded, he knows how to diagnose 
 the public mind and prescribe just what it wants and 
 needs to know. And the results of all this professional 
 training and experience and investigation are admirably 
 and opportunely presented in this last work of his, which 
 same guarantees to the reader pleasure, accuracy and 
 instruction. 
 
 Sheldon Jackson, 
 U. S. General Agent of Education for Alaska. 
 
 Washington, D. C, March 13, 1908.
 
 UNDER THE CLOUD. 
 
 Twenty-three years ago, when Alaska, disregarded 
 and undervalued, seemed to be lying in the shadow and 
 chill of its sub-Arctic seclusion, the author of "Our New 
 Alaska," in an attempt to vindicate the "Seward Pur- 
 chase," wrote what follows. It was an appeal to Caesar. 
 Subsequent development has borne out all that was then 
 forecast, and transcendently more, as has been confirmed 
 by official surveys, governors' reports, U. S. experiment 
 stations, and correspondents: 
 
 "The special object of this book is to point out the visible 
 resources of that far off territory, and to assist their lag- 
 gard development; to indicate to those insufficiently 
 informed the economic value of important industries 
 hitherto almost neglected, which are at once available for 
 immediate profit; to elucidate the vexed problem of labor 
 supply; to impress upon Congress the advantage, as well 
 as the duty, of providing proper protection for the 
 people, and granting them representation through a chosen 
 delegate, who shall be competent and conscientious to 
 instruct and advise, and efficient to push their claims and 
 their necessities, so that they may voice the needs of this 
 great integer of the republic, and contribute without let or 
 hindrance to its wealth and prosperity ; and finally to prove 
 conclusively that the " Seward Purchase " was not so bad a 
 bargain after all. At the same time attention is directed to 
 those extraordinary physical phenomena whose marvelous 
 combination makes Alaska the most attractive region in the 
 world for sojourners and summer tourists. I would fain 
 divert a portion of the travel which habitually goes to 
 Europe to this new field of commerce and adventure. I 
 would popularize home excursions among our votaries of 
 fashion — Yosemite, Alaska, and the Yellowstone — as the 
 primary and proper thing to " do " before attempting the 
 Old World tour ; and so make it incumbent upon every 
 American citizen, who would claim consideration abroad, 
 to be duly accredited at the home office as competent to 
 travel. 
 
 "Hitherto our new possession has seemed almost a myth 
 too vague and intangible to tempt even the Argonauts. 
 Like an unexpected legacy, its magnificence and value have 
 not yet been comprehended; but the time is close at hand
 
 6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 when her mighty forests will yield their treasures, her mines 
 will open out their richness, her seas will give of their 
 abundance, and all her quiet coves will be converted into 
 busy harbors. Her grassy islands, her rounded foot-hills 
 and her bounteous table-lands will pasture goodly herds, 
 and her exuberant soil teem with vegetables ami fruit. The 
 gelid out-put from her glacier fronts — the crystal ice-floes 
 which fill her most sequestered channels — will be harvested 
 where they float, for transportation to the semi-torrid lati- 
 tudes below; pleasure yachts will thread the intricacies of 
 her studded islands, and no retreat for invalids and summer 
 saunterers will be half so popular. Already the vibrations of 
 the pending boom begin to agitate the air. The favorable 
 reports of government explorers sent out to investigate the 
 interior as well as the coast, are re-assuring. Letters of 
 inquiry from intending settlers come from every section. 
 Official departments are getting down to systematic work. 
 New industries have been established within the present 
 year. Capital will no longer be withheld grudgingly from 
 enterprises waiting to be developed ; and by the time this 
 book is ready to leave the press, a tide of emigration will 
 set strongly in the direction of the Aleutian Isles. 
 
 "Talk of the sterility of Alaska, and its inhospitable soil ! 
 Why there are eleven kinds of edible berries which mature 
 in August, and strawberries grow in lavish profusion right 
 under the breadth of the glacier fields in latitude sixty 
 degrees. The mightiest giant of our eastern pineries is 
 but a pigmy in diameter beside the average conifer of 
 Alaska, where the undergrowth is so dense, and the " slash " 
 so intricate, below the snow-line, that progress through it is 
 almost impossible, and three miles a day is a difficult feat 
 to accomplish. 
 
 "Alaska has been egregiously misconceived, maligned and 
 misrepresented. The very encomiums which enraptured 
 tourists have bestowed upon her Alpine scenery, have served 
 to discourage settlement or adventure; men forgetting that 
 the forbidding Alps do not constitute the whole of Switzer- 
 land. Frigid impressions of her climate and agricultural 
 capabilities have been reflected from her glacier fields and 
 snow-clad peaks. Beneath her pallid drapery fancy 
 apprehended a stark dead body instead of a living force. 
 What poets admire to paint as " The land of the midnight 
 sun," matter-of-fact folks accept as the polar world. And 
 so Alaska is misjudged. 
 
 "Alaska has been belied. Not only are her marvelous 
 resources generally ignored, but they have been systematic
 
 UXDER THE CLOUD. J 
 
 cally and semi-officially denied. Authentic statements of 
 disinterested investigators have been sedulously contra- 
 dicted in the interest of parties whom it paid to keep the 
 possibilities of the country close. It was so during the 
 Russian occupation, and has been so ever since, and from 
 kindred motives. No conscientious person ever dared 
 affirm that the country was absolutely worthless; that a 
 region with 2,000 miles of breadth and 25,000 miles of coast 
 line (!) had absolutely nothing in it worth having; but the 
 Russian government, which yielded its prerogatives to the 
 fur companies, couid itself get nothing out of it, and so, 
 perhaps, it came to be for sale. Only within a few years 
 past has the light of truth begun to gleam steadfastly 
 through the fog, inasmuch as the country had been pre- 
 viously inaccessible to us; but now, with a regular bi- 
 weekly steamer to principal ports, and the omnipotent fact 
 published broadcast by the Sitka paper, that milk is sold at 
 ten cents a quart, and lettuce is given away in the local 
 market, some caution must be observed in pronouncing the 
 territory valueless, incapable and agriculturally worthless. 
 The scope and fitness of Alaska for agriculture and stock 
 raising are not yet recognized, simply because they have not 
 been extensively tested. 
 
 "The illimitable wheat region of the British North-west, 
 once supposed to be a desert, it has been proved can feed 
 the world. The intense cold of winter, instead of being a 
 drawback, acts in the farmer's interest. The deeper the 
 frost goes the better. As it thaws out gradually in the 
 summer, it loosens the sub-soil and sends up the needed 
 moisture to the roots of the grain. The Canadian explorers 
 in Rupert's Sound, in the interest of a railway to Hudson's 
 Bay, claim that the country is not only densely forested but 
 contains valleys and plains which promise rich wheat 
 harvests when once they shall have come under cultivation. 
 The interior of Alaska seems to be equally assuring, since 
 all the witnesses in nature, there indigenous, rise up and 
 testify to it. The geese which fly north in April and return 
 in November, the grouse which brood in May, the flowers 
 which bloom in June, the uncounted herds of caribou, the 
 abundance of moose, bears, mountain goats, birds and 
 other animal life, the exuberance of wild fruits and forest 
 growth, the expansive prairies and moss-covered plains, and 
 the almost tropical heat of mid-summer, all attest the 
 presence of conditions, climatic and otherwise, upon which 
 to predicate deductions altogether favorable. 
 
 "And Alaska 'is waiting t'. .; -ici.voranee.' She holds her
 
 8 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 arms outstretched, and her lap filled with offerings, bidding 
 us come and take them as our recompense, if we will but 
 set her free from isolation and introduce her to the com- 
 mercial world. 
 
 "My unpretentious sketch may not add any great amount 
 of information to what has already been written of this 
 strange country, but what I have contributed is mainly from 
 my own personal observation, unaided by reports and 
 reference books, which I have purposely refrained from con- 
 sulting. Its south-eastern coast line for a distance of one 
 thousand miles has become already pretty well known, and 
 is now being thoroughly surveyed by the government. My 
 illustrations show some of its characteristics. We need not 
 care at present to speculate much upon what lies inland, 
 back of the coast range. It is better to utilize the oppor- 
 tunities at hand than to search for others which may not 
 exist. The territory is vast, and centuries of systematic 
 investigation will hardly suffice to reveal its fullest capa- 
 bilities. Population will penetrate into the interior as soon 
 as economic industries are fairly introduced along the sea- 
 board, and if there be any land fit for cultivation it will be 
 promptly brought into requisition to supply local demands. 
 Those who know, and have raised fine potatoes one hundred 
 and fifty miles up the Stickeen River, which matured in 
 August, affirm that Alaska can supply her home people from 
 the outset, and pari passu with their numerical increase, 
 with fresh meat, and vegetables, game and berries, fish and 
 dairy products, leaving the lower latitudes to supply the 
 cereals and groceries. If minerals are found as widely 
 distributed as indications suggest, the process of develop- 
 ment and occupation will be rapid. Upon the whole, our 
 people have shown considerable energy in taking hold to 
 make something of what appeared to be "no good." They 
 have done fairly well with their cumbersome acquisition, 
 and events are likely to prove that the " Seward Purchase " 
 was more than dirt cheap. Since the cession she has 
 yielded in revenues to the general Government $10,000,- 
 000. The nation has been enriched by the fur industry 
 to the extent of $52,000,000; the value of the salmon 
 taken has been $50,000,000; the output of gold has 
 amounted to more than $37,000,000; the wealth of the 
 nation from her mining and fishing industries alone is 
 double in amount the price paid by the United States 
 Government for the territory. And yet hardly a begin- 
 ning seems to have been made in the development of her 
 mineral resources.
 
 ITINERARY. 
 
 In this year of grace, 1908, five large passenger steam- 
 ers a month ply between Seattle and Valdez, Alaska. 
 Valdez is an important entrepot for the interior, and will 
 soon be connected with the Yukon Valley by rail. The 
 old route to Alaska used to be from Port Townsend to 
 Victoria, B. C, and thence to ports of Southeastern 
 Alaska. But both ways via Seattle and Victoria are 
 patronized now most liberally by visitors in the excursion 
 season. 
 
 The mid-summer journey of 900 miles between San 
 Francisco and Portland, Ore., is a trip full of delight all 
 the way, taking the tourist through the most attractive 
 scenery of the west coast, that he may be the better pre- 
 pared to compare it with what is superlative beyond. All 
 the scenic attractions of the coast range, of the San Joa- 
 quin and Sacramento valleys, the Sierra Nevadas just within 
 view, Mt. Shasta in its isolated grandeur, the Siskiyou 
 Mountains, just across the Oregon line, and the Rogue River 
 and Willamette Valleys, are vouchsafed to us within the 
 limit of three days. How we bridge the mighty intervals 
 of space, and handicap old time in this modern race of 
 life ! 
 
 For elegant comfort, without sight-seeing, the magnificent 
 Steamers of the Pacific Mail Company, running from San 
 Francisco to Portland, and Port Townsend on Puget Sound, 
 afford an incomparable service. The boats of the trans- 
 Atlantic routes to Europe are hardly more luxurious ; and 
 those dwellers of the Pacific to whom the beauties of the in- 
 land journey are familiar, generally choose the water route. 
 Excursion tickets which are good for 40 days from date of 
 issue, enable the tourist to accomplish both the inside and 
 the outside routes. Eastern people choose the Union 
 Pacific or Northern Pacific railroads, and Canadians the
 
 i° PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Canadian Pacific, according as geographical location meets 
 their convenience. Those of the Southwest find their 
 objective point most accessible by the Southern Pacific. 
 Happy is he whose course leads across the northern tiers, 
 where the phenomenal solar heat of midsummer is always 
 tempered by a vitalizing atmosphere which cools when the 
 sun goes down. It would do your honest hearts good to 
 see the complaisance with which our Canadian neighbors 
 regard their completed transit — a stupendous accomplish- 
 ment whose engineering difficulties take precedence in com- 
 parison with the mightiest of our own, and whose passage 
 through the rugged gaps of three successive mountain 
 ranges makes our single cut across the Rockies, seem almost 
 common-place. Yet the Northern Pacific is a more inter- 
 esting route, and the most desirable for all whose conven- 
 ience permits a choice. It traverses a more diversified and 
 populous country, and is besides the great continental 
 artery whose pulsations are destined to keep the life-blood 
 warm in all our Alaskan extremities. It will presently become 
 the great feeder and factor of our Alaskan commerce, and 
 the popular thoroughfare of two-thirds of those who, by and 
 by, will regard the tour as imperative, as they have done the 
 stereotyped tour of Europe, now becoming a familiar and 
 effete experience. 
 
 I recall with pleasure my journey over this great thorough- 
 fare, and the vague anticipations of my first Alaska trip. 
 My thoughts were full of the unknown land. The outlook 
 seemed without a horizon. I felt more than ever " foot- 
 loose," — like a candidate blind-folded for a first degree, or 
 a novice after the preliminary toss of a blanket — not guess- 
 ing what was coming next, but feeling that all would turn 
 out right in the end. I fared sumptuously in the dining 
 car ; and my time was agreeably divided between reverie 
 and repletion. 
 
 " Going to Alaska ! Going to Alaska ! " 
 
 For three consecutive nights I had lain in my Pullman 
 berth, traveling westward, and between the hours of som- 
 nolence and semi-wakefulness, I would listen to the cadence 
 of the car wheels as the train rumbled on, and each mono- 
 tonous iteration, seemed always to repeat, with a repetition 
 which made me tired : " Going to Alaska — going to Alaska 
 — going to Alaska — going to Alaska — going to Alaska ! " 
 Sometimes it would drop into a subdued refrain, and anon 
 increase to a rattling emphasis when the train ran through a 
 cut, and this continuous admonition was broken only when- 
 ever we came to a full stop and all the waste air in the
 
 ITINERARY. II 
 
 brakes blew off with a prolonged sigh and a fizz. Of course 
 I had started from St. Paul with that intention (to go to 
 Alaska) and it was perhaps well to know that I had made 
 no mistake in the passage ; nevertheless, it was a rest to all 
 the senses when daylight came to relieve the night-watch, 
 and unfold the wondrous revelations of the trans-continen- 
 tal trip. How impotent have been the attempts of pen 
 and brush to impress the comprehension with the reality of 
 things seen. In vain I hold up my hands and cry " 'mira- 
 bile." No two days ' experiences were alike. Each suc- 
 ceeding view and extended panorama was altogether dif- 
 ferent from its predecessor, and one had hardly time to be 
 amazed at this, before he was lost in new admiration of the 
 other. " There is one glory of the sun, another of the 
 moon, and another glory of the stars." Across the illimita- 
 ble grain fields and the prairie, through the mysterious 
 " Bad lands," over the pine-clad and snow-capped moun- 
 tains, past the far-reaching sage plains, and down the tran- 
 scendent Columbia to the portals of the broad Pacific — 
 every division of the grand thoroughfare we traversed was 
 crammed full of novelty and absorbing interest. The 
 delicious warmth of a summer atmosphere lay over all, and 
 delightful anticipations continually gave place to blissful 
 realization. 
 
 The tourist no sooner strikes the Columbia River than he 
 seems to have gotten into a new kingdom of creation. The 
 sudden transition from an interminable sage plain of more 
 than one hundred miles in breadth to vertical cliffs and pal- 
 isades which rise to fifteen hundred feet sheer out of the 
 river — this unexpected step from the unlimited horizontal to 
 the unattainable perpendicular — is of itself phenomenal. 
 Then the architecture of the rocks and hills is different from 
 any thing east. The rivers flow in mighty volume, green as 
 emerald, and plunge into black rifts and chasms, churning 
 their sides with foam. Shifting sands in their exposed beds 
 blow into fantastic dunes and bury the underbrush along 
 the shores until only their leafy tops protrude. Waterfalls 
 leap from dizzy heights, emulating the Yosemite. The 
 vegetation is luxuriant, and all the field of flora is new. 
 Every thing is gigantic. The common alder bush grows to 
 merchantable wood, and the principal forest trees into giant 
 columns six feet thick. The orchards break down with 
 redundant fruitage, and whenever there is a neglected gar- 
 den patch the sweet briars and wild vines overrun the in- 
 closing fences and bury them out of sight. Mosses cling to 
 the limbs of trees in solid masses and festoons, and cover
 
 12 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 prostrate trunks ten i.iches deep. All along the route from 
 the Dalles to Portland are gangs of Chinese, section-hands, 
 at work along the railroad with costumes quaint and scanty, 
 and features bland and child-like. It was against those ver- 
 tical walls which overhang the Columbia, that they swung 
 the indomitable heathen from the heights aloft, to drill and 
 blast a passage for the railroad out of the solid rock. I 
 know not how many dozens lost their lives in the dangerous 
 exploit, but inasmuch as they stood substitute and proxy for 
 supposed better men, this little trifle can hardly enter into 
 the " Chinese Question." 
 
 Of course all tourists rhapsodize the notable points of 
 view along the river — the Dalles, Cape Horn, the Cascades, 
 Pillars of Hercules, Rooster Rock and Multnomah Falls, 
 each of which, if isolated and apart, instead of contiguous 
 to each other, would constitute an attraction which tourists 
 would travel far to visit. Not the least interesting novel- 
 ties are the fish-wheels along the shores, both portable and 
 stationary, which scoop up the running salmon from March 
 to August by the tens of thousands, looking for all the 
 world like the obsolete mill-wheels of New England. 
 Occasionally little groups of Oregon Indians come in view, 
 seeming one-third civilized and two-thirds blanket. In vain, 
 however, we look for the spectral outlines of Mount Hood 
 and other notable peaks, for all the atmosphere is thick 
 with smoke of forest fires which have spread all over the 
 country ; and for six weeks past no one has drawn a breath 
 of pure air, so that the inhabitants of this notoriously moist 
 and fog-ridden region pray for rain. In course of time we 
 come to a comfortable halt at the romantic little station of 
 Bonneville, where a breakfast is served with more than 
 Oriental profusion of melons, fruits and vegetables in every 
 grown variety, and with milk and eggs, poultry, fish and 
 meats, and every thing else toothsome and edible, piled on 
 platters three tiers deep until the table holds no more — 
 and still the waiters come with reinforcements, hands full, 
 and loaded to the " gunnel." It seemed to the parched 
 and dusty travelers from the arid sage plain, just now left 
 behind, as if they had suddenly struck an oasis and every 
 thing had been knocked into pie by the collision. The 
 markets of Oregon and California were emptied out upon 
 the board ; Ceres and Pomona sat helpless with their laps 
 full. With this wide-open welcome the brief additional 
 run to Portland was made without apprehension, although 
 the approaching city could not be distinguished through 
 the murk.
 
 ITINERARY. 13 
 
 There is a reputable tradition that when the atmosphere 
 is clear, a view can be had from points of vantage whose 
 unfolding is like a revelation of the celestial realm. Afar 
 off in the horizon, just where the intense blue firmament 
 seems to flank the spirit land, a trio of snowy peaks loom 
 up from the somber plain in clear cut whiteness against the 
 sky, like pyramids of crystal, Mt. Hood conspicuous and 
 majestic above the rest. Rising in their purity to the very 
 dome of heaven, and gleaming with a translucence super- 
 natural, positive yet most intangible, they stand, as it were, 
 the embodiment of the EternalTrinity — not mere reflections 
 of this material world. It is seldom that this beatific 
 vision comes, even to patient watchers ; for fogs and mists 
 obscure them in the spring, and clouds of smoke hang over 
 them all the summer long ; but if, perchance, September 
 rains should purify the air and lift the lowering veil, they 
 appear momentarily to the world as the reflex of the divine 
 transfiguration. As such, I beheld as one privileged. The 
 time-favored denizens of Portland could not appreciate it 
 more. 
 
 I don't know why tourists prefer to take the Alaska 
 steamer from Portland via Columbia River, and its dis- 
 tressful bar, with the supplementary and outside passage to 
 Victoria, instead of choosing the Puget Sound route, 
 except that they can thereby secure their berths for the 
 voyage and survey serenely the subsequent scramble for 
 places when the overland passengers arrive on board. The 
 consideration is certainly important, but the experienced 
 voyager can secure equal comforts by correspondence with 
 the officials of the steamship company. One who took the 
 river route writes : 
 
 " The Lower Columbia has none of the grand and sub- 
 lime scenery of the Upper Columbia, where it breaks its way 
 through the Cascade Mountains, but it has a picturesque 
 beauty an its own, wooded isles and bold headlands, the 
 river banks being high, wooded bluffs, with mountains in 
 the background. We had an occasional picture of lovely 
 level farms lying along the river and stretching back for 
 miles, but such glimpses of cultivation were rare. Settle- 
 ments were few. At about four in the afternoon we 
 reached Astoria, which is fifteen miles from the sea ; and 
 to-day we climbed to the top of a high hill, from which we 
 could see the breakers on the bar. Astoria is quite a pretty 
 town, has a population of five or six thousand, and its chief 
 industries, fish and lumber, remain the same in kind as 
 when John Jacob Astor established his trading post here.
 
 M PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 The best part of the town, in regard to residence, is back 
 on the hills, which rise steep and near to the shore, while 
 the business part is built on piles over tide water." 
 
 An eight hours' ride by rail is a moderate journey, and 
 while the steamer is buffeting the waves of the outside pas- 
 sage, the overland tourist from Portland to Tacoma is per- 
 mitted to enjoy the comforts of the superb hostelry at the 
 head of the sound, and perchance to view the snow-crested 
 peak of Mt. Tacoma, standing out in its virgin purity, like 
 a spirit of retrospection against the deep blue background 
 of sky. On it there are glaciers equal in size to those 
 found among the Alps. He may also observe the humble 
 houses under the hill by the cove, where the presence of a 
 half dozen Chinese small merchants was permitted for 
 years to vex the equanimity of 7,000 people, but now hav- 
 ing been charitably wiped out, is obnoxious no more. 
 From Tacoma to Victoria there is a six hours' sail across a 
 long reach of the sound by the splendid steamer " Olym- 
 pian," palatial as any in the east, and electric-lighted in 
 every apartment. On the route is Seattle, a goodly brick- 
 built city of many thousand souls, long ago made histori- 
 cal by its four days' war with a " barbarian horde "of 
 Chinese 140 strong ; then Port Townsend, the lands' end 
 of our western possessions before Alaska, perched high 
 upon a perpendicular bluff whose top is reached by a hun- 
 dred steps, with the mercantile traffic properly bestowed 
 upon the flat below. At every intermediate hamlet and 
 landing there is a saw-mill, with the primitive forest for a 
 background and reminder of its purpose. On every side 
 there are intimations of the country's recent settlement and 
 the presence of the wilderness. Indian dug-out canoes of 
 fantastic shapes with carved prows, steal quietly along the 
 shadowy shores, or cross the open water between the 
 embowered islands. Up and down, with every sweep of the 
 eye, this notable Mediterranean stretches its majestic length 
 of two hundred miles ; at times a broad expanse, anon no 
 wider than a river, with many a point and promontory 
 and curve of shore, roadsteads tortuous, channels narrow, 
 and water bluer than the reflected skies, dotted with 
 islands, indented with umbrageous recesses where the 
 unsuspicious fish breaks the quiet surface, and offering in 
 every littoral dell and sweep of forest such delights as 
 sportsmen covet and endure long journeys to enjoy. And 
 yet, on every side are budding hamlets and thrifty settle- 
 ments with airs of comfort, farms and hop-fields, and busy 
 saw-mills, and great ships sailing filled with surplus wheat,
 
 ITINERARY. 1 5 
 
 and steamboats plying hither and yon — all significant of 
 energetic industry and a prosperous future. It is said that 
 a hundred steamboats ply the waters of the sound. 
 
 But the speculative tourist, looking far beyond, Alaska- 
 ward, is not content to abide. Victoria, the entrepot of 
 British Columbia, claims direct attention, and there is not a 
 surer refuge or resting place for the sea-worn and wayfar- 
 ing than the land-locked basin which forms its harbor. 
 While the good ship which is to take us onward waits at 
 her dock, and the purser and steward are making out their 
 lists, we have two days on shore to see the town. There is 
 a commodious hotel, called the " Driard," where the most 
 exacting guest can be made comfortable. It is quite up to 
 the modern standard, built of stone, and occupies half a 
 square ; containing within its walls a creditable Opera 
 House, which alone cost $50,000 to construct. Its landlord 
 is a dapper Louisiana Frenchman, acquainted with every 
 body in the two countries, and therefore a companionable 
 host for strangers to meet, having no race prejudices and 
 providing plenty to eat. [Burnt now and landlord dead. J 
 dead.] 
 
 This far-western city is as substantial as it is charming. 
 Started originally as a fur company's post, and afterward 
 boomed into importance by the Fraser River mining excite- 
 ment of 1858, time has proved that other than even extran- 
 eous causes have contributed to its prosperity and growth. 
 All the steamer lines of the Province center at Victoria, 
 whence they reach all coast ports where settlements have 
 been made, and penetrate far into the interior by ascending 
 the Fraser River and other water-ways ; and trade increases 
 constantly in proportion as the tributary settlements and 
 industries expand. The flags were all at half mast the day 
 I arrived, in commemoration of the Grant obsequies, and 
 my heart warmed toward the good people for their respect 
 shown to our great captain. Travelers say the town is 
 intensely English in its composition. If so, it has a warm 
 corner for its neighbors, and the " English of it " is good 
 will. A considerable portion of the town-site has been set 
 aside and designated as " Beacon Hill Park," with winding 
 drives, gentle undulations, conspicuous eminences, majes- 
 tic trees, and a wonderful outlook toward the seas where 
 some small earthworks and great guns frown imperiously ; 
 but to me the entire location seemed like a natural park, 
 with its numerous bridges and points of rock, its pictur- 
 esque bays and inlets, its islands and bits of beach, its 
 clusters of trees and luxuriant gardens, every eminence 
 crowned with a modern villa every cove cuddling a cosy
 
 1 6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 cottage, and all the well-built business blocks occupying a 
 curve of the land-locked harbor, constituting a picture of 
 solid comfort and natural beauty which grew more and 
 more attractive as it became familiar. There was just 
 enough shipping to give the place an air of importance — 
 some square-rigged vessels, some steamers, and a few old 
 hulks which were well nigh past service. Here lay the old 
 Hudson Bay steamer " Beaver," which crossed the ocean 
 in 1832. It is said she has cheese aboard now which she 
 brought then. Here was the " Otter," which laid the sub- 
 marine cable, and the " Wilson G. Hunt," once p^ing in 
 New York waters. Up the gorge, where the tide flows 
 furiously, except at slack and flood, is a famous place for 
 catching sea-trout with rod and fly. Everywhere about the 
 bay Indian canoes were plying, and there were groups of 
 tents on shore, with hectic salmon spread on neighboring 
 rocks to dry. The dusky groups carelessly disposed about 
 the grass, men, women, and children, in motley dress, sit- 
 ting on native mats, and skins of mountain goats, knitting, 
 mending clothes, plaiting baskets, lounging, or lazily turn- 
 ing the half-cured fish, resemble a gypsy camp or holiday 
 picnic, so civilized are their appearance and surroundings. 
 Few visible traces of aboriginal barbarism remain, only some 
 rude lip ornament, or cherished habit almost obsolete, or 
 amulet, or knick-knack, transmitted from their remote 
 progenitors. Red, black and yellow colors predominate in 
 their rustic fancy, — yellow scarfs for the head or neck, red 
 for shawls or jackets, and black for frocks and skirts of 
 women. In the city streets we see the girls in pairs loll up 
 to the shop windows with the easy abandon of habitues, 
 laughing outright with delight at the glittering objects dis- 
 played, as much enraptured and absorbed as a cat in catnip. 
 Three generations of intercourse with white people whose 
 policy has been justice and humanity and tempered with 
 firmness, have won their confidence. They were treated 
 kindly from the start, and no white man was permitted to do 
 them an injustice without being punished for his conduct. 
 At the same time they were made to understand that they 
 were equally amenable to wrong doing. They were also 
 given employment in pursuits suited to their proclivities 
 and aptitude, which brought them food, trinkets, and cloth- 
 ing they had before been destitute of, whereby they learned 
 the value of friendly relations with the new-comers. Hence- 
 forth we shall find them an omnipresent quantity along the 
 coast, varying somewhat in features, habits, disposition and 
 intelligence, but all well-disposed and tractable. Here in
 
 rfTXERARY. 17 
 
 Victoria the tourist can pick up much information of 
 Alaska, together with curios, photographs of scenery, maps 
 of route and itineraries, not to omit a " Chinook " dictionary 
 which will be useful to him at all times, and indispensable 
 if he wishes to make the most of his opportunities to trade 
 with the natives and learn the ways of the people ; all of 
 which he can buy cheaper for cash than up the coast. 
 
 The most interesting and aesthetic part of Victoria is 
 the Chinese quarter, which is a cleanly business suburb of 
 solid red brick blocks, with buildings two and three stories 
 high ornamented with green verandas. Some of the stories 
 and shops are very spacious, with superb fittings of gilt, 
 tapestry and carved work, comprising stocks of general 
 merchandise, drugs, spices and specialties. One of these 
 Chinamen is said to own real estate within the limits worth 
 $200,000. I took occasion to go through all parts of their 
 reserve, into their theaters, joss housesandhousesof pleasure, 
 into their opium joints and their squalid and poverty-worn 
 tenements where a dozen personsare herded together inasin- 
 gle room, and was compelled to change the impression which I 
 had formed from popular hear-say. The worst I saw was not 
 half as foul and repulsive as the slums of some populous 
 eastern cities, outside of New York. They have a comforta- 
 ble building where they board and lodge their kinsfolk when 
 they first arrive, or when sick, or out of work, or on a visit 
 from the interior. It is a sort of hotel-hospital. There 
 are no Chinese beggars, for " John " takes care of his own 
 in purse and person, and will even return their dead bodies 
 to China, if desired. The impression that the return of 
 dead Chinamen is imperative, is a myth, and absurd on the 
 face of it ; but the prejudiced will believe any thing. I 
 found them engaged in every kind of occupation, except 
 the very highest, and was amazed at their general thrift, 
 sobriety, and intelligence. The policy of the Canadians to- 
 ward these Mongolians is much more liberal than ours, — as 
 it has been with the Indians, — and in course of time they will 
 surely profit by it. In British Columbia the occidental 
 section of the Flowery Kingdom blooms and blossoms as 
 the rose — a tea rose, as it were, whose fine points, not all 
 of thorns, might be studied with advantage if we would 
 only take the cue. But it is whispered in the inner chamber 
 that the days of the cue are numbered. The conditions 
 of a mighty dispensation are about to be fulfilled. The 
 time is near at hand when the Chinese will be at liberty to 
 cut off their cues and dispense with their large sleeves. 
 
 They say that according to a prophecy in one of their
 
 i8 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 sacred books, the reigning dynasty that imposed, centuries 
 ago, the custom of dress now in vogue, will come to an end, 
 and the new government will make the abolishment of both 
 permissible — an act devoutly hailed by Chinamen. Thence- 
 forth, these insignia of race distinctions will not be any more 
 imperatively imposed. Obstacles to naturalization and 
 American citizenship will be removed. Indeed, the days of 
 immunity are already being anticipated, and scores of 
 Chinese here and in the United States are taking out papers. 
 Leading celestials assert that the movement will soon be- 
 come general, and that most of their people in the south- 
 west will soon proceed to become American citizens and 
 permanent residents ; that they will then bring over their 
 wives and children and spend their earnings here ; and that 
 all the money which has hitherto been sent abroad for their 
 support will be " blowed into " the treasury of the United 
 States. Truly, the patience and long-suffering of the 
 " heathen," in consequence of their two-fold religious and 
 political disabilities, are worthy of admiration. For a free 
 country such inflictions are hard to bear. 
 
 It was at Victoria that I first noticed that exuberance of 
 vegetation which surprised me still more when I reached 
 Alaska. The maple leaves were larger than I could span ; 
 alders grew into trees ; fruit-trees broke under the weight 
 of fruitage ; honeysuckles grew rank, and moss clung to the 
 trees in great masses ; ferns were several feet in length ; 
 water melons as big as a barrel ; growing pines ran up into 
 the air indefinitely. Everything on this coast is gigantic, 
 from the rocks and mountains and " big trees " to the 
 Chinese immigration, the forest fires, and the ambition of 
 the politicians. No wonder that the people of the Pacific 
 coast claim to be the most favored in the world ; they ab- 
 sorb the beneficence of the Creator. 
 
 Three miles from Victoria, at Esquimault, there is a naval 
 station, with arsenal, hospital, dock-yard, and powder mag- 
 azine, the latter located on an island. The dry-dock is sub- 
 stantially built of concrete faced with sandstone, and will 
 cost when fully completed a half million of dollars. The 
 harbor is one of the deepest and securest in the world.
 
 ITINERARY.— Continued. 
 
 It is no small task to equip and provision a steamer, car- 
 rying two hundred persons, and get her under way for a 
 month ; but finally all the pigs, and poultry, and cabbages, 
 and crates of fruit, and ice, and carcasses of beef, are trun- 
 dled aboard and stowed conveniently for the steward's daily 
 deal ; the sheep and hay are snugly housed between decks, 
 and the last reluctant steer is forced up the gangway by a 
 twist of the tail so excruciating that it wrings out a sugges- 
 tion of ox-tail soup for next day's bill of fare. Then the 
 hawsers are cast off, and the good ship swings bravely into 
 the stream on the hope of her new departure — bound for 
 Alaska. 
 
 First, there is an eight hour's run of 70 miles to the Brit- 
 ish port of Nanaimo for coal, in the course of which, if the 
 atmosphere be clear, the snow-clad peaks of the Cascade 
 range of mountains will appear like a crystal rampart across 
 the sea. There is a succession of them, rising one above 
 the other, and looking as unreal and ethereal as a vision of 
 fairy-land. Enchantment of the voyage begins at the very 
 threshold of departure, and the first outlook is exhilarating 
 with satisfying promise. Nanaimo is the headquarters of 
 the Vancouver Coal Company, and the distributing depot 
 of a large coal district. The coal areas of this province are 
 widely spread, of whose product San Francisco alone takes 
 150,000 tons per annum. Departure Bay and Nanaimo are 
 twin harbors connected by a deep narrow channel of ample 
 width for navigation. The town lies along the bay, with 
 streets quite irregular in conformity with the sinuosities of 
 the indented shore line. A dense and continuous pine for- 
 est, underlaid by coal measures, occupies the back ground. 
 There is an octagonal block house three stories high, which 
 years ago did duty for the Hudson Bay Fur Company. 
 Hence, through the picturesque Strait of Georgia to the 
 head of Vancouver, 300 miles or more, there are islands all 
 the way, with a good deal of scrub cedar and fir ; now and 
 then a farm house and clearing. Every body on board the 
 steamer busily studies charts, picking out the course of the
 
 20 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 ship in advance, and locating her hourly whereabouts. Hour 
 after hour there succeeds an alternation of deep narrow 
 channels hemmed in by mountains, and long reaches of 
 open water which glisten with the scintillations of the sun. 
 Deep bays reach far into the land, and projecting points 
 invite the lambent breezes of the sea. Here and there are 
 shoals with warning beacons, and tide-rips churned by 
 counter-currents into foam, into which if a vessel without 
 steam be caught, she drifts on dangers, powerless to escape. 
 Of such mischances we see some victims now and then high 
 and dry on sunken reefs, keeled over. Sometimes, when 
 running close to land the jutting ledges seem about to pour 
 their leaping waterfalls bodily upon the deck, and over- 
 reaching boughs almost brush the taffrail as we pass. All 
 the shores are lined with drift-wood and stranded trunks of 
 enormous trees, weather-worn and naked. The average 
 rise of tide is eighteen feet, and on the ebb and flow, its 
 velocity through the narrow channels reaches nine miles an 
 hour, so that vessels have to make intelligent forecast of 
 time of tide, of fogs, and hours of moonlight. To attempt 
 the passage except on flood and slack is to court destruc- 
 tion, for although the mean depth of water is sometimes 
 seventy fathoms, the tortuous straits are filled with hidden 
 rocks. The first and worst of these is " Seymour Rapids," 
 a passage less than a quarter of a mile wide, about nine 
 hours run from Nanaimo ; and here in the awful swell and 
 vortex which lashes each broken shore with the rage of 
 Niagara's whirlpools, the U. S. man of War " Saranac " went 
 down, shivered on a sunken rock ; and in the self-same 
 place, by an extraordinary coincidence of mischances, the 
 steamer " Grapplcr" was burned and sunk. She was carry- 
 ing Chinese coolies, of whom seventy vainly struggled 
 momentarily with the surging waves, and disappeared ; but 
 they do say that their bodies periodically come to the sur- 
 face, and pitch about the eddies, with pigtails streaming 
 wildly in their wake, though the more matter-of-fact opinion 
 is that the objects seen are only strings of kelp drifting on 
 the tide. Other dangerous passages are Grenville Strait 
 and Peril Strait. For the rest, the journey is at present 
 without risk or peradventure, and with ordinary seaman- 
 ship and prudence, depending much upon experienced 
 pilots, may be made with less discomfort than the pas- 
 sage of Long Island Sound ; for the sweep of the ocean 
 blasts seldom reaches these sheltered by-ways. Fogs are 
 chronic, however, for eight months of the year, and apt to 
 occur at early morning, all the summer long, though they
 
 ITINERARY. 21 
 
 do not interrupt travel ; for navigators have learned to 
 evoke the echoes from the enfilading walls and headlands 
 by resonant blasts of the steam whistle, and so estimate 
 their courses, whereabouts, and distances. 
 
 By the time passengers have been two or three days at 
 sea, they get to know many of the tricks of the ship, as well 
 as of their fellow-voyagers. They have topics in common 
 which promote familiar intercourse ; and so, between the 
 scenery, the log, the bill of fare, and themselves, they find 
 strong ties of mutual sympathy. Furthermore, the sailors 
 had a bear aboard, named " Pete," which was raised on 
 bilge water and was very tame; a black setter, a companion 
 of the bear ; a toy terrier ; and a fine tom-cat; all of whose 
 intellects had been largely developed by their association 
 with tourists and shipmates. I know of no better training- 
 school for bears than a voyage of this kind. 
 
 From the head of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan 
 frontier, the coast maintains the same indented and tortuous 
 line, flanked by innumerable islands. The mountains 
 gradually increase in height, and at Grenville Narrows they 
 rise to fully 3,000 feet, directly out of the sea ; some of 
 them with snowy peaks, and numerous water-falls tumbling 
 from their aerial reservoirs, but wooded at the base with 
 conifers. As the civilization of this region is mainly apart 
 from the route of the steamer, and unseen by tourists who 
 imagine it all unsettled, I venture to prompt the reader 
 from the pages of the West Shore Magazine, so that erron- 
 eous impressions may not obtain. Some may be astonished 
 at the proficiency of the Indians, not long since savage. 
 
 We read : " The population of this region is chiefly In- 
 dian, and they are both intelligent and industrious ; per- 
 forming nearly all the labor of the two industries — salmon 
 canning and lumbering — which have gained a foothold 
 there. In going north, Rivers Inlet is the first reached 
 where industries have been established. At its head is sit- 
 uated the village of Weekeeno. On the inlet are two sal- 
 mon canneries and a saw-mill. Bella Coola is situated at 
 the head of Burke Channel, on the North Bentinck Arm. 
 It is the site of a Hudson's Bay company post, and years 
 ago was the landing place for the Cariboo mines. Bella 
 Coola River is a considerable stream entering the arm from 
 across the mountains. Here is a tract of some 2,000 acres 
 of rich delta land, which is partially cultivated by the In- 
 dians. Bella Bella is a Hudson's Bay post on Campbell 
 Island, near the head of Milbank Sound, 400 miles north of 
 Victoria. There are three Indian villages, with a combined
 
 22 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 population of 500. The next important point is the mouth 
 of Skeena River, a large stream flowing from the interior. 
 It is a prolific salmon stream, and there are three canneries 
 on its banks ; one at Aberdeen, another at Inverness Slough, 
 and a third at Port Essington, near its mouth, where there 
 is a small village of traders, fishermen and Indians. The 
 river is navigable for light draught steamers as far as 
 Mumford Landing, sixty miles inland, and 200 miles further 
 for canoes. There are two missionary stations on the river, 
 and along its course are many spots favorable for settle- 
 ments. 
 
 " Sixteen miles beyond the mouth of the Skeena is the 
 town of Metlakahtla, on the Tsimpsheean Peninsula. There 
 are a store, salmon cannery, a large church and school- 
 house. This is an Indian missionary station, about which are 
 gathered fully 1,000 Tsimpsheean Indians, who have been 
 taught many of the mechanical arts. They have a saw- 
 mill, barrel factory, blacksmith shop ; live in good wooden 
 houses; do the work at the cannery, and are industrious in 
 many other ways ; the women having learned the art of 
 weaving woolen fabrics. Fifteen miles beyond Metlakahtla, 
 on the northwest end of the same peninsula, is the impor- 
 tant station of Fort Simpson, separated from Alaska Terri- 
 tory by the channel of Portland Inlet. This is one of the 
 finest harbors in British Columbia, and was for years the 
 most important post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the 
 upper country, furs being brought there from the vast inte- 
 rior. Besides the company's post, the Methodist Mission 
 has buildings valued at $9,000. There are about 800 
 Indians in the village, most of them living in good shingled 
 houses and wearing civilized costumes. They are governed 
 by a council, and have various organizations, including a 
 temperance society, rifle company, fire company and a brass 
 band. They earn much money in the fisheries. Forty 
 miles up the Portland Channel is the mouth of Nass 
 River, a very important stream in the fishing industry, 
 being the greatest known resort of the oolachan. Two sal- 
 mon canneries, a saw-mill, store, two missionary stations 
 and several Indian villages are situated along the stream. 
 The climate is favorable to the growth of fruit, cereals and 
 root crops near the coast, and there are a number of quite 
 extensive tracts of bottom lands, requiring only to be 
 cleared to render them fit for agriculture or grazing. 
 Further up the stream there are a number of good locations, 
 and several settlements have been made. Gold is found in 
 small quantities along the river.
 
 ITINERARY. 23 
 
 " A special feature of the province is the outlying group 
 of large islands known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, the 
 upper end lying nearly opposite the southern extremity of 
 Alaska. They are three in number — Graham, Moresby and 
 Provost — and are about 170 miles long and 100 wide. They 
 are mountainous and heavily timbered, and the climate is 
 more genial and the rainfall less than on the mainland coast, 
 Along the northern end of Graham, the most northerly of 
 the group, is a tract of low lands thirty-five miles in extent, 
 and much level, arable land is to be found elsewhere, which 
 only requires clearing. There are also many extensive 
 marshy flats requiring drainage to render them fit for culti- 
 vation. The mineral resources of the islands are undoubt- 
 edly great. The only industry now established is the fac- 
 tory of the Skidegate Oil Company, on Skidegate Island in 
 a good harbor at the southern end of Graham Island. In 
 connection with this is a store. The Hudson Bay Company 
 has a store and a trading post at Massett, near the upper 
 end of Graham's Island, where there are a Protestant Mis- 
 sion and a large Indian village. 
 
 " There are several villages on each of the islands of the 
 group which are occupied by Hydah Indians, the most in- 
 telligent of the aboriginal inhabitants of the coast. Their 
 origin, in the absence of any written record or historical 
 inscriptions, is an interesting subject for speculation. Their 
 features, tattooing, carvings and legends indicate that they 
 are castaways from Eastern Asia, who, first reaching the 
 islands of Southern Alaska, soon took and held exclusive 
 possession of the Queen Charlotte group. Their physical 
 and intellectual superiority over the North Coast Indians, 
 and also marked contrasts in the structure of their language, 
 denote a different origin. They are of good size, with ex- 
 ceptionably well developed chests and arms, high foreheads 
 and lighter complexion than any other North American 
 Indians. 
 
 " Massett, the principal and probably oldest village of the 
 Hydah Nation, is pleasantly situated on the north shore of 
 Graham Island at the entrance to Massett Inlet. Fifty 
 houses, great and small, built of cedar logs and planks, with 
 a forest of carved poles in front, extend along the fine 
 beach. The house of Chief Weeah, is fifty-five feet square, 
 containing timbers of immense size, and planks three feet 
 and one-half in width and eighteen inches thick. The vil- 
 lage now has a population of about 250, the remnants of a 
 once numerous people, the houses in ruins here having 
 accommodated several times that number. Massett is the
 
 24 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 shipyard of the Hydahs, the best canoe-makers on the con- 
 tinent, who supply them to the other coast tribes. Here 
 may be seen in all stages of construction these canoes, which, 
 when completed, are such perfect models for service and of 
 beauty. This is the abode of the aristocracy of Hydah 
 land. Other villages are the offshoots from the parent 
 colony, caused by family and tribal feuds and quarrels." 
 
 Although not included within the limits of Alaska, being 
 some fifteen miles south of its frontier, I am pleased to 
 be able to give fair sketches of the remarkable Indian settle- 
 ment of Metlakahtla, above referred to, not only as an in- 
 stance of the advanced state of civilization to which some 
 of the Pacific coast Indians have already been brought, but 
 because it is an earnest of the enviable results which must 
 surely crown our own endeavors, if properly applied, and 
 therefore an encouragement to persevere. 
 
 Metlakahtla is truly the full realization of the missionaries' 
 dream of aboriginal restoration. The population is 1,200, 
 and there are but six white persons in the place. Like the 
 mission Indians at Fort Simpson, its residents have also a 
 rifle company of forty-two men, a brass band, a two gun 
 battery, a cooper shop, and a large co-operative store where 
 almost any thing obtainable in Victoria can be bought. We 
 visited this port on our return trip from Sitka, and were 
 received with displays of bunting from various points, and 
 a five-gun salute from the battery, with Yankee Doodle and 
 Dixie from the band of thirteen pieces. The Union-Jack 
 was flying. The church is architecturally pretentious and 
 can seat 800 persons. It has a belfry and spire, vestibule, 
 gallery across the front end, groined arches and pulpit 
 carved by hand, organ and choir, Brussels carpet in the aisles, 
 stained glass windows, and all the appointments and em- 
 bellishments of a first class sanctuary ; and it is wholly 
 native handiwork ! This well ordered community occupy 
 two-story shingled and clap-boarded dwelling houses of uni- 
 form size, 25x50 feet, with three windows and gable ends and 
 door in front, and inclosed flower gardens, and macada- 
 mized sidewalks ten feet wide along the entire line of street. 
 The chief peculiarity of these houses is, that none of them 
 have chimneys, the apartments being heated by fires built 
 on hearths in the center of the ground floor, and the smoke 
 passing out through a flat cupola in the roof, after the fashion 
 of Indian tenements in general. These people have also a 
 large town hall or assembly room of the same capacity as 
 the church, capable of accommodating the whole population. 
 It is used for councils, balls, meetings, and for a drill room.
 
 ITINERARY. 25 
 
 It is warmed by three great fires placed in the center of the 
 building, and lighted by side lamps. The people dress 
 very tastefully in modern garb, and I am not sure but they 
 have the latest fashions. The women weave the cloth for 
 all the garments, and there are gardens which afford vege- 
 tables and fruit in abundance. It is as cleanly and orderly 
 as the most punctilious Shaker settlement. A fine assort- 
 ment of Hydah utensils, plaques, and carved work is on 
 sale here. For exquisite beauty and quaint designs, there 
 is nothing like Hydah ware to be found on the whole coast. 
 A most beautiful table service of many pieces is on view at 
 the U. S. National Museum in Washington, carved from 
 black talcose slate. [This entire community soon after- 
 wards moved bodily across the channel to Annette Island, 
 started a new town with up-to-date improvements, and is 
 now on Alaskan soil under jurisdiction of the U. S.] 
 
 From this point to American soil the distance is short 
 and noteworthy. The transition from the neat and 
 thrifty settlements left behind to the dilapidated and half- 
 deserted line of buildings — formerly a Russian trading post 
 of rank, but now the U. S. port of entry of Alaska, is 
 not flattering to spread-eagle pride. When the weather- 
 stained Custom House officer formally comes on deck, 
 conscientious American citizens " go below." It was 
 said that nothing remunerative to any body ever fol- 
 lowed his official visits. Usually it was " too foggy " 
 for him to discover the vessel, and this fog became 
 so constitutionally prevalent in all that district that smug- 
 gled goods were nowhere apparent until, one unpropitious 
 day last February, Collector Beecher by some timely hint 
 conveyed through the circumlocution office, was enabled to 
 unearth at Tongass no less than $45,000 worth of opium 
 packed in casks purporting to cover furs. However, the 
 Territorial regime is full of irregularities, affecting other 
 things than revenue, all of which will be speedily corrected 
 whenever domestic order shall succeed official chaos. But 
 I shall venture no reflections. I will hold no " mirror up 
 to nature," for never did nature see herself to better ad- 
 vantage than upon that early morn at Tongass. There was 
 no fog then ; the early sun had scarcely risen ; and all the 
 morning lights which painters find it so difficult to limn, 
 filled the firmament with their transparency. Not only the 
 trees and rocks, and mountains, the moss, the kelp, the 
 gulls on wing, the reek of the smoke-stack, and the rosy 
 glow of morn, but even the fleecy films of vapor which, in 
 voluptuous summer float high in the upper air — the lace-
 
 26 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 like canopy embroidered on the blue — were mirrored on 
 the water ; and each individual wave upturned by the cleav- 
 ing prow formed reduplicating mirrors, like the facets of a 
 gem, reflecting a consummate picture in each one. It was 
 a moment of perfect earthly peace. The impressionable 
 young ladies on board declared that it was "just too lovely 
 for any thing." These little maids from school all keep 
 faithful diaries of the happenings aboard ship, nautical and 
 social, the distances run each day, the places called at, what 
 the steward laid for dinner, how many chickens there are 
 left in coop, what the captain told them sub rosa, and all 
 the special and private information to be picked up in the 
 purser's state-room, and the "after-run." They make 
 themselves " solid " with the officers, tip the steward and 
 waiters, and even button-hole the first officer for best boats 
 when little side excursions are afoot, for on those Alaska 
 journeys frequent opportunities are offered to go ashore at 
 the regular landings, of which there may be ten, besides spe- 
 cial trips to places of universal interest ; after each visit the 
 cabins and state-rooms are littered with ferns, mosses, wild 
 flowers, clam shells, bits of mineral, slippery kelps, Indian 
 curios and souvenirs of all sorts brought aboard. One of 
 these little exploring parties once came across a member of 
 the ship's crew digging a hole in the ground on a secluded 
 point, and when he told them he was to get three dol- 
 lars for burying a dead Chinaman who had been sent over 
 from the steamer in the yawl, they were paralyzed. The 
 body lay on the ground beside him, covered with a coat. 
 In their view such a summary disposal of a corpse was not 
 at all in accordance with civilized customs, but it seemed to 
 be approved in Alaska. This incident was of course duly 
 noticed in the diaries, with comments. So also was the ad- 
 venture of the " rooster and the cook." The chicken coop, 
 it seems, stood on the hurricane deck in the lee of one of 
 the paddle-boxes, and passengers would often stop on their 
 matutinal turns aloft to inspect or feed the feathered 
 inmates, and speculate upon the uncertainties and vicissi- 
 tudes of galley life. On these occasions the chickens were 
 always inclined to be sociable and would scuffle with each 
 other for donations ; but it was remembered that whenever 
 the cook or his assistant, both of whom were Chinamen, ap- 
 proached the coop, the apprehensive flock fled to the rear 
 and bunched up in the corners. They knew the difference, 
 and no wonder ! One by one the fatted victims were sum- 
 marily withdrawn and served as soup or fricassee, until at 
 last the cutest of them all, an old rooster who had hitherto
 
 ITINERARY. 2j 
 
 evaded the intruded hand, was fairly cornered ; yet he did 
 not succumb nor faint. Watching his chance, he slipped 
 John's grip, and getting free on deck, at last he gave both 
 the Chinamen a desperate chase around the texas and the 
 smoke-stacks, this way, and that way, and back again, 
 headed off at every turn, feathers flying, pig-tails streaming, 
 all hands cackling and squawling, and every passenger look- 
 ing on quite interested. At last, utterly exhausted, the 
 rooster was neatly coraled in a bunch of life-preservers 
 (which were nothing to him then), when he suddenly took 
 wing, and with one defiant and despairing shriek, flew over- 
 board and was drowned ! He deliberately committed sui- 
 cide rather than go to pot ; so he escaped the ignominy, but 
 the passengers lost their salad. 
 
 I am quite sure, if I desired a complete epitome of the 
 voyage, with no details omitted, I could find it in one of 
 these same records; but as I am not likely to meet any of 
 these " Vassar Girls Abroad," it only remains for me to re- 
 cite the bare fact of our due arrival at Wrangell, which was 
 fifteen years earlier of considerable importance, where 
 large parties fitted out daily for the Stickeen mines located 
 nearly three hundred miles inland across the country in 
 British Columbia. There the whole region is even now 
 filled with deserted cabins. There was a temporary glim- 
 mer of brightness for Alaskan prospects, in the first dawn 
 of the new " purchase," when no less than 3,000 people 
 congregated here to " outfit." Then there were many shops 
 and stores, and warehouses on the wharf, and all sorts of 
 rude places of amusement, and a motly and unruly crowd 
 such as always gathers at a frontier town. Even old hulks 
 were improvised as boarding-houses. But the prospects 
 " petered out," not for lack of mineral so much as lack of 
 suitable mechanical appliances, and so both the mines and 
 the town are now almost dead. There is a picturesque 
 block-house on a convenient hill, and a grassy plaza with 
 barracks where troops were quartered then, and a couple of 
 small churches, Catholic and Protestant, on the crest of a 
 ridge, with plank walks leading to them, but the barracks 
 are now occupied by the Indian Mission of Mr. Young, and 
 the bethels and brothels are boarded up. Every thing is dilap- 
 idated and worn of paint, aud spacious hostelries where board 
 was once $3.00 per day, have already tumbled into ruins, with 
 the walls collapsed and the roofs fallen in. There are about 
 500 people left, chiefly Indians, whose better houses, many 
 of them painted, occupy a picturesque curve of the shore 
 and a point of land which projects into the harbor. A foot
 
 2S PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 bridge also leads across an estuary to what is an island 
 when the tide is full, and here are some of the best built 
 houses and elaborate totem-poles. This part of the town 
 has at least the charm of supreme novelty, and I dare say 
 there is nothing like it to be seen in all Alaska; a hint of 
 which visitors should take due note and govern themselves 
 accordingly. I suppose that there will be a better civiliza- 
 tion ere many years have passed, but this peculiar architec- 
 ture and ornamentation stand to-day, not only as striking 
 illustrations of the idiosyncracies of a peculiar people, but 
 of their native capabilities, made more creditable and more 
 conspicuous from lack of superior tools with which to cut, 
 hew, carve and smooth. When it is borne in mind that 
 their boards are split from hemlocks, riven with an ax, and 
 planed with adzes, and that shaping and finishing is done 
 with rude knives, it is apparent that the impartial judge 
 will allow them many points for ingenuity and skill. 
 [Since these notes were taken Wrangell has been re- 
 vised.] 
 
 Wrangell lies at the mouth of the Stickeen. One of 
 these days not distant, a steamboat excursion up the 
 Stickeen River through the great canon which it has cut 
 for its passage through the mountains, will be one of the 
 most popular and exciting of all the experiences on 
 this continent. There is steamboat navigation for one 
 hundred and sixty miles from its mouth to Glenora, 
 up to which point the river is usually clear of ice 
 by the middle of April. There the Dominion custom- 
 house is located on the supposed boundary line, and 
 the scenery is of the most romantic character all the 
 way, the wonderful creations of nature being diversified by 
 trading posts, stores, and mining stations along the banks. 
 Several fine glaciers are to be seen en route, and a number 
 of tributary streams or branches flow into the main river. 
 From the head of navigation there are canoe routes and 
 overland trails for pack trains which lead to the gold mines 
 at Deese Lake, eighty miles further, and to the noted quartz 
 lodes and placers of Cariboo and Cassiar in British Colum- 
 bia. The strip of territory owned by the United States and 
 lying along the coast is only ten leagues wide by the Rus- 
 sian Treaty of 1828 with Great Britain ; and the continual 
 difficulties which arise between customs officials along an 
 indeterminate boundary line, makes its speedy official estab- 
 lishment in every respect very desirable. 
 
 The distance between Victoria and Wrangell is a little 
 less than eight hundred miles, the whole route so land- 
 locked that not a qualm of sea-sickness is permitted to come
 
 ITINERARY. 3 1 
 
 aboard, and all the emissaries of Neptune lie low among 
 the grottoes of the deep. The further northward one goes 
 the grander the scenery becomes, the higher and more 
 rugged grow the mountains, the whiter their caps of snow, 
 the denser the surrounding forests, and the more numerous 
 the streams which leap from the lips of the crags. There 
 are fjords deeper and blacker than the Saguenay, open chan- 
 nels greener than Niagara. Peaks are piled on peaks in 
 most tumultuous forms. Outlines serrated and sharp cut 
 the upper sky. Black ravines and dazzling patches of 
 snow alternate. Scars seam the entire sides of lofty moun- 
 tains, where the spring avalanches have scathed them of 
 every vestige of soil and vegetation. The inlets are often 
 enveloped in fogs, but when they lift, the surprises are 
 bewildering. Sometimes it is the bases of the mountains 
 which are revealed, and sometimes the peaks, with a filmy 
 drapery floating athwart their sides, or a golden fleece hung 
 gracefully over their broad shoulders. At Kasaan there is 
 a wharf and cannery with an annex of Indian cabins like an 
 old time negro quarter. There is a fleet of splendid canoes 
 employed in the fishery, drawn high and dry upon the beach 
 ready for use, but now tenderly covered with sails and mats 
 to protect them from the alternate damp and sunshine. 
 The hulk of an old sloop long since past usefulness, lies on 
 the shore cracked, seamed, dismantled and keeled over. 
 She has a history, for once she smuggled goods for the old 
 Russian magnate, Carl V. Baronovick, and carried many a 
 goodly cargo through the intricate water-ways which it did 
 not pay to watch. Out in the stream the U. S. sur- 
 veying steamer lies at anchor, with every thing taut and 
 trim and her brass aglow with polish, like the " knocker of 
 a big front door." She has done lots of work on the coast, 
 and marked out the intricate and dangerous channels with 
 tripods and can-buoys. Some twelve miles off is a Hydah 
 village — one of the few to be found in Alaska — which 
 excursionists sometimes visit for the collection of curios. 
 Its head chief, " Scowl," who was quite a celebrity in his 
 day, died two years ago, leaving a good house and an hon- 
 orable pedigree, vouched for by no less than four totem- 
 poles set up inside, and a tall one in front, outside, made of 
 yellow cedar, which grows abundantly in the vicinity, and 
 is exceedingly beautiful, taking a finish like satin wood, 
 with an odor as distinctive as that of sandal-wood. At 
 Salmon Bay the steamer stopped at another cannery to 
 receive some three hundred barrels of salted salmon, and 
 again at Naha Bay, near which there is a beautiful lake
 
 32 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 connecting with the ocean by a tidal passage, into which 
 the salmon were crowding to spawn. There is a double fall 
 at the outlet of this lake ; the fresh water pouring out when 
 the tide is low, and the salt water flowing in when the tide 
 is high. Here the salmon were wedged so tightly for the 
 whole length of two miles that they could not move at 
 times. The rise of the tide is some eighteen feet and the 
 entire channel, from the surface to the bottom, was jammed 
 and packed solid, so that if a plank were laid upon the liv- 
 ing mass, a person might have walked dry shod across it. 
 This is hard to believe, but easy to understand when it is 
 known that during the salmon " run," from early spring to 
 August, the vast schools which swarm along the shores and 
 fill the bays and inlets, swim in compacted masses six feet 
 thick, so that it is impossible to thrust a spear or lift a boat- 
 hook without impaling a fish. In rivers of Oregon the 
 salmon often obstruct a ford so that horses can not pass, 
 but in Alaska the astounding aggregate is infinitely greater, 
 and large rivers being few, they crowd into available inlets 
 as frightened sheep were never known to block a gangway. 
 Juneau, or Harrisburg, is the metropolis of Alaska — a 
 town of several streets and shops, stores and restaurants, with 
 a trading-post, a dance-house, a brewery, a barber-shop, and 
 a dramatic company. It is the depot for the rich placer 
 mines behind the mountains back of it, and the live center 
 from which radiates whatever of excitement there is in the 
 territory, outside of " government circles " at Sitka. Gold 
 ore was first discovered on Douglas Island, opposite, where 
 there is to-day in operation the largest stamp mill in the 
 world ; but it has since been found to exist in paying quan- 
 tities on the main-land in the mountains back of Juneau. 
 An Indian revealed the secret, for a consideration, to two 
 prospectors named Harris and Juneau, who at once staked 
 out claims and began to pan out pay dirt and nug- 
 gets of free gold handsomely. The town is named for each 
 of them respectively, though the post-office is now called 
 Harrisburg. It is growing rapidly and is orderly. The 
 miners themselves are temperate, industrious, and well- 
 behaved, and are gradually gathering around them a com- 
 munity of good citizens. One of the best of the miners, 
 Michael Powers, with two others, was unfortunately killed 
 last winter by an accidental cave in the " basin " where the 
 placers are being worked. The population of Juneau in 
 winter, when the mines are idle, is fully 1,500. The laborers 
 employed are chiefly Indians, with a few Chinese. There 
 are two villages of Indian huts built along the shore, one
 
 ITINERARY. 33 
 
 on either side of the town. They belong to different tribes 
 who are traditional enemies — the Auks and the Talcus — but 
 they live amicably enough with the white settlement sand- 
 wiched in between them. Fleets of canoes ornament the 
 sloping shores in front of the cabins, and wolfish dogs, 
 brindled and yellow, with bushy tails and pricked ears, 
 doze and loll in front of every door. As a general rule their 
 bark is not dangerous. Beyond these dusky suburbs there 
 are burying grounds, with strips of white and colored mus- 
 lin tied to the tips of poles to indicate the graves, which 
 would otherwise be lost in the teeming undergrowth that 
 overruns them in a single season. It is a motley throng 
 which crowds the wharf on " steamer day," but not alto- 
 gether so savage as might be imagined. It is purely cos- 
 mopolitan, and one may land and move about the throng or 
 through the streets of the town and not be stared at as he 
 would be in any equal village of New England. It may be 
 accepted for granted that there is not a white man in all the lot 
 as " fresh " and " tender " as the tourist who supremely con- 
 templates him with his eye-glasses, quite aloof. All of them 
 have " traveled." Some of the stores are branches run by 
 leading merchants of Oregon and San Francisco, and I 
 doubt not one could find the latest cut of trowsers at the 
 tailor's shop. Baths there are, hot and cold, and shaving- 
 parlors with veritable black men behind the chairs, quite 
 comfortable and luxurious to observe and enjoy. There 
 were no less than five negroes in Juneau last year. Verily, 
 the African is as widely scattered as the Israelite ! Here 
 the tide falls twenty-five feet, and when it is dead low water 
 all the piles of the wharf stand out in stark alignment, 
 crusted with barnacles hung with sea-weed and bored by 
 teredos. So destructive is this well-known sea-worm that 
 piles have to be renewed every two years at a great deal of 
 labor and inconvenience, and it is not unusual to find them 
 actually eaten in two below the water-line. A ferry boat runs 
 half hourly from Juneau to Douglas Island, where there is 
 a saw-mill and a considerable settlement connected with the 
 stamp-mill and ore-beds. In the center of the harbor is a 
 pretty island, with a point stretching out from the main- 
 land half the distance to meet it, on which there is an arti- 
 ficial marble monument. Back of the point is a ravine with 
 a goodly stream tumbling out of it in a series of cascades, 
 discolored with the tailings of the sluices back in the moun- 
 tains which have contributed to swell its volume. Up the 
 timbered slope which skirts it a precarious foot-path leads 
 to the " basin," along the edges of steep precipices and
 
 34 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 through thickets of " devil's club " and luscious salmon- 
 berry bushes. 
 
 From Juneau to Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor, so called 
 from a wedge-shaped island in the center of the channel, it 
 is a twelve hours' run. Here are the two largest salmon 
 canneries in the territory, together employing over one 
 hundred hands. From this place a novel excursion may be 
 made in canoes or boats to the Chilkat village, where the 
 famous blankets are made. This tribe numbers a thousand 
 souls at least. The women are expert manufacturers of 
 baskets and mats, as well as blankets. The first are made 
 from grass and the dried fiber of sea-kelps; the blankets 
 from the wool of the mountain sheep and goats, woven by 
 hand and dyed with native dyes in strangely wrought 
 designs of blue, black and yellow. These are chiefly used 
 in dances and on fete days. From Chilkat to Kilisnoo is 
 the next stage. Here there is a cannery and phosphate 
 works — phosphate made from the scraps of herring after the 
 oil is extracted. 
 
 With a run through Lynn Channel to Glacier Bay, where 
 a day is passed in viewing the greatest wonder of the coast, 
 and thence through Cross Sound, we finally reach Sitka, 
 which is usually the terminal objective point of the long 
 voyage, but is really a considerable distance on the home 
 stretch, accomplished by a long detour to the northward, for 
 Sitka lies in latitude fifty-seven degrees, while Chilkat is in 
 latitude fifty-nine degrees, thirty minutes. In the gray of 
 the early morn we can faintly discern the spectral summit of 
 Mount Edgecumb right before us, and trace the dusky out- 
 lines of the rambling town, the outlying islands, and the 
 hull of the Pinta, U. S. man-of-war lying restfully 
 at anchor a few cables length from the government pier. 
 
 Thus hastily touching at points of interest, I have 
 attempted to give the tourist a general idea of what he is to 
 see. In a general way also, he will like to know what to 
 take for the voyage. Presumably he will not require an 
 evening dress, even should a ball be given at the " Castle 
 of the Governor." Indispensible, however, are great-coats 
 and gossamers, heavy shoes, warm underclothing, and short 
 skirts for ladies, as well as light wraps and thin garments of 
 all sorts, traveling caps, and stout canes for glacier-climb- 
 ing. Those who are fond of fishing and hunting may carry 
 shot-guns and tackle for both salt and fresh water use. A 
 blue-fish outfit, with heavy sinker, and a black-bass rod, 
 with reel and line, will be sufficient. Steamer chairs maybe 
 bought at any port before leaving Victoria, and a half-
 
 ITINERARY. 
 
 35 
 
 dozen books will afford exceptionable pastime. Finally, if 
 the officers of the line would only provide a steam launch, 
 forty feet long, with a compound engine, to burn both wood 
 and coal, and half a dozen skiffs for trolling, the service 
 would be quite complete, and the passengers correspond- 
 ingly happy. 
 
 KLOOTCHMAN S.
 
 AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT. 
 
 There is undoubtedly a tendency on the part of enthused 
 and susceptible visitors to turn the bright side of Alaska 
 always toward the light, for surely there was never scenery 
 more grand, or climate more delectable. From the first of 
 June to the end of September, throughout the whole 
 excursion season, the temperature is equable. One needs 
 not perspire without exercise. He is always cool and needs 
 never be cold. Morning fogs burn off by ten o'clock ; rain 
 seldom falls ; there is scarcely wind enough to fill a sail ; and 
 the headway of the steamer makes a grateful breeze. On 
 shore there are few insects or flies, no reptiles, and scarcely 
 a butterfly or beetle. The whole excursion of fully 2,000 
 miles is one long blithesome holiday without a blemish. The 
 thermometer ranges imperturbably and conscientiously 
 between sixty degrees and seventy degrees. 
 
 Looking back over my past sojourn on the North Pacific, 
 and my saunterings along its extended coast, I am at first 
 bewildered by the retrospect. Remote from other men, and 
 from evidences of the very existence of men, except when 
 intermittent glimpses are vouchsafed, I seem to have been 
 adrift in a new creation, such as is sometimes outlined in 
 our dreamland. I am lost in the height of the mountains, 
 the depth of the sea, and the immensity of space. Every 
 thing is on so enlarged a scale that there is no familiar 
 standard of comparative measurement. When I stand in 
 the heart of the Rockies I am impressed by the environ- 
 ment of mountain chains and snow-clad peaks. I am 
 appalled by the rugged grandeur of their height, and the 
 interminable depth of their canons and chasms. The 
 senses are crushed and oppressed by their overwhelming 
 weight. But in this archipelago of mountains and land- 
 locked seas, objects individually so magnificent in them- 
 selves as to startle the senses are multiplied and reduplicated 
 until they paralyze one's comprehension ! Looking forward 
 from the deck of the steamer, through a long vista of head- 
 lands, whose clear-cut outlines are set against the sky in 
 graduated shades of blue, I see a chevaux de /rise of snow-
 
 AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT. 37 
 
 capped peaks so high that Mount Washington or White 
 Top would seem like hills beside them. Astern, or on 
 either side abeam, the same stupendous view looms up in 
 wondrous counterpart. Between the wave-washed foot-hills 
 in the foreground close at hand, the sea is placid like a 
 mirror, and all the gigantic firs which clothe the mountain 
 side, the scores which the avalanche has made on the rocks, 
 and the waterfalls which fall from perpendicular heights, 
 higher than Yosemite, are pictured there in sublime reflec- 
 tions. At night the glory of the stars and constellations is 
 repeated from infinite heights to infinite depths, and the 
 round, full moon seems regent of the whole universe. In 
 land-locked basins, so small that the ship could scarcely 
 turn, great whales disport, and all the battles of the brine 
 are fought, like combats in a prize ring. It is funny to see 
 whales playing in what seems to be a mountain lake, and, of 
 course, all the sea lions rear up on the adjacent rocks and 
 smile. Occasionally there are nights when the crests of all 
 the waves are luminous, and the lustrous phosphoresence 
 piles up under the prow in lumps of liquid light, and streams 
 off in the receding wake of the vessel. Looking over the 
 bow, a watchful eye will detect large fish darting aside to 
 avoid the advance of the vessel, flashing up scintillations 
 and curves of fire as they double and turn. The passengers 
 watch these submarine pyrotechnics by the hour. 
 
 Points and curves, headlands, fiords and bays, sea-worn 
 rocks and wooded islets, rocks and reefs awash at low water, 
 narrow channels and precipitous heights, towering peaks 
 and shadowy valleys, luxuriant forests and kelp-covered 
 shores, waterfalls projected from dizzy heights, glaciers 
 pressing toward the sea, and splitting off with thunder 
 tones and roaring splash — these characterize the scenery 
 and the landscape throughout the entire voyage. Occasion- 
 ally an Indian village of huts or tents is seen on shore, or a 
 canoe load of natives sweeps by under pressure of blanket- 
 sail and paddle. Of course, throughout this extended 
 coast-line, there are many islands of many different 
 phases — some of them mere rocks, to which the kelps 
 cling for dear life, like stranded sailors in a storm ; 
 while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with 
 fir ; and others still, precipitous cliffs standing breast 
 deep in the waves. Steaming through the labyrinths 
 of straits and channels which seem to have no outlets ; 
 straining the neck to scan the tops of snow-capped peaks 
 which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor ; 
 watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and
 
 38 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 herds of sea-lions, which seem as if penned up in an 
 aquarium, so completely are they inclosed by the shadowy 
 hills — one watches the strange forms around him with an in- 
 tensity of interest which almost amounts to awe. 
 
 In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no 
 sand beaches or gravelly shores. All the margins of main- 
 land and islands drop down plump into inky fathoms of 
 water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow 
 weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, 
 and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when 
 the lapping waves recede. When the tide sets in, great 
 rafts of alga?, with stems 300 feet long, career along the sur- 
 face ; millions of jelly fish and anemones crowded as closely 
 as the stars in the firmament ; great air bulbs, with streamers 
 floating like the long hair of female corpses ; schools of por- 
 poises and fin-back whales rolling and plunging headlong 
 through the boiling foam ; all sorts of marine and mediter- 
 ranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible 
 army. Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the 
 ledges, where they squat content or run about feeding ; 
 ducks and sandpeeps, eagles, ospreys, fish-crows and king- 
 fishers, the leaping salmon and the spouting whales, fill up 
 the foreground with animated life. Here and there along 
 the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the melting 
 snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy 
 waterfalls. From the canons which divide the foot-hills, 
 cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are 
 choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I 
 could catch them with my hands as long as my strength en- 
 dured, so helpless and infatuated are these creatures of pre- 
 destination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there 
 are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson 
 spots as large as a pea; and young salmon-parr and smolt, barr- 
 ed, crimson spotted and iridescent and the 'cut-throat trout,' 
 slashed with carmine under the gills. And there is another 
 trout, most familiar to the eye in eastern waters, and doubly 
 welcome to the sight in this far-off region — the Salvelinus 
 Canadensis or ' sea trout,' which I have recognized these 
 many years as a separate species. Here he is in his gar- 
 niture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up stream 
 neighbors of New England and the Provinces, only here he 
 is no " brook trout run to sea," for all the denizens of Alaska 
 brooks are the Salmo My kiss, and not at all like him! and 
 no naturalist claims that these last two are identical. 
 
 Sometimes we cross the mouth of a sound open to the 
 sea, where the full force of the Pacific waves rolls in to swell
 
 AS EXCURSIONISTS SEE IT. 39 
 
 the symphony of the inshore surf. There is a stretch of 
 thirty miles across Queen Charlotte's sound, and of fifteen 
 miles at Millbank, where even in ordinary weather passen- 
 gers show the effects of the motion ; but these disagree- 
 ments are brief. Some of the cloud effects are very grand, 
 stretching, as they do, for scores of miles half-way up the 
 mountain sides, overhanging the peaks or piled on top. 
 Sometimes a blue pyramid or cone will be seen projected 
 above a mass of clouds which has obscured the whole land- 
 scape, just as the glory appeared to Jacob when he slept. 
 Fogs are of almost daily occurrence. In the chilly mornings 
 the hills are wrapped in a thick mantle, and all the little foot- 
 hills are cuddled like bantlings in the fleecy vapors ; but 
 when the warm sun mounts, the fogs disappear and the day 
 comes out almost cloudless. 
 
 After all one can not epitomize Alaska in a brief synopsis 
 or resume. There it stands before you in its inimitable 
 wilderness of forest-clad mountains, eternal and snow- 
 capped, outlined by the clouds and circumscribed by the 
 sea : and one scarcely knows more of what lies on the sur- 
 face of the one than under the billows of the other. The 
 marvelous and the amazing are combined with startling effect 
 wherever we go. Many of the wonders of the Yellowstone 
 country are reduplicated here. We have in Alaska hot 
 springs, lava beds and volcanoes as well; a volcano on 
 Chernabura island, Cook's inlet, is said to be in active and 
 sulphurous operation ; and these together with the unique 
 interest of Russian and Indian life added, and the appar- 
 ently incongruous juxtaposition of arctic and tropical fea- 
 tures, which are continually presented, render the experi- 
 ences of the tourist so delightful, and so novel withal, that 
 it needs no artificial adjuncts to give them expression, and 
 no new lights and shades in the coloring to make them at- 
 tractive. The answering mirror held up to nature reflects 
 on every side a goodly picture. One does not gaze into 
 it darkly. 
 
 [I went out with the first passenger load and territorial 
 officers. No one then seemed to have any idea of the bo- 
 nanza which was aligned along the coast which they 
 skirted en voyage. They dabbed and dabbled like ducks 
 along the golden shore, plucking the lotos plants and 
 toying with trifles. C. H.]
 
 ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 But what of Alaska that is practical ? Is it frigid ? 
 sterile ? God-forsaken ? a land of perpetual ice ? Will any 
 thing grow there ? Can any considerable population, apart 
 from the coast, subsist on the country ? Are the natives 
 any less savage than the seals and bears they hunt ? Are 
 the traces of Russian occupation Siberian or barbarian ? 
 Did the Muscovites leave any thing at all which Uncle 
 Samuel wants ? Is there any gold or other mineral there ? 
 Any thing which the Creator does not regret having made ? 
 In a word, is our new possession good for anything at all, 
 except for another " National Park ? " a resort for tourists 
 and mid-summer ramblers? Let the contents of this vol- 
 ume answer. Much of it was gathered more than twenty 
 years ago. There is nothing now to abrogate or change. 
 
 Years ago, when we gathered in the Louisiana purchase 
 for the sum of $15,000,000 — a tract in itself nearly as large 
 as Europe — there were immense areas of it which were 
 deemed absolutely worthless ; and these were set off, in the 
 transaction, against the more fertile tracts, with their diver- 
 sity of climate, soil and vegetation. Especially, that very 
 considerable portion of it which is now known as the Ter- 
 ritory of Dakota — although a population of more than half 
 a million have made it the peer of any state in every thing 
 but privilege — was disregarded ; it "didn't count." On the 
 maps it was marked " American Desert." At the best, in 
 the opinion of merely superficial observers, it was only an 
 illimitable buffalo range, rainless and treeless, whose russet- 
 colored grass dried up in June for lack of moisture, and 
 was worthless. Now it is the most valuable and productive 
 portion of the entire Louisiana purchase ; capable of 
 feeding the world with grain ; subsisting domestic herds as 
 countless as the buffalo which once grazed over its broad 
 expanse ; munificent in its out-put of precious metals ; 
 underlaid with coal measures which form the subsidiary 
 reserves of the region lying west of the Mississippi River ; 
 seamed and interspersed with out-croppings of the finest 
 building stone yet discovered ; flowing with milk and th«
 
 ECONOMICAL!. Y CONSIDERED. 41 
 
 richness of its dairy products. Even the " Bad Lands " 
 which were designated pre-eminently so, in contradistinction 
 from others esteemed not quite so bad, have become the 
 chosen grazing ground of herds which supply the East with 
 beef, and of horses which bid fair to rival the swiftest and 
 sturdiest stock of Kentucky and Vermont. So far from 
 being sterile, the soil of the " Bad Lands " has been proved 
 actually better for general farming than the heavy tenacious 
 loam of the Red River Valley, just because it is lighter. 
 
 Not less erroneously regarded was the illimitable territory 
 of the British Northwest, whose agricultural possibilities are 
 now ascertained to be co-extensive with her boundaries. 
 This impression of incapacity was founded on its hyper- 
 borean situation. But practical men who had to deal with 
 practical measures, upon which the very life and perpetuity 
 of the Canadian Dominion depended, went forward in 
 advance of the projected railroad through the country, and 
 ploughed and planted at intervals of every twenty miles, to 
 test the quality of soil and climate ; and when without 
 tillage or protection, the answering grain came up in 
 bounteous profusion and ripened before the autumn frost, 
 no better assurance of the future was desired ; and now the 
 directors of the Canadian Pacific Railroad confidently pre- 
 dict that the new Northwest will have fifty millions of people 
 a century hence, with capacity to feed themselves and the 
 rest of the world, if need be. Indeed, it seems incredible, 
 and altogether unaccountable, to those who put no value 
 on isothermal lines, and infer that the climates of all high 
 latitudes are rigorous and inhospitable, to read in the cur- 
 rent newspaper telegrams of the day that spring wheat- 
 sowing commences in April at Maple Creek, in Atha- 
 basca, fully six hundred miles west of hyperborean Win- 
 nipeg, on the same parallel of latitude; that the tempera- 
 ture ranged from fifty-four to fifty-seven degrees at Fort 
 McLeod during the corresponding period ; that the trains 
 of the Canadian Pacific Railroad usually run on time 
 through the snowdrifts of the mountain division. 
 
 Maple Creek, lying at the east base of the rocky moun- 
 tains, feels the influence of the Chinook winds which are 
 wafted from the warm bosom of the Kuro Siwo, or Japan 
 current, although they have to pass over four great moun- 
 tain ranges — the Cascades, Gold, Selkirk and Rockies, each 
 of which helps to cool and condense the atmosphere — 
 whereas access to the interior of Alaska is obstructed only 
 by the single barrier of the coast range. 
 
 I have traveled over a great part of the British Northwest 
 and British Columbia, and have read the official reports of
 
 42 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 
 
 their geological surveys, railway engineers, Hudson Bay 
 officials and Indian inspectors ; I have gathered together 
 all the facts I could find in books, and listened to the tales 
 of miners and traders, and old settlers whose lives have 
 been passed in the ultima tkule ; and I have supplemented 
 the whole with the observations photographed on the eye ; 
 and having gotten together all this testimony, and dis- 
 covered that the physical features of this vast region and 
 Alaska are much alike with each one's advantages and 
 objections reciprocally counterbalanced by the vagaries of 
 isothermal lines, I am prepared to believe that Alaska is 
 worth all that was paid for it, and to predict that in due 
 course of time it will surpass the expectations of its pur- 
 chasers more than despised Dakota or the Northwest has 
 done. The elements of wealth pervade it ; they are 
 through, above and around it. 
 
 Misconceptions of the productive capabilities of a country 
 spring from imperfect diagnosis. No mere superficial 
 observation will suffice ; no hasty conclusions predicated 
 upon general appearances. Nothing but a thorough 
 examination of the soil, flora and fauna will furnish 
 testimony of an absolute character that can be relied on. 
 Dakota was condemned because her summer rain-fall was 
 meager, and the dry and arid appearance of every thing 
 contrasted most unfavorably with the verdant green of 
 eastern localities. The Northwest was condemned for like 
 reasons — with the inferential objection of high latitude 
 added ; but there were hidden influences underneath the 
 soil, begotten by the very conditions which seemed adverse, 
 that served to counteract them. The book of nature was 
 left wide open, but men neglected to turn its pages. A 
 high latitude is very naturally suggestive of cold, but in the 
 code of climatology latitude is less arbitrary than isothermal 
 lines. Even in countries truly frigid there is a season of 
 respite from inexorable congelation. Most people imagine 
 Iceland to be ice-clad and ice-bound the whole year round, 
 and yet its summer lawns are verdant with rich grass, and 
 the meadows are spangled with buttercups and daisies ; 
 pigeons congregate upon the house-roofs, and the cows 
 come home from pasture with the same straggling gait as 
 the kine of other lands. Nine-tenths of the children at 
 school believe the Arctic zone to be a realm of perpetual 
 darkness and intolerable frigidity without a break, and 
 would hoot with incredulity if told that its inhabitants 
 swelter in the heat of her mid-summer sun, and that nothing 
 but its brief duration prevents a high development of ver«
 
 ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED. 43 
 
 dure. But, compared with Alaska, the blessings and 
 fruition of other northern lands in either hemisphere are 
 insignificant — British Columbia alone excepted. 
 
 Of course the modifying influence of the Japan Current, 
 or Pacific Gulf Stream, which projects its vast volume of 
 tepid water athwart the Aleutian Isles, is already well 
 understood, but the results one sees there are hard to real- 
 ize, and the reports we hear are listened to as mariners' 
 tales. The effect of this warm current is equivalent to 
 twenty degrees of latitude, that is to say, the same products 
 which are found in latitude forty degrees on the Atlantic 
 thrive in latitude sixty degrees on the Pacific, which is 
 but little north of the location of Sitka, and on a scale far 
 more generous. Fruits, vegetables, plants, and trees are 
 not only of greater size, but their yield is manifold, though 
 it is fair to say, that the quality of flavor is not always as 
 good. Oranges, which do not mature in the East above 
 the latitude of Port Royal, S. C, grow to perfection in 
 Shasta, California, in latitude forty-one degrees, which is a 
 little higher than the latitude of New York City. Shasta also 
 produces cotton, limes, soft-shell almonds, and superb 
 prunes. By the same ratio of climatic progression, tomatoes, 
 musk-melons and grapes ripen in the latitude of Victoria, 
 but better back of the coast-range than on the seaboard, 
 because of the higher temperature and immunity from exces- 
 sive fogs and rain. 
 
 The influence of ocean currents in distributing heat 
 throughout the globe, and especially of the warm currents 
 which modify the climate of the polar regions, is set forth 
 very intelligibly in Croll's " Climate and Climatology" pub- 
 lished by the Appletons. By that influence, places which 
 are now buried under permanent snow and ice were once 
 covered with luxurious vegetation, and arctic regions 
 enjoyed a comparatively mild and equable climate ; and 
 vice versa. Hitherto this influence seems to have been 
 enormously underestimated. Really, the amount of heat 
 borne north by the Gulf Stream, whose volume and temper- 
 ature have been ascertained with an approach to certainty, 
 is computed to be more than equal to all the heat received 
 from the sun within a zone of the earth's surface extending 
 thirty-two miles on each side of the equator. Or, in other 
 words, as a little calculation will demonstrate, the amount 
 of equatorial heat carried into temperate and polar regions 
 by this stream alone is equal to one-fourth of all the heat 
 received from the sun by the North Atlantic from the 
 Tropic of Cancer up to the Arctic Circlei But theri
 
 44 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 are other great oceanic currents, especially the Kuro-Siwo, 
 which, though not yet subjected to as careful mensuration, 
 are believed to convey as much heat poleward as the Gulf 
 Stream. Evidently, then, comparatively slight changes in 
 the oceanic circulation would increase or decrease glacial 
 conditions. The severity of climate, in Mr. Croll's view, is 
 about as much due to the cooling effect of the permanent 
 snow and ice as to an actual want of heat. An increase in 
 the amount of warm water entering the Arctic Ocean, just 
 sufficient to prevent the formation of permanent ice, is all 
 that is really necessary to make the summers of Greenland 
 as warm as those of England." It is obvious that a large 
 decrease in its temperature and volume would lead to a state 
 of things in northwestern Europe approaching to that which 
 now prevails in Greenland. The causes which he assigns 
 for changes in the volume and temperature of ocean cur- 
 rents, he declares are actual and explicable, and by no 
 means based on mere hypotheses ; all of which are set forth 
 in a most intelligible and interesting manner in the volume 
 referred to. Briefly epitomized, they may be stated in Mr. 
 Crolls own words, as follows : 
 
 " The causes of these changes may be found in physical 
 agencies, stimulated or checked by changes in the eccen- 
 tricity of the earth's orbit, provided the heat-transferring 
 power of such agencies is suffered to be operative by such 
 geographical conditions as now exist, and which there is 
 not an atom of evidence for believing have been materially 
 altered since the glacial epoch. It is unnecessary to postu- 
 late the submergencies or the elevation of continents, or the 
 existence of extra inter-continental channels, transporting 
 northward additional heat currents, and thus contributing to 
 ameliorate the climate of the pole. The geographical condi- 
 tions and the physical agencies which actually exist are amply 
 sufficient to account for all the facts. When the eccentricity 
 of the earth's orbit is at a high value, and the northern win- 
 ter solstice is in perihelion, agencies are brought into opera- 
 tion which make the southeast trade-winds stronger than 
 the northeast, and compel them to blow over upon the 
 northern hemisphere as far probably as the Tropic of Can- 
 cer. The result is that all the great equatorial currents of 
 the ocean are impelled into the northern hemisphere, which 
 thus, in consequence of the immense accumulation of warm 
 water, has its temperature raised, and snow and ice to a 
 great extent must then disappear from the Arctic regions. 
 When, contrariwise, the precession of the equinoxes brings 
 round the winter solstice to aphelion, the condition of
 
 ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED. 45 
 
 things on the two hemispheres is reversed, and the north- 
 east trades then blow over upon the southern hemisphere, 
 carrying the great equatorial currents along with them. 
 The warm water being thus wholly withdrawn from the 
 northern hemisphere, its temperature sinks enormously, 
 and snow and ice begin to accumulate in temperate 
 regions." * 
 
 Mr. Croll is also at pains to show that the mean interval 
 between two consecutive interglacial periods (correspond- 
 ing to the time required by the equinoctial point to pass 
 from perihelion round to perihelion) is not, as is commonly 
 assumed, 21,000, but 23,230 years. At intervals, therefore, 
 of from 10,000 to 12,000 years the north pole will experi- 
 ence the extreme of cold and the extreme of heat compat- 
 ible with the coincident geographical conditions, and with 
 the coincident eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the latter 
 factor being ascertainable from Croll's tables. 
 
 The final result, therefore, to which Mr. Croll would lead 
 us is that those warm and cold periods which have alter- 
 nately prevailed during past ages are simply the great secu- 
 lar summers and winters of our globe, depending as truly 
 as the annual ones do upon planetary motions, and like 
 them also fulfilling some important ends in the economy of 
 nature. 
 
 It is needless to say that in a country as vast as Alaska 
 the climate varies greatly ; but taken as a whole, it is more 
 moderate and equable than that of any region of a corres- 
 ponding latitude west of the Rocky Mountains — enjoying 
 summers cooler, and winters much more mild. On its 
 mountains there is perpetual snow, but not perpetual cold. 
 There are large tracts of country where the mean yearly tem- 
 perature is higher than that of Stockholm or Christiana of 
 Europe, and where it is milder in winter, with a less fall of 
 both rain and snow than in the southern portion of Sweden. 
 Along the southern seaboard, which is the most habitable 
 portion, the average temperature is forty-two degrees, with 
 a common range between the zero point and a maximum of 
 eighty degrees. Winter breaks up in March. Even in 
 January, showers, such as we of the north have in April, 
 alternate with the sunshine of May. 
 
 John J. McLean, the U. S. Signal Officer at Sitka, has 
 kindly furnished me the following synopsis of meteorological 
 data for the winter of 1885-6. 
 *For eiiects of glacial dynamics, see pages 168-77.
 
 4 6 
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Nov. 1885. 
 Dec. " 
 Jan. 1886. 
 Feb. " 
 
 Mean Temp. 
 
 40.2 
 36.8 
 29.2 
 37-1 
 
 Precipitation 
 inches. 
 
 9-65 
 11,70 
 
 7-36 
 
 18.84 
 
 Max. Temp. 
 
 50. 
 50.5 
 
 52.5 
 
 Min. Temp. 
 
 29- 5 
 
 3o.5 
 
 4- 
 
 24. 
 
 In the region fully subject to the influence of the equato- 
 rial current, flowers bloom and vegetation remains green and 
 bright the winter through, with only a temporary suspension 
 for rest and recuperation, and there is little save the 
 almanac to remind the stranger that winter is in transit, 
 though the native knows it from the increased rainfall. The 
 warm air coming off from the Gulf Stream meets the colder air 
 from the north and evokes precipitation, more abundant on 
 the main land coast than on the islands, or in the interior. 
 And it is this steaming moisture which clothes the mountains 
 to the height of more than a thousand feet with their dense 
 growths of spruce, pine, alder, hemlock, and cedar. But it is 
 not always calm and mild and delectable in that region ; for 
 the Custom House officer who keeps his lonesome watch at 
 the tumble-down post at Tongass, which is the southernmost 
 limit of our possession, tells how the winds begin to blow 
 about the istof November and sometimes hard enough to 
 upset the crow's nest at the look-out, and whisk the shingles 
 off the roof. Frequently he is weather-bound for weeks, 
 and once he did not taste fresh meat for four months. In 
 mid-winter snow sometimes falls as deep as four feet, an 
 immense precipitation, but it seldom remains unmelted for 
 more than a fortnight, and the temperature rarely falls to 
 zero. In January, 1886, it reached five degrees, the coldest 
 of the season for many years. Capt. L. A. Beardslee, com- 
 manding the U. S. Steamer, Jamestown, on the Alaska Sta- 
 tion, in his official report for 1879, made at Sitka, mentions 
 the appearance of robins, sparrows and buntings in March, 
 with ducks flying north. He gives four hundred and sixty- 
 nine hours of blue sky out of a total of seven hundred and 
 forty-four hours for the thirty-one days of the month. In 
 April about one day in seven is cloudy. The summer up to 
 September is uniformly dry, with an equable temperature. 
 September temperature is sixty degrees in the shade, and 
 seventy degrees in the sun, with a good deal of rain gener- 
 ally. It is these early rains which prevent the ripening of 
 grains on the coast. Cereals would do better in the interior 
 despite the 6hort summer. All kinds of vegetables mature
 
 ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED. 47 
 
 on the coast, and potatoes grow large and keep through the 
 winter as seed for the next year's planting. As testimony 
 to the dryness of the climate, the captain says : " Our guns 
 (vessel of war) do not suffer as on our own coast." Hali- 
 but and herring fishing occurs in April. Salmon fishing 
 begins May i. Coots, teal, widgeon and sprigtail ducks 
 arrive in September ; canvas-backs and mallards in October; 
 geese fly in November. 
 
 A great deal more has been written about Alaska than the 
 public imagines. A whole library of information is avail- 
 able among the shelves of the Smithsonian Institution at 
 Washington, and all the traits and industries and social life 
 and religious belief of its peculiar peoples are illustrated in 
 the cabinets of the U. S. National Museum. The reports 
 of Prof. Dall alone, whose research covers a period of 
 seventeen seasons in Alaska, published under Government 
 auspices, afford such explicit information that no one need 
 be ignorant of its capabilities. But such valuable emana- 
 tions as Government reports and " pub. docs." are usually 
 consigned to the archives, to be presently forgotten, or per- 
 haps exhumed in exigency for special reference, while the 
 imperfect and baser effusions of irresponsible contributors 
 find universal currency. Mr. Bancroft, in his exhaustive 
 " History of Alaska," comprising seven hundred and fifty 
 pages, has also given us all the information which research 
 can unearth, from the earliest discovery of the country to 
 the present day. The volume comprises a most valuable 
 and authentic repertory of facts, geographical, historical 
 and economical, coast-wise and in-board, all of which are 
 sufficient to demonstrate and prove that the difficulty to be 
 encountered in the agricultural development of Alaska, is 
 not a climatic one. Samples of oats, rye, barley, hay, po- 
 tatoes, onions, garden truck, and fresh beef from the 
 1,280-acre experiment farm in Copper River valley which 
 were shown at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1903 
 prove what can be done in this line. Already the settlers 
 and miners in that section are "living off the country." 
 The Copper River valley basin is 140 miles long by 75 
 wide. 
 
 Notwithstanding the habitable and cultivable modicum 
 is relatively but little, it is of far greater extent and im- 
 portance than would be supposed by those who fail to 
 appreciate the magnitude of the territory as a whole; 
 and it must ever be borne in mind that the area of Alaska 
 is greater than that of the original thirteen states, and 
 poor indeed must be that plat of earth, so magnificent in
 
 4 8 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 sweep and superfices, which does not contain the value 
 inherent of $7,500,000, the equivalent of the "Seward 
 Purchase." What real or tangible foundation is there for 
 the impression that it cannot decently support more than 
 a handful of population, when other countries, which re- 
 semble it in climate and character, support large num- 
 bers? The contributory causes of a false impression 
 have already been hinted at in chapter one of this volume, 
 and will presently be made more clearly to appear. 
 
 In the latter years, with the discovery of the fertility of 
 our illimitable prairies and their boundless capacity for 
 grain, men's ideas of farm dimensions expanded in propor- 
 tion, until an area of less than 10,000 acres came to be 
 regarded as small. But the era of bonanza farms has now 
 passed away ; the great wheat fields are being subdivided ; 
 mixed industries are being introduced, and with constantly 
 diminishing areas it will be possible presently to conceive 
 of a farm no larger than those they have in Scotland or 
 New England ; and a country may be considered agricul- 
 tural that is not wholly an alluvial level destitute of trees and 
 stones. Nay, it may even come within the grasp of thought 
 to imagine acres tucked away in the folds of the Alaska 
 mountains or spread out like blankets upon the waste ter- 
 races of the upper Yukon. No lands were ever more fruit- 
 ful than the hill counties of Judea, where the desert 
 encroached very nearly upon the fertile tracts, and there 
 are few countries where the climatic conditions are better 
 adapted to diversified crops than the mountainous seaboard 
 of Alaska. With regard to its local or indigenous products, 
 let me recite the testimony of Captain Beardslee, of the U. 
 S. Navy, given in 1879, soon after his arrival on the station, 
 to wit : " We have been here three months, and during that 
 period have been plentifully supplied with a variety of good 
 vegetables, among which have been radishes, lettuce, car- 
 rots, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, peas, turnips and pota- 
 toes, and have a prospect during the coming month of beets, 
 parsnips and celery, all of which look well in the gardens. 
 The cauliflower and cabbage are as good as I ever ate ; the 
 potatoes are just coming on, and are not quite ripe yet. I 
 had this day (Sept. 17th) at my dinner, a potato grown here 
 which was seven inches long, three inches thick, and weighed 
 one pound five ounces, and it was one of many I have seen 
 which would average from one-half to three-quarters of a 
 pound in weight. Its flavor was good, and I shall, as do 
 all other people here, depend upon this market for my 
 winter's supply. There are many small gardens which 
 return crops, as in all other countries, in proportion to the
 
 ECONOMICALL Y CONSIDERED, 49 
 
 care and skill displayed in their cultivation. I have seen 
 plenty of ' the watery walnuts dubbed potatoes,' but they 
 came from gardens belonging to people so excessively pious 
 that they trusted God for every thing, and put in no work 
 themselves. Some of these gardens are over a single acre 
 in extent, and have supplied good crops annually for quite 
 a while. On Japonski and Biorka, and Survey and other 
 islands there are hundreds of acres which could be culti- 
 vated with profit, if the population were great enough to fur- 
 nish customers. On Biorka, an island about twelve miles 
 from here, there is now under cultivation a thriving vege- 
 table garden of several acres, and these acres have 
 been under annual cultivation for some years. So we eat 
 and grow fat, when we thought to have had short commons." 
 The captain is writing at Sitka, two hundred and forty 
 miles up the coast from the southernmost boundary of the 
 territory, where the climate may be supposed to be less 
 favorable to perfect maturity of esculents. There are some 
 good vegetable gardens at Wrangell and Tongass. Mr. 
 and Mrs. Young, who have charge of the mission at Wran- 
 gell, have a ranch of 1,600 acres at the mouth of the 
 Stickeen River, on which they have successfully raised bar- 
 ley and oats, but that is ninety-five miles southeast of Sitka. 
 At the village of Haines, further up the Stickeen, there is 
 another good ranch. Red raspberries are cultivated at 
 Tongass. In the stores at Wrangell, I have seen fine pota- 
 toes on sale in the month of August ; but these were not 
 raised on the coast, but up the Stickeen River, one hundred 
 and fifty miles back in the interior. As a matter of fact, 
 the whole coast region is so like a vapor-bath or hot-house, 
 that vegetation grows too exuberantly. There is no room 
 for it, and indigenous plants crowd the economic products. 
 If you fence a garden, or a grave-plot, the fence disappears 
 from view the second year among the overgrowth. The 
 same vegetable phenomena pertain to the interior, but there 
 the summer temperature is inordinately higher, the skies 
 are cloudless, and the supply of moisture derived from the 
 reeking sub-soils and underlying strata of ice, abundantly 
 sufficient. Wild hops, wild onions and wild berries grow in 
 profusion; crab-apples, gooseberries, currants, black and red 
 whortleberries, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries, red 
 and white salmon berries (like raspberries, only four times 
 the size), checker berries, pigeon berries, and angelica, fur- 
 nish the native fruit supply. At berries we have to draw 
 the line between Alaska and Southern British Columbia, 
 which can supply the Dominion with choicest apples, pears,
 
 50 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 plums, peaches, grapes, cherries, etc. One curious feature. 
 of Alaska vegetation is that nearly every flower is succeeded 
 by a berry. In the same latitude of Labrador on the 
 Atlantic side, the only solitary fruit is a little yellow berry, 
 locally known as " baked apple," which grows among the 
 grass and lichens ; and spruce sticks, no more than eight 
 inches in diameter, illustrate the best forest growth. Why 
 don't the Canadian Government move its three thousand 
 pinched and starving population from Labrador to Brit- 
 ish Columbia at the public expense? They would earn 
 their transportation in a year. 
 
 As stock raising is the remunerative complement of every 
 well constituted farm, it is being prosecuted by the Alas- 
 kan granger with marked advantage. Certainly the climate 
 is vastly more propitious than in Northern Minnesota and 
 Dakota, where the grazing of fine sheep and the best 
 blooded cattle is now prosecuted with signal profit. Like 
 the bonanza wheat fields of the Northwest, so the illimitable 
 cattle ranges of the further west are being sub-divided. 
 Diversity of industry has become a necessity and a watch- 
 word. Gradually the wheat fields and the cattle ranges 
 are over-lapping and dove-tailing into each other. Very 
 rapidly the farmer of the West is driving the desert before 
 him. The developments of each succeeding year make it 
 more and more obvious that the encroachment of the home- 
 steader upon the grazing lands can not be checked. The 
 Defiver Tribune says : — " Men have stood in line a hundred 
 deep at the Land Offices waiting their turns to enter land 
 upon which as little rain falls as in the most arid spot east 
 of the Rocky Mountains. If this move can be made to 
 pay them it simply means that all the plains will be home- 
 steaded within a few years. It means that the large herds 
 will disappear and that the lands will be fenced by their 
 real owners. In short, it forebodes another change in the 
 evolution of the arid cattle-grazing business greater than 
 any that has gone before." 
 
 Finally when all the land is homesteaded, men will look 
 to Alaska. And why not ? Says Bancroft : — " Grasses 
 thrive almost everywhere on the low-lands. Kodiak is a 
 good grazing country, capable of sustaining large droves of 
 cattle. On the Aleutian Islands trees do not grow, but the 
 grasses are luxuriant." Lieutenant Schwatka in his report of 
 the interior, speaks enthusiastically of the upland meadows 
 and the grass-grown bluffs. Capt. Beardslee says : — " I am 
 not sufficiently posted in the mysteries of a granger's pro- 
 fession to undertake to speak very positively as to the num-
 
 EC0N0M1CALL V CONSIDERED. 5 1 
 
 ber of stock of any kind which any given amount of land 
 would support, but that there is land here which will sup- 
 port some stock, I will also prove by facts. * * * 
 While the army was here Japonski Island was used as a 
 stock ranch. There has been kept on it as many as sixty 
 head of cattle, over one hundred of sheep, and over three 
 hundred of hogs ; all of which obtained their own food for 
 a much greater portion of the year than they could have 
 done in any state north of Alabama ; and there was no 
 difficulty in getting good hay. Twelve miles north of here 
 are the Katliansky and Nesquasarisky bays and plains, 
 which, having been planted with timothy some years ago 
 by a settler named Doyle, furnished to the troops an aver- 
 age of sixty tons of good hay, cured during the heated spell 
 of July, when the temperature goes up into the nineties ; 
 and this year those who cut a little for their own supply es- 
 timate that t^ere was at least one hundred tons. In the 
 immediate vicinity of Sitka there are three thousand acres of 
 arable land, much of which is now well grassed and covered 
 with white clover. And on the summits of some of the 
 foot-hills there are plateaus now covered with wdd grasses, 
 where innumerable deer obtain pasturage and where goats 
 and mountain sheep would thrive." 
 
 These references are to limited areas which have come 
 within a circumscribed scope of observation. They illus- 
 trate the coast region, just as arable places illustrate Switz- 
 erland ; and Switzerland is a good country, if not strictly 
 agricultural. With regard to the Yukon River country, 
 Captain Wm. H. Dall, of the United States Coast Survey, 
 says, in his report made to the Commissioner of Agriculture 
 in 1867: — "Among the more valuable grasses, of which 
 some thirty species are known to exist in the Yukon terri- 
 tory, is the well-known Kentucky" blue grass, which grows 
 luxuriantly as far north as Kotzebue Sound, and perhaps to 
 Point Barrow. 
 
 "The wood meadow-grass is abundant. The blue joint- 
 grass {Calamagrostis canadensis) also reaches the latitude 
 of Kotzebue Sound, and grows on the coast of Norton 
 Sound with a truly surprising luxuriance, reaching in very 
 favorable localities four or even five feet in height, and 
 averaging at least three. Many other grasses enumerated 
 in the list of useful plants grow abundantly, and con- 
 tribute largely to the whole amount of herbage. Two 
 species of Elymus almost deceive the traveler with the 
 aspect of grain-fields, maturing a perceptible kernel which 
 the field-mice lay up in store.
 
 52 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 " The grasses are woven into mats, dishes, articles of 
 clothing for summer use, such as socks, mittens, and a sort 
 of hats, by all the Indians, and more especially by the 
 Esquimaux. 
 
 " In winter the dry grasses, collected in the summer for 
 the purpose, and neatly tied in bunches, are shaped to cor- 
 respond with the foot, and placed between the foot and the 
 seal-skin sole of the winter boots worn in that country. 
 There they serve as a non-conductor, keeping the foot dry 
 and warm, and protecting it from contusion. 
 
 " Grain has never been sown on a large scale in the Yukon 
 territory. Barley, I was informed, had once or twice been 
 tried at Fort Yukon, in small patches, and the grain had 
 matured, though the straw was very short. The experi- 
 ments were never carried any further, however, the traders 
 being obliged to devote all their energies to the collection 
 of furs." 
 
 Respecting the Aleutian islands, he states that "The climate 
 is better adapted for haying than that of the coast of 
 Oregon. The cattle were remarkably fat, and the beef very 
 tender and delicate ; rarely surpassed by any well-fed stock. 
 Milk was abundant. The good and available arable land 
 lies chiefly near the coast, formed by the meeting and 
 mingling of the detritus from mountain and valley with the 
 sea sand, which formed a remarkably rich and genial soil, 
 well suited for garden and root-crop culture. It occurs to 
 us that many choice sunny hillsides here would produce 
 good crops under the thrifty hand of enterprise. They are 
 already cleared for the plow. Where grain-like grasses 
 grow and mature well, it seems fair to infer that oats and 
 barley would thrive, provided they were fall-sown, like the 
 native grasses. This is abundantly verified by reference to 
 the collections. Several of these grasses had already 
 (September) matured and cast their seed before we arrived, 
 showing sufficient length of season. Indeed no grain will 
 yield more than half a crop of poor quality (on the Pacific 
 slope), when spring-sown, whether north or south. 
 
 " The Russians affirm, with confirmation by later visitors, 
 that potatoes are cultivated in almost every Aleutian village ; 
 and Veniaminof states that at the village in Isanotsky 
 Strait they have raised them and preserved the seed for 
 planting since the begining of this century. 
 
 " Wild pease grow in great luxuriance near Unalaska Bay, 
 and as far north as latitude sixty-four degrees." 
 
 There is no trouble about wintering cattle and sheep 
 in Alaska. Old traders have declared to me that the
 
 ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 53 
 
 musk-ox exists in considerable numbers in the northern 
 part of the territory, especially near the British boundary 
 line, on the other side of which, in the vicinity ot 
 the Mackenzie River, Northwest Territory, they are quite 
 numerous ; and although some naturalists strenuously in- 
 sist that it does not, and never did, exist in Alaska, there 
 seems no reason why the Rocky Mountain range should 
 constitute an insuperable obstacle to their transit. There 
 are several fine specimens of the musk-ox in the United 
 States National Museum, all of which were obtained 
 in the Mackenzie River country, but there are none 
 from Alaska ; so that bodily proof is wanting. On 
 the other hand we read in Lieutenant Schwatka's 
 article printed in the Century Magazine in 1883, that 
 the range of the musk-ox is from latitude 60 degrees 
 to 79 degrees, and from the Rocky Mountain di- 
 vide, westward, almost to the Behring Sea. The native 
 mountain sheep and goats of Alaska weather through the 
 inclement winters without sheds or cotes, or any shelter but 
 the dense undergrowth which chokes every gully and ravine. 
 Domestic utensils and ornaments are made by the natives 
 from the horns of each, and the latter animals are in such 
 abundance as to furnish wool for quite an extensive manu- 
 facture of blankets and clothing. Wool-growing should be- 
 come an important industry in Alaska, as it is in Oregon ; 
 and better, for the atmosphere there is not so damp. Last 
 summer a single train of twenty cars loaded with 438,000 
 pounds of wool was made up at Portland for Philadelphia, 
 and this was only a fraction of the product of the State. So 
 fine is the texture of the fleece of the Alaskan Mountain 
 goat, that the meanest homespun Chilkoot blanket fetches 
 twenty dollars. There is not the -shadow of a doubt that 
 these animals can be easily domesticated, and the wool 
 product made immensely profitable. The very fact of their 
 preference of location by the wild goats and sheep show 
 that there is no portion of America more favorable for ovi- 
 culture than the ridges of Alaska, while the numerous herds 
 of cariboo, moose, and deer, away up on the plateau of the 
 Yukon, testify with equal favor of the moors and moss- 
 barrens of the interior. What subsists one class of animals 
 should subsist its kin. 
 
 In addition to the farming and herding, large supple- 
 mentary revenues are now derived from the dairy, the 
 poultry-yard and hog-pen. Indeed, butter, eggs, beef, 
 pork and poultry are already staples.
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 The timber forests of Alaska are a standing testimony 
 to the value of the "Seward Purchase," which even the 
 most obstreperous objectors could not deny. The visible 
 wealth of Alaska lies in her forests. Alaska is the great 
 timber reserve of the continent. Trees of such size and 
 commercial value exist nowhere else on the globe in such 
 numbers and extensive areas of growth. There is a 
 supply here of five thousand seven hundred million feet at 
 a low estimate, a very large part of which is at once acces- 
 sible for shipment, as saw-mills and vessels can lie right 
 alongside the timber at tide-water, all the way up the 
 coast as far as it extends. Saw-mills at prominent points 
 on the coast ought to pay well, for lumber is very high. 
 If prices were less, the Indians alone would purchase 
 large quantities. On another page the size and dimen- 
 sions of some of the largest yellow cedars and 
 are given. They are equalled only 
 coast States. Nothing like the red- 
 woods, of course, but more like Puget Sound timber. We 
 are approaching a time when the resources of the Union 
 will be overtaxed, and timber will be scarce ; but when 
 all the states are drained of their product, there will 
 
 Douglas pines 
 on the Pacific
 
 ECONOMIC A LL Y CONSIDERED. 5 5 
 
 remain in Alaska a virgin reserve of more than 300,000,000 
 acres of the noblest timber in the world — a source of wealth 
 upon which the people may draw for generations to come. 
 All the islands are clothed with it ; the mountains of the 
 adjacent main-land are covered with it ; great areas of the 
 interior plateau, which reaches to the verge of the Arctic 
 sea, are untracked wildernesses of spruce. Only when peo- 
 ple who are now strangers to the land and listeners to the 
 story come to see the magnitude of these forests, and the 
 stupendous individuality of their giant trees, will they be 
 able to realize the truth of what is told them. The lumber- 
 men of the old states, whose lives have been passed in 
 logging camps, would stand appalled at the majesty of the 
 Douglas pines, which tower heavenward, and whose diame- 
 ter is nine feet at the base; or the famous red cedars, out 
 of which the Indians make their dug-out canoes, some of 
 them sixty feet in length with eight feet beam ! 
 
 Alongside of some logs which one finds prone, the choicest 
 cull of the Wisconsin and Minnesota drives, would look like 
 fence posts. Beside standing trees, the tallest rampikes of 
 the Maine forests resemble saplings. Here the alders grow 
 to a diameter of sixteen inches, and an ordinary maple leaf 
 has thirteen inches span. Rankness characterizes all the 
 growth. But the trees are not all gigantic, or the forests 
 all unscathed. The bulk of the forest trees are of ordinary 
 height, say fifty feet or so, and the giants are distributed 
 throughout at neighborly intervals, occupying the low- 
 lands between the shoulders of the mountains; but many 
 of the angular hill-sides along the coast fairly bristle with 
 the skeletons of dead spruces, which have died from dearth 
 of nourishment among the rocks; the survivors meanwhile 
 drawing life from their decaying remains. As in all known 
 forests frequented by man, fires have here run through vast 
 areas of the wilderness, starting from carelessness of hunt- 
 ers and trappers, causing conflagrations whose smoke 
 obscures the sun for months together. It is sad to contem- 
 plate the great destruction ; yet some of the forests of Alaska 
 are over-populous. Time was, I ween, when the only 
 smokes seen in the distant view were the signals of the 
 tribes who wished to communicate with each other ; some 
 for the purpose of barter, some to intimate the presence of 
 intruders ; some to indicate the direction to be taken, or a 
 point of rendezvous. Sometimes the signal was a big 
 smoke, at others only a thin spiral ; again there were two or 
 three adjacent, some large, others small, with many varia- 
 tions adapted to the information to be conveyed. These
 
 5 6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Indian signals were almost as perfect as the crude symbols 
 of our army at the beginning of the war, before they were 
 formulated into a fixed code. 
 
 Commercially considered, the trees of Alaska rank as fol- 
 lows : Yellow cedar, spruce, hemlock, alder and a species 
 of fir or black pine. The Douglas pine, which is so abund- 
 ant in British Columbia and possesses the chief commer- 
 cial value there, is replaced in great part in Southern 
 Alaska "by the white cedar, a splendid finishing wood, out 
 of which the Indians carve their totem poles or heraldic 
 columns. The red cedar grows in special abundance on 
 the lower coasts, and extends inland to the Rocky Moun- 
 tains. It is in great demand because of its durability. Of 
 it the Indians make their canoes, roofing their houses with 
 the bark and weaving the fiber into blankets. The cypress 
 or yellow cedar is found in southern Alaska. It is suscepti- 
 ble of taking a very fine polish, and considered valuable for 
 boat-building and finishing purposes. It sells for $80 per 
 thousand in San Francisco. It possesses a delightful odor, 
 which like camphor wood it retains for a long time ; and, 
 manufactured into boxes and chests, is very valuable for 
 packing furs and other goods, as it is said to be a moth 
 preventive. It is also extremely tough, and proof against 
 the teredo sea-worm, and for this reason is in demand for 
 piling and all submarine purposes. Samuel's West Shore 
 Magazine supplies the following list of the principal trees of 
 British Columbia, nearly all of which I believe are common 
 to some portion of Alaska, but not all of equal perfection in 
 the higher latitude : — 
 
 " Juniper, or pencil cedar, found on the east coast of 
 Vancouver Island, and on the shores of lakes in the inte- 
 rior. The Weymouth, or white pine, {Pinus strobus) found 
 on the Lower Fraser, where it attains great size and beauty. 
 The balsam pine attains a vigorous growth, but is of little 
 value as timber. Yellow pine, {Pinus ponderosa) flourishes 
 in the interior. The wood is close-grained and durable, 
 though very heavy. Scotch fir, {Pinus Bankskiana) is 
 found in the interior ; also on Vancouver Island, though of 
 a smaller growth. Throughout the lower coast the hem- 
 lock, {Abies sitkensis) grows to large proportions, its bark 
 being exceedingly valuable for tanning purposes. The 
 western larch, {Larix occidentalis) grows to immense size in 
 the bottoms along the international line. The yew, ( Taxus 
 brevi-folia) is found on the coast and as far up the Fraser 
 as Yale. It does not attain the size of English yew. The 
 natives utilize it for bows. Oak, {Q Garryana) grows
 
 ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 57 
 
 abundantly on Vancouver Islands. It is tough and service- 
 able. Alder grows along the streams of the coast, and 
 attains great size. It is useful for furniture. Maple is 
 abundant on the islands and coast up to latitude 55 degrees. 
 The wood is very useful for cabinet making. Vine maple, 
 a very strong white wood, is confined to the coast. Crab- 
 apple grows along the coast. Dogwood is found on Van- 
 couver Island and opposite coast. The aspen poplar is 
 found throughout the interior. Another variety of poplar 
 abounds along the water courses near the coast, and is the 
 kind so much in demand on Puget Sound for barrel staves. 
 Two other kinds of poplar — all known as "cottonwood," — as 
 well as the mountain ash, are found in the interior valleys." 
 
 The white spruce is the most widely distributed of Alaska 
 trees, covering the country inland to the Rocky Mountains 
 and up to the very shores of the Arctic Ocean on the north. 
 The white birch is also abundant in the interior, and is used 
 for canoes by some tribes. The cottonwood is found on 
 the upper Yukon, where it is used for navigating its rough 
 waters. Manifestly, there is in Alaska a great variety of 
 merchantable woods which are available for new uses, and 
 new woods which may be substituted for others nearly used 
 up commercially. I am fully convinced of the great value 
 of what is there unrecognized and unappreciated, but which 
 we can not afford to ignore or overlook any longer. 
 
 Some of the mosses of Alaska are of special economic 
 value. They have long been utilized by the natives in 
 various ways. Within twenty years the tree-mosses of 
 Florida, Texas, and Louisiana have become important 
 articles of commerce, chiefly as substitutes for curled horse 
 hair in the manufacture of mattresses, cushions, etc., and 
 the mosses of Alaska are equally desirable and available 
 for like purposes. The supply is practically inexhaustible, 
 and when it is contiguous to the coast it may be gathered 
 without great labor. 
 
 The impenetrable jungle of the Alaskan forest, with its 
 windfalls of timber and profusion of wild fruit and succu- 
 lent mosses, constitutes an incomparable nursery and pro- 
 tection for its fauna, while the open ridges above the timber 
 line are no less secure from man's intrusion by the natural 
 obstacles interposed. Assuredly, there is no place on the 
 continent where wild animals enjoy such perfect immunity 
 from harm. It remains by its natural gifts the only great 
 game and fur preserve left in the western world, and stands 
 ready and wide open for the operations of intrepid hunters 
 and trappers at the very time when other sources of supply
 
 58 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 have been drained, and denizens of cold countries are look- 
 ing about them for substitutes for buffalo robes and the 
 more costly furs which have now at last become priceless or 
 extinct. American furs are becoming scarcer every year as 
 civilization pushes into the wilds. Oregon, which within 
 the memory of men not old, was one of the finest of hunting 
 grounds, has practically ceased to yield any thing of the 
 kind. Washington Territory is only productive in its wilder 
 portions, and the same may be said of British Columbia. 
 Alaska, however, remains almost intact, and not only the 
 lucrative seal isles of Prybilov, but all the fastnesses of the 
 coast range, the "barren grounds " of the great plateau, and 
 the banks of the great rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, 
 still make it worth the absorbing attention of the fur trader, 
 and the trapper. The stock of good merchantable fur is 
 neither abundant nor cheap in Alaska ; but squirrel robes 
 containing six or seven dozen skins neatly sewed together 
 may often be bought cheap at the Indian " ranches." They 
 make excellent cloak and coat linings. A red fox skin 
 costs two dollars ; mountain goat fifty cents; black bear 
 from ten to twenty-five dollars unmounted. Hair and fur 
 seals range in price, undressed from three to ten dollars ; 
 sea otter from ninety to two-hundred dollars — the most 
 expensive of all American fur and the most desirable. 
 Land otter is very pretty, and at one of the Sitka stores a 
 shoulder cape and muff made up in San Francisco was offered 
 at twenty-five dollars. The Russian occupation, which was 
 founded on the fur trade and enriched itself for a century 
 on its profits, withdrew from the field before the lead was 
 half worked out, nay, scarcely opened ! The Hudson Bay 
 Company was long ago attracted to the country by its 
 inducements, and attempted to secure a foothold in it by 
 establishing trading posts on the upper Yukon as far back 
 as 1850, crossing the Rocky mountain divide from the head 
 waters of the Mackenzie; but they were soon driven out by 
 the Chilkoot Indians, the most energetic and business-like 
 of the coast tribes, who had been for generations the self- 
 constituted middle-men between the seaboard and the in- 
 terior ; and the interior of Alaska has since remained an 
 unoccupied field for the pursuit of an industry, which for a 
 century enriched a masterful corporation and made it almost 
 a sovereign power. If the brave spirits who started the 
 Northwest Fur Company of years ago, and whose survivors 
 are now few and hoary, could renew their youth and energy, 
 they would ask no better opportunity for business than 
 the one now so opportunely presented, with transportation
 
 ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 59 
 
 made easy and bases of supplies convenient, the natives 
 not only friendly but earnestly disposed, the cost of outfit 
 cheap, and a market more remunerative than was ever 
 offered before. With the population doubling every 
 twenty years, and more and more permanent residents 
 wintering through, more mushers to muffle and furs of 
 superior quality for street perambulation in the cities, and 
 the ladies to bundle for their cross-country excursions 
 with sleds and kometiks, and the very general demand for 
 furs in Alaska, hunters, trappers, furriers, traders and 
 shoppers ought to find the fur business lucrative. The 
 successes of the Hudson Bay Company, through the pro- 
 tracted period of its sovereignty, are an earnest of the re- 
 sources which are held in reserve in the Alaskan fur 
 lands; and inasmuch as its earnings reached millions an- 
 nually, who dare say that the "Seward Purchase" is not 
 as good as gold, just for its furs alone? 
 
 With regard to the mineral resources of Alaska whose 
 richness is rapidly coming to view with their development, 
 I have chosen to devote a separate chapter. 
 
 A once lucrative and interesting industry of Alaska is 
 the seal "fishery," so called, though the animals are usu- 
 ally driven upon the land and knocked on the head with 
 clubs. For the exclusive privilege of catching seals, not 
 to exceed 100,000 in number per annum, the Alaska Com- 
 pany of San Francisco paid to the government the stipu- 
 lated price of $317,000 every year. Since the lease ex- 
 pired in 1890, the seal catch has very materially fallen off 
 in consequence of poaching, so the revenue to the govern- 
 ment is far less now. 
 
 With regard to the possibilities of the Alaska Commercial 
 fisheries, they may be regarded as simply illimitable. Fish are 
 so abundant everywhere, that a dime will at any time procure 
 from a native all the fish that ten men can eat. Halibut 
 banks, cod-fish banks, and rock-cod bottoms, occur at inter- 
 vals all along the coast. Salmon jam the rivers and tidal 
 estuaries so that they can not move, in masses many yards 
 wide and as deep as the normal rise of the tide (18 feet) 
 from the surface to the bottom. In their spawning season 
 candle-fish, or caplin — beautiful fish some seven inches 
 long, like smelts — line the beaches at each flood-tide in 
 windrows a yard wide and several inches deep, all 
 alive and kicking, each incoming wave stranding a host 
 of them. Herring swarm in all the estuaries and channels.
 
 60 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 All the inlets abound in fish of a hundred known and 
 unknown kinds, good for food and good for oil and 
 fertilizers. Whales and blackfish are plentiful off the coast 
 and in the estuaries. There is wealth here for all who 
 will spread their nets or cast the hook. Devastating 
 storms and periodical dearth of fish do not make the fishing 
 business too hazardous to undertake. Starvation never 
 threatens. Our Cape Anners and Gloucester fishermen who 
 breast the hardships of the Atlantic, will here find a more 
 congenial climate ; spring opening with fulsome benefi- 
 cence in early March ; fish swarming into every estuary 
 and congregating on every outlying bank in ample season 
 for Lenten market ; herring, cod and halibut enough to sat- 
 isfy an eternity of Fridays. There labor stands already 
 provided — men, native Indians accustomed for many gener- 
 ations to the perils, intricacies and abounding munificence 
 of the sea coast ; men, intelligent and industrious, waiting 
 with open arms to welcome any enterprise which will give 
 them congenial and profitable employment ; men of dusky 
 hue, and strong sinews to breast the waves and haul the 
 seine and heave the ponderous halibut and rock cod from 
 their sequestered depths, who have already, of their own 
 motion and energy, established canneries and oil factories 
 along their sea-girt home ! Here on this boundless Pacific 
 coast, where Yankee and Kanuck have each a thousand 
 miles of scope, no questions of jurisdiction or marine pre- 
 rogatives need arise ; whispers of awards and claims will 
 be lost in the sounding surf ; dissensions and jealousy will 
 be drowned in the overwhelming flood of fortune ; and no 
 one will have to wait on the flow of tide. All the vessels 
 of the coast-guard will be impressed for holiday jaunts 
 among the clustering islands, and moods and tenses of men 
 and tempests will remain symbolically " pacific. " Should 
 the attachments of home be too strong for the sturdy New 
 Englanders to cut their latch-strings loose altogether and 
 deter them from migrating for permanent establishment on 
 new cruising grounds, the annihilation of time and distance 
 by modern facilities of transcontinental transportation will 
 make each trip and periodical sojourn little more than an 
 annual holiday excursion. Compared with the precarious 
 ventures of their progenitors who flocked to the North 
 Atlantic fishing grounds before the early days of colonial 
 settlement, their new departure would be a bagatelle — a 
 mere reflection of personal hazard and commercial risk. 
 
 Out in Alaska every thing which is required for this stu- 
 pendous industry grows spontaneously — an abundance of
 
 ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 6 1 
 
 bait without cost ; all materials for building and cooperage; 
 ice for packing, salt for curing, if it can be evaporated 
 profitably, and twine for nets and seines, which is supplied 
 by the gigantic kelp, a hundred feet in length, whose fiber is 
 too tough to break. At no distant day ice from her glaciers 
 will be harvested for consumption in lower latitudes, just as 
 it is now gathered in San Rafael Bay, in South America, for 
 refrigerating uses in Chili and equatorial towns. Some 
 enterprising company will establish a set of piers or breakers 
 in the bays where the glacier streams debouch, with flumes 
 and machinery for squaring the ice for stowage in cargo ; and 
 among the ice, packed in galvanized iron cases inclosed by 
 wooden crates, fresh fish will be dispatched on ten-knot 
 steamers to lower ports, and thence perchance to eastern 
 cities where Pacific salmon have long been the precursors of 
 the coming traffic. Thus a combined industry may secure 
 a two-fold return from the capital employed. The rapid 
 drift of time will see all these things accomplished, for men 
 will not be content to grub when they can possess bonanzas 
 for the gathering. Glut of labor will return no more " like 
 a dog to its vomit," nauseating the whole industrial system ; 
 but the surcharge will flow into the open channels of our 
 new possession, and, with the relief that must follow, the 
 present pressure will measurably cease to aggravate dis- 
 tress. Capital will prefer to invest where it is least liable to 
 disturbance, and in Alaska the field is broad, the laborers few, 
 and the branches of industry new and almost untried. 
 Long before we began to rub our eyes the citizens of 
 British Columbia were fully awake to the opportunities 
 before them, and alive to the importance of their unde- 
 veloped resources, so very like our own in kind and quan- 
 tity. At once they had steamers running to all essential 
 points up the rivers and along the coast to the interna- 
 tional boundary line. They have established numerous 
 industries, thrown open public lands to settlement, civ- 
 ilized the Indians, and instituted schools for them, and 
 sumptuary laws. But we are laggard no longer. We not 
 only followed the lead of our sagacious predecessors, but 
 we lead now ourselves in all things. If not, why not? 
 Interest in the boundary dispute grew slack when the 
 rich placers of the Seward Peninsula were discovered 
 ten years ago, and now Canada has her Klondike and we 
 our Nome, and each of us our own good name. On this 
 we bank. At the same time our "Cache near the 
 Pole" is a lasting verity upon which we expect to draw
 
 62 
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 for venerations to come, sure and inexhaustible. The 
 Pole & may shift in its secular progression, and the per- 
 sistent Peary chase it from pillar to post across the 
 ice pack and into the ice blink until his term of service 
 expires, but our cache will hold radiant with pay streaks 
 and the color of gold. Meanwhile let the old flag wave! 
 
 STONE TOTEM-POLE (HAIDAH)
 
 COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE. 63 
 
 COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE. 
 
 The prominence given to Alaska and Siberia by current 
 politico-economic questions as well as by the contribu- 
 tions of popular authors and lecturers will render inter- 
 esting any information bearing directly upon the commer- 
 cial relations of those two vast regions, especially in 
 view of the possible union of Asia and America in the 
 near future by transcontinental railroad and telegraph. 
 Under this belief the following history is submitted, with 
 the remark that the route of the government railroad 
 from St. Petersburg to Bering Strait follows very nearly 
 the course of the fur trade, as outlined by the writer, in 
 its gradual extension eastward through Siberia to the ter- 
 ritory once known as Russian-America, but now called 
 Alaska. 
 
 In the course of the one hundred and fifty years subse- 
 quent to Czar Ivan's conquests on the Caspian, the Osti- 
 aks, Samoides, Tungusi, Buraits, Yakouts, Koriaks, 
 Tchuktchi, all of them inhabitants of Siberia, and finally 
 the dwellers in Kamschatka successively came under the 
 dominion of the Czar. The Russians also took posses- 
 sion of the Amoor River in northern China and held it 
 over forty years (1639 to 1680), during which occupa- 
 tion a very considerable intercourse was maintained with 
 the Chinese subjects of Manchuria. Meanwhile, discov- 
 ering the marvelous wealth of the Siberian wilderness 
 and the value of the fur trade that in the course of time 
 came to yield 3,500,000 silver roubles per annum, the 
 Russian government located "ostrogs" or fortified trad- 
 ing posts all over the country, opened commercial thor- 
 oughfares between the principal depots, and established 
 a continuous line of communication from St. Petersburg 
 to Bering Sea, with lateral ramifications into China via 
 the Amoor, and through Kiachta, the central gateway 
 of the Great Altai mountain range.
 
 64 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Tempted by the emoluments which the constantly 
 increasing fur trade promised, the great body of the 
 invading army, with its motley following, remained in 
 Siberia and was distributed permanently throughout the 
 country. By the exigencies of war, many of the native 
 tribes were scattered; some were almost extirpated, and 
 others were driven to the antipodes of their homes. But 
 analogous pursuits and a common struggle for subsist- 
 ence brought them all, aliens and aborigines, into close 
 personal contact; and therefore it is easy to see how con- 
 tinual association during the three supervening centuries 
 might naturally result in essential modifications of race 
 characteristics. At the same time the strongest types 
 would remain constant, and generic peculiarities and 
 customs be transmitted lineally to the latest generation, 
 even under most adverse circumstances. 
 
 At the very inception of the fur trade a system of 
 annual fairs or exchanges was inaugurated by the gov- 
 ernment, which brought together to the ostrogs once a 
 year the entire nomadic population of fur hunters and a 
 considerable portion of the shore-dwellers for the pur- 
 pose of barter. The principal fairs were, and are, held 
 at Ostrownoje, the easternmost and remotest trading 
 post of the Old World ; Okhotsk, on the sea of that name ; 
 Yakoutsk, on the Lena River; Irkutsk, on Lake Baikal, 
 at the central gateway of the Celestial Empire; Irbit, 
 Tobolsk, and Nijni-Novgorod, whence the bales of fur 
 and the miscellaneous products of the Arctic Seas find 
 their way eventually through regular channels to St. 
 Petersburg, Moscow, and Pekin, and at last to markets 
 far beyond. There is also at the present day a very con- 
 siderable trade to the Amoor, which, being ceded to the 
 Russians in 1858, was again occupied by them after an 
 interval of almost two hundred years, and more recently 
 contested for again. Yakoutsk is the focal point and 
 entrepot of Eastern Siberia, lying on the border line that 
 separates the countries of the Yakouts and Tungusi — the 
 latter occupying the center of Siberia and the Yakouts 
 the country north of them up to the Arctic Ocean. Orig- 
 inally the Yakouts, or Jakuts, occupied as far south and 
 west as the Baikal and Angora, but were driven thence 
 by the more powerful hordes of Tungusi, who were, in 
 turn, subjugated by the Russians in 1640, about the time 
 when the Manchus conquered the Chinese Empire. Al-
 
 COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE. 65 
 
 though the Manchus and Tungusi come from the same 
 stock, the difference in their fate is accounted for by the 
 fact that the Manchus were better armed and disciplined 
 than the Chinese, while the Tungusi had only bows and 
 arrows to oppose to the firearms of the Cossacks. The 
 Manchu tongue is now the court language of Pekin, 
 while the Tungusi are nomads, poor and ignorant. 
 
 It was a bad day for Eastern Siberia when the Yakouts 
 were crowded up to the Lena by the victorious Tungusi, 
 for they in turn dispossessed the weaker tribes which 
 they found in possession of the country and established 
 themselves as far eastward as the Kolyma River, on the 
 frontier of the Tschuktchi, the most eastern tribe of Asia, 
 whose ultimate boundary is the Arctic Ocean and Bering 
 Sea. The Yakouts, or Jakuts, have always possessed a 
 higher civilization than is found elsewhere in the same 
 latitude, except in Iceland, Finland and Norway ; and by 
 their superior intelligence and force of character they 
 have stamped their impress upon all with whom they have 
 come in contact. Theirs is the dominant language from 
 the basin of the Lena to the extreme eastern coast of 
 Siberia. All the Tungusi speak Jakut. Russian ts 
 scarcely known in two-thirds of its Asiatic possessions. 
 For centuries the Jakuts have been the common carriers 
 for all the peoples with whom they have had commercial 
 intercourse. "Without the Jakut and his horse," says 
 Middendorf, the eminent naturalist and Siberian ex- 
 plorer, "the Russians would never have been able to pen- 
 etrate to the Sea of Okhotsk, and from thence to the 
 Aleutian chain ; but for him they never would have set- 
 tled on the Kalyma, nor have opened commercial inter- 
 course with the Tschuktchi and the eastern Eskimo. 
 * * * Before the possession of the Amoor had opened 
 a new road to commerce (1640), thousands of pack 
 horses used annually to go to Okhotsk." 
 
 Jakutsh merchants were the pioneers of trade with 
 Kamschatka, and many hundreds of them settled on that 
 peninsula and remained until the forests of the New 
 World became the ultimate quest of the insatiable fur 
 hunters. When pursuit was pushed to the adjacent con- 
 tinent they were the first to venture in crazy craft across 
 the Sea of Kamschatka (now called Bering), discovering 
 the island of Kadiak in the Aleutian Archipelago, and 
 opening barter with the natives; so that three centuries,
 
 66 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 at least, have elapsed since the infusion of Asiatic ele- 
 ments into the Aleutian composition. 
 
 But there are shorter routes than this from Asia to 
 America, and there must have been, from a period long 
 anterior, intercommunication between land and land, 
 whose approximate shores are so contiguous as to be dis- 
 cernible from a boat in mid-passage, and whose inhabi- 
 tants are constantly afloat in pursuit of a livelihood. 
 Nevertheless, there was little to invite barter between 
 neighboring peoples whose products were as homogene- 
 ous as themselves ; for traffic in tobacco, sugar and iron 
 implements had not begun thus early. Such tangible 
 intimations of a superior civilization had not so soon 
 penetrated the interminable versts of wilderness which 
 intervened. 
 
 There can be little doubt that Asiatic blood and Asiatic 
 customs, transmitted through the Manchus and Tungusi, 
 with the Jakut predominating, are deeply engrafted into 
 the coast dwellers of western Alaska and the Aleutian 
 Islands ; and, furthermore, inasmuch as all the shore 
 tribes intermarry promiscuously, that they have perme- 
 ated southeastern Alaska and the Alexandrian Archipel- 
 ago. George William Stellar, a distinguished ethnologist 
 who accompanied Bering on his second voyage of dis- 
 covery in 1741 and landed at Kaiak Island, on the Alas- 
 kan coast, noticed such race similarities, and he immedi- 
 ately conjectured that the aborigines of that part of the 
 American coast must be of the "same origin as the Kam- 
 schatkans." But the Kamschatkans had then been inti- 
 mate with the Jakuts for a century, and 1,000 of the latter 
 were settled at Petropovolsk, imparting their dominant 
 traits to the natives, after having been amalgamated for 
 a still longer period with the Tungusi, who are of Man- 
 chu stock. The Jakuts have a Mongolian cast of fea- 
 tures, but Middendorf says there is a tradition that they 
 are of Turkish extraction. They are very shrewd and 
 ''beat the Jews" for trading. They are keen of vision, 
 very hardy, great hunters, well versed in woodcraft, pur- 
 suing the fur-bearing animals with great persistence. 
 Their memory is remarkable, and their bump of locality 
 well developed. Like the Alaskans, they are ingenious 
 artificers and artisans. In manual dexterity they surpass 
 all other Siberian nations. Long before the Russian con- 
 quert they made use of iron ore to manufacture their own
 
 COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE. 67 
 
 knives and axes, in the use of which they are very ex- 
 pert. They are acquainted with flint and steel. Their 
 women make carpets of white and colored skins. Their 
 only domestic animals are the dog and the horse. Houses 
 are built of slabs or logs placed upright, with sleeping 
 berths ranged along the sides on a raised dais or plat- 
 form, the center of the earthen floor being occupied by a 
 hearth, the smoke of which issues through an aperture 
 in the roof. They are gross feeders, and celebrate wed- 
 dings and special events by feasting, after the fashion 
 of the Alaskan "potlatch." This, for the most part, seems 
 literally descriptive of what was to be seen in Alaska 
 twenty years ago. It is identical. 
 
 Stellar, when he landed at Kaiak in 1741, found a 
 wooden tray hollowed from a trunk of a tree, into which 
 hot stones were placed to heat water for boiling meat. 
 He also found a cellar filled with smoked fish and cov- 
 ered with a platform made of strips of bark laid on 
 poles, and numerous implements "like those used by the 
 inhabitants of Kamschatka," all of which will be at once 
 recognized by anybody familiar with Alaskan domestic 
 economy of a later period. 
 
 The Jakuts call themselves Christians, having doubt- 
 less been absorbed into the Greco-Roman church at the 
 time of the conquest, but they all believe in shamanism, 
 which is a sort of barbarous faith cure, and have an ab- 
 ject fear of evil spirits. Shaman is the name applied to 
 the sorcerer or magician among many of the tribes of 
 northern Asia, and the shaman and shamanism were 
 until recently alike prevalent along pretty nearly the 
 entire coast of Alaska up to "the Arctic Ocean. The 
 Jakuts are generally reserved in manner, small in stature, 
 with broad shoulders, prominent cheek bones, noses small, 
 lips very full, hair black, complexion dark brown, or 
 sometimes yellow — a description which answers very well 
 for some of the Alaskan natives. The men sometimes 
 have full beards, and the women paint their faces with 
 black and red pigments mixed with fat. 
 
 Some conspicuous peculiarities of the Alaskan natives 
 seem to have been borrowed directly from the Tungusi. 
 For instance, the Tungusi are divided into clans accord- 
 ing to their occupations, or to the domestic animals which 
 they employ, or to those which they have killed in the 
 chase, notably the horse, dog, reindeer, frog, raven and
 
 68 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 bear, and are distinguished by their respective names. 
 This peculiarity is illustrated in the Alexandrian Archi- 
 pelago by the heraldic totem poles which have been such 
 striking objects of interest to tourists. The Tungusi have 
 also evidently transmitted the superstition of the thunder 
 bird ; they do not bury the dead, but place tiiem in large 
 chests on platforms, or in the forks of trees ; they hold 
 slaves, and traffic in women ; brides are bought for mer- 
 chandise, or earned by long periods ol service; cannibal- 
 ism and human sacrifices are not unknown; all of which 
 conditions were prevalent in Alaska at a period not re- 
 mote. 
 
 The strangely composite Chinook jargon in use along 
 the entire North Pacific Coast, which was invented by 
 the early traders to facilitate business intercourse, repre- 
 sents very well the ethnography of the people, for it was 
 formulated from all the spoken languages and dialects of 
 the associated inhabitants ; and we shall find by analysis 
 that a moiety of the words are of Asiatic origin, while 
 we observe at once a prevalent substitution of the letter 
 1 for r, as in China. Some importance should attach to 
 collateral testimony of this character. It is at least a link 
 in the chain of evidence. Sir George Simpson, in his 
 "Overland Journey Around the World," tells how the 
 bales of fur which arrive at Kiachta, on the Chinese fron- 
 tier, are covered with walrus hide from the Arctic coasts, 
 the same being forthwith utilized to protect the tea chests 
 which are shipped thence to Moscow, whereby a perfect 
 continuity of overland traffic is "blazed" half way round 
 the globe. By the same token we can readily trace the 
 lineage of representative peoples employed along the line 
 of traffic. 
 
 It is quite as easy to follow the races, through their 
 commercial connection, across the Strait of Bering into 
 what was so long known as Russian-America. By the 
 year 1769 a very large area of that vast country had been 
 so thoroughly prospected by fur hunters and explorers 
 that it was intelligently, though rudely charted. Up to 
 the time of the accession of the consolidated Russian Fur 
 Company in 1779, no less than sixty distinct trading com- 
 panies had been established. Posts were scattered all 
 over the interior, as well as along the coast. The pur- 
 suit of the seal, sea otter, ice bear, whale, walrus, and 
 other hunting operations, extended over 3,000 miles, from
 
 COURSES OF THE RUSSIAN FUR TRADE. 69 
 
 Kadiak in the Aleutian chain over to the Kurile Islands of 
 Japan, and up to the extreme north coasts of Asia and 
 America. In the course of the great monopoly there 
 came to be no less than one hundred and thirty of these 
 trading posts in Russian-America. The Russians con- 
 tinued the same commercial system which they had inau- 
 gurated in Siberia long before. Trails and thorough- 
 fares were established along the principal water-courses 
 and across the divides which separated their headwaters, 
 and brigades annually packed their furs and supplies 
 over them to designate depots. 
 
 Precisely the same system was prosecuted by the con- 
 temporaneous Hudson Bay Company, whose outposts 
 by that time had been pushed to the sources of the Mac- 
 kenzie River, and even beyond the Rocky Mountains to 
 the Yukon. The headwaters of the Yukon interlock 
 with those of the Mackenzie, and there was regular traffic 
 over an eighty-mile portage between the two to points 
 where forty- foot barges, drawing two feet of water, 
 could float. Again, there was an established thorough- 
 fare, and now is, all along the continental coast line, west 
 from the mouth of the Mackenzie to the mouth of the 
 Colville, where an Eskimo coast brigade meets a brigade 
 which comes up from Kotzebue Sound via the Noatak 
 River and across a portage to the Colville River, which it 
 descends, there exchanging tobacco and iron implements 
 for seal products. When the barter is over, the Point 
 Barrow Eskimos journey eastward to Barter Reef, where 
 they obtain, from eastern Eskimos, lamps, knives, beads, 
 guns and ammunition (brought from the Mackenzie 
 River), which they exchange the following year for 
 Kotzebue goods at the Colville rendezvous. There is 
 also a shore route from Icy Cape on the Arctic Coast, 
 over which furs and walrus teeth are sent from hand to 
 hand as far as Gwosdew Islands, in Bering Strait, where 
 they are bartered for tobacco, knives and iron kettles of 
 Tchuktchi, who obtain them from Sledge Island on East 
 Cape of Siberia, to which they have previously been 
 shipped from Ostrownoje. Thus did the early articles 
 of Russian manufacture gradually find their way along 
 the American coast as far east as Repulse Bay, there com- 
 peting among the tribes of the Mackenzie district with 
 articles from Sheffield or Birmingham, in England. By 
 this hyperborean transit and line of connection it may
 
 70 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 be possible to establish an old-time relationship with the 
 Eskimo of the entire circumpolar region. Matiuschin, 
 who was Baron Wrangell's companion, says that "the 
 Tschuktchi belong to the widespread Eskimo family and 
 live in the same way. They are of Chinese origin, 
 hardened by acclimation." 
 
 The Eskimos of the Arctic belt have hitherto occu- 
 pied their isolated geographical position from sheer ne- 
 cessity, compelled no less by exigencies of subsistence 
 than fear of coterminous hostile tribes. They are never 
 found far from the coast line, because the sea amply 
 supplies their wants. Deer and wild fowl come to them 
 in Summer, and in Winter there is no occasion for them 
 to leave the coast, for the adjacent country to the south- 
 ward is an inhospitable ice plain, barely covered with 
 lichens and sphagmum, and utterly destitute of life. 
 Nature has interposed it as a neutral and uninhabitable 
 belt to separate them from the Red Indians who are 
 their hereditary enemies and merciless. 
 
 Thus restricted to the Arctic Zone, they can migrate 
 only on east and west lines. Their hazardous pursuits 
 require an association of labor, so that they are obliged 
 to dwell in communities. Exigencies of the chase — some 
 dearth or superabundance of salmon, seals, whales or 
 other creatures upon which they depend for subsistence — 
 sometimes drive or attract them to new regions and stim- 
 ulate the planting of new communities, so that it seems 
 easy to account for the continuous extension of Eskimo 
 settlement from Bering Sea to Smith Sound, and also for 
 the persistence of the Mongolian type, with unaltered 
 habits and manners, whether they be independent or 
 under Russian, Danish or British rule. Only on the 
 Pacific Coast do they venture into lower latitudes, rang- 
 ing southward as far as the Aleutian Peninsula, in lati- 
 tude fifty-eight degrees, where they meet and fraternize 
 with their congeners from Asia, no longer deterred by 
 fear of hostile aliens, but by their presence bearing 
 significant testimony to their common origin. On the 
 Atlantic Coast the Eskimos drop down to Ivuktuk Inlet, 
 or Eskimo Bay, in latitude fifty-five degrees.
 
 > 
 
 H 
 
 H 
 
 n 
 
 a 
 
 c 
 
 n
 
 AN INTERIOR VIEW. 
 
 The territory of Alaska, is naturally divided into two 
 immense districts, insular and continental ; and the latter, 
 owing to its vast area and mountainous interruptions is 
 again subdivided into three districts with more or less dis- 
 tinctly defined boundaries and characteristics. The northern 
 district, bordering the Arctic Ocean, and comprising a third, 
 is principally a series of spruce timber fiats and moss 
 barrens, or " tundras ; " the eastern division, lying between 
 the coast range of mountains and the Rockies, is occupied 
 by the broken and diversified country which is drained by 
 the upper Yukon, presenting every contour of mountain, 
 valley and plain. The southwestern portion, not including 
 the Alaska peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands, is in large 
 part a spruce timbered flat, but the " Alaskan range " of 
 mountains, 500 miles or more in length, occupies its 
 southern portion. The delta of the Yukon on the west coast, 
 is an alluvial flat. The Yukon, itself, nearly as long as the 
 Mississippi, almost bisects the territory. It lies midway 
 between the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, flowing in a general 
 east and west direction, but with a tremendous curvilinear 
 sweep conformable to the outline of the coast, which carries 
 it up through seven degrees of latitude into the very verge 
 of the Arctic Zone. With its twenty or thirty great tribu- 
 taries, it constitutes a vast fluvial system which drains almost 
 the entire territory. Besides this, there are several large
 
 72 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 rivers like the Stickeen, the Taku, Suchitno, and Copper 
 Rivers, which find their way to the sea through great gaps in 
 the mountains, and others which drain the glaciers and the 
 melted snows of the peaks. On the north shore are several 
 large rivers flowing into the Arctic. The prevailing level 
 of the great interior plateau is interrupted only by a few 
 isolated mountains and mountain ranges, which lie princi- 
 pally in the southwest. It is a co-ordinate and extension of 
 the plateau of the Columbia and the country south of it, 
 between the same meridians, except that the arid sage and 
 prickly pear of the latter are replaced in Alaska by bound- 
 less grass prairies and the so-called " tundras," on which 
 the moss grows knee-deep, nurtured into rank exuberance 
 by the constant melting under the fervid heat of midsummer 
 of the omnipresent stratum of ice, which underlies it. In 
 like manner the grain of Manitoba and the Northwest 
 Territory is stimulated into a marvelous yield by the very 
 instrumentality which wiseacres in the early period of inves- 
 tigation declared would kill it. And the interior of Alaska 
 is much milder than the region which lies east of the 
 Rockies in the same latitude, as every body knows. The 
 conditions of prolific growth in high latitudes are continu- 
 ous moisture, and a temperature sufficiently high and evenly 
 maintained to constitute an equivalent for the longer sea- 
 sons of lower latitudes where rainfall is insufficient. 
 Maturity can be secured by a forcing process in half the 
 time that is reached by natural operations where the tem- 
 perature and irrigation are uneven. In the long days of an 
 Alaskan midsummer the sun dips but little below the 
 horizon, and Venus, the brightest star that shines, alone is 
 visible at midnight. Between sunset and sunrise the 
 warmed earth suffers no temporary chill, even though per- 
 petual ice lies not two feet beneath. Cole's new system of 
 subsoil irrigation, which is attracting such general attention, 
 and shows such prodigious results, is merely an arti- 
 ficial application of the natural process in operation under 
 the shadows of the north pole. It counteracts solar evapo- 
 ration, supplying moisture to the growing plants as they 
 need it, and becomes, as it were, the measure of the fertility 
 of the soil. It is not unusual to find the ground frozen eight 
 feet deep in northern Minnesota ; and if it freezes a hundred 
 feet deep in Alaska, what does it signify, more or less ? 
 
 When the future requirements of settlement shall test the 
 capabilities of the interior climate, it will undoubtedly be 
 found as fruitful as Minnesota for all crops not requiring a 
 long period of ripening, Alaska will make four §*«**»*<
 
 AN INTERIOR VIEW. 75 
 
 Lieutenant Schwatka says that luxuriant moss fields and 
 great timber flats, densely covered with spruce, extend to 
 the very verge of the Arctic Ocean. In his admirable 
 report, which is more tropical than boreal in its coloring, he 
 refers to these frequently, and to the great bands of caribou 
 or reindeer which find pasturage on the tundra. He writes 
 of grass-covered bluffs along the rivers ; of foot-hills, with 
 an impenetrable underbrush of deciduous vegetation ; of 
 vast expanses of treeless prairie, of thick black loamy soil ; 
 of rank dead grass, which remains over until June from the 
 previous year, looking like fields of yellow stubble. He 
 speaks of thunder storms, of broods of young grouse early 
 in June, of flowers on all sides, of cloudless skies and 
 blistering sun, of wild hops and onions and berries in pro- 
 fusion, of myriads of great mosquitoes, which drive the 
 game to the mountain slopes above the timber line, and 
 other like phenomena altogether at variance with commonly 
 conceived opinions of the territory. Up to the very head- 
 waters of the Yukon and its lateral tributaries, the noble 
 salmon run ; the adjacent lakes are filled with salmon 
 trout, which reach ten pounds in weight, and all the 
 brooklets teem with mountain trout like those of Montana ; 
 in the long reaches of the Yukon itself, as well as in 
 its fluvial feeders, grayling which weigh a pound may be 
 caught in great abundance ; and if one will pass through 
 the country in mid-summer, as Schwatka did, he will find 
 brush camps and canvas tents lining the river banks at 
 frequent intervals, where the Indians are curing fish for 
 their winter supply ; and should he for any reason pene- 
 trate beyond into those vast tracts which white men have 
 seldom trod, he will discover other Indians with stores of 
 hides and pelts stripped from the scores of cariboo and 
 moose which they have captured among the willow copses 
 of the far-reaching " tundras," or perchance the skins of a 
 few black or grizzly bears picked up accidentally beside 
 some river bank or shore of lake — for the Indians fear to 
 hunt in the tangles of the forest where the multitude of 
 bears and the difficulties of the jungle make it unsafe to 
 look even for small game ; and so they resort only to run- 
 ways there, and the methods of the " still hunt." There is 
 no use for hounds in the coverts of Alaska ; they might as 
 well try to run through an osage hedge. The Indians use 
 the reindeer or cariboo hide for clothing, dog-harness, and 
 covering of tepees, or lodges ; and the very fact that so 
 slight a habitation is a sufficient protection against the 
 extremes* rigors of the climate is evidence of its compara«
 
 76 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 tive mildness ; albeit the Indians of the lower river have 
 greater need of more substantial houses, which they build 
 like those of white folks, with boards riven from the helm- 
 lock and smoothed with adzes, thatching them with the bark 
 of cedar. The tundras or moss barrens where they hunt 
 professionally, and except for daily supply, are similar to 
 the " muskegs " of northern Minnesota, and the adjacent 
 country — not wholly a growth of yielding moss, knee deep, 
 but interjected with thickets of willows and mingled with 
 rank, coarse grass which grows breast high ; sometimes they 
 are interspersed with cranberry bogs and patches of wild 
 roses, with here and there a slough or pocket of water, dyed 
 wine-color with the steepings of the dead leaves and mosses. 
 Walking over a tundra is like promenading a feather-bed. 
 This thick undergrowth of moss is found in all the forests 
 and above the timber line as well ; and a lady correspondent 
 of the American Register, of Paris, France, who is a botanist 
 and an impulsive student of the woodlands, has written : 
 
 " The Alaskan forests are the finest, in a picturesque way, 
 in the United States. Trees grow upright from prostrate 
 and dead trees, from the tops of stumps, and they are draped 
 with black and white moss, dry, fine, and crinkly, like hair, 
 which produce a most weird and Druidical effect. Mosses 
 grow to a depth of from six to ten inches, and on the 
 top of stumps, dead branches, and every dead thing is 
 cushioned deep with moss and draped with vines. Par- 
 ticularly does the Cornus Canadensis enwreath logs and 
 stumps in the most charming way." All of which I hope 
 will corroborate what others say of the exuberance of 
 Alaska ; yet I think the tree mosses there can in nowise 
 compare with those of Florida or Louisiana. 
 
 The upper portion of the Yukon valley, or rather the 
 entire region which the upper river drains, is spoken of as 
 almost a perfected Eden. Flowers bloom, beneficent plants 
 yield their berries and fruits ; majestic trees spread their 
 umbrageous fronds, and song birds make the branches 
 vocal. The water of the streams is pure and pellucid ; 
 the blue of the rippled lakes is like Geneva's ; their banks 
 resplendent with verdure, and with grass and shining peb- 
 bles. Wherever the rocks lift up their crags they are 
 cushioned with luxurious moss. Nature is enjoying a 
 grateful surcease from labor. Lower down, in the middle 
 country, the creation is quite unfinished. One can per- 
 ceive that the processes of the glacial forces are still in 
 operation. All the fluvial waters are white or milky with 
 the glacial mud washed down from the sluices of the out*
 
 AN IN TERIOR VIE W. 77 
 
 lying chains of mountains, where the Titanic pulverizers of 
 their rocky flanks are yet industriously grinding. Like the 
 muddy Missouri into the limpid Mississippi, pours the 
 impetuous White River into the Yukon, with a current so 
 swift that it sends its discolored waters, chalky with the 
 debris of the glaciers nearly across the other stream, 
 changing its sparkling blue into an element which even the 
 fish avoid. A few miles below the White another river of 
 the same size and character comes in, called the Stewart ; 
 and others still, at frequent intervals — at least a dozen of 
 them — as far down as the majestic Porcupine near Fort 
 Yukon, five hundred miles or more. All such lakes as are 
 widenings of the river beds are bordered with deep deposits 
 of the same mud, which are gradually filling them up, pre- 
 paring a richness of alluvial land which in the course of a 
 brief span of geological time will constitute the most fertile 
 fields of all the hyperborean world. And a thousand miles 
 further down, the outflow of the Yukon delta is building 
 out land in the Bering Sea, just as has been going on for 
 centuries at the mouths of the Mississippi, forming shoals, 
 dangerous to approach from the outboard, which every 
 storm lashes into a muddy froth. The delta of the Yukon 
 is a labyrinth of channels and islands whose upper ends are 
 piled yards high with driftwood brought down by the cur- 
 rent, and all the levels are fringed and interspersed with 
 low willows which have replaced the poplars and spruces of 
 the upper country. This is the land of the Esquimaux ; and 
 hereaway, not only up stream, but along the coast, one can 
 study their native habits and peculiarities, not so primitive 
 and boreal as in the Kane country and Greeley land, yet 
 still suggestive of sealskin, blubber, and whalebone. 
 Though their houses are modern and within the civilizing 
 influence of the Greek missions around which they have 
 clustered for two generations, one will see their kayaks and 
 bidarkas (sealskin canoes) and their toupiks (or summer 
 tents of sealskin) scattered along the shore ; and if he 
 should search behind the permanent winter dwellings he 
 would find a cometik, or sled, convenient for winter use 
 early in September, with sharp-eared dogs at hand to draw 
 them at the proper time, though now listless in their summer 
 indolence, lazily snapping at flies congregated in the tena- 
 cious atmosphere of stale fish. On pegs inside hang 
 hairless sealskin boots well tanned and preserved by their 
 natural oil, waterproof jackets made of walrus intestines, 
 which find a ready sale to the tribes far southward, nets 
 made of the prepared fibers of the 6ea-ke!p, queer fish*
 
 78 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 hooks of wood and bone, and many an ornament or 
 utensil into whose ingenious composition are fabricated 
 portions of the skeletons and integuments of walrus, seal 
 and whale. 
 
 Such are the varied features of our interior domain, not 
 less foreign because our flag floats over them, but con- 
 cerning us the more on that account, and well worth our 
 investigation, not merely as hunters of curios, but as 
 speculators and shrewd men of business. Undoubtedly 
 portions of Alaska are very charming at certain seasons of 
 the year, but the sophisticated explorer will incline to avoid 
 them in fly-time. The romance of natural history is not 
 confined exclusively to the tropics. The mosquitoes of 
 Alaska are unquestionably bigger than the southern bred, 
 and the higher up the Arctic pole we climb, the bigger and 
 more insatiate they become. " In fact," says Schwatka, 
 " our greatest inconvenience within the Arctic circle was 
 the tropical heat (July 29th) and the dense swarms of gnats 
 and mosquitoes that met us everywhere when we approached 
 the land. That night none of the party could sleep notwith- 
 standing the mosquito bars over us." But our summer 
 saunterers along the coast will have none of these ex- 
 cruciating experiences. There are no pestiferous insects 
 to be dreaded, for every blessed breath which blows from 
 the south will waft them inland, over the hills and far 
 away. Seated in his comfortable easy chair on deck, while 
 the steamer steadily pursues her weaving way through the 
 clustering islands, each happy tourist who languidly follows 
 these closing lines will be content to take for granted the 
 truth of what they say, and scarcely incline at present to 
 push the matter to a personal inquiry. 
 
 ^S5^^^-;;i^-*5^%^^^£ 
 
 
 SEAI.-SKJN B1DARKA.
 
 HOME OF THE SIWASH. 
 
 From the broad blue waters of Puget Sound to Bering 
 Strait, beyond the Aleutian Isles, the high-prowed gondo- 
 las of the natives are ever present. Crossing some wind- 
 swept sound with bellying sails, gliding under the shadow 
 of bold shores or drawn high and dry among the rocks 
 before some temporary camp, they animate a solitude whose 
 vast loneliness would otherwise be wearisome, despite the 
 exquisite charms of the natural scenery. Whenever a 
 steamer comes to an anchor, no matter in however so 
 sequestered a cove or fiord, a half dozen canoes appear as if 
 by magic, where none were visible before, and surround the 
 vessel, eager to dispose of curios to the passengers. "Sitkum 
 tolla (half a dollar), sitkum tolla ! " pipes the shrill treble of 
 the klootchmen, using the common Chinook vernacular, as 
 they hold up to view their baskets, mats, miniature canoes, 
 and carved spoons made from the horn of the mountain goat. 
 "Sitkum tolla ! " chimes in the deeper voice of the stolid 
 Siwash, who steadies the cranky craft with his paddle. And 
 one of the smart Alecks among the passengers, who under- 
 stands human nature better than Chinook, yells back : 
 " Sixteen dollars be hanged, I'll give you $2.50." And so 
 the trade is eagerly made, but the market is spoiled for the 
 rest of the passengers, and Aleck enjoys a short-lived tri- 
 umph until he learns true wisdom by experience. 
 
 As ponies are to the plains Indians, so are canoes to the 
 shore dwellers of the Pacific. They are the universal vehicles 
 of locomotion and livelihood. More weatherly craft are 
 not found anywhere among savage or civilized peoples. Be- 
 yond the limits of compact populations there are no roads, 
 excepting foot trails over the mountains, only the intermin- 
 able waterways through archipelagoes and long rivers which 
 penetrate far into the land ; and the Indian who wishes to 
 haul freight or travel, instead of hitching up his team, 
 simply launches his canoe. These craft are of several 
 different patterns, but the distinctive type is quite like a 
 batteau in outline, high and sharp at both ends, with a 
 broad flare and an inordinate prolongation of prow, which
 
 8o PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 is often ornamented with grotesque carvings of nondescript 
 creatures, animals, birds or fishes. One model has a pro- 
 jecting prow or beak below the water-line, precisely like 
 that of the old triremes of the Romans and the modern ram 
 of our war ships. There is another pattern similar to the 
 common Indian birch canoe. Their old-fashioned war ca- 
 noes were formidable craft, carrying a hundred men, and 
 Alaskan history relates how a fleet of ten of these made an 
 expedition of 1,000 miles down the coast to one of the Hud- 
 son Bay posts, in the early days, to capture a man against 
 whom they had a grievance. The magnitude of their naval 
 demonstration is sufficient evidence of their inherent nerve 
 and determination. 
 
 Indian trails are found all along the coast, which lead up 
 to bodies of fine timber where canoes have been built, and 
 the valuable wood otherwise utilized for totem poles and 
 for carving and building purposes. Upon some of these 
 trails much labor has been expended in bridging ravines, 
 corduroying marshy places, and cutting through trunks of 
 fallen trees no less than six feet in diameter. Across the 
 mountain ranges, in the interior, white birch grows to great 
 size, and there its bark is substituted for the cedar. Dug- 
 outs of cottonwood are also used in broken water. There 
 are no skin canoes used in Alaska south of Bering Sea. 
 The largest wooden canoes are more than fifty feet long, 
 capable of carrying sixty men, hewn from great cedar logs 
 with much labor, being dug out with axes, and then thinned 
 with adzes to the required thickness. They are next 
 steamed by filling the cavities or holes with water heated 
 by hot stones, so as to give them their graceful curves, 
 after which they are spread to the desired width and 
 braced. They have often as much as eight feet beam. 
 Usually they are painted black outside, but when new 
 they often show quaint decorations, in bright colors, 
 which, however, are very soon lost by weathering. The 
 Indians take as great care of their canoes as the Arabs 
 do of their horses. When not in use they are drawn 
 up on sloping beaches in front of their villages or 
 camps, and carefully covered with brush, mats or sails to 
 protect them from the weather. A native will take off 
 his own coat to wrap around the ornamental prow of his 
 boat, which is as much as he would do for his " klootch." 
 The best of the canoes, of course, cost a high figure, and 
 great pains is frequently employed in clearing away bowlders 
 and rocks to provide a snug berth for them upon the beach. 
 They are weatherly craft in a sea way, and the fact, that none
 
 HOME OF THE SI WASH. 81 
 
 of them are decked, speaks with high testimony of the 
 habitually quiet moods of the Pacific, to say nothing of 
 skillful seamanship. The native Alaskan is seldom wrecked 
 or drowned. In tempestuous weather he propitiates the 
 spirit of the storm by tossing a few wads of tobacco into the 
 rock caves alongshore, and in calm he leisurely stuffs the 
 same into his pipe and smokes serenely. By the way, these 
 people smoke less than any others I have ever met, which is 
 a fact phenomenal. One seldom sees a native with a pipe in 
 his mouth. 
 
 In the dry and sunny days of summer, when the salmon 
 are running, and the climate is uniform perfection, the tem- 
 perature scarcely varying ten degrees from sun to sun and 
 month to month, the Siwash locks his winter cabin and 
 takes his " klootch " and fishing outfit to some choice loca- 
 tion where he can catch and cure a supply of fish for 
 winter's use; and as the natives incline to be gregarious and 
 combine for mutual help in hauling nets and hunting, he 
 usually has plenty of company. Very picturesque are their 
 aggregations of canvas tents and shanties of bark and 
 boards which skirt the shore of some landlocked cove under 
 the shelter of some circumjacent forest and overshadowing 
 mountain, with busy canoes plying to and fro with the seines, 
 and the klootchmen spreading out the ruddy salmon on the 
 adjacent rocks to dry. " Klootch," or klootchman, is 
 synonym for woman in the Chinook lingo, who may be wife, 
 concubine, mistress, or actual slave, for partnership attach- 
 ments are not always fixed by formulas of marriage in that 
 lone country ; and every sojourner has his " klootch " in 
 wedlock or otherwise, who acts as constant housekeeper or 
 handmaiden. In the same vernacular her liege is known as 
 " Siwash," which is a corruption of the French word sauvage, 
 and is applied to the male sex generally. 
 
 A queer jargon is this Chinook. Once upon a time, 
 when very many nations were represented by a very few peo- 
 ple in that vast region dominated by the fur companies, em- 
 bracing Oregon and Washington Territories and all the 
 country lying to the northward (the French perhaps being 
 numerically the strongest), a sort of congress of national 
 representatives formulated this universal language to 
 facilitate intercourse. The words in most common use 
 were adopted, a few of them purely native dialect, but 
 a very large proportion bastard French. The remainder 
 are simply phonetic, expressing, when pronounced, the 
 ideas conveyed by the sounds ; for instance, amusement 
 is "he-he" rain "patter-chuck" a crow "caw-caw" a
 
 82 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 cough " hoh-hoh," the heart " turn-turn," a handkerchief 
 " hak-at-chum" etc. There are about five hundred and 
 fifty words in all, and with this limited vocabulary and 
 the use of signs, a man can travel the whole North-west 
 over from Central Montana to Bering Sea. In fact, 
 Chinook has almost superseded the native dialects, of which 
 there are no less than ten upon the coast, and perhaps as 
 many more in the interior. The different tribes seldom 
 attempt to converse in each other's language. There are a 
 few words in which the letter " 1 " is substituted for " r," 
 Chinese fashion, indicating possibly an ancient Asiatic con- 
 nection ; for most of such words are appropriated from the 
 native tongues, a fact which no doubt must be gratifying 
 to those who claim to be able to prove that the Chinese were 
 the earliest discoverers of America. 
 
 In the early days when the monotony of isolation was 
 varied by reprisals among the tribes, slaves were habitually 
 made by the victors, and I have heard it stated by white 
 men who claim to have been residents at the time, and cog- 
 nizant of the circumstances, that the Shimpshean Indians, 
 near Dixon Channel, used to kill and eat certain parts of 
 their prisoners, taking bites from the fleshy portions of 
 the arm and breast and thigh to give them courage 
 " skookum tum-tum." Others placed the necks of their 
 captives across a log, fastening the bodies to the ground by 
 saplings weighted with stones at the ends, and so killed 
 them with axes. Slaves were often killed at " house- 
 warmings," one being placed under each of the corner up- 
 rights when the frame was raised, the ceremony being 
 sometimes attended with the greatest cruelty. With a 
 house of irregular foundation lines the sacrifice of life was 
 great. One occasionally catches accidental glimpses of 
 old-time war-implements which indicate an ancient degree 
 of savagery out of which these people seem to have long 
 since passed. Slavery, however, continued until a recent 
 date, and even now a sort of traffic is constantly main- 
 tained, whose conditions are more binding than the obli- 
 gations of matrimony. Women often, and sometimes 
 men, are traded for a valuable consideration, or thrown 
 into a bargain as a sort of rcmplisage — white people not 
 seldom being the purchasers ; and I have heai d that those 
 so obtained make far more dutiful servants than others 
 who farm out their labor, showing conscientious fidelity 
 in their obligatory relationship. Some of the old settlers 
 have women living with them whose legal status it would 
 be difficult to determine, but so it is in all the wilderness
 
 HOME OF THE SIWASH. 83 
 
 domain of the fur companies, the number of the half- 
 breeds in the North-west being counted by tens of thou- 
 sands. On the Alaskan coast the hybrid product of a na- 
 tive crossed with a Russian is designated a "Creole," as 
 with the French and Spanish mixtures in the Gulf of 
 Mexico and West Indies. 
 
 At Kasaan Bay the Indian widow of old Baronovick, the 
 Russian smuggler, was living in 1885, with a goodly heri- 
 tage and two buxom daughters, which, I was informed, 
 were at disposal for the moderate sum of $4,000 — for the 
 lot ! The girls, as I saw them, seated on their home-veran- 
 da near the savory salmon cannery, and dressed in comely 
 black dresses of modern mode, were not bad looking. The 
 young women of the coast are uniformly comely, but their 
 mouths are immense, and they have an excess of adipose, 
 which grows greasy and more flabby as they grow older. 
 They are very partial to gaudy frocks ; but the prevailing 
 costume is a black shawl over a calico skirt, and a bright 
 yellow kerchief over the head. Very often they blacken 
 their faces with deer tallow and charcoal, some say to keep 
 off mosquitoes, some to improve their complexions, and 
 others to hide defects. The older women thrust great stone 
 ornaments into their pendulous ears, and even some young 
 women use a lip pin of silver, steel, or bone, which they 
 push outward through the flesh from the inside of the lower 
 lip. It is said this is the badge of wife-hood. But such 
 fashions are not pretty. Like many of their discarded cus- 
 toms and implements, they are the relics of a barbarism 
 which passed away fully two generations ago. The girls 
 look much better, according to modern ideas, in their silver 
 bracelets and earrings, and the marvel is how so great 
 improvement has taken place in so comparatively short a 
 time. I have seen some of the gray-headed old folks take 
 from their capacious chests souvenirs, such as medicine- 
 rattles, masks, dance-blankets, stone war-clubs and idols ; 
 and I fancied they regarded them tenderly, with some 
 lingering regrets of the old time ; but very often they will 
 part with these readily for cash to the curio-hunters, who 
 frequently pay most exorbitant prices. Industry is one 
 of the virtues of the Alaskans. When the men are not en- 
 gaged in fishing and hunting, or employed at the several 
 canneries on the coast, they build canoes and houses, pack 
 goods on their backs over the mountains to the mines, and 
 do all sorts of manual labor. They are very powerful. 
 The regulation pack-load is seventy-five pounds. With 
 this on their backs they will keep ahead of the most experi- 
 enced mountain climbers, and I know of one who packed
 
 84 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 over a steep new trail, which was hardly more than 
 blazed and cleared, a load of 125 pounds, to-wit: two sacks 
 of flour, a shovel, some drills, a ten-pound salmon, and his 
 clothes and blankets. They do tremendous tasks on very 
 short commons, but when they do get afoul of a full kettle 
 they never leave it while there is a mouthful left. In camp 
 they are splendid attendants, drying wet clothes, cleaning 
 guns, cooking, building shelters, and doing all manner of 
 " chores." Once I followed the trail six miles over the 
 mountain from Juneau into Silver Bow Basin, and was as- 
 tonished at the work going on there in hydraulic and placer 
 mining. Sluices were built or dug up to the very snow 
 line, and ten-inch iron pipes, as well as every other article 
 of use and construction, and contents of dwellings and stores 
 had been carried there upon the backs of Indians at one cent 
 a pound ! These men are ambitious to earn praise and 
 money, and are not mere eye-servants. The women, too, 
 are seldom idle, and when at home are occupied with the 
 needle, or with braiding, weaving, basket-making and em- 
 broidery. Dogs are always members of the household. 
 They are civil and mild-mannered, like their owners, and sel- 
 dom bark. In the winter season they also do their share 
 of appointed work, dragging sleds over the deep snows and 
 freighting goods and fuel when the water courses are frozen. 
 They are of the true Eskimo type, of colors brindle, 
 white, and tawny ; not fierce like the Labrador dogs. 
 
 However, the Indians have their bad traits as well as their 
 good ones. In trading they are very unscrupulous. They 
 will take a mean advantage of every opportunity. They 
 will not abide by a contract. They will demand back what 
 they have already sold, and tell you that their " klootch " 
 objects to the trade. Like the strikers in Belgium, they 
 put their women in front when they would shield their own 
 craven selves. But this is policy ; for they well know the 
 consideration with which the whites regard the fair sex. 
 Indeed they are themselves quite chivalrous and consider- 
 ate toward their women, imposing upon them no inequit- 
 able burdens, but assuming upon themselves those heavier 
 physical tasks which eastern squaws are obliged to perform 
 unassisted ; even declining to excel them in the emulous 
 and honorable competition of a canoe race, an act which 
 they declare would cover them with everlasting disgrace. 
 But it may be that the women wield the better paddle. — 
 " Klaxta kumtux " — who knows ? When a tribe or com- 
 munity becomes imbued with the elements of politeness, 
 which is refined humanity, there is indeed hope for them.
 
 HOME OF THE SI WASH. 85 
 
 Nevertheless, they are arrogant and exacting when they 
 have the upper hand, and like all subordinates must be kept 
 in their lower places. Once the Chilkats threatened to kill 
 some miners who wished to cross the mountains over to the 
 Yukon, and refused to pack goods for them. The distance 
 was seventy miles. But when they discovered that two of 
 the miners had started for the gunboat for assistance, they 
 wilted at once, and offered to take the party over for noth- 
 ing. The moral effect of the gunboat now on the Alaska 
 station has proved most potent on more than one occasion. 
 It is an admirable coadjutor of the garrison, as occasion 
 has proved more than once. 
 
 The typical native house is a one-room affair built of 
 upright split slabs, with a door-way in front and a square 
 hole in the roof for the passage of smoke. Sometimes 
 there is a small window as well. The bare earth is the floor 
 and a goat-skin or a bear-pelt the bed. Dirt, filth and 
 abundance are the accessories. The walls and ceilings are 
 grimy with smoke ; the pots and kettles smeared with a 
 conglomerate of grease ; nothing seems ever to have been 
 washed. Every thing is foul and squalid, and the strips of 
 dried meat and fish, the oil bladders and pelts hung over 
 the low rafters, are eloquent of degradation in the midst of 
 plenty. The most pretentious houses in the country, with 
 three or four exceptions, are those at Wrangell, some of 
 which are 60x30 feet in dimensions, one story high, built of 
 logs, planked on the outside, nicely whitewashed, with gable 
 roof and doors and windows. They never have chimneys. 
 The fire is built in the center of the smooth earthen floor, 
 and the smoke escapes through a flat cupola in the roof. 
 An elaborately carved and gaudily painted totem pole usu- 
 ally ornaments the front. Some of these are sixty feet 
 high. They are popularly supposed to have some religious 
 significance, but are for the most part pedigree poles, 
 illustrating the family history and showing the family 
 crest, whether it be bear, beaver, eagle, shark, whale, wolf, 
 frog or raven. To injure one was to insult the family to 
 which it belonged ; to cut one down, an unpardonable of- 
 fense. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that descent is 
 reckoned through the female line, and it seems to prevail 
 throughout the North American tribes, a custom which is 
 probably of very ancient date. These totems have their 
 counterpart in the pictured buffalo robes and coup-sticks 
 of the Indians of the plains. To one who has never seen 
 them before the effect is most startling. One writer says : 
 
 "Seen in the wet, gray dawn of early morning, as I first
 
 86 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 saw them, they have a most weird and strange appearance ; 
 for the ravens which are carved upon them, the whales and 
 the bears, are all of huge proportions, and have a most 
 melancholy way of glaring down upon all who stand gaz- 
 ing at the barbarous relics." One pole displays an ele- 
 phant's head; indicating that elephants were once in- 
 digenous. 
 
 But the totem poles are becoming weather-beaten and 
 time-worn. The paint is nearly off, never to be renewed, 
 and the pride of ancestry and achievement, as manifested 
 by visible testimony, seems to have vanished with the pre- 
 ceding generation. In many cases similar devices appear 
 upon the tombs of the dead. Around the four sides of the 
 interior of these houses is a raised platform several feet 
 wide, the rear portion of which, opposite the entrance, is 
 partitioned into state rooms and screened by curtains of 
 cotton or woolen stuff. On either side of these sleeping 
 apartments are slabs of heraldic devices fixed to the walls. 
 The best houses have modern stoves, furniture, crockery 
 and kitchen utensils, and are very clean and comfortable 
 throughout. There is always a variety of traps, guns, nets, 
 fishing implements, harpoons, spears, decoys for catching 
 seals and all kinds of fur animals, birds and sea fowl. The 
 families have ample supplies of oil suits, rubber boots, 
 blankets, miscellaneous clothing, and even ornaments. No 
 simple people were ever better " fixed " ; and, as I have 
 stated, their capacity for improvement and adaptability to 
 new and better methods of living and doing is very 
 marked. 
 
 If some master of the aesthetic school could only instruct 
 them properly, what beautiful designs they might contrive 
 in mats and rugs and shells and carving, and how hand- 
 somely they could embellish their homes ! They have not 
 only good taste, but a natural genius which could be culti- 
 vated to marked advantage. Their preference for the gro- 
 tesque manifests itself in all their ornaments and imple- 
 ments, their cooking utensils and their costumes ; and 
 there is scarcely an article of adornment, use or wear 
 which is not elaborated with studies in natural history, some 
 literal and others fanciful and ridiculously distorted. A 
 good many devices are simply heraldic, corresponding to 
 those seen on their totem poles, like the family crests 
 paraded on the panels and dinner-service of people in a 
 higher state of civilization. They have elaborate chests 
 and boxes of red and yellow cedar ; spoons and dishes 
 made from the horns of the mountain goat and sheep, set 
 with mother of pearl obtained from the shells of the abe- 
 lone ; trays of wood and stone highly polished and wrought
 
 
 INDIAN CHIEFS iHYAS-TYEE).
 
 HOME OF THE SI WASH. 89 
 
 in the forms of frogs, fishes and creatures half-animal and 
 half-human ; fish-hooks, harpoons and spears of wood, 
 bone, iron and copper, all ornamented with quaint devices ; 
 masks and head-dresses representing all the monsters of 
 the pliocene period, with jaws worked by mechanical con- 
 trivance ; blankets woven from the wool of goats and sheep 
 in allegorical designs, and shirts of softest buckskin, beau- 
 tifully painted and ornamented with bead-work. They are 
 very clever in contriving pipes of old gun-barrels, and also 
 of stone, wood and bone, inserting into the bowls of the 
 wooden ones the brass collar of a kerosene lamp or the 
 slide of an umbrella to serve as a lining. Formerly they 
 made women's skirts of cedar bark and the fiber of sea- 
 kelp. Some of their manufactures have attracted the 
 attention of outside capital, and there are firms in New 
 York and San Francisco who are regularly supplied with 
 basket work and mats, which are made of the inner bark of 
 roots and twigs of trees, shredded, dyed and plaited by 
 hand. For dyes they extract the colors from calico, 
 blankets, etc., and produce some brilliant hues, but they 
 are not permanent. However, as they fade, they get to 
 resemble more and more the India and Persian colors, and 
 are very pleasing. A better dye of black and yellow was 
 obtained from charcoal and a species of moss called sekhone. 
 Their hats made of plaited roots and their wicker work are 
 skillfully dyed to form pretty patterns. As silversmiths they 
 are quite expert, making attractive bracelets from ham- 
 mered coin, so attractive that the native market is kept well 
 supplied by counterfeits shipped from San Francisco 
 makers, which sell readily to tourists at $3.00 to $5.00 per 
 pair. One considerable item of their handiwork is the 
 manufacture of wooden decoys representing animals, birds, 
 seals, etc., which they use in trapping and hunting. They 
 cover bottles, demijohns and carboys with exquisite wicker 
 work ; they make good beds from moss, caps and tobacco- 
 pouches of furs and skins, and water-proof bags and 
 pouches from the intestines of animals. Their magicians' 
 rattles are perhaps the most elaborate of all their handi- 
 work, being made hollow, usually in the form of a strange 
 bird covered all over with carvings of strange creatures 
 and human deformities, emblematic of the mysteries of 
 their profession. They will trade readily for any thing they 
 take a fancy to, or which is novel, but as they can buy 
 almost any thing at the trading stores, they usually require 
 silver coin to complete a purchase. 
 
 Finally they manufacture a beastly intoxicating liquor
 
 OUR NEW ALA SKA. 
 
 from molasses, called Hoochinoo, the equal of which for 
 vileness is hard to find anywhere an 
 
 Like many other peopte with : more jen^y wh _ ch 
 inherent passion or ^^>^J) Z y o bone sticks 
 ^r^r^roraTencd, ^h cf Le L, respective 
 vahies and uses, best known to the initiated. 
 
 INDIAN HOUSES AT WRANGELL.
 
 GOOD INDIANS. 
 
 The cold-blooded maxim that the " only good Indians are 
 dead Indians " does not apply to the natives of Alaska. 
 Whatever may be truly or erroneously stated of the tribes 
 east of the Rocky Mountains has small significance with 
 respect to the dwellers on the west side. The "great con- 
 tinental divide " seems to have segregated traits and char- 
 acteristics as effectually as it has separated climates and 
 indigenous products. As a whole the Indians of Alaska, 
 both of the coast and of the interior, as far as known, are 
 normally peaceable, tractable, intelligent, clever, eager to 
 learn, useful, and industrious to a degree unknown else- 
 where among the aborigines of America. The general 
 statement, however, is subject to some qualification, inas- 
 much as there are a good many different tribes — ten at least 
 on the coast, and perhaps as many more in the interior — 
 who are manifestly of divers origins, and, of course, differ 
 variously in respect to the meritorious attributes accorded 
 to them. Some are very slovenly and semi-barbarous, while 
 others have attained a degree of civilization which compares 
 favorably with the status of Caucasian communities. Vin- 
 cent Colyer said : " I do not hesitate to say that if three- 
 quarters of the natives of Alaska were landed in New York 
 as coming from Europe, they would be selected as among 
 the most intelligent of the many worthy emigrants who daily 
 arrive at that port. In two years they would be admitted 
 to citizenship, and in ten years some of their children, under 
 the civilizing influence of our eastern public schools, would 
 be found members of Congress." The great majority of all 
 the people dress wholly or partially in the costume of the 
 whites, and in the towns, where there are shops and stores, 
 the women affect even the latest procurable fashions in 
 frocks and headgear. In complexion, they are olive rather 
 than red, not unlike a seafaring man or a worker on a farm ; 
 and many of the men wear beards. The Hon. James G. Swan, 
 correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution at Port Town- 
 send, Wash., who has made a special study of Pacific coast 
 ethnology, thinks the whole population up to the Arctic
 
 9 2 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 belt have a common origin among the Aztecs, and attempts 
 to establish this position by demonstrating an identity of 
 many generic words common to both languages, and by 
 similarity of features, implements, handiwork, carvings and 
 religious emblems and ceremonies. One strong corrobora- 
 tive coincidence rests on some old-time silver idols, which 
 are quite identical in size, feature, and figure with the Chir- 
 iqui idols of the Isthmus of Panama. Capt. Beardslee, U. 
 S. N., who has likewise carefully investigated the subject, 
 sustains Mr. Swan, so far as respects the tribe of Hydahs, who 
 are exclusive occupants of Queen Charlotte's Island, in lati- 
 tude 51 deg., but regards all other coast tribes as of Asiatic 
 origin. He thinks the Hydahs were driven north by Cortez 
 during the Spanish invasion. Diametrically opposite is Mr. 
 Newton H. Crittenden, in the West Shore Magazine pub- 
 lished at Portland, Or., who infers from incidental evidences 
 that the Hydahs are castaways from Eastern Asia, who, 
 first reaching the islands of Southern Alaska, soon took and 
 held possession of the Queen Charlotte group. Mr. Edward 
 Vining, in his new book entitled " The Discovery of Amer- 
 ica ; or the Uncelebrated Cojumbus," inclines to a Chinese 
 origin and reiterates the story from the original Chinese 
 sources of the landing of Hwin Shin and a party of Bud- 
 dhist monks on the coast of Mexico about the year 500 a.d. 
 The spot marked out is about 20,000 Chinese miles east 
 from Kamtchatka. There is also a record that the indi- 
 genous populations reached a high degree of civilization. 
 The houses were small, and of wood ; stone dwellings were 
 not known. The people knew how to write, and used a 
 paper made from cotton wool. They wore garments of fine 
 linen. There was no iron, but copper, gold, and silver 
 existed in large quantities. Also the fact is on record of 
 the Spaniards finding at Quivisa the wrecks of large ships 
 which Mr. Vining feels assured were of Chinese origin. 
 The Hurons also had a tradition that ages ago their ances- 
 tors were visited by beardless men clad in silk and wearing 
 pigtails. 
 
 There is assuredly a strong facial resemblance between 
 the Chinese coolies now living on the coast and some of the 
 native Indians. They seem to affiliate naturally, and to 
 have some few words of common derivation. It is also true 
 that there are Alaskan words of Aztec construction, espe- 
 cially those having the terminal " tl" and"xtl." With 
 regard to the Hydahs, they certainly have a remarkable 
 physical and intellectual superiority over all the other Paci- 
 fic coast Indians, while marked contrasts in the structure of
 
 GOOD INDIANS. 93 
 
 their language denote a different origin from them. They 
 are of fine stature, with exceptionally well-developed chests 
 and arms, high foreheads, and lighter complexions than any 
 other North American Indians. These people are engaged 
 in the manufacture of fish-oil on a large and scientific scale, 
 and they have a Protestant mission and trading post. It is 
 proper to state that this tribe, with the exception of small 
 detachments, is attached to British Columbia and not to 
 Alaska, being situated a short distance south of the Alaska 
 boundary ; and it is equally proper to credit their enviable 
 condition to the wise policy pursued by the British govern- 
 ment in cultivating friendly relations with them and educa- 
 ting them to employments suited to their inclination and 
 tastes. The plan of the British government has been never 
 to recognize the Indian title, but certain tracts of land most 
 prized by the Indians have been appropriated to their 
 exclusive use, while at the same time they were made to 
 understand that they must earn their own living the same 
 as the white men they saw around them. It is gratifying to 
 know that this view is likely to obtain with us henceforth, 
 and to govern our own policy hereafter. Yet it must be 
 allowed that the Indian problem in the United States has 
 been more difficult to manage from the outset, because the 
 Indians were vastly more numerous, wilder, and subject to 
 food conditions which made them constantly nomadic, in- 
 stead of communal and stationary. On the Pacific coast 
 the advent of the white man has never diminished the food 
 supply of the natives. They have fruit and game as before 
 ; .n abundance, and more fish than they know what to do 
 with, while the lessons in farming which have been taught 
 them have given them a source of food supply and variety 
 which they were previously ignorant of ; so that they have 
 never been compelled by starvation to make reprisals, like 
 the transmontane plains Indians, to whom the buffalo in its 
 prime supplied houses, fuel, food, clothes and utensils all at 
 once. To the latter the extinction of the animals was like 
 cutting down the palm trees to the South Sea Islanders ; 
 and the shifts to which they have been forced in conse- 
 quence are what is subduing them to the methods of those 
 who toil for bread. 
 
 In writing of the Indians of the Pacific coast, it is not 
 easy to segregate the tribes of Alaska as distinct from most 
 of the others, for all of them have many traits, customs, 
 peculiarities and occupations in common, and some are 
 intermixed by marriage. It is true, however, that the 
 inhabitants of our new possession are much more degraded
 
 94 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 and generally demoralized than those of British Columbia, 
 whatever they may have been under the Muscovite occu- 
 pation. Dawson's book, entitled "Indian Tribes of British 
 Columbia," gives a very correct idea of the present status 
 of the British Indians. While the Russians held possession 
 of Alaska they also exercised a conservative and fostering 
 care over their wards under a similar policy and system ; 
 but after the American succession the Indians were left 
 without visible restraint or guidance, and their course was 
 miserably downwards; just an example of how people, 
 no matter how refined their origin, will eventually degen- 
 erate and actually revert to a savage state if segregated 
 for a long period from the influences of civilization. This 
 fact is especially illustrated in the case of our nomadic 
 Plains Indians who occupied the buffalo ranges in the 
 days when meat was running, and who migrated from the 
 Southwest upon the advent of the Spanish conquistador, 
 Coronado, and became hunters what time he introduced 
 horses. Among the liberated slaves of our Southern 
 States in known cases the third generation has lapsed into 
 a degree of barbarity equal to that of their Congo and 
 Guinea ancestors in Africa. 
 
 For a long time after the American succession they main- 
 tained a hostile and often aggressive attitude. With all 
 moral support and conserving influences withdrawn, they 
 relapsed into partial savagery. For many years there was 
 no civil government whatever in the territory. The 
 " Shamans " or native magicians began to regain their 
 ascendency over the people. The garrisons stationed at 
 Sitka and Wrangell kept perpetually drunk on home-made 
 hoochinoo ; they debauched the women and quarreled with 
 the men. All industries along the coast were paralyzed. 
 No business was done. There were none to buy the furs 
 which the hunters had trapped and collected, and utter ruin 
 seemed inevitable. At present, however, thanks to a com- 
 bination of wise measures and ameliorating influences which 
 have extended over three decades, the country has settled 
 into serenity of hope, and good order everywhere pre- 
 vails. The Indians are hostile no more. They have 
 pledged themselves to perpetual amity ; a consummation 
 chiefly effected through the instrumentality of a wau-wau, 
 or conference held with the hyas-joint or grand commission 
 of 1880, at which the first condition imposed by the Indians 
 was " teachers, so that our children may not grow up stupid 
 like their fathers ! " In one brief hour of conviction they 
 spontaneously abandoned the traditions of the past and 
 never looked back to the flesh-pots of barbarism. They
 
 GOOD INDIANS. 95' 
 
 were willing and ready to accept the new dispensation, to 
 live by it, and to qualify themselves to promote it. All they 
 wanted was, to receive it undefiled. These Indians have 
 sagaciously forecast their approaching opportunity, and 
 all look for the advent of commercial ventures with eager 
 longing and open hands ready for employment. It would 
 seem as if the red men were in advance of the philanthro- 
 pists. All they want is a clean deal, and it is the fault of 
 the government if it does not step in and occupy a field so 
 nearly ripe for the harvest. The resources of Alaska are 
 now known to be varied and rich enough to tempt invest- 
 ment. The outlook is propitious, and the natives will aid 
 us in every way to find out all there is to know about the 
 country. 
 
 The history of this palaver by which the entire popula- 
 tion of the country may be said to have been conciliated at 
 one diplomatic stroke, is interesting if not remarkable, inas- 
 much as the key of the situation came to hand at the very 
 outset. It seems that a domestic quarrel was on the eve of 
 an outbreak between the Chilkats and Chilkoots in conse- 
 quence of a drunken brawl the previous summer, at which 
 blood was shed, and which could only be expiated by a 
 requital in kind, or its equivalent in blankets ; and as the 
 Chilkats did not consider the dead Chilkoot worth quite 
 one hundred blankets (say $400), the usual " potlatch " 
 preliminary to a war was in progress at the date of the pro- 
 posed " wau-wau " (Aug. 24, 1880), at which fully three 
 thousand Indians were estimated to be present. The object 
 of the " wau-wau," or conference, to which the contestants 
 were peremptorily invited by the naval commandant of the 
 Alaska station, backed by a persuasive gun-boat, was to 
 settle the difficulty without war, and to re-establish peace. 
 Now, nearly all of the Indians of Alaska are, according to 
 tradition, descended from the Chilkats, and among these 
 descendants are the Chilkoots, who have largely inter-mar- 
 ried with them. The villages of the two tribes are about 
 thirty miles distant from each other, situated well up the 
 rivers, one of which, the Chilkat, flowing southeast, and the 
 other southwest, converge to the head of a narrow peninsula 
 which divides the upper end of Chatham Straits into two 
 bays. There is a trail and portage across this peninsula, 
 and at the lower Chilkat village on the west side, and at 
 Portage Bay on the east, the two tribes used to meet to 
 trade when in harmony. At Portage Bay the post agent 
 is in the confidence of the two. The Chilkats are the most 
 powerful and warlike of all the tribes, and as they have
 
 g6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 always dominated the trade with the interior tribes, it is 
 obvious that a maintenance of friendship and amicable 
 intercourse with them was all important to secure the pro- 
 tection of such whites as were prospecting in the far-off 
 interior, as well as to conserve the future welfare of the 
 entire territory. The happy result of the conference is 
 thus related in Capt. Beardslee's own written account, 
 addressed to the author of this book at the date of the 
 occurrence. The vessel which did duty on the momentous 
 occasion was the North west Trading Company's tug-boat, 
 " Favorite," with a howitzer in the bow and a gatling 
 mounted on the upper deck. The regular naval coast 
 detail, the " Jamestown," lay in Sitka harbor. I quote : 
 
 Pyramid Harbor, August 25. 
 
 " That you get this letter may be a sign and token to you 
 that success has crowned our efforts. I gave in yesterday 
 afternoon, too restless to continue my summing up, and in 
 spite of my prudent resolution donned my shooting habili- 
 ments and started across the trail. About half way over I 
 met in single file, first Pierre Errassan, who, with his hand- 
 some six feet of figure arrayed in red shirt, leggins, and well 
 revolvered, would have made a capital robber in Fra 
 Diavolo ; and behind him five Indians, the foremost of 
 whom I at once recognized by descriptions I had had as 
 Klotz-Klotz, the chief of the Chilkats, a tall, well-built, dig- 
 nified old fellow, from whose good looks, however, a wad 
 of cotton, stuffed into a hole in his left cheek, somewhat 
 detracted. From this hole, caused by a gun-shot wound, 
 one of his sobriquets, " Hole-in-the-Cheek," has been 
 derived. With him was another veteran, almost equally 
 powerful with himself and much older, Klotz being about 
 sixty and Kak-na-tay about seventy or more. Both wel- 
 comed me most heartily, for in spite of my decidedly unmil- 
 itary rig, Errassan, with true shrewdness and French polite- 
 ness combined, drew himself stiffly up as we neared each 
 other, and making to me the most profound obeisance, 
 omitted to offer me his hand, thus paying tribute to my 
 greatness, which was his trump card with the Indians, and 
 most gracefully and solemnly introduced me. 
 
 " The costume of Klotz and Kak was not so gorgeous as 
 to add to my discomfiture, as both they and their attend- 
 ants were arrayed in blankets and leggins ; but in a big box 
 carried by the latter was the wardrobe, in which he had 
 expected to astonish and impress me. The retainers were 
 in war paint, with cotton or down on their heads, which
 
 GOOD INDIANS. 97 
 
 indicated determination. Thus stripped of all external 
 show of power, the old chief and I sat down under a great 
 cedar tree and discussed the situation. I think that this 
 meeting was a fortunate one, for I had with me cigars and 
 a breech-loader, the free use of both of which I at once 
 accorded; and the influence of a large meerschaum pipe, 
 which some months ago I sent him as a present, had its 
 weight. After all, if the true history of wars and diplomacy 
 could be written, how many times such little matters have 
 had more weight than elaborate speeches, convincing only 
 their utterer. Free from disturbing influences, Klotz-Klotz 
 unbosomed himself, and during that interview he admitted 
 to me that his family was in the wrong, and that he would 
 willingly assist in establishing peace. He claimed that the 
 killed Chilkoot was not worth a hundred blankets, but that 
 he would pay two hundred if no less would heal the breach. 
 " The post trader made Klotz & Co. comfortable for the 
 night, and this morning about ten o'clock several large 
 canoes, with flags flying, drums (Indian drums) beating, and 
 propelled by about a dozen painted paddlers, each came 
 around the point of Chilkoot Inlet and were shortly along- 
 side. In the foremost was Danawah, the chief of the lower 
 village, and a blind old Shaman, who is chief of the Chil- 
 koots. They were directed to go ashore to the post trader's, 
 to wait until the firing of a gun announced the readiness of 
 the Tyhees to receive them. They refused to go to the 
 trader's, because the Chilkats, their enemies, were there, 
 but instead paddled in to the mouth of a creek, where on 
 the beach they prepared and ate their meal and donned 
 their pow-wow garments. At n the sharp bark of the 
 howitzer summoned them to the meeting, and both parties 
 came alongside on different sides of the boat, and avoiding 
 all intercourse with each other". When duly seated in the 
 cabin they presented a not undignified appearance. All 
 wore good American clothes, of which the coats were orna- 
 mented with more or less insignia of various ranks of 
 American and English officers of both army and navy, 
 white shirts and shoes and stockings. On our side of the 
 table, epaulets and full dress undoubtedly produced good 
 effect. The interview lasted two hours, and during it the 
 whole difficulty was adjusted, and when we left the stifling 
 atmosphere of the cabin — for Indians even of high rank are 
 odorous — for the upper deck we were a party of friends all 
 under pledges for mutual benefit. Mine to them was, in 
 answer to the request of both parties, 'Yes; I will do my 
 utmost to assist you in this matter,' which matter was this :
 
 98 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 " When you go to your country please tell them to send 
 teachers to us as well as to the Stickeens, so that our chil- 
 dren may not grow up stupid like their fathers." (The 
 Stickeens are the Indians at Wrangell, where the Presby- 
 terians have established a mission school which is doing 
 much good.) I believe that they will keep their promises 
 to treat well all white men coming to their country, and I 
 know I will mine, and through you I now ask of any Chris- 
 tians you may have among your readers — and I doubt not 
 that such there are — to send to the missionary at Sitka, such 
 articles as will be useful to the school which Mrs. Dickson, 
 the wife of the post trader, has started on her own hook, 
 and at which half a hundred children are being taught, and 
 which is soon to be transferred to a neat frame building, 
 which, designed for a store at Taku, has been, by Capt. 
 Vanderbilt, given to the Indians at Portage Bay, and on 
 each side of which building the Chilkats and Chilkoots, now 
 re-united, promise to build villages so that their children 
 may attend the schools. 
 
 " The Indians were entertained by a few shots fired from 
 the howitzer, and more by several volleys from the gatling 
 which was mounted aft, and which was made to sweep an 
 arc of one hundred and eighty degrees, at good canoe dis- 
 tance. 
 
 "Then they paddled ashore in company, lit a camp fire, 
 and began a friendly potlatch on the beach, and we, satisfied 
 with the day's work, started at 3 P. M. for home, as we have 
 learned to consider Sitka, and are now anchored in a snug 
 harbor for the night. 
 
 " Yours &c, L. A. B." 
 
 " Potlatch " is a term of varying significance applied to 
 any assemblage, for whatsoever purpose, at which good 
 cheer is provided. Sometimes a native will invite his 
 friends to a house-raising and give away more grub and 
 blankets than ten such houses would cost to build. Pot- 
 latches are given at the outset of great undertakings, and in 
 commemoration of the same. In its primary sense a pot- 
 latch is a gift. In its expression, as an economic, or social, 
 or moral force, it amplifies the uses and applications of the 
 customary tobacco pipe in all grave affairs of red-men. It 
 is preliminary to weighty councils, social entertainments, 
 business undertakings, unexpected meetings of old or new 
 friends, family reunions, celebrations, special observances, 
 obsequies, etc. When grave complications threaten, and 
 diplomacy is invoked, arguments are invariably re-enforced
 
 GOOD INDIANS. 99 
 
 by a war dance, or a series of dances, in the course of which 
 the jarring factions who have met together to investigate 
 and settle their differences (peaceably, or by arms,) endeavor 
 to impress and intimidate each other by extravagant dis- 
 plays of costume, menacing attitudes, hideous noises, 
 uncompromising yells, consummate braggadocio, and 
 illustrations of prowess and muscular science in pantomime, 
 so that peradventure, each other's opponent may weaken 
 before he ventures upon hostilities, or at least be timorous 
 on the field of battle. The full significance of these 
 methods is presumably understood by the present genera- 
 tion of natives, though the young men do not appear to be 
 well posted in the formula, seeming to regard the whole 
 demonstration as a noisy farce ; and it is seldom nowadays 
 that young or old can be induced to illustrate the nearly 
 obsolete customs of their forefathers, an exhibition of 
 which is apparently regarded with some such mixed interest 
 as " ye old folks' concerts " of their progressive white 
 brethren. However, for a few dollars contributed by 
 inquisitive spectators or tourists they can usually be per- 
 suaded to do the proper thing, and it has got to be quite 
 the fashion, within the past few years, for excursionists to 
 drum up some recruits from the Indian " ranche" at Sitka 
 to give a war dance, or some other dance, on the parade 
 ground, although such improvisations are obviously not as 
 striking as the bona-fide demonstrations held at the Chilkat 
 potlatch in 1880. The form is to build a huge bonfire in 
 the center of the plaza, and after a sufficient time for suita- 
 ble preparation, the maskers appear, marching in from the 
 Indian quarter through the gate of the old Russian stock- 
 ade, in full panoply of buckskin, paint and feathers, 
 singing in a wild weird monotone which has a swinging 
 cadence or rhythm that is quite infectious, and while the 
 glow of the bonfire lights up their painted faces and fantas- 
 tic toggery with the lurid tinge of Tophet, all the by- 
 standers catch the inspiration and join the chant with sway- 
 ing bodies and ever kindling fervor. It is much like the 
 regulation Indian dance which most eastern readers have 
 witnessed at the " Wild West Show " of Buffalo Bill in 
 these later days — chiefly mechanical posturing and posing, 
 with wild gestures and much brandishing of weapons — 
 only that the Alaska natives do not pass and chassez around 
 the fire, but dance in a single row, all on one side, like so 
 many jacks-in-the box. Neither their performance nor their 
 costumes begin to compare with what I have seen among 
 the Mountain Crows and Sioux. Most of them had their
 
 ioo PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 faces painted red with dashes of black, chiefly on one side, 
 and they wore preposterous head-dresses of cotton waste and 
 goat horns, and fantastic ornaments that dangled, feathers 
 which wabbled, and bits of metal that made a tinkling 
 noise. Some wore their blankets, and others more meager 
 costumes, with bodies daubed. The women bound their 
 silver bracelets about their heads, spread wide open in 
 crescent form, like the characters in old mythology, and 
 the firelight glistened on their polished points like scintilla- 
 tions from the moon ; but a pervading odor, whose origin 
 was familiar and unmistakable, added a substantial realism 
 to the scene. 
 
 There are, perhaps, thirty thousand Indians in Alaska — 
 though this estimate is based solely upon the number of 
 tribes or bands known to the trading posts on the coast 
 and in the interior ; and they are not only expert in their 
 natural gifts of hunting, trapping and fishing, but they are 
 splendid navigators and seamen, and will make good sol- 
 diers, surveyors, coast guards and policemen. They are 
 very efficient help in the salmon canneries and oil factories, 
 and they make good mill men, miners and agriculturists. 
 
 That Indians will become farmers when it is made worth 
 while, is shown in an appendix to General Crook's report, 
 whence it appears that during 1885 the White Mountain 
 tribes of Arizona had 2,120 acres of land under cultivation, 
 raised 80,000 pounds of barley, and 3,500,000 pounds of 
 corn. They sold to the government 700,000 pounds of 
 hay and thirty-two tons of barley, and had 1,000,000 pounds 
 of hay awaiting the quartermaster's order. These Alaskans 
 are natural-born carpenters and workers in wood. Some of 
 their carving on wood, bone, stone and metal is exquisite, 
 and always original and unique. Their permanent nouses 
 are one-story and occasionally two-story frame buildings, 
 and many of them have two or more windows fitted with 
 sash and glass. The women weave beautiful cloth and 
 blankets from the fleece of the mountain goat ; they sew 
 very deftly, embroider, weave hats, mats and baskets, and 
 make fishermen's nets. They also make waterproof cloth- 
 ing from the intestines of the moose, bear and sea lion. 
 There are also among them regular artificers in metals, 
 jewelers, who manufacture the silver rings, bracelets and 
 lip ornaments which are so common among themselves. If 
 a dollar ever comes into their possession, it is hammered out 
 at once into ornaments. It never goes back to the United 
 States Treasury. Oh, that all the silver dollars could be 
 sent to Alaska !
 
 GOOD INDIANS. IOi 
 
 There are already industrial schools at Sitka, Wrangell 
 and Juneau, with apt pupils aggregating several hun- 
 dreds, and lesser communities elsewhere, at all of which 
 native men and women are employed in every sort of out- 
 of-door and household capacity, so that their versatility, 
 industry and ingenuity have been fully tested. In British 
 Columbia the Indians derive a considerable income from 
 their labors in various occupations, and it has been de- 
 clared that but for their aid several flourishing industries 
 would cease to exist, or, at least, labor under serious dis- 
 advantages. The inner life of the Alaskan natives is ex- 
 tremely interesting to the visitor. There is every encour- 
 agement to hope for their complete absorption into civili- 
 zation.
 
 THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 Alaska owes its otology, its autonomy, its prosperity, 
 its good order, and the civilization and thrift of its na- 
 tives collectively to Capts. Beardslee and Glass, U. S. N. ; 
 Rev. Sheldon Jackson, who has been styled the "apostle 
 of Alaska" and the "Alaska Moses"; Capt. Healy, of the 
 revenue cutter "Bear"; Mrs. A. R. McFarland, and Rev. 
 John G. Brady, all pioneers soon after the cession. Alex 
 Choquette, Tom Haley, King Lear, Capt. George, and 
 those other oldtimers of an earlier and fateful period 
 played their individual parts all right, too, but they were 
 not the true vitalizing force which laid out the working 
 plan of the Arctic Province and set its machinery in mo- 
 tion ; Sheldon Jackson was. His eleemosynary and exec- 
 utive work in Alaska was absolutely the chief corner- 
 stone of its Christian civilization and good order, as 
 well as the salvation of the natives, body and soul, and 
 in more recent years the helpful promoter of material 
 comfort and commercial dispatch (by his reindeer 
 scheme) in the rigorous sub-Arctic winters. Capt. 
 Beardslee held down the Purchase under his guns for 
 three years (1879-80), and was followed by Command- 
 ers Henry Glass and Edward P. Lull at intervals until 
 Jan. 10, 1882, each of them rendering efficient service 
 in many a critical emergency. Capt. Healy, for ten years, 
 was an ever-present help in time of need when the ice 
 blockade was on. Rev. Brady played an heroic Aaron to 
 Jackson's Moses, and Mrs. McFarland stayed up the 
 hands and stiffened the backbone of the others. She 
 was the trained nurse for the bantling in arms. For 
 twenty-five years past Mr. Jackson has filled the difficult 
 and not altogether attractive position of general agent of 
 the U. S. Board of Education for Alaska with its multi- 
 farious duties, requiring a stout heart, a tough constitu- 
 tion, and a resourceful tact. His record is before the
 
 SHELDON JACKSON
 
 THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 103 
 
 world in a score of annual reports, printed books and 
 monographs. His biography, written by Rev. Robert L. 
 Stewart, D. D., was issued in September, 1908, from the 
 press of Revell & Co., New York, under the title, "Shel- 
 don Jackson, Pathfinder and Prospector of the Mission- 
 ary Vanguard of the Rocky Mountains and Alaska." 
 
 But his work in Alaska is only the half of a lifelong 
 service for the betterment of men. For a quarter of a 
 century he was one of the chief factors in the making of 
 the "New West." Keeping pace with the new settlers 
 pouring into the farming regions, camping with the pio- 
 neers who laid out new railway centres, scaling the 
 mountains, and penetrating the canons with the pros- 
 pectors and miners, he everywhere rallied around him 
 the friends of order and religion, of schools and tem- 
 perance, of Sabbath observance and good citizenship. 
 While public sentiment was still plastic he shaped it for 
 weal and for civic righteousness, and left his impress 
 upon that half of the United States which lies west of 
 the Mississippi river. From 1869 to 1903 he traveled 
 from 17,000 to 30,000 miles a year — on foot, horseback, 
 by buckboard and army ambulance, stage and railway, 
 steamship and canoe, revenue cutters and naval vessels. 
 
 In the Alaska Mission field signal success has attended 
 his tactful apportionment of its precincts among the 
 dozen religious denominations engaged there, the idea 
 and purpose being to prevent the simple pagan mind 
 from being phased by the many different forms of relig- 
 ious work in vogue among civilized people. Accordingly, 
 the Presbyterians who were already established in South- 
 eastern Alaska took that section, where they had in 1907 
 four churches for whites, and for natives 32 missionaries 
 and teachers, an industrial school with 164 uniformed 
 pupils., a hospital, 12 churches with 982 native communi- 
 cants, and 25 preaching stations, influencing some 5,000 
 natives. The Baptists operate at Kadiak and the regions 
 around Cook's Inlet and Prince William Sound, 600 miles 
 west, where they have churches and mission stations, an 
 orphanage, with 46 pupils, with an experimental farm 
 of sixteen acres attached; a fishing station, a dairy, a 
 poultry yard, and other industrial plants. The Metho- 
 dists occupy the Shumagin and Aleutian Islands and the 
 Aleutian Peninsula. They have six stations for whites, 
 two local preachers, and two missions for natives and an
 
 104 
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Industrial Home at Unalaska. The Aleuts are practically 
 civilized. They live like white folks, and study the latest 
 fashion plates. The Moravians hold to the valleys of the 
 Nushagak and Kushokwim, having 24 missionaries, 8 na- 
 tive helpers, with 75 native communicants and 860 native 
 adherents. The Swedes hold to Norton Sound. They 
 have nine white missionaries and nine native assistants, 
 and a membership of about 500; also a mission school. 
 The Norwegians use around Port Clarence, the Friends, 
 or Quakers, about Kotzebue Sound, where they have a 
 main station and nine out stations, schools, and several 
 hundred adherents, and are doing very successful work. 
 Episcopalians control the Yukon Valley, employing a 
 bishop, 14 clergy, native helpers 8, women workers II, 
 wives of missionaries 6, licensed candidates 2, missions 
 17, outside preaching stations 15, hospitals 7, schools 7, 
 churches 14, sawmills 2. The Congregationalists are 
 lined along Bering Strait, with churches at Nome, Valdez, 
 and Douglas, and an Eskimo mission at Cape Prince of 
 Wales. The Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greco-Rus- 
 sian churches are scattered broadcast. The Catholics have 
 19 priests, 11 lay brothers, 7 sisters of St. Anne, 11 mis- 
 sion centres, and 100 out stations. The Russians have a 
 bishop, 18 priests, 2 deacons, 44 teachers, 1 woman 
 teacher, 1 catechizer, 16 parishes, 17 temples (churches), 
 67 chapels or prayer houses, and claim 10,600 adherents, 
 of whom 7,821 are said to be natives. Consequently, 
 there is a most wholesome absence of denominational fric- 
 tion, and the sects are all harmonious and friendly. 
 
 Alaska in the beginning, so far as the general disposi- 
 tion of the natives was concerned, was not a dangerous 
 field. After they were toned down by naval discipline 
 there was small chance of any missionary being killed 
 and eaten. Three or four have been drowned and 
 two have been killed by insubordinate grown Eski- 
 mo pupils at Cape Prince of Wales, and Mr. Edwards 
 by a white whiskey smuggler at Kake Island, in 
 southeastern Alaska, but no gangs of bad men exist 
 throughout Alaska's broad extent one-half so brutal 
 as the well-dressed thugs who infest New York and 
 Chicago. The population of the Province was no 
 longer savage, but like those of British America under 
 the jurisdiction of the Hudson Bay Company. They had 
 been in contact with the Russians for 120 years. Fur
 
 THE MIS SI OX FIELD. 105 
 
 hunters, mining prospectors, and explorers had pene- 
 trated to the innermost parts of the country. Quite a 
 few trading posts and as many as fourscore chapels were 
 located at principal points. Fifteen or more tribes are 
 embraced in five ethnic divisions of manifestly different 
 origins, mainly from Asia. So many being fairly civilized 
 and skilled in many of the finer arts is evidence of de- 
 generation from a civilization not very remote, whose 
 ancestors were coeval with the antediluvians of the other 
 hemisphere and of the people who formerly occupied 
 Central America, Arizona and New Mexico, and whose 
 close kindred dwell to-day in the vicinity of Klamath, 
 Oregon, and Puget Sound. One proof of this contention 
 is that they are so susceptible to culture, and respond so 
 quickly to efforts toward rehabilitation, the Rev. Wm. 
 Duncan having restored a community of Tsimpsheans 
 to its original high plane in five years, and had them 
 building churches, attending schools, keeping stores, run- 
 ning sawmills, playing pipe organs and orchestra music, 
 and behaving and dressing like advanced and educated 
 white men. In like manner Rev. Jackson had half the 
 native of the Alexander Archipelago going through all 
 the motions of a civilized community in ten years, with 
 the schoolboys in military uniform learning trades for 
 future support, and the girls doing embroidery as a re- 
 laxation from cooking, baking, sewing, washing, and 
 housekeeping, and a dozen two and three-story build- 
 ings to accommodate the crowding applicants. 
 
 This partly explains why Alaska is forging ahead so 
 wonderfully. She does not have to import Asiatic labor. 
 She has her own indigenes in direct descent, and those 
 lend a willing hand toward her development. Her enter- 
 prise and her ingenuity keep pace with her wants. She 
 makes history as fast as she can stand for it. Never was 
 there a field so attractive to the anthropologist, or so rich, 
 accessible, and easy to work. This view is just coming 
 to light. 
 
 The poor natives are suffering the terrible penalties 
 for those evils into which they were betrayed by the 
 serpent who intruded into their primitive paradise, to 
 say nothing of the barbaric inheritance which they re- 
 ceived from their ancestors in the twin practices of 
 witchcraft and slavery, with their attendant and nameless 
 cruelties, which are only repressed by legalized force.
 
 Io6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Though slaves to intoxicants, as very many of the na- 
 tives are, they realize their degradation and their help- 
 lessness, and are anxious to extirpate the infliction and 
 the original cause of it. For years they have protested 
 in vain against its sale and manufacture. They are earn- 
 est Prohibitionists on principle. They are ready to co- 
 operate with any instrument or authority which can 
 break it up. In every effort of repression or crusade 
 against rum they are prone to assist. The Indian police 
 are very efficient. Since 1882 they have broken up the 
 manufacture of hoochinoo entirely. Indian policemen 
 are earnestly recommended for appointment over all na- 
 tive villages. By the respect for authority which imbues 
 their people, they will not only promote cleanliness, so- 
 briety and good order among them, but through these 
 they will insure the work of missionaries for permanent 
 good. 
 
 From the personal knowledge which I possess of South- 
 eastern Alaska, I can say with true satisfaction that, on 
 account of its physical formation, the field is not a diffi- 
 cult one to comprehend or provide for. Its needs and 
 its neglects are obvious at sight. It is the easiest place 
 in the world to reform and hold subject to sumptuary 
 obligations. Remedies for exogenous evils, like antidotes 
 which grow with the bane, are at hand ready for use 
 and application, while the obstacles to success are insig- 
 nificant, and may be surmounted with comparative ease. 
 Its people are gathered chiefly into villages and com- 
 munities all along the coast, so that they are easily acces- 
 sible. They are tractable, industrious, peaceable, consci- 
 entious, and eager to learn and apply themselves. 
 
 The degradation of the Alaskan women is notorious 
 and deplorable. The cultivation and improvement which 
 they receive at the schools only serves too often to en- 
 hance their commercial value. Missionary John Brady 
 declares that the natives knew nothing of bodily diseases, 
 nor of intoxicants, before the soldiers came. 
 
 When the Russians transferred their wards, the na- 
 tives, to the United States, they stipulated in Article 3d of 
 the Treaty of Cession that they should have all the priv- 
 ileges and immunities of citizens of the United States ; 
 so that these people stand in a different relation to the 
 government from a majority of the red aborigines. One 
 of these stipulated rights is protection; and the best
 
 THE MISSION FIELD. 
 
 107 
 
 sumptuary protection is from sin and the opportunity to 
 sin. Take away the grog, and the men and women will 
 grow without taint. Although temporarily under stress, 
 they can be redeemed. Careful Christian training of the 
 children among them, and a conservation of the unblem- 
 ished adults from contamination, will restore their pris- 
 tine vigor and manliness. The examples of proficiency 
 among the pupils are really remarkable, instances being 
 common where youth and adults have been able to write 
 grammatical English in letters and composition within 
 a year from the time of their entering the kindergarten 
 as untutored heathen. They are most deft at all manner 
 of handiwork — braiding, embroidering, carving in wood, 
 ivory, bone and stone, engraving on metals, painting, 
 and making exquisite fabrics of feathers and fur, weav- 
 ing, etc., etc. ; and in such estimation are their domestic 
 wares held by collectors and merchants that shrewd 
 speculators keep them on sale at the bazaars of San 
 Francisco, New York, Washington, and other cosmo- 
 politan centres, where they realize six times the prices 
 obtained in Alaska. The women have comely features, 
 though inclined to adipose fullness. They are modest in 
 their demeanor and attire, even when they are most de- 
 praved. In the large towns their dress is modern, and 
 sometimes almost up to the mode, being made of woolen 
 and cotton stuffs, supplemented, in a few instances, by 
 store bonnets. A very few cling to their old-time lip 
 ornaments (pins and labrettes), tho' the use of paint is 
 not uncommon. Nevertheless, they emerged from their 
 primitive habits two generations ago ; that is, they 
 adopted European costumes and modes of living; and at 
 present they are as well informed of the intrinsic worth 
 of trinkets and tinsel as the traders themselves. In all 
 the principal stores at Sitka, Wrangell, Juneau, Oona- 
 lashka, and the other large settlements on the coast to 
 the northward, may be found assortments of goods equal 
 to those of the average store in New England. The^e 
 embrace even the latest patterns in garments, bonnets, and 
 finery, and ther.e is as much of a flutter over a new invoice 
 there as there would be over a millinery opening at the 
 East. In many families modern utensils and furniture 
 are found.
 
 MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY 
 
 While cruising in the Alaskan archipelago the voyager 
 often discovers, on some lone islet or low-lying point pro- 
 jecting from a headland, what appears to be a miniature 
 house, half hidden by a luxurious undergrowth. Sometimes 
 it is whitewashed and sometimes it is painted in gaudy col- 
 ors. Occasionally it has a little window in the side. As a 
 rule it is remote from settlement of any kind, and affords 
 the only suggestion of human occupation which is seen for 
 miles. Only towering mountain peaks, pine-clad and 
 snow-capped, and tortuous water channels intervene, 
 and there is usually such an absence of animal life, owing 
 to the physical formation of angular heights and fathomless 
 depths, that even the scream of a gull seldom disturbs 
 the solitude. 
 
 The stranger wonders at the apparent preference for 
 isolation for any purpose whatsoever ; but, after having been 
 duly informed, he learns to take it for granted whenever he 
 sees them, that each of these diminutive tenements is the 
 mortuary abode of some "Shaman" or Indian magician, 
 whose supposed supernatural powers have not availed to 
 avert the inevitable grip. Having completed the mortal 
 period of his allotment for good or evil, whichever suits his 
 individual caprice, he has been summarily shelved, as it 
 were, by those who care to have nothing more to do with 
 him or his occult dealings. They have swathed his poor 
 body in cerements of sail-cloth and mats, covered it with a 
 dance blanket, and laid it away like a discarded bundle whose 
 usefulness is done. There it will dry into a mummy, or 
 molder into decay. Nevertheless, he has been scrupu- 
 lously provided for by his credulous subjects, who have care- 
 fully placed beside him, within his wooden domicile, all the 
 properties and appurtenances of his craft — his magic 
 charms, hideous masks, grotesque wooden rattles, fantas- 
 tic toggery, and nameless implements, which it is believed 
 will serve him in some new embodiment which he is expected 
 to assume. Formerly these relics were held in superstitious 
 awe by the natives, and ©ven the burial sit© was ghynned.
 
 MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. 109 
 
 But in these days of modern civilization and vandalism the 
 graves are plundered of their contents, not only by ethno- 
 logical students and visitors in search of curios, but by the 
 natives themselves, whose cupidity has overcome the 
 scruples of bygone days of abject barbarism. 
 
 The Shaman,* or medicine man, is an omnipresent living 
 conundrum to his unsophisticated people. He is a mystery 
 which they can not comprehend, and a terror always, for 
 while he is a handy sort of a personage to have in a com- 
 munity, and is supposed to have power to heal the sick, he 
 is, nevertheless, believed to be in league with the devil. The 
 malign influence of his spells is a constant menace, and no 
 one can tell when or upon whom it may fall. This is a hard 
 reputation to have, but the Shaman promotes it. He is a 
 self constituted bugaboo, having duly qualified himself for 
 the role by a course of trying ordeals by fire,water, famine and 
 direst torture. It is probably his attested ability to survive 
 inflictions which in ordinary course would cause death, 
 rather than absolute immunity from any physical injury, 
 which inspires his people with a superstitious fear. At the 
 same time he is himself in constant apprehension of some 
 clandestine influence at work to counteract his own. If his 
 incantations and mummeries fail of success, he charges the 
 failure and its blame to whomever he chooses. Many an 
 innocent life has expiated an alleged interference in days 
 gone by. Happily, his supremacy is now at an end. His 
 sway was incontinently cut short by Capt. Beardslee, in 
 1879, when he interposed to prevent the murder of a woman 
 who had been accused by a vengeful medicine man of being 
 a witch. A witch used to have no more show in Alaska, than 
 she did in the days of our disreputable Pilgrim forefathers. 
 
 It is the professional business of the Shaman to scare 
 people and to keep them scared. It pays. Whenever he 
 wants money, instead of "holding a man up," he shakes 
 his rattle at him. One shake will impoverish an ordinary 
 Siwash, two will clean him out. It is the same with bodily 
 ailments. As a medical practitioner he despises the use of 
 nostrums, and discards all physic. His method is to frighten 
 disease away. When summoned in a case of sickness he rigs 
 himself out in a garb that would scare a hobgoblin and in- ■ 
 crease the pallor of a ghost. An invalid must be in great 
 extremity indeed when he will consent to send for a doctor. 
 
 " Shaman " is the name applied to the sorcerer or magician among the 
 Kalmuks and other tribes of Northern Asia, and the word, therefore, adds 
 another evidence to confirm the belief that the Pacific coast tribes have an 
 
 Asiatic prigiru
 
 no PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 An appointment with a nightmare would not require half 
 the nerve. The patient knows just what to expect. He 
 has prepared himself to be frightened by a long course of 
 mental enervation, and he feels that it is merely a toss-up 
 which shall stand the infernal racket the longer himself or 
 the ailment. In fact if he should fail to be frightened at all, 
 the enchantment is kultus — no good — and the doctor with- 
 draws, a mortified and disgruntled Shaman. 
 
 Such dilemma is alarming, but the medicine man is pre- 
 pared to wrestle with it. He at once dons a frightful head- 
 gear of mountain-goat horns, with a mask of hideous device ; 
 and down his naked spine a row of horns, jet black and 
 polished, extends in abnormal development to the very 
 base. Long pendants made of dried skunk-skins and as- 
 sorted intestines dangle from his head, armlets and 
 anklets equally repulsive encircle his shriveled limbs, 
 and his whole body glows with ocher of green, yellow 
 and red. Armed with a huge wooden rattle, fash- 
 ioned in the form of a stork, with a demon carved on 
 its back pulling out a man's tongue with its teeth, or some 
 other collateral symbol still more repulsive, and carrying a 
 long mystic rod or wand in his hand, he advances into the 
 room with a series of postures and jerks, which impressively 
 emphasize his aggressiveness, overpowering the patient and 
 leaving him limp and paralyzed with terror. If, however, 
 the disease should prove recalcitrant, the Shaman seats him- 
 self on the earth in the center of the room with his back 
 to the fire, and proceeds to beat the ground with his stick, 
 shaking his rattle and singing with all his might. He seems 
 in dead earnest, and, if there is any thing in the logic of 
 sympathy, the patient ought to get well instanter. But death 
 too often plays the stronger hand, carrying off the victim 
 and the malady together, much to the disgust of the doctor, 
 who is very apt to make some outsider the scapegoat of his 
 bad luck. Quite likely he marvels that men should die at 
 all, and it must be even a greater surprise to him when he is 
 called to shuffle off his own mortal coil ; for a magician so 
 capable to heal, and to forefend death, would be likely to 
 suppose himself exempt from the common fate. But the 
 inevitable end comes, and, in view of his peculiar relation- 
 ship as middleman between mortality and the devil, it is 
 little wonder that he is buried apart from his people, and 
 that the site of his grave is shunned. In something of the 
 strain sung of an abdicated monarch, 
 
 He sleeps his last sleep, he has sprung his last rattle. 
 No call can awake him to mischief again.
 
 MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. HI 
 
 On the Alaska coast the reputable dead used to be 
 cremated, and the bones collected into a box and preserved. 
 The calcined remains are carefully placed in miniature 
 houses like the Shaman's ; but, instead of being isolated from 
 each other, the houses are grouped in a common cemetery, 
 as in civilized communities. The sites are chosen with 
 respect to picturesque attraction on grassy islands, shapely 
 ridges of land, and curves of the shore. On a burial island 
 near Metlahkahtla the Indians have fashioned a number of 
 fir trees into very artistic patterns. At Sitka there is a long 
 ridge lined with several score of these mortuary receptacles 
 painted in gaudy colors and arranged in parallel rows, inter- 
 spersed with fanciful totem poles in quaint devices, on the 
 apex of each one of which is a bear, a raven, or an eagle, 
 denoting the clan to which the deceased belonged. These 
 houses are seldom more than five or six feet cube, with a 
 pyramidal roof, sometimes surmounted by a carved image, 
 and are very creditable bits of architecture, considering that 
 the boards have been split with an ax and smoothed with 
 an adze. There are cemeteries elsewhere which are 
 inclosed with neat whitewashed palings, and you often see 
 small jackstaffs with pennants of white and colored cotton 
 cloth standing by the graves. This is where the method of 
 interment has been adopted from the whites, the bodies 
 being placed in the earth and carved slabs set up in lieu of 
 headstones. There are no less than four other modes of 
 sepulture in Alaska, namely, burial in tents and in canoes 
 raised on staddles out of reach of animals, burial in trees, 
 aquatic burial beneath the waves, and in canoes turned 
 adrift. 
 
 Tree-burial is more in vogue in the interior than on the 
 coast, a dry goods box, shoe box, or even a cask obtained 
 from some trader, being a good enough coffin for the 
 defunct remains. One of these improvised burial caskets, 
 which I saw in the forks of a tree, retained the original 
 manufacturer's mark [D W] in the customary place of the 
 coffin plate, an inscription which might have been appro- 
 priately translated to mean " dead weight." 
 
 With so many various methods in vogue in the same 
 region, one hesitates to lay as much stress as some ethnolo- 
 gists do upon the assumed significance of mortuary rites 
 and burial as indicating the religious belief of those who 
 practice them. It depends much upon circumstances and 
 present convenience, as well as the liability to subsequent 
 disturbance, how Indians, or any other people, bury their 
 dead However, it may be said with, regard to cremation,
 
 ii2 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 which has long been the popular form in Alaska, that the 
 natives believe that the souls of those who are cremated 
 turn into ravens. The raven is consequently a sacred bird 
 all over the country, and is never molested. He is known 
 as " tillikum " (friend), and it is considered a good omen 
 when one of the dismal creatures is in attendance at a 
 cremation. 
 
 In Sitka, ravens are as numerous as buzzards are in some 
 Southern cities, so that the natives have no lack of family 
 associations. One would think they were dead heroes, sure 
 enough, or " hyas-tyees," from the way in which they strut 
 about the place, and the independent airs they assume ; 
 yet it is not obvious at first thought what especial advantage 
 there may be to the evicted spirits in securing the embodi- 
 ment of this ill-favored bird. What becomes of the souls of 
 those who are not cremated does not appear. Doubtless 
 they abide in that intangible middle ground which only a 
 few mortals have ever been permitted to explore. Two 
 years ago the Indian " ranche " at Sitka was in a chronic state 
 of disquietude because of a ghost with teeth three inches 
 long, which was said to have been seen along the Indian 
 river, and many were willing to offer a hundred blankets to 
 anyone who would capture this terrible ghost, which was 
 believed to be that of an Indian lately drowned there, who 
 belonged to another tribe, and whose body was not crema- 
 ted but buried. A dead slave is not considered worthy of 
 any ceremony whatever, the corpse often being thrown into 
 the sea. There was a death and obsequies when I was in 
 Sitka, and I walked one morning down to the end of the 
 Indian " ranche, " as it is called, which constitutes the out- 
 skirts of every white settlement on the coast, to examine the 
 remains of the funeral pile where the cremation had taken 
 place. I found nothing but a small quantity of charred 
 coals. The unconsumed brands had all been carefully car- 
 ried away, while the bones of the corpse had been picked 
 out and wrapped in a mat and laid away in a dead-house. 
 Some of these houses have compartments, and are the 
 receptacles of as many as a dozen separate bundles of bones. 
 
 There is very little ceremony now at a cremation, but in 
 earlier times a bereaved widow was subjected to a good deal 
 of cruelty, being repeatedly thrown upon the pyre by sym- 
 pathizing friends or demonstrative mourners, and seldom 
 escaping without serious burns. Very few had courage to 
 inflict the sacrificial torture upon themselves. Other near 
 relatives displayed their sincerity of grief by various bar- 
 barous mutilations.
 
 ■. ll l|f*;SE.-j'j'*T I I * I 
 
 rOTEM-POLES. 
 
 I Note the head of elephant on left-hand pole.)
 
 MEDICINE A ND M YTHOL OGY. 115 
 
 Previous to the cremation there is a good deal of formality 
 at the house of mourning. In. Alaskan houses a dais or plat- 
 form runs around the four sides of the interior, which is a 
 single compartment or reception room, opening into small 
 staterooms on the side opposite the entrance. A brick or 
 flagged hearth occupies the center of the quadrangle, the 
 smoke from the fire escaping through a fiat cupola in the 
 roof, there being no chimneys. Four totem poles of fantas- 
 tic carving, and color, showing the genealogy of the de- 
 ceased and the clan to which he belonged, are set up at the 
 four corners of the court. They are kept covered while the 
 body sits in state, for the dead Indian is not laid out on a 
 bier, but is set up on the dais opposite the entrance, with 
 his face painted red, a fanciful crown on his head, and a 
 blanket over his shoulders, as if living. The wall behind 
 him is appropriately draped and sometimes festooned with 
 small American flags. 
 
 On the evening of the day before the funeral the totem 
 poles are uncovered and the wailing begins. The whole 
 space between the dais and the central fire is crowded with 
 mourners of both sexes, clad in their best blankets, who beat 
 the ground with sticks in time with a doleful chant. This 
 lugubrious singing and shaking of rattles and beating of 
 the floor with long staffs is kept up all night. When the 
 hour of cremation comes the body is hoisted out through the 
 roof and carried to the funeral pile. A corpse is never taken 
 out of the door of a house. It would be " bad medicine," 
 and defile the temple. Some tribes of Indians burn the 
 bark or skin lodge whose inmate dies therein, or they set up 
 the lodge apart from habitations and place the dead body in 
 it, occupying it no more as a dwelling. But this practice 
 would be expensive where the houses are substantial and 
 hard to build, as is the case with most of the winter resi- 
 dences in Alaska. As a matter of belief a house in which 
 an Indian dies is defiled, and this notion is as old as the 
 Mosaic Law, for proof of which see Old Testament, book 
 of Numbers, Chap. XIX., verse 14. 
 
 The funeral pile is made of resinous spruce poles of the 
 proper length, built up in cob-house fashion, with fat pine 
 sticks placed inside of the crib, on which the body is laid 
 wrapped in its blanket. Logs are then added above the 
 body, crossing other logs at the corners, and then the whole 
 is set on fire. An intense heat and conflagration results, 
 and a few of the Indians remain to keep the fire alive with 
 their long poles, while a bevy of sad women contemplate the 
 ghastly procedure from their seats on the grass not far
 
 n6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 away. When every thing is consumed the relations will cull 
 out the whitened bones and level the ashes decorously. 
 There is no odor, and everything is done silently, decently, 
 and in order. 
 
 It is customary to place the dead man's property beside 
 the bundle of bones, which represents all that he was cor- 
 poreally, and occasionally his canoe is drawn up beside the 
 tomb, allegorically to continue the voyage of life, but in 
 fact to remain until it falls to decay. Of late years inquisi- 
 tive visitors, as well as avaricious vandals, have robbed the 
 dead houses of all their contents, and even despoiled them 
 of their bones. The canoes have been cut up or stolen, and 
 the sepulchers otherwise shamefully desecrated. Grass and 
 weeds have grown up inside to their very roofs, and if a 
 chance stranger attempts to explore the violated precincts, 
 he finds a satisfactory inspection prevented by an almost 
 impenetrable jungle of undergrowth. And all this neglect 
 and disorder is done and suffered at the capital of the ter- 
 ritory, and there seems to be no official authority to interdict 
 or protest. 
 
 Some writers on Alaska topics who aim to be sensational, 
 are very fond of printing in their books engravings of 
 totem poles and idols, and obsolete things which the young 
 natives of the present generation regard with much the same 
 interest that we do the calashes and warming pans of our 
 grandmothers, or the " one horse shay," and credulous 
 readers are apt to infer therefrom that the religious condi- 
 tion of the people is but one remove from heathenism, 
 whereas it is not impossible to find Christianity in some 
 localities nurtured and propagated exclusively by native 
 efforts. We who took umbrage at the travesties of Charles 
 Dickens ought not to underrate or misrepresent the poor 
 Siwash. For myself, I prefer to write in behalf of an 
 " improved order of red men," quite content to leave the 
 archaeology and mythology of Alaska to the antiquarians. 
 Doubtless there is a sort of morbid interest in tracing out 
 the hieroglyphs upon a T'linket dance-blanket, and an 
 enthusiast may even fancy that he has unraveled some 
 pious analogies from their mystic woof, but he who is accus- 
 tomed to read the heroics of the red men of the plains as 
 they are pictured on the rocks and sketched with pigments 
 on their robes, and shields, and tepees, will find in the 
 T'linket blanket but a simple analogue and repetition of 
 the oft-told story of vaunted prowess ; or perhaps a shad- 
 owy suggestion of some familiar thoughts or objects or 
 practices like those we see on the bronzes, fans, and screens
 
 MEDICINE AND M YTHOLOG Y. 1 1 7 
 
 of Japan and China. But there is not enough dust of an- 
 tiquity between the blanket-folds to blind the ingenuous 
 searcher after knowledge. Doubtless some progressive 
 savage in these modern days has traced our spiritual lineage 
 in the patterns of our Wedgewood ware, and discovered rev- 
 elations of deepest human import in our Holland delf. 
 Students of composite zoology may amuse themselves by 
 the day, or month, in deciphering the intricacies of the em- 
 blazoned totem poles ; and some of the most pedantic will 
 point out to you the " all seeing eye," the " thunder-bird," 
 identical with the Aztec " bird of the sun," and the " light- 
 ning-fish," which simple natives, it is said, believe to be the 
 authors of those profound phenomena of the air. Yet is it 
 more absurd to attribute the noise of thunder to the cleav- 
 ing wings of a supposititious bird, or the lightning-flash to 
 the darting fish which stirs the phosphorescence of the sea, 
 than it is to explain the sound of thunder as being caused 
 by the swif* passage of the electrical bolt ? Verily, the sub- 
 limity of ignorance is as profound as the depth of wisdom. 
 To the untutored savage mind the structural idea of swift- 
 ness, courage, strength, and brain, and all the mental and 
 physical attributes of man and divinity, are best expressed 
 and comprehended through external objects which he makes 
 symbolical. Their modes of thought, and the notions they 
 have respecting departed spirits, are illustrated in their rude 
 way. The natives of Alaska have thought that the crows 
 control the eruptions of volcanoes, and that they have 
 power over the Spirit of Evil which incites them. They 
 believe in transmigration, and in the supernatural powers of 
 the bear and raven, which are prominent on all their insig- 
 nia. Probably the essence of their religious belief is out- 
 lined in the following legend connected with Mt. Edgecumbe, 
 once an active volcano. It is the most significant of all 
 the legends of the Deluge. It was printed in the Century. 
 The story runs : " A long time ago the earth sank beneath 
 the water, and the water rose and covered the highest places, 
 so that no man could live. It rained so hard that it was as 
 if the sea fell from the sky. All was black, and it became 
 so dark, that no man knew another. Then a few people 
 ran here and there and made a raft of cedar logs ; but noth- 
 ing could stand against the white waves, and the raft was 
 broken in two. 
 
 " On one part floated the ancestors of the T'linkits ; on 
 the other, the parents of all other nations. The waters tore 
 them apart, and they never saw each other again. Now 
 their children are all different, and do not understand each
 
 n8 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 other. In the black tempest, Chethl was torn from his 
 sister Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon [The-woman-who-supports-the- 
 earth]. Chethl [symbolized in the ospreyj called aloud to 
 her, ' You will never see me again ; but you will hear my 
 voice forever ! ' Then he became an enormous bird, and 
 flew to southwest, till no eye could follow him. Ah-gish- 
 ahn-ahkon climbed above the waters, and reached the sum- 
 mit of Edgecumbe. The mountain opened, and received 
 her into the bosom of the earth. That hole [the crater] is 
 where she went down. Ever since that time she has held 
 the earth above the water. The earth is shaped like the 
 back of a turtle, and rests on a pillar ; Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon 
 holds the pillar. Evil spirits that wish to destroy mankind 
 seek to overthrow her and drive her away. The terrible 
 battles are long and fierce in the lower darkness. Often the 
 pillar rocks and sways in the struggle, and the earth trem- 
 bles and seems like to fall ; but Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon is good 
 and strong, so the earth is safe. 
 
 " Chethl lives in the bird Kunna-Kaht-eth ; his nest is in 
 the top of the mountain, in the hole through which his sis- 
 ter disappeared. 
 
 " He carries whales in his claws to this eyrie, and there 
 devours them. He swoops from his hiding-place, and rides 
 on the edge of the coming storm. The roaring of the 
 tempest is his voice calling to his sister. He claps his wings 
 in the peals of thunder, and its rumbling is the rustling of 
 his pinions. The lightning is the flashing of his eyes." 
 
 Even the whites have acquired some of the Indian super- 
 stitions. There are credulous people who believe that croc- 
 odiles once inhabited Alaska because a wooden nondescript 
 exists which somewhat resembles one. So also because the 
 snake is a favorite pattern for bracelets, they believe that 
 snakes once existed in the land, when, forsooth, the first 
 design was furnished by a chance visitor to a native silver- 
 smith who began to manufacture them ; and when a San 
 Francisco sharp discovered how great the demand was for 
 them he sent seventy dozen pairs of California workman- 
 ship to a trusty Siwash at Sitka on commission. Verily, 
 when science overleaps itself, the tumble is precipitate. I 
 do not take much stock in the mythological significance of 
 the multifarious devices which are inseparable from Alaskan 
 handiwork. Some of them are obviously the crude expres- 
 sions of their primitive theology, but for the rest, they are 
 the mere outcroppings of a genius of deformity, fable and 
 incongruity, which is their inherent propensity. These 
 natives are born caricaturists, manifesting their broad
 
 MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 119 
 
 humor in every thing they do, or make, or say, so that all 
 their domestic utensils, their ornaments and interior deco- 
 rations, their boats and paddles, toys, dolls, masks, attire, 
 and even their family escutcheons, are often of the most 
 grotesque character. The images which they make are not 
 all idols, nor worshipful. As for their religious zeal as 
 Christian proselytes, it is related that some wicked wags 
 induced the converted Indians of Sitka to demand a 
 " potlatch " of 100 blankets from two Hebrew traders 
 because, it had been told them, they had killed their 
 " tillikum," the Christ ! 
 
 INBIAN GRAVE.
 
 ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH. 
 
 There is no doubt that in the early days of discovery 
 and prospecting among the quartz ledges of southeastern 
 Alaska there was more swindling to the square inch than 
 in any other known location, but swindling was made 
 easy because the "stuff" was there, the indications were 
 there, and pay-dirt and bonanza-quartz were there. 
 Officers of the army and navy who were on the station 
 were the principal investors and chief sufferers, because 
 nobody else had any ready cash. These confiding and 
 intelligent gentlemen, who were on the spot and took the 
 pains to examine for themselves, making interminable 
 tramps through the wilderness to visit quartz ledges and 
 placer diggings, eagerly "blew in" all they could spare 
 each pay day, on the faith of their own investigations. I 
 know of one officer who had no less than $2,500 so 
 placed, and I myself had a considerable stake in the 
 old Lake Mountain property,, ten miles out from Sitka, 
 neither of which has yet failed of its promise. Want of 
 capital and absence of mechanical appliances made invest- 
 ments unremunerative at the outset, but as soon as ever 
 capital was forthcoming the mines declared themselves 
 in metallic tones which no adverse clamor could down. 
 The largest stamp-mill in the world, which has been in 
 active operation on Douglas Island for twenty years and 
 more, was one of these early properties. It is owned by 
 San Francisco parties. The ore comes right out of the 
 side of the mountain (which rises abruptly from the 
 ocean) and is shot down an inclined plane to the stamp- 
 mill, where it is treated ; and vessels drawing twenty feet 
 of water can lie right alongside the rocks of the natural 
 shore and receive their freight not a hundred yards from 
 the mill. The primitive forest clothes the slopes of the 
 mountain from base to summit, and fuel is all around in 
 intimate proximity. No plant of such value was ever
 
 'ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH. 121 
 
 erected or operated at so cheap a cost. It is said the 
 outlay was half a million dollars, and that $16,000,000 
 have been refused for the property. It is a low-grade 
 ore, yielding $5 to $100 per ton of quartz. No stock 
 is for sale. The first gold-brick came out in July 1, 
 1885, and weighed 297 ounces. In August the output 
 was equal to $60,000, and the mill is now reported to be 
 running up to $100,000 per month, with improving pros- 
 pects. It is said that Senator Jones, of Nevada, who was 
 one of its principal stockholders, added $250,000 a year 
 to his income from its output. Right alongside of this 
 mine, in continuation of the same ledge or formation, is 
 the Treadwell claim, also phenomenal, and also owned 
 in San Francisco. Other early locations were on Wil- 
 loughby Island, in Cross Sound ; the "North Star," near 
 Juneau, at Kilisnoo, at Admiralty Island, and at Silver 
 Bow Basin, just across the channel from Douglas Island, 
 six miles back from the shore, and in the heart of the 
 mountains. The estimated yield of this mine was $120,- 
 000 as early as 1884. These neighborhood mines made 
 Juneau a metropolis at the start, and gave her at once 
 all the appointments of civilization, including a news- 
 paper, barber shop and bath. 
 
 About sixty miles from Juneau is the Chilkat country, 
 which Captain Beardslee succeeded in opening to miners 
 in 1880 through the instrumentality of a prominent chief 
 named "Sitka Jack," whom he sent into the interior as 
 plenipotentiary, arrayed in all the self-sufficiency and 
 authority of a blue frock-coat, brass buttons, a colonel's 
 stripes, a navy cap with gold band and device, and, I be- 
 lieve, a sword. He remained all winter dispensing good 
 cheer liberally from village to village, and when he re- 
 turned in the spring, the up-country natives said it was 
 "all right ; the white people might come ;" whereupon, in 
 1881, a schooner immediately outfitted at Sitka to statt 
 for Chilkat. Jack lived at Sitka in one of the best 
 houses in the "ranche," white-painted, with windows, 
 green blinds, porch and veranda. 
 
 Gold was early discovered on the Yukon, and Lt. 
 Schwatka found miners at work on the Stewart River, 
 a tributary, in 1883. Several hundred were there in 1886. 
 Captain Beardslee, U. S. N., who was on the Alaska sta- 
 tion during the years 1879-82, has given a complete his- 
 tory of mining operations in the vicinity of Sitka during
 
 122 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 the Russian occupation, and up to the year 1880. Its 
 publication was commenced in the Forest and Stream in 
 1879, while I was its editor, and continued throughout 
 the year following. 
 
 It seems that reports of mineral and marble discov- 
 eries were long ago brought in from time to time by the 
 Indian fur hunters, but very little attention was paid to 
 them until the year 1855, when the Russian government 
 sent an engineer officer to examine and investigate into 
 the mineral resources of the country. Although he was 
 ostensibly engaged in this duty for a period of two years, 
 the report is current that he put in the best part of his 
 time at Sitka in "potlatch" and dancing; and as he never 
 visited the range of mountains on which are situated 
 nearly all of the ledges which have since been discovered, 
 his report was unfavorable; and from that date until the 
 transfer of the territory to the United States nothing was 
 done. In fact, the Russians were after fur, and not gold. 
 The fur company itself was especially lukewarm toward 
 prospectors and explorers, because, by the terms of their 
 contract, the government had a right to take away from 
 them the control of any lands in which mineral deposits 
 were found. 
 
 The first discovery of gold in the vicinity of Sitka was 
 made by a soldier named Doyle, in 187 1. In 1872 string- 
 ers of quartz were found at Indian River, one mile from 
 town, and in the mountains, back of Silver Bay, ten miles 
 from town, and the "Haley & Milletich ledge," the "Bear 
 ledge," and the "Upper ledge" successively came to light. 
 On December 9 of that year the first blast ever made in 
 Alaska quartz was exploded, and from the rock thrown 
 out and broken up by it, about sixty dollars worth of 
 free gold was obtained. On Christmas day the "Stewart 
 ledge" was discovered. The next year, in 1873, two min- 
 ing companies were formed of army officers and citizens 
 of Sitka. In 1877 the "Lower ledge" passed into the 
 hands of San Francisco people, who organized the Baro- 
 noff Island Gold and Silver Mining Company. Sitka is 
 situated on Baronoff Island. 
 
 Coal was discovered at Kilisnoo and at Cook's Inlet, 
 and places to the westward as early as 1886. 
 
 These were the auspicious beginnings. At the present 
 day mineral prospects are spread over the whole region 
 from the Pacific to the Arctic oceans. Interest has been
 
 X
 
 ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH. 125 
 
 diverted for the present from the upper Yukon, Forty- 
 Mile Creek and Porcupine Creek diggings, and from the 
 southeastern ledges, to the middle ground of the interior 
 and the Seward Peninsula in the northwest. E. S. Har- 
 rison, of Seattle, has published an exhaustive statement 
 of this latter region, of which the very considerable city 
 of Nome is the entrepot, giving full statistics of the au- 
 riferous deposits and the aggregate output since the 
 great strike ten years ago [this sort of a strike doesn't 
 hurt], during which time it added $35,000,000 to the 
 wealth of the country! It all came out of Uncle Sam's 
 "Cache near the Pole." If the Seward Peninsula only 
 had a climate like California its annual gold output would 
 be from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars a year. 
 
 Mining in this part of the world is totally unlike what 
 it is anywhere else. To get the gold out of the earth the 
 miners plow and ditch. Thene are no surface indications. 
 The tundra overlays the ancient channels of glacial 
 streams, and these are discovered by digging holes in the 
 ground. Ditches are made, and furrows are plowed 
 from these ditches to a river. Water is turned into these 
 furrows, and soon deep gullies are worn down to the pre- 
 historic gravel beds, where the pay streaks lie. That is 
 the way of it! Who would have ever thought that these 
 sphagnum plains would be found to be the chief deposi- 
 tory of the nation's wealth? This monograph of Harri- 
 son's is of inestimable use to any one interested in this 
 subject. So is his "Alaska Almanac" for 1908. 
 
 The Valdez Chamber of Commerce has also issued a 
 book of information regarding the region tributary to it, 
 and, of course, reliable. Valdez is the gateway to the 
 Copper River country north and west of Cook's Inlet. 
 Thousands of acres of low-grade gold placers are known 
 of along Copper River. I quote: 
 
 "Along the coast from Kyak west is found coal and 
 oil in abundance. In Prince William Sound on both sides 
 from the ocean to Valdez are scores of copper properties. 
 The Gladhaugh mine at Ellamar, about twenty miles 
 south of Valdez, is the heaviest producer, having shipped 
 some 40,000 tons during the past year. The Bonanza, on 
 Latouche Island, is also a regular shipper, while many 
 other properties, notably the Simonstadt group at Galena 
 Bay, are being opened up. The copper ores of the coast 
 are of the sulphuret variety, averaging about 15 per cent.,
 
 I 2 6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 and carrying good gold values, and are all close to navi- 
 gable waters. Gold and antimony also exist along the 
 Sound. 
 
 Passing through Valdez to the Copper River valley 
 there will be found located on the Kotsina and Chittyna 
 rivers and their tributaries vast bodies of high-grade 
 copper, such as bornite, glance and native copper. A 
 short distance from this large deposits of tin have been 
 recently located. 
 
 Across the range, on the upper Tanana, about seventy- 
 five claims of free-milling quartz are located, and many 
 copper properties. 
 
 The Yukon Railroad, now building from Valdez to 
 Eagle, will traverse and open up the most extensive and 
 richest copper district on earth. It will pass through and 
 open for settlement thirty-five thousand square miles of 
 rich agricultural lands. It will give easy access to the 
 rich gold placer deposits of the Nizina, Slate Creek, 
 Chisna, Tanana, White River, Shushitna, Bremner and 
 Kaina. It will open up and make productive hundreds 
 of placer deposits now inaccessible. It will increase the 
 gold production of the United States ten million per year. 
 These are pointers, sure and direct, to "Our Cache 
 near the Pole." Furthermore, we are told that during 
 the year 1900, after many hardships, a few men discov- 
 ered Slate Creek and Miller Gulch with pay dirt, and 
 brought back $15,000 worth of gold for a few days' 
 work. In 1901 the same camp cleaned up $175,000. The 
 year 1902 was still better, with a clean-up of $310,000 
 for probably ninety days' actual work. The year 1903 
 had more disadvantages, there being an unusually heavy 
 snowfall. With all the disadvantages encountered, the 
 output was $275,000. 
 
 The Nizina placer camp was discovered in the summer 
 of 1902, and after all necessary arrangements had been 
 made for opening the mines the output for the first year 
 was $20,000. The second year, 1903, $135,000 wac taken 
 from the same place. Shushitna was discovered in the 
 summer of 1903 by five prospectors, and for fifteen days' 
 work they cleaned up one hundred ounces, or $1,750. 
 This promises to be one of the richest of the camps tribu- 
 tary to Valdez. Another new find was reported this year 
 on Lowe River, only a few miles from Valdez. Copper 
 is found everywhere, and in many places so rich in qual-
 
 ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH. 
 
 127 
 
 ity that the pure copper projects from the ground. The 
 Nizina is full of high-grade ore that averages from 40 to 
 70 per cent. When adequate transportation facilities are 
 provided Valdez will become the center of the smelting 
 industry and the shipping point for the greatest group of 
 copper mines in the known world. 
 
 Capt. Abercrombie, who claims to have traveled over 
 more miles of territory in Central Alaska than any other 
 white man, and has informed himself of the geological 
 structure of the mountain ranges and their mineral de- 
 posits, writes in the Seattle Mail and Herald the follow- 
 ing words of encouragement to settlers other than 
 miners : 
 
 "For a century past the great safety valve for the con- 
 dition of the poor man in the crowded portions of our 
 country has been the thought of 'free land in the west.' 
 Adventurous spirits, finding themselves unable to get 
 ahead in the older settled communities, have ever been 
 free to dispose of their interests and move forward 
 towards the frontier to avail themselves of new and 
 broader opportunities for becoming independent. This 
 pioneer movement has been the greatest of all factors in 
 the wonderful achievements of our country. 
 
 "But the 'free land in the west' is about exhausted. 
 There now remain but a few limited portions of the pub- 
 lic domain in any of the western states which can be 
 said to be fertile and productive. But what 'the west' 
 has offered for the man desirous of bettering his condi- 
 tion, ten, twenty, forty, or one hundred years ago, Alaska 
 offers to-day. In the wonderful empire to the north 
 there are thousands, yes, millions of acres of lands suit- 
 able for agricultural purposes, capable according to the 
 able authority of the special agent of the Agricultural 
 Department, Prof. C. C. Georgeson, of sustaining an 
 agricultural population of three millions of people, and 
 open to-day under the American homestead laws to actual 
 settlement. 
 
 "Owing to her manifold resources in this and other 
 lines of development, the Copper River country offers 
 greater opportunities for the man of moderate means 
 desiring to make a home for himself and to become self- 
 supporting, than any section of the Pacific states did 
 twenty years ago. The development of the vast mineral 
 resources, which has already begun on a large scale, pro-
 
 128 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 vides a practically inexhaustible market for all the hay 
 and garden produce that will be raised in the country for 
 the next ten years at higher prices than can be secured 
 in any market in the United States. A man making his 
 home there can work his farm or garden during the 
 farming season, and during the winter time can go to 
 the streams for fish and to the hills for game, and thus 
 keep himself supplied at little trouble with meat for the 
 year round. At the seasons of the year when the farmer 
 would ordinarily be unemployed he can go to the nearby 
 mines where he can secure steady employment at excel- 
 lent wages. 
 
 "A man with rudimentary ideas of agriculture, and 
 with a knowledge of frontier life such as would enable 
 him to rustle for himself in a sparsely settled country 
 can go into the Copper River country in the vicinity of 
 Copper Center, carry with him a few tools, a pocketful of 
 seeds, and a supply of flour, salt and coffee sufficient to 
 last him one season, and within a few years can by the 
 exertion of his own efforts, become independent. The 
 first year he can spade or plough up his garden ground 
 and sow his seeds. He can then construct his own cabin 
 from timber cut on the ground. He can kill his own 
 meat, and he can catch any quantity of fish in the 
 streams. He can, if he desires, work a portion of the 
 summer season in one of the many mines, and when fall 
 comes he will have, not only the money he has earned by 
 his labor for others, but in addition will have his home 
 and the produce of his garden as well. Or he can cut 
 and put up for the winter season the wild grass hay which 
 is sure to command a good price throughout the winter 
 months at any point along the military trail. 
 
 "Once located, and particularly if Congress makes 
 more liberal provisions in the matter of granting lands 
 to settlers, as is probable, the settler will, upon the ad- 
 vent of the railroad, find himself in possession, with a 
 perfect title from the government, of a piece of valua- 
 ble land, and a home and income sufficient to render him 
 financially independent. 
 
 "Strangers who know nothing of the possibilities of 
 the country may scoff at these statements just as thou- 
 sands scoffed at similar statements concerning the agri- 
 cultural possibilities of the country composing the great 
 empire of western America. But to those who have been
 
 ALASKA'S MINERAL WEALTH. 129 
 
 through the country these possibilities are too well known 
 to require substantiation." 
 
 What the Captain says of the winters up there at the 
 "Cache" comparing favorably with those of northern 
 New York and Minnesota will be cheerful news to many 
 who have been deterred from migrating into the gold re- 
 gions by the bugbear of frigid conditions.
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 
 
 It has been my good fortune to enjoy unusual opportun- 
 ities to investigate the inland and salt water fishes of Alaska, 
 having coasted along a thousand miles of the shore line and 
 visited nearly all of its fishing stations in company with pro- 
 fessional fishermen, familiar with the Pacific coast. Knowl- 
 edge of the habitat of deep-sea fish can only be obtained 
 by feeling the bottom with repeated and laborious soundings, 
 aided by that intuition which enables an experienced person 
 to determine where they are by the color of the water and 
 the configuration of the land. Codfish and some other 
 species can be traced in part by following the bait fish upon 
 which they feed and which appear upon the surface and in 
 the bays and estuaries at certain seasons. Seafowls, seals 
 and humpbacked whales are of great assistance to the investi- 
 gator — indicating by their own presence the presence of the 
 fish. Humpbacked whales and porpoises are often seen in 
 large numbers in the land-locked waters of the Alaskan 
 archipelago, sporting and spouting in basins so small that 
 they seem hardly more than lakelets ; and it is proper at 
 once to remind the reader that the entire mainland of our 
 new possession is flanked by an outlying chain of islands, 
 chiefly mountainous, with shores which drop abruptly into 
 deep water ; and that there are few open-water reaches for 
 a distance of fifteen hundred miles that are exposed to the 
 full force of the ocean swell and the breakers. 
 
 From all indications I am convinced that some day in the 
 near future the fisheries of Alaska will occupy as important 
 a commercial place as those of Norway and the Hebrides 
 and the North Atlantic. Already the canning of salmon 
 has become an industry of considerable importance, and 
 establishments have been located at all the principal points 
 as far north as Sitka and considerably beyond, the proprie- 
 tors preferring the services of the native Indians to those of 
 the irrepressible Chinese — the favorable difference between 
 the two races compensating for the many obvious inconven- 
 iences of a location so remote from a market. 
 
 An evidence of the value to which these fisheries have
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 131 
 
 attained even now in their infancy is shown in the statis- 
 tical statement that in 1884 the territory shipped 10,101 
 cases of four dozen i-lb. cans, and 1,527 barrels of salted 
 salmon, each barrel containing thirty fish. The cannery 
 near Sitka put up 700 barrels. There were also shipped 
 large quantities of halibut, herring, cod, rock cod and her- 
 ring oil, and the year 1885 would have shown still better 
 results but for a depression in prices which made the labor 
 unprofitable. Notable among other establishments is the 
 Chilkat cannery, situated in 59 deg. 13 min. north latitude, 
 which is well up toward the frigid zone, but warmed like 
 the rest of the Alaskan coast by the Japan current, or Kuro- 
 Siwo, which corresponds to the gulf stream of the Atlan- 
 tic. I dare say that no commercial company in the world 
 ever found its way to a nook of earth so ineffably roman^ 
 tic ; for the grandeur of the surrounding scenery is 
 supreme. Parallel ranges of snow-capped mountains of 
 majestic height inclose a narrow strait, whose waters are 
 deep and green, and seldom disturbed by the storms which 
 beat the outer wall. High up in the bluest empyrean the 
 glittering peaks flash to each other the reflections of the 
 noonday sun, and where the silvery summer clouds rest 
 upon the summits the eye can scarcely distinguish the 
 fleecy vapor from the spectral snow. Below the timber 
 line their sides are clothed with fir and hemlock, and in the 
 dark waters under the shadow of their confronting but- 
 tresses the salmon are continually tossing the spray, so that 
 the surface fairly boils. Through one of the clefts of the 
 mountains the sparkling Chilkat River leaps over the 
 obstructing rocks in a succession of pools and rapids, and 
 upon the point of rocks at its mouth the cannery stands. 
 Perched upon a ledge so narrow that the wharves and fish- 
 ing stages can scarcely keep a foothold above the tide, it 
 looks out toward a long vista of headlands, whose clear-cut 
 outlines are set against the sky in graduated shades of 
 blue, as they recede and overlap each other. And out of 
 another great rift the famous Davidson glacier presses 
 toward the sea, filling a valley four miles wide ; and the 
 masses of ice, which are successively pushed to the front 
 and break off, float away with the recurring tides, and 
 chassez up and down the landlocked channel until they 
 finally melt away or drift out into the ocean. On a beach 
 near by is a village of Indian employes, with the usual 
 adjuncts of half-dried salmon spread on the rocks, rueful 
 dogs, and log canoes drawn up on shore and carefully pro- 
 tected from the weather by boughs and blankets when not
 
 T32 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 in use. Cray and white gulls fill the upper air, or sit on 
 the drifting icebergs and scream, while large wisps of sand- 
 peeps flit constantly from point to point, feeding on the 
 land-wash. In hours of toil the foreground is active with the 
 movements of the canoes and boats hauling seines. This 
 location is also known as "Pyramid Harbor." 
 
 Captain Beardslce, U.S.N., while on this station, wrote : 
 " One day I jumped in with Tom McCawley, one of the 
 most experienced salmon seiners, and got him to show me 
 how it was done. Our boat, rowed by four untiring 
 Indians, had already a ton at least of fish just taken, but there 
 was room for another, and McCawley wanted it. We rowed 
 slowly around the various islands for an hour with no suc- 
 cess ; the tide was high, the day too bright ; none were 
 jumping. We pulled into a quiet, pleasant, little cove and 
 lunched ; the Indians preparing for us a good pot of coffee, 
 of which they are very fond, when well sweetened. With 
 plenty of it, hard bread and smoked salmon, they can work 
 forever. As we lay on the grass with our pipes, an Indian 
 called out 'Fish! ' and pointed to a spot in the channel but a 
 short way off. Soon another leaped, and in a moment we 
 were in and off. I saw the fish jump, and, after a little 
 time, another, or, as it seemed to me, the same one. I 
 didn't think much of that school ; but when I said so, the 
 Indians answered ' Tshugatahen ' (plenty), and Tom said : 
 ' When one jumps, there's a hundred under him that 
 don't ; ' and that was news to me, for I expected to see the 
 whole school at once, as one does porpoises. Pulling for 
 the shore, fifty yards to the left of them, one end of the 
 seine was landed and held by the crew of one of the boats 
 (there were two), while the other rapidly pulled around the 
 apparently deserted spot ; the hundred yards were soon 
 placed, and ' Haul in ! ' was the order. I tended boat, our 
 crew having also landed, and made fast to the outer row of 
 corks, and was drawn in with them, peering anxiously into 
 the diminishing circle. Soon I saw bright streaks darting 
 rapidly to and fro, and then a dozen in the air glistening 
 in the sunshine. The pool diminished, and a solid mass of 
 plunging fish became visible ; not one leaped over the corks ; 
 they dove as they approached the wall of net, rising in 
 the center for convulsive leaps. In a few moments two 
 tons of salmon, weighing five to twenty pounds each, were 
 huddled together in a six-foot circle, and into this the 
 Indians who were not holding net, dashed blow after blow 
 of short, stout gaff hooks, jerking out with every dash a 
 salmon — they simply ' fired at the flock,' and never missed.
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 133 
 
 A jerk over the gunwales, and the noble fish lay heaped up, 
 gasping and struggling. This was in July; nearly all of 
 the fish were good, and, according to McCawley, there were 
 five varieties in the catch. A few which had begun to 
 'dog' were cast into the canoe of an old Indian who 
 accompanied us, and who had gleaned quite a canoe load of 
 such as are considered unsuitable for canning." 
 
 Heavily laden canoes bring the still struggling fish to the 
 lift which hoists them to the cleaning table, where women 
 dexterously sever the heads, cut off the fins and tails and 
 draw the entrails, and then divide the bright red flesh into 
 pieces of a proper size to fit the cans. Boys solder the tins, 
 which are then put into boilers with their contents, and 
 afterward resoldered, labeled and packed. Thus whole 
 families are employed, the labor being divided among them 
 according to their ability to perform. For their own use the 
 Indians dry the salmon on the rocks in the sun, no salt being 
 used. Their store-houses are often placed in the branches 
 of trees, sometimes forty or fifty feet above the ground, it 
 is said, with a view to keep them from the ravages of blow- 
 flies and other pests. Many of these houses will hold sev- 
 eral tons, and are used by a number of families in common; 
 they are reached by notched poles, which are admirable sub- 
 stitutes for ladders. Some persons assert that the custom 
 of placing the boxes high is to keep them from dogs and 
 wild animals, but the Indians assign only the one reason 
 given. I have seen the same method employed elsewhere, 
 by both Indians and white men. A spent salmon — a ' dog ' 
 salmon, as it is termed — after spawning, is a sight to see ! 
 I found one in shoal water some two feet long, as thin as a 
 slab, feebly struggling as though he were trying to push 
 himself ashore. I picked him up and landed him on the 
 grass. A sicker fish never continued to wag its tail. His 
 skin was yellow, picked out with green and blue spots (such 
 as a good recoiler will leave on your arm after an all-day 
 shoot). Spots from the size of a bit to that of a dollar, and 
 one about an inch wide and six long on his side, were raw 
 as if gnawed out by mice. One eye was gone, one gill 
 cover eaten through, and every fin and his tail were but 
 ragged bristles, all integument between the rays having 
 disappeared. No wonder the legend arose that all Cali- 
 fornia salmon die immediately after spawning. The Creoles 
 and Indians catch daily great numbers of these sick fish 
 with their gaffs, and they consider that they are better eat- 
 ing when dried than the healthy fish. 
 
 The quantities of salmon found in Alaska are simply
 
 X34 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 enormous. I have watched the movements of Eastern 
 salmon in the most prolific rivers of Canada during their 
 spawning season, but have nowhere found them in such 
 compacted masses as they appear in Pacific waters. Only 
 where dams or natural falls obstructed their free passage 
 were they sufficiently crowded, in those Canadian rivers, to 
 interfere at all with each other, or with the comfortable 
 ascent to the upper streams ; they had always elbow-room 
 for acrobatic leaps and somersaults. On the Pacific coast 
 their numbers are incalculably greater — perhaps a hundred 
 fold. During the period of their annual mid-summer 
 " runs " they swim in schools ten feet deep or more, with 
 ranks closed up solid. Only those of our Eastern fishermen 
 who are familiar with the swarming of mossbunkers, herring 
 and bluefish can have any conception of their multitudes. 
 
 Of course we are all accustomed to the current stories of 
 their innumerable hosts out West, yet I will deliberately 
 strain the credulity of the reader by over-reaching state- 
 ments far more marvelous and declare that in Alaska the 
 salmon jam the estuaries and inlets sp that they can not 
 move at all ! I have seen the outlet of Lake Loring, which 
 is a rivulet two miles long and two rods wide, connecting 
 the salt water with the fresh, so choked with living salmon 
 that if a plank were laid across their protruding backs a man 
 could walk across dry shod. It is so with other similar 
 localities. On the southwestern coast the mountains rise 
 from the ocean quite abruptly, so that there are but two 
 rivers of any considerable length which cut their way through 
 the granite ridges from the interior ; but the melting of the 
 snows upon the peaks fills all the valleys and pockets bor- 
 dering upon the coast, forming picturesque lakes whose 
 outlets reach the ocean through short rugged channels worn 
 deeply into the rocks. The tide there rises some eighteen 
 feet, and when it is low the outflow of the lakes makes its 
 romantic journey to the brine by a series of rapids and 
 tempting pools, where brook trout of two varieties can be 
 caught with a bait of salmon roe, or even with a fly, afford- 
 ing good sport to the angler. But whenever the tide begins 
 to make, the whole vicinity of the outlet at once swarms 
 with impatient salmon, and as the channel gradually fills 
 with the growing flood the schools press inward and upward 
 from outside, until, finally, when the tide is full, the stream 
 becomes a slack-water channel reaching from the salt water 
 to the very border of the lakes, of which every cubic foot is 
 choked with fish wedged tightly. No theater lobby on a 
 benefit night, nor sheep van on a transportation line, was
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 135 
 
 ever packed more solid. In such extremity the helpless 
 salmon become an easy prey to animals and men. One can 
 lift them out with his hands until he is tired. It is almost 
 impossible to thrust a spear or boat-hook into the mass, and 
 of course a fish must come out whenever it is withdrawn. 
 Bears take their opportunity to scoop them out with their 
 great paws, and when they have regaled themselves to 
 satiety they retire to the adjacent thickets for a dessert of 
 berries which grow there in great abundance and variety. 
 Of course a great many salmon get into the lakes at every 
 tide, but after each recession multitudes are stranded, of 
 which the lustiest flop back into the ocean, while the maimed 
 and hapless remain dead and stranded on the denuded 
 rocks. 
 
 It is said that salmon were exceptionally numerous on the 
 Alaska coast in the two years just past, but there seems to 
 be no doubt that they are always more abundant there than 
 in the more southern latitudes of British Columbia and Ore- 
 gon ; and they swarm clear across the Behring Strait to the 
 coast of Siberia and down to Japan, filling all the waters 
 with their incalculable numbers. In the vicinity of such 
 hosts the problem of bait disappears. Salmon enough can 
 be bought there for a dime to furnish bait for five thousand 
 pounds of halibut or cod, and if some enterprising Yankee 
 will only turn his attention to the opportunity w:iich the 
 Alaskan waters offer, he can supply every Atlantic fisher- 
 man with bait and freeze out the Kanucks so that they will 
 never seize any more fishing vessels for violation of their 
 obnoxious laws. 
 
 The halibut of Alaska are bound to be a source of large 
 revenue, although at present the fishery is in its infancy. 
 Great numbers are taken from the numerous banks along 
 the coast ; they grow to an enormous size, sometimes reach- 
 ing five hundred pounds in weight. Captain Morrissey, of 
 San Francisco, in the year 1880, filled up the schooner 
 General Miller in less than a month on the banks off Sitka, 
 taking one hundred tons of halibut at the rate of 7,000 
 pounds per day. There can be no question but that this 
 business will be some day followed up with profit, especially 
 in view of the remarkable depletion of the Atlantic fish- 
 eries, which, in 1885, were reduced to one-fourth their 
 former proportions ; of which Prof. Goode, of the Smith- 
 sonian Institution, has written as follows : 
 
 " At the beginning of the present century these fish were 
 exceedingly abundant in Massachusetts Bay. From 1830 to 
 1850, and even later, they were extremely abundant on
 
 136 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 George's banks ; since 1850 they have partially disappeared 
 from this region ; the fishermen have recently been following 
 them to other banks, and, since 1874, out into deeper and 
 deeper water, and the fisheries are now.carried on almost 
 exclusively in the gullies between the off-shore banks and on 
 the outer edges of the banks in water 100 to 350 fathoms in 
 depth. The species has, in like manner, been driven from 
 the shallow fishing grounds on the coast of Europe ; there 
 is, however, little reason to doubt that they still are present 
 in immense numbers within easy access off the British and 
 Scandinavian coasts, and that a good fishery will yet grow 
 up when the fishermen of those countries shall have become 
 more enterprising. In the year 1879 there were forty vessels, 
 of 3,168 tons, from Gloucester, Mass., employed exclusively 
 in the fresh halibut fishery. The total catch of halibut on 
 the New England coast for 1879 is estimated at 14,637,000 
 pounds. 
 
 " In 1885, the halibut fleet of Gloucester is reduced to one- 
 fourth of its former size, and the total catch is estimated at 
 from three to five million pounds. By this token it is evi- 
 dent that ere long our chief supply will come from the 
 waters of Greenland and Iceland, where several vessels 
 already go each year to bring back cargoes of salt 
 'flitches.' " * 
 
 But why go to the British and Scandinavian coasts, or to 
 the waters of Greenland and Iceland, when Alaska is so 
 convenient, the cost of bait almost nothing, the transit 
 across the continent so rapid, and refrigerators so complete ? 
 If we have fresh Pacific salmon in our eastern markets, why 
 not fresh halibut as well, that the species may remain 
 "familiar?" If salt fish are required, or halibut fins, salt 
 can perhaps be manufactured on the coast from sea water 
 by evaporation, as it now is at places on the California sea- 
 board ; or the halibut can be sun-dried or smoked. Salmon 
 are used for bait. The Indians are adepts at taking these 
 great fish. They do not fish from the canoes, but set lines 
 which are attached to floats — generally bladders — to which 
 are fastened little flags on staffs. Among a group of them 
 the fisherman watches, and when the hooked fish has 
 exhausted itself towing the float, he is secured. It is very 
 exhilarating to the novice to see the floats, when a fish is 
 on, go diving and darting through the water at the rate of 
 
 * By 1907 the halibut industry of the Atlantic had been almost 
 entirely transferred to the Alaska coast. Gloucester fishermen 
 have establishments all along the Pacric shore now, but the catch 
 goes east to Boston, for the most part over the C. P. R.
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 137 
 
 ten knots an hour. The hook is a native contrivance, 
 which is far more efficient than any shop-rig, made usually 
 of two pieces of tough wood, each about eleven inches long, 
 beveled at the ends, so that when joined and seized with 
 twine or sinew, they form a < , or angle, with an opening five 
 inches wide; an iron spike passes through the lower jaw, 
 inclining inwardly, the upper jaw of the hook serving as a 
 guide to the jaw of the fish, which can not be withdrawn 
 without catching on the point of the spike. A fish which 
 once takes hold, seldom gets away. 
 
 In 1884 Captain Exon, of Portland, Oregon, equipped a 
 vessel for deep sea-fishing, with the prosecution of which he 
 was familiar, but had hardly demonstrated the value of this 
 method, and the abundance of fish where sought, before 
 he was unfortunately drowned. Other practical men are 
 now investigating the subject with the purpose of prose- 
 cuting the business to a profitable result if they find the 
 conditions as favorable as they believe them to be. There 
 are also a few San Francisco fishermen who visit the Alaska 
 coast for cod, of which they salt some 2,000 tons annually. 
 
 Another newly introduced industry is the manufacture 
 of fish oil for dressing leather and preparing jute for market. 
 The first factory of the kind was established at Kilsinoo, 
 last spring, by the Northwest Trading Company, and a ship- 
 ment of 20,000 barrels was made in September last, of 
 which 12,000 barrels went the long distance to New York ; 
 but it will not be long before there will be many oil factories 
 on the Alaska coast, for all the bays and estuaries swarm 
 with oil-producing fish, and the product is limited only by 
 the capacity of the works and the supply of casks. This 
 company expects to manufacture 300,000 gallons this 
 season — equal to a hundred car-loads. At Skidegate, on the 
 British Columbian coast, there is a factory for extracting 
 oil from the livers of dogfish, whose output this year is 
 50,000 gallons. This oil is admitted to be superior to any 
 other kind as a lubricant. It is shipped chiefly to the 
 United States, where it pays a duty of 25 per cent., though 
 small quantities are consumed in the Province, or sent to 
 Honolulu and China. In another year or so this industry 
 will probably establish itself on the Alaska coast as well, 
 and thereby save the duty. 
 
 The foregoing summary refers to the meager fishing 
 industries of Alaska in the beginning but I will show, in the 
 statements that follow, what enormous possibilities of lucra- 
 tive employment and revenue lie in the immediate future. 
 Certainly the waters of the Pacific are far more prolific of
 
 1^8 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 fish and other marine forms than the Atlantic, or even the 
 Gulf of Mexico. For not only do we find the sea lion, the 
 fur seal, the sea otter, and other exceptional forms of marine 
 life in vast numbers, but we find the cod, the torn-cod, the 
 halibut, the herring, the flounder, the salmon, the sea-trout 
 of the same or closely related species, common to the 
 Atlantic coast ; and we find them differing in size, many 
 larger and frequently more abundant, but dissimilar in 
 color and flavor — and, beside these, a great many varieties 
 unknown to Atlantic waters, and of especial economic 
 value. Principal among the latter are the sculpins, the 
 scorpamids, sebastichthydae, and the embiotocoid or vivi- 
 parous fishes, which comprise a great number of species. 
 At the same time it may be borne in mind that there are 
 many Atlantic fishes, like the blackfish, cunner, striped bass, 
 porgy, sheepshead, bluefish, etc., which have no analogues 
 on the Pacific. The viviparous fish maybe said to be some- 
 what intermediate in external appearance, as they are in 
 structure, between the labrids and the sparids, but they are 
 readily recognizable and distinguished from all others by 
 ichthyologists. In reproduction they develop a uterus-like 
 envelope, which incloses the young fish to the number of 
 from seven or eight to forty, and these are hatched out at 
 maturity just like a litter of kittens or mice. The family is 
 characteristic of the western coast, only two or three species 
 being known to ocean beyond the limits of the Pacific coast 
 of temperate North America, and these few only on the 
 opposite coast of the Pacific in the northern temperate 
 region, and possibly in the opposite hemisphere in the tem- 
 perate seas of New Zealand and Australia. The numerous 
 varieties of sebastichthys are locally known as " rock-cod," 
 but they have not the remotest relation to the family 
 Gadidce. There are no less than twenty-eight of them on 
 the Pacific coast, of which six are found in Alaskan waters. 
 Several of them are highly colored and very beautiful — 
 bright scarlet, banded yellow and black, pink-spotted, etc. 
 Indeed, the fish of the Pacific are more highly colored as a 
 rule than their congeners of the Atlantic, a characteristic 
 equally true of most of the marine forms — animals, mollusks, 
 crustaceans, plants, etc., as well as of the land flora and 
 fauna, the fruits, vegetables, shrubs, trees, and flowers. 
 One of the rockfish just referred to very closely resembles 
 the Florida red snapper in color and general appearance, 
 though the structural differences are quite apparent when 
 specimens of each are examined side by side. As a class 
 they are good edible fish. Most of them are caught in deep

 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 141 
 
 water on rocky ledges, a half mile or so from shore, often 
 in thirty fathoms, with hard clams, crabs or fresh meat for 
 bait, and it is very easy to determine whenever the fisher- 
 man swings off from a ledge, for the fish stop biting, a fact 
 which shows how important it is to ascertain and keep the 
 exact location of their feeding grounds. Besides these 
 there are many kinds of fishes not at all related to this 
 family, or to each other, which are called rock-cod. One 
 such, which is familiarly known in Alaska as the black-cod, 
 rock-cod, and coal-fish, is likely to form a valuable addition 
 to our list of economic fishes, and may well fill the place of 
 substitute for some other kinds which may have become or 
 may become scarce. No one has labored half so hard to 
 secure the introduction of this estimable fish into our 
 markets as the Hon. James G. Swan, who is the Hawaiian 
 consul at Port Townsend, Washington Territory, and a 
 veteran correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution ; and 
 I regard it fortunate for the integrity of this chapter of my 
 volume that I find available for republication here an 
 admirable report of the habits, habitat, and quality of the 
 black-cod from the Bulletin of the United States Fisheries 
 Commission, and from which I cull the following extracts. 
 [Scientifically the fish is known as Anoplopoma fimbria.} 
 
 The report says : 
 
 "The Anoplopoma fimbria is known in California as the 
 candle-fish, Spanish mackerel, grease-fish, etc.; among the 
 Makah Indians of Cape Flattery, Wash., as ' beshow,' and 
 by the white residents of the cape as ' black-cod.' On 
 Queen Charlotte's Islands, British Columbia, it is called 
 ' coal-fish ' by white settlers, and by the Haidah Indians, who 
 reside on those Islands, it is called ' skil.' At Knight's In- 
 let, British Columbia, it is called ' kwakewlth.' Each tribe or 
 locality where it is taken has a local name for it, but it is gen- 
 erally known as black cod. The scientific name, anoplopoma 
 fimbria, has been adopted by Gill, Jordan and Gilbert, and 
 most other writers, although a specimen taken off Mount 
 Saint Elias, Alaska, was named by Pallas Gadus fimbria 
 (Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, 1881, vol. 4, p. 254), thus showing 
 that its resemblance to the cod was observed by that nat- 
 uralist. The term ' cod ' is applied by fishermen and fish- 
 dealers on the North Pacific coast to a variety of fish which 
 are not related to the genus Gadus, and are not found in 
 Atlantic waters. The Ophidon elongatus is called in San 
 Francisco, buffalo cod, Green cod, blue cod, etc. At Cape 
 Flattery the Makah Indians call it ' tooshkow.' The whites 
 call it ' kultus ' cod, or inferior to true cod. The different
 
 142 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 varieties of Sebastichthys are known in the Victoria and San 
 Francisco markets as rock-cod, but do not resemble the 
 rock-cod of New England in any manner, being more like 
 the perch, having a remarkable development of sharp bony 
 spines and prickles. The popular name of black-cod ap- 
 plied to the A noplopoma fimbria does not seem any more of 
 a misnomer than to call the Ophidon elongatus blue or green 
 cod. In general appearance the black-cod resembles a pol- 
 lock, but when fully grown they have the rounded form of 
 a true cod, but are not so marked. In color they are a 
 dark olive brown or sepia on the back, with grayish sides 
 and belly; the flesh is white and very fat, like mackerel, and 
 they have been sold in San Francisco under the name of 
 Spanish mackerel when of small size. Professor Jordan 
 says: 'The young ones are taken off the wharves at 
 Seattle, but are not much thought of as a food-fish . It attains 
 its greatest perfection in very deep water, where it attains 
 a size of 40 inches, and a weight of 15 pounds. Instances are 
 not uncommon of black-cod being taken measuring 50 
 inches and weighing 30 pounds, but the average is much 
 less than this last. But it is an admitted rule that the 
 deeper the water the larger the fish.' 
 
 " Although I have the credit of first introducing this fish 
 in a marketable shape to the public, yet it has been known 
 to the officers and employes of the Hudson's Bay Company 
 for many years, but was seldom seen on their tables ; the 
 enormous quantities of salmon, eulachon, herring, cod, 
 halibut and other fish, easily and plentifully taken, made it 
 unnecessary to incur the trouble of fishing in the deep 
 water for the black-cod. The first I saw of them was atjjNeah 
 Bay, Wash. Terr., at the entrance of Fuca Strait, in 1859. 
 An old Indian caught a few when fishing for halibut. I 
 procured one, which I broiled, and found it equal to a No. 1 
 mackerel. I have occasionally seen the ' beshow ' every 
 summer that I have been at Neah Bay since 1859, but I 
 have never had an opportunity to get any quantity of them 
 till in September, 1883, while at Skidegate, Queen Charlotte's 
 Islands, which I visited under instructions from Professor 
 Spencer F. Baird. I succeeded in procuring about 100 of 
 them. The Haidah Indians take them in considerable 
 quantities on the west coast of the group of islands, 
 in the deep waters of the inlets and harbors, for the purpose 
 of extracting the oil or grease, which is used as food by the 
 natives, and is similar in appearance to the eulachon grease, 
 which is of the color and consistency of soft lard. From 
 Montery to the Arctic ocean the Anoplopoma is found. It
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 143 
 
 feeds on crustaceans, worms and small fish. Hitherto it has 
 not been introduced among the whites as a food-fish, owing 
 to the superstitious prejudice of some tribes against fishing 
 for them to sell. 
 
 " A lot I took to Victoria dry-salted in boxes were the first 
 ever seen in a merchantable condition in that city, and the 
 four boxes I sent to the United States Fish Commission 
 are the first ever exported from the Province of British 
 Columbia, a fact to which special reference was made by the 
 collector of customs of Victoria in his quarterly report to the 
 Minister of Finances in Ottawa. 
 
 " As the Haidah Indians seem to be the only ones who 
 make a business of taking the black-cod or ' skil,' I will 
 confine myself to a description of a method adopted by them. 
 The fish lines used in the capture of the black-cod are 
 made of kelp, in a manner similar to that of the Makahs, of 
 Cape Flattery, and other tribes on the northwest coast. 
 This giant kelp the Nereocystis (Harvey) is of the order 
 Laminariaccz, and is of much larger dimensions than the 
 Fucaccce, the fronds being measured by fathoms, not feet. 
 Some of these plants, it is said, when fully grown, have a 
 stem measuring 300 feet in length. These grow where the 
 water is rapid, and have to extend to a great length before 
 their buoyancy will permit them to reach the surface. For 
 about two-thirds of this length from the root up, the stem 
 is about the size of a halibut line. It then expands till at 
 the extremity it assumes a pear-shaped hollow head, capa- 
 ble of holding a quart, and from which extends a tuft of 
 upward of fifty leaves, lanceolate in form, each of which is 
 from 40 to 50 feet long. The slender stem is of prodigious 
 strength, and is prepared by the natives for use as fol- 
 lows : The stems being cut off a uniform length, generally 
 15 or 25 fathoms each, are placed in running fresh water 
 till they become bleached and all the salt is extracted. 
 They are then stretched and partially dried in the open air, 
 then coiled up and hung in the smoke of a lodge for a short 
 time. Then they are wet and stretched again and knotted to- 
 gether. This process is continued at regular intervals till 
 the kelp stems become tough and as strong as the best hemp 
 line of the same size. After using, it is always coiled up, 
 but as it gets brittle if allowed to dry too much it is inva- 
 riably soaked in salt water before being used. The hooks 
 used are of a peculiar shape, unlike any fish-hook I have 
 ever seen; they are made of the knots or butts of limbs of 
 the hemlock, cut out from old decayed logs. These knots 
 are split into splints of proper size, then roughly shaped
 
 144 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 with a knife, and then steamed and bent into shape, which 
 shape they retain when cold. This form is adopted, so the 
 Indian informed me, because the bottom on the west coast 
 is very foul with stones and coral formations and incrus- 
 tations ; steel hooks get fast, and lines are subject to being 
 lost ; but this style of hook does not get fast. 
 
 " When the hook is to be used the bait is tied on with the 
 string- which is used to bring the two ends of the hook 
 together and keep them in position when not baited. After 
 the bait is well secured a piece of stick is inserted to press 
 the ends of the hook apart. When the fish bites the bait it 
 knocks out the stick, which floats to the surface, the two 
 ends of the hook, springing together, close on the fish's head 
 and hold it fast. It is usual to tie from seventy-five to one 
 hundred hooks to the line, at a distance of about two feet 
 apart, and the fish are so plentiful that not unfrequently every 
 hook will have a fish. The sticks which float to the sur- 
 face, when knocked out of the hook by the fish, serve to 
 indicate to the Indian the sort of luck he is having at the 
 bottom. But although the fish maybe abundant, the Indian 
 is not always sure of securing what he has caught. His 
 greatest annoyance is the ground-sharks or nurse-fish, as 
 the sailors call them, which will often eat the bodies of the 
 black-cod, leaving only the heads attached to the hooks. 
 Another annoyance is from a small fish called by the Haidah 
 Indians ' nee-kaio-kaiung,' the Blepsias cirrhosus (Pallas) 
 Gun., one of the family Cottidce, which steals the bait and 
 often gets hooked ; as soon as the Indian discovers this pest 
 he quits fishing and goes to another place. As the depth 
 of the water varies in different places it is usual to have a 
 lot of spare lines in the canoe which can instantly be knotted 
 together and form a line as long as required ; sometimes two 
 hundred fathoms will be used, as the line when fully supplied 
 with hooks becomes a trawl. A most ingenious contrivance 
 is the sinker used by the Haidahs in this deep-water fishing. 
 This is a stone, from ten to twenty pounds in weight. A 
 small kelp line is wound round this stone and held by a 
 bight tucked under the turns, and the end made fast to the 
 end of the larger line, which large line is wound round this 
 stone, and a smaller stone which serves to bind it fast and 
 as a sort of tripping stone. The large line is secured in a 
 similar manner as the small line, by a loop or bight tucked 
 under the turns. The stone is then lowered to the bottom 
 and the line paid out. As soon as the fisherman sees 
 enough pegs floating to warrant his pulling in the line he 
 gathers in the slack till he feels the weight of the stone,
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 145 
 
 when he gives a sudden jerk, which pulls out the bight and 
 loosens the tripping stone, which falls out and loosens the 
 big stone, which in turn becomes detached from the line, 
 which is then pulled in relieved of the weight of the 
 sinker. 
 
 " On my arrival at Skidegate, in the last of August, 1883, 
 I arranged with Mr. Andrew McGregor, one of the partners 
 in the Skidegate, to send some Indians to the west coast to 
 procure some black-cod. He sent four Indians, Scanayune, 
 Ske-at-lung, Ingow and Skatsgai, who all belong to the 
 Gold Harbor band on the west coast. I sent a sack of salt 
 with the Indians, with instructions to take out the gills, 
 remove the viscera without splitting the fish, and then fill 
 the cavity with salt, which was done, and the fish were 
 received in prime condition. On the 2d of September 
 Scanayune returned with twenty fine fish. A council was 
 now called to decide the best way to split them. There were 
 a number of eastern fishermen present, who were the crew 
 of the little steamer Skidegate, engaged in dog-fishing for 
 the oil works. Some were of the opinion that the fish should 
 be split in the back, like a salmon ; but I objected, as I 
 thought people would say they were the white-flesh dog- 
 salmon and be prejudiced, so I had them split and dressed 
 like cod, and well salted in a vat. But now my trouble com- 
 menced. I was of the opinion, as were all the others, that 
 the fish should be barreled like salmon ; but we had no bar- 
 rels or coopers, and the question was how to get them to 
 Victoria without rusting, for we all thought that so fat a 
 fish would rust like a mackerel or salmon. At last I recol- 
 lected how I had seen halibut treated when it was to be 
 smoked, and I decided on that plan. After the fish had 
 been in salt two weeks I rinsed them in the pickle they had 
 made, and piled them skin side up, put planks and heavy 
 stones on them, and so pressed out the pickle. After they 
 had been four days under this pressure I found them hard 
 and firm, and beautifully white. I then packed them in 
 boxes, which I made for the purpose, putting twenty fish in 
 each box and filling up with dry salt. My intention was to 
 repack them in Victoria and put them in barrels, but on 
 examining the boxes on my arrival I found the fish in such 
 fine condition that I was advised by experts of the Hudson's 
 Bay Company to send the fish forward just as they were ; 
 and so well satisfied were the officers of the company with 
 the plan I had adopted through necessity, that the chief 
 factor, William Charles, Esq., instructed the company's 
 agent at Massett, Mr. McKenzie, to procure all the black-
 
 146 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 cod he could get from the Indians, to cure them in every 
 respect as I had done, and to pack them in similar pack- 
 ages, as it was thought they would take better in the Lon- 
 don market. 
 
 " I tested the fresh fish in every manner I could think of. 
 I had the livers and we fried and found them delicious. The 
 females were full of eggs, which I found very small, about 
 the size of herring spawn. This was the first of September, 
 but I had no opportunity of ascertaining the spawning 
 season or their spawning ground. I tried the tongues, but 
 did not like them as well as cod-fish tongues, as they were 
 quite small. The fish does not make a good chowder, as it 
 is too fat ; the heads, however, after having been salted, we 
 found made excellent chowder. The best way in which 
 the fresh fish can be cooked is to broil it like fresh mackerel, 
 or roast it before the open fire like planked shad. After it 
 has been salted, as I salted those I put up, it should be 
 cooked by first soaking till the salt is well out, then simply 
 boiled and served with plain boiled potatoes. Made into 
 fish-balls it excels any fish I have eaten. On the 6th day of 
 October, 1883, I gave George Vienna, the fish dealer on 
 Government street, Victoria, one of the black-cod, which he 
 hung up in his stall for every one to examine. On the 18th 
 day of December I examined the same fish, which had been 
 exposed to the weather in the stall all the time, and it was 
 perfectly sweet. Mr. Vienna said it never would rust ; it 
 was too well salted. A gentleman of Victoria, who had 
 eaten of the black-cod heartily on several occasions, told 
 me that he is unable to eat either salt salmon or mackerel, 
 as the oil of these fish does not agree with his digestion, 
 but he experienced no such effect from eating the fat black- 
 cod, and mentioned the fact as something to be noticed. 
 
 " Now that the experiment of my method of dry-salting 
 the black-cod has proved a success by the encomiums passed 
 upon the excellence of that fish as tested by the experts of 
 the Boston Fish Bureau, who are undoubtedly some of the 
 best critics and judges of fish in the United States, I wish 
 to call attention to the economy of my method for the poor 
 settlers on our northwest coasts of Washington Territory 
 and Alaska. All that is required for outlay is the cost of 
 the salt for curing the fish, and the nails for making boxes, 
 which can be made from the white spruce which abounds 
 on the coast, from the Columbia River to Western Alaska. 
 This wood splits as easily as cedar, is perfectly sweet and 
 free from resin, as all the gum is contained in the thin ring 
 of sap-wood and bark. The inside is free from resin. This
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 147 
 
 will make the cheapest and best of boxes and save the 
 expense of coopers and barrels, and the fish being of full 
 size is better adapted for smoking than the same fish cut 
 and barreled. 
 
 " The Fishery for the Black-Cod. — A very important ques- 
 tion to be answered is : Will the black-cod be taken in suffi- 
 cient quantities to supply the demand which is likely to spring 
 up wherever their rare excellence is known ? I think that 
 at present the supply will be limited, as there are no fisher- 
 men on the North Pacific coast who have the appliances or 
 the experience in deep sea fishing as practiced at present on 
 the Atlantic coast. Our coast fisheries are exclusively con- 
 fined to salmon, which are taken in the rivers with nets and 
 seines. The very few cod and halibut brought to our 
 markets are taken with hand-lines and old-fashioned trawls, 
 but it is rare to find any fishermen working in more than 
 thirty fathoms of water. Our waters teem with fish, but as 
 yet, with the exception of salmon, no organized plan has 
 been tried for taking quantities of fish What we want are 
 Eastern fishermen with Eastern capital and Eastern methods of 
 taking fish. If such men would come out here they can 
 find plenty of black-cod, but they will be found in deep, 
 swift water, where at times it is pretty rough. But to a 
 ' Grand Banker' or a ' George's Banker ' our most turbu- 
 lent waters would be but a plaything. In order to develop 
 the fisheries of Puget Sound and the Alaskan waters there 
 should be some regular wholesale fish dealers established, 
 who would take every thing the fishermen would bring, and 
 find markets themselves. Our fishermen are too poor to 
 send their fish to a distant market ; but let a wholesale 
 dealer with capital establish himself, and he would find that 
 fish would be brought from all quarters, white men and 
 Indians working with a will to catch fish which would bring 
 them ready money. 
 
 " The best season of the year for taking black-cod is in 
 the spring, when the eulachon run up the inlets and streams 
 where they spawn ; the black-cod follow them, and can be 
 taken in quantities ; but I am informed by both Haidah and 
 Makah Indians that the black-cod can be taken in the deep 
 water at any season of the year when the weather will per- 
 mit fishing. There are undoubtedly certain seasons which 
 are better than others for taking this fish, but as yet no one 
 has made a study of their habits." 
 
 Herring swarm in the bays and inlets of Alaska during 
 the spawning season in the spring, but are not at that time 
 of as good quality as when taken in nets from their perma-
 
 148 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 nent banks and feeding grounds. The Indians catch great 
 quantities with poles and boards, armed with sharp nails at 
 an angle. These are thrust under the schools, which swim 
 about two feet deep, and the fish are gaffed out. The her- 
 ring spawn in salt water, and their favorite places are the 
 quiet bays along the shores, and there every kind of kelp 
 and seaweed is crusted with the spawn, and as the tide goes 
 down and one walks along the beach, every step crushes 
 myriads. I can not discover that they enter the fresh water 
 streams at all. The most careful investigation has failed to 
 discover their spawn attached to plants beyond the reach of 
 tide. The Indians do not collect the eggs deposited on the 
 seaweed, but plant at half-tide marks rows of branches of 
 cedar and balsam, which, in a tide or two, become covered 
 with spawn ; these are replaced by others, and hung up to 
 dry. The spawn is eaten dried, raw and cooked in various 
 ways, and is very palatable in either. These, however, are 
 somewhat smaller than those of Europe, though fully equal 
 in quality when taken in their prime. There is a factory on 
 Burrard inlet, near the Canadian Pacific railway terminus, 
 where herring oil is pressed out and fertilizers made from 
 the scraps. The success of the menhaden fishing in the 
 East should encourage herring fishing in the West. 
 
 Comparing my personal observations made at sundry 
 times and places, I find the range of the true cod, halibut, 
 salmon, sea trout and some other fish to be the same on both 
 sides of the continent. The cod range between the fiftieth 
 and sixtieth parallels of latitude. In the East the principal 
 food of the shore-cod is the caplin, and the fishermen not 
 only use caplin chiefly for bait, but they follow their move- 
 ments to ascertain the whereabouts of the cod. On the west 
 side (the Pacific) the oolachan, or the candle-fish, is the cor- 
 respondent of the caplin, and is almost identical with it. It 
 is smoked, salted and dried on the rocks in the same way, 
 and is largely used for food by the Indians, being very de- 
 licious, but it is much more oily and will burn like a candle. 
 Oolachan oil is considered superior to cod liver oil or any 
 other fish oil known. It is of a whitish tint, about the con- 
 sistency of thin lard, and is a staple article of barter between 
 the coast Indians and the interior tribes. The fish begin 
 running about the first of March, and swarm into the rivers 
 and estuaries by the million for several weeks, the waves of 
 each flood tide stranding them upon the beach in windrows a 
 yard wide and several inches deep. This period should be 
 the cod-fishing season, which is three months earlier than in 
 Labrador. They are caught in purse nets by the canoe load.
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 149 
 
 In the province of British Columbia, where the manufacture 
 of the oil is prosecuted to some extent, the fish are boiled in 
 water about four hours in five-barrel wooden tanks with iron 
 bottoms, and then strained through baskets, made from 
 willow roots, into red cedar boxes of about fifteen gallons 
 capacity each. When the run of fish is good, each tribe 
 will put up about twenty boxes of oil. 
 
 Sturgeon are said to exist in the interior, and if such be 
 the fact, which I can not vouch for of my own personal 
 knowledge, here is another opportunity for lucrative profit 
 to energetic operators, who can employ the Indians to cap- 
 ture them. Wherever sturgeon are found in Canada or the 
 United States, the catching of them is prosecuted with great 
 pecuniary advantage, for there is no part of this extraordi- 
 nary fish that can not be utilized, and in bulk they often 
 reach 150 pounds avoirdupois. Sturgeon have a wide dis- 
 tribution, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and 
 through many degrees of north and south latitude. They 
 are abundant in Fraser River, British Columbia, and in the 
 Peace River country much further north, whose waters 
 head in the same great divide or watershed which separates 
 the north-eastern tributaries of the Yukon ; and there seems 
 to be no physical reason why they should not exist in the 
 interior of Alaska. Indeed, I have an impression that 
 Lieutenant Schwatka mentions their being there. The 
 strongest evidence to the contrary is the fact that the Rus- 
 sians, who make such an extensive commodity of the stur- 
 geon and its products elsewhere, did not prosecute this 
 industry in Alaska. However, and whether or no, the 
 methods of catching sturgeon are so unique and the econo- 
 mic value of the fish so great, that I dare say a description 
 of them here will prove interesting to the reader, even 
 though the subject be not strictly Alaskan. In the first 
 place, sturgeon are caught in seines, pound-nets, and drift- 
 nets, during both winter and summer, and by hook and 
 line. In winter gill-nets are set by an ingenious system of 
 holes cut through the ice at equi-distant intervals, 
 through which they are thrust and located by means of long 
 poles with boat-hooks attached. The " pounds " used are 
 the common trap-net with lead, heart and pocket. When 
 drift-nets are used, they are handled from large fiat-boats, 
 and fishing is done only at night. In the morning the fish 
 are hauled to a floating platform on the shore, where the 
 heads, tails, entrails, backbone, and skin are removed, and 
 the two sides are packed in ice in large boxes for shipment, 
 to be sold for consumption while fresh, or for smoking else-
 
 i5° PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 where. Many fishermen inclose a space on the lake or 
 river shore in three or four feet depth of water, by making 
 a pen of piles or heavy stakes driven in the bottom. Here 
 they are kept after being caught and fed until wanted 
 for market. Numerous pens of this kind may be seen along 
 the Detroit River and Lakes St. Clair and Huron. The 
 American Angler, in describing the entire adaptability of 
 the whole body of this most economical fish says : — " The 
 meat of this fish is extremely nutritious, and when fat and 
 properly employed is nearly equal to veal in its sustaining 
 principles. When eaten from the young fish it highly 
 savors, and partakes chiefly of that enticing flavor so much 
 praised in the shad. Every part of the fish is utilized. 
 The meat is often labeled salmon, and is often mistaken for 
 the meat of that fish. The cartilaginous bones make a 
 highly valued isinglass, and the stomach gives a most per- 
 fect, clear, and adhesive glue. The residue is used as 
 manure, and by the farmers is considered equal to that of 
 sheep. The process of smoking is quite simple. After 
 being cleaned the meat, which has no bones, like other 
 fish, is cut into strips from one-half pound to two and three 
 pounds weight, put into brine ten or twelve hours for cur- 
 ing, hung up a short time to dry and then finished with the 
 smoke of hickory or some hard wood for ten or twelve 
 hours, when it is ready for boxing and shipment. The next 
 largest industry connected with the sturgeon is the manu- 
 facture and exportation of " caviar." This is nothing else 
 than the roe or eggs of the female which, it is said, some- 
 times equal one-third the weight of the fish. Generally the 
 yield of the lake sturgeon is one and two gallons. These 
 are taken in hand by experts, who manipulate them by sev- 
 eral washings through sieves, with water strongly impreg- 
 nated with the purest salt, obtained usually from Russia or 
 Germany, until every shred and vestige of flesh and impurity 
 is removed. The " caviar " is then treated to a certain 
 seasoning of ingredients, known only to the initiated and 
 carefully guarded from public ken, and put up in water- 
 tight casks holding from 115 to 125 lbs., well headed to 
 exclude the air. It is then ready for market and bears an 
 average of twelve cents per pound, wholesale. In retail 
 shops it sells at twenty-five and thirty cents, and is put up 
 in small cans, one-half to two and three pounds in size. It 
 would be difficult to give the tonnage of " caviar " that is 
 prepared on the lakes and finds its way largely to New 
 York and Boston, and probably in still larger amounts to 
 Europe, and principally Russia and Germany. One dealer
 
 COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 151 
 
 gives his annual trade at 400 kegs, say 60,000 lbs.; 4,000 
 kegs of caviar were received at the single port of Hamburg, 
 Germany, from the middle of June, 1885, to the middle of 
 November, from the United States. The eggs are quite 
 small and dark colored, entirely salty in taste, and without 
 a superior as an appetizer. For table use caviar is seasoned 
 with onions, pepper, and such condiments as are palatable 
 to the eater, and spread in its raw state upon bread and 
 eaten with it, much as butter is. It is a highly popular dish 
 among the Russians, who make it in its perfection, and is 
 to them what Limburger cheese is to the Dutch. But the 
 American people are gradually bringing their taste up to 
 the Russian delicacy, as they are also fast bringing it up to 
 the Frenchman's frog. The taste has to be educated to 
 enjoy its gustatory flavor. It seems to have been known 
 in Shakespeare's time. He makes Hamlet say : ' For 
 the play, I remember, pleased not the million. 'Twas 
 caviar to the general,' from which it would seem not 
 to have been a universal favorite. The value of the 
 sturgeon is still further enhanced by its large air bladder 
 or sound. When taken from the fish it is split open, thor- 
 oughly cleansed and prepared by men who understand the 
 business. When dry it is the isinglass of commerce, and 
 sells usually at $1.50 per pound. The bladders are bought 
 by the fishermen at five and six cents each. A considerable 
 quantity is made in Detroit yearly. The sturgeon is 
 one of the most oily of the finny tribe, and when put through 
 the usual process yields a large percentage of oil, which is 
 said to make a very good lubricating oil, and is also pre- 
 ferred for greasing and softening harness." 
 
 The Indians who dwell along the great Sascatchewan 
 River in the British Northwest Territory, spear sturgeon 
 in the river pockets just below shoals, where they resort to 
 gather up whatever floats down stream and settles, just as 
 all the tribes of suckers do ; and for this purpose they have 
 an ingenious harpoon whose head comes out of the shaft 
 whenever a fish is struck and fastened, but which is pre- 
 vented from being carried off or lost by a free line which 
 attaches it to the staff or handle. In roily or turbid waters 
 where the fish can not be seen, they use a long pole, at the 
 end of which are fastened, loosely, several large hooks, the 
 shanks of which are tied to the pole with sinew or strong 
 marline. The red man feels for the fish with his pole, 
 and knowing by long practice when he has touched a fish 
 he gives a strong pull backward, which sinks the sharp 
 hook through the tough skin and deep into the flesh. The
 
 152 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 fish struggles and the hooks loosen from the pole, but are 
 held fast by the line. Then it is only a question of strength 
 to get the lethargic fellows out of the water, with may be a 
 hearty wrestle on the bank to keep them out. 
 
 In Alaska, flounders, anchovies, and sole are found in 
 large numbers, but quite unlike the fishes called by the 
 same names on the Atlantic ( coast. The sole is especially 
 different from his celebrated European namesake. Dogfish 
 and sculpins are not esteemed as edible fish, although they 
 are very numerous and great nuisances to those who fish 
 with hook and line. One kind of dogfish is beautifully 
 spotted, and one of the sculpins (Hemilcpidotus trachartd) 
 looks very much like a rutabaga turnip covered with warts, 
 with a slit clear across the big end for a mouth. He is so 
 ugly that old fishermen torture him just for his ugliness. 
 
 There are two kinds of coral found on the coast, and 
 also sponges of fine texture, not round like the recognized 
 sponges of commerce, but palmated with digital divisions, 
 which might be made useful for many purposes. The sea 
 cucumber is abundant also. When cured and dried it 
 makes the article of commerce known as the beche de la mer, 
 highly prized in China for food, where it is called "trepang." 
 A valuable industry might be built up by preparing this 
 commodity for market. Indeed there are lots of economi- 
 cal natural products in this new and unprospected region 
 which might reasonably prompt mercantile effort if atten- 
 tion were only called to them. 
 
 The immunity of the North Pacific ocean from the inter- 
 mittent storms which devastate the Atlantic, makes most 
 favorable comparison in its behalf as a field for commercial 
 fisheries and a cruising ground for fishing vessels. Cyclones 
 are seldom heard of there, while on the Labrador coast and 
 the gulf of St. Lawrence alone, no less than three hundred 
 vessels and twelve hundred lives have been lost in storms 
 during the past twenty-five years. Besides this considera- 
 tion, the scarcity of fish in Eastern waters within the past 
 few years is making the fisheries a precarious business. 
 Let the disappointed fisherman of the Atlantic coast mi- 
 grate to Alaska ! The fishing seasons are different there, 
 and not subject to interruptions of drifting ice in the 
 spring and rough weather in the fall ; and there is no dan- 
 ger of starvation, even if the fisheries should fail. I see no 
 reason why the banks and littoral waters of the Alaskan 
 Pacific may not swarm with fleets of fishing vessels as 
 well as those of Newfoundland and Labrador. The an- 
 nual fish catch of Alaska is already worth $8,000,000.
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. 
 
 As regards the anadromous and inland fresh water fish of 
 Alaska, there are the salmon and the sea trout, the lake 
 trout, at least two kinds of brook trout, pike, grayling, and 
 a very superior whitefish. Silver salmon begin to arrive in 
 March, or early in April, and last until the end of June. 
 They generally weigh from four to twenty-five pounds, but 
 sometimes reach seventy. The second kind are caught 
 from June to August, and are considered the finest. The 
 average size is only five or six pounds. The third, coming 
 in August, average seven pounds, and are an excellent fish. 
 The humpback appears every second year, remaining from 
 August until winter, and weighs from six to fourteen pounds. 
 The hookbill arrives in September, and remains till winter, 
 its weight ranging from twelve to forty-five pounds. There 
 are several other varieties of salmon, not all strictly edible, 
 of which the most numerous is the dog salmon, eaten only 
 by the Indians. The rainbow trout, 6". iridea, and the cut- 
 throat trout, which is especially distinguished by the crimson 
 slashes under its gills, are found in many streams and also in 
 the lakes. A larger lake trout, of the Dolly Varden type (S. 
 Afalmd), with red spots as large as a pea, is found in the 
 lakes on the small islands, as well as the mainland. The sea 
 trout, identical with the Canadian sea trout, and spotted in 
 the same way with blue and crimson spots, much like the 
 Eastern brook trout, makes its appearance at stated inter- 
 vals like its Atlantic brothers, and ascends the rivers to 
 spawn. All kinds of trout take bait and fly. The sea trout 
 takes the trolling spoon readily in the bays. It is found all 
 the way from Victoria, B. C, northward to Bering Strait, 
 and in the Arctic seas replaces the salmon, which is not 
 found there at all. Its north and south range on the west 
 coast corresponds very nearly with its range on the Eastern 
 coast. It winters in the lakes which connect with salt 
 water, and runs down the streams in the spring. The indi- 
 genous fish of the streams are the Salmo iridea, but there are 
 many streams in Alaska which are bare of all fish except in 
 the early summer and fall, and then these self-same sea trout,
 
 154 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 migratory and anadromous, run up their channels to spawn, 
 just as they do in the Canadian Atlantic. 
 
 For other varieties of trout than this, Indian River and 
 Saw Mill Creek, near Sitka, the Lake Loring outlet at Naha 
 Bay, and other streams, afford good rod-fishing. Sport 
 with the artificial fly is by no means as satisfying as it is in 
 the East, or even in Oregon and Washington Territory, al- 
 though at certain times it is fair. It may be said that, 
 owing to the condition of water as affected by the melting 
 snows in spring, and the subsequent superabundance of 
 salmon roe with which every crevice is crammed after those 
 fish begin to spawn, even bait-fishing can hardly be en- 
 joyed except at certain periods. No fly will tempt the trout, 
 nothing in fact but a chunk of nasty sticky spawn, which 
 they will approach leisurely and feed on as daintily as a 
 full fed kitten on a bit of meat. You must sink your 
 weighted hook to the bottom, and keep up a series of little 
 jerks as though you were bobbing for eels, and by and by 
 you strike one ; once hooked they are quite gamy. 
 
 The Salmo iridea is found here both in the lakes and 
 streams, but there is another trout which differs much in 
 appearance from varieties which I am familiar with. A spec- 
 imen ten inches long, called "mountain trout " by the In- 
 dians, had a body covered with black spots, from one-six- 
 teenth to one-eighth inch in diameter. These extend con- 
 siderably below the medial line and cover the tail and the 
 dorsal fins ; the second dorsal is adipose, but slightly less 
 so than that of a fontinalis, having a slight show of mem- 
 brane on which there are four spots. The ventral and anal 
 fins are yellowish in center, bordered with red, the tail is 
 square, the belly a dull white. 
 
 That the spawning seasons of families of fish similar to 
 those of the Atlantic should be different on the Pacific, is 
 easily accounted for by the warmer temperature of the 
 water. It would seem that the laws of heat and cold have 
 the same effect upon fish as they do upon vegetation, order- 
 ing the seasons accordingly ; and the spawning of fish, like 
 the budding of trees, may be advanced or retarded by mild 
 or inclement weather ; stated visitations of pelagic or anad- 
 romous fish may be postponed or even prevented by cold 
 weather ; but the Pacific is less subject to these vicissi- 
 tudes than the Atlantic. 
 
 In Alaska there are few sandy beaches or gravelly shores. 
 The margins of the mainlands and islands drop plump into 
 many fathoms of water, so that the tide never goes out — it 
 merely recedes, and when it is lowest it exposes the rank
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. i55 
 
 yellow and green weeds which cling to the damp crags and 
 slippery masses of rock, and the mussels and barnacles 
 which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. In 
 some places there are little bights, a few yards wide, between 
 the rocks, where there is a sort of beach formed entirely of 
 comminuted shells ; and one can pick up cockles, round 
 hard-shell clams and abelones by the peck — clams of all 
 sizes, some large and tough, and some small and very sweet. 
 Exceptionally there are areas of mud, where the gigantic 
 geoduck, a soft-shell clam which sometimes weighs 8 lbs., 
 vegetates in oozy retirement a foot beneath the surface, 
 squirting aloft its tremendous jets, four feet high, whenever 
 a passing foot chances to disturb its shellfish privacy, and 
 there are also flats near the mouths of rivers which, on gala 
 days when the festive clam luxuriates, seem to be filled 
 with miniature fountains, squirting. As for the luscious and 
 toothsome oyster, the abrupt conformation of the coast, with 
 its rocky shores and almost fathomless waters, explains why 
 there are none. I can not learn that any person has ever 
 seen a native Alaskan oyster ; but there are a good many 
 beds further south, in British Columbia, and I have eaten 
 lots of the bivalves with genuine gusto. However, along 
 side of a regulation " Saddle-rock" they look insignificant, 
 inasmuch as seven stewed oysters go to the teaspoonful, by 
 actual count ! 
 
 To me it is a great pleasure to see what the ebb-tide un- 
 covers, and to watch the career of the counter currents as 
 they surge to and fro in the narrow channels betwixt sunken 
 rocks — visible now at low water, and eloquent with the dan- 
 gers of Peril strait or Seymour rapids — which are invisible 
 when the flood is full. At flood or slack water the surface 
 is as placid as the moon, but whenever the tide turns and 
 the ebb or flood begins, it is strange to observe the tide-rips 
 in what seems to be an interior land-locked lake. If one 
 were to unexpectedly behold a surging commotion in the 
 placid basins of the Adirondacks, he would scarcely be 
 more startled. It is hard to grapple with the phenomenon. 
 Immediately on the flood, all the trash and floating trees, 
 chunks of ice, dead fish, loose seaweed, and what not, which 
 have been floating about on the slack, begin to set in with 
 the tide ; giant kelps with stems 20 fathoms long and broad 
 streamers spreading in all directions and half under water, 
 like the hair of a drowned woman, lift their weird forms as 
 they drift by ; jelly-fish and medusas, almost translucent, 
 with delicate tints of pearl, lavender, mauve, and brown, 
 come in countless myriads, contracting and expanding like
 
 i5 6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 a living pulse, and with streaming filaments like threads of 
 glass steadfastly follow the inexorable stream of fate, as if 
 striving to overtake the lead ; schools of herring and small 
 fish of all sorts swarm in all directions, skurrying onward and 
 fretting the surface like flaws of wind ; and last of all, pre- 
 datory and with fell intent, follow the whales and porpoises 
 and thresher sharks, tumbling, sporting, diving and feasting 
 with appetites never cloyed by repletion. Here and there 
 along the shore, where some little bight makes into the 
 land, herds of seals bob up serenely out of the water and 
 gaze with large and solemn eyes. All the atmosphere is 
 filled with the softened light of a summer haze, and the air 
 aloft and roundabout is noisy with the scream of gulls and 
 terns quartering the azure fields on the wings of the warm 
 southwest winds. This is a summer picture of Alaska. 
 
 As I stroll along the seething shore, with all the bowlders 
 and crags slippery and rank with a pervading odor from the 
 uncovered repository of the sea, peering into clefts and 
 crannies, opening out rough snarls of seaweed with my 
 crooked stick, and lifting pendulous draperies of soggy kelp, 
 uncouth creatures with horny claws and bristling spines 
 stare at me with glassy eyes, clinging defiantly to the place 
 of their exposure. If I poke at them, they rise up on edge 
 and snap and dart and pinch the stick. Some pettishly 
 withdraw, spitting spiteful jets of acrimony, while others 
 attach themselves by insidious discs or suckers which no 
 small force or shrewd device is able to unloose. The Spirit 
 of Evil clings not more tenaciously to human nature. If it 
 had been my hand, nothing but shreds of flesh and blood 
 would satisfy the grudge. With their protecting element, 
 the sea, withdrawn, they are practically hors du combat, yet 
 repellant. When the tide comes in, they will be aggressive 
 enough. It is not a nice place for a bath. Here are giant 
 crabs. Close by, moving inexplicably over the rocks, 
 there seems a pewter wash-basin, bottom up, dingy with use, 
 but turn it over, and we find it filled with a tangle of legs, 
 sprawling and kicking ; and it has a handle a foot long, 
 three-sided like a bayonet, serrated on the edges. It is a 
 horseshoe crab, more horrid than hurtful. All over the 
 sodden premises, scattered among the party-colored kelp and 
 seaweeds, are conchs, abelones, periwinkles, and spirals, 
 with their protruding tenants gasping for the beneficent 
 moisture of the tardy tide. Touch them ever so gently, and 
 some will pull in their heads, and some thrust them out 
 further. They have a bland, innocuous look, yet if one of 
 them once shuts down its valve on a presumptuous hand,
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. 157 
 
 the creature will hold its grip until the tide comes in and 
 drowns the man, for some of them are glued fast to the 
 rocks so that no ordinary means will pry them off. In soft 
 places sand-lances burrow deeply, leaving only their tails 
 out ; and fiddler-crabs and craw-fish have burrows into 
 which they dart when frightened. In some pockets of 
 standing water left by the ebb, we will sometimes see a clam 
 or scallop suddenly lift himself from the belittered bottom 
 and go, by little convulsive jerks, to another place a few feet 
 off. Yes, the object which seemed so helpless and inani- 
 mate, almost like a stone, will actually rise up and swim. 
 By opening and shutting his valves quickly, he inspires and 
 expels the water from the membrane which joins the two, 
 in such a way that he can propel himself through the water 
 clear of the ground. I suppose he knows why he wishes to 
 change his position, but how can he tell when and where to 
 go with his shell shut ? or does he take the chances, happy- 
 go-lucky, where he may land ? 
 
 One can not always tell for certain which are sentient liv- 
 ing creatures, and which are inorganic and inanimate. Here, 
 for instance, is a cluster of tubes like hollow stalks or reeds 
 cut off six inches above the ground and filled with water. 
 Keep quiet for awhile, and blossoms of exquisite purple will 
 begin to protrude from every one, and finally mature into a 
 perfect bloom. It is like magic so to see things grow apace ! 
 We think they are natural flowers, but they are only sense- 
 less and slimy mollusks, capital for fish-bait and agreeable 
 for the table, and the purple fringes are their gills. So also 
 one picks up rough substances like bits of rock, and lo ! they 
 are coral insects in their cases soft and juicy ; or we find on 
 strings of sea-weed little bulbs like berries, which perchance 
 are eggs of fishes. In wet caves, arched and smoothed by 
 churning waves, starfish of many patterns pave the bottom 
 like cobblestones — starfish of five, eight, ten, eighteen and 
 twenty-two fingers or points, and of bright crimson, green, 
 purple, pink, dark-red, yellow, drab and gray hues, and all 
 the crabs and prawns left by the ebb climb and skip over 
 their motionless bodies, seldom provoking them to stir the 
 least bit out of position. On the piles of all the wharves, 
 and wherever there are sunken logs or trees, anemones of 
 pink and purest white grow in clusters shaped like lilies, 
 only more mysteriously beautiful in their composite char- 
 acter and blending of animal and vegetable forms. And 
 there are many kinds of the repulsive octopus, with deca- 
 pods and cephalopods and all the tribes of sepia and cuttle- 
 fish, growing sometimes to gigantic sizes ; creatures such as
 
 158 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 we used to think were mere fictions of gross fable, but are 
 terrible realities, though seldom seen. And yet the little 
 ones, only a few inches long, perhaps have all the villainous 
 attributes of their superior kin — malicious eyes aflame, and 
 yearning tentacles, which seem to shrink while momentarily 
 alert to fling out their inexorable clasp upon the wrist or 
 arm. And there are ink-fish, which in their natural element 
 eject a liquid cloud to befog their pursuers or blind their 
 victims — double-dyed scamps, who advance backward by 
 jerks, and look one way when they are going the opposite. 
 And on every landwash, when the tide is out, are stranded 
 jelly-fish, limp and flabby, which blister where they touch 
 the flesh, and beautiful medusae with stings like nettles, and 
 great black sea-spiders, ugly but harmless, and shark's eggs 
 which look like leather wallets. How strange the marvels 
 which the ebbing tide reveals ! 
 
 Outside, along the shore, are large areas of amber-colored 
 kelp, with intervals of open space, where there is splendid 
 trolling with a spoon for a fish of the genus Sebastichthys 
 (S. melanops) locally known as " kelp-fish " and " black sea- 
 bass "; but they are not bass at all, although somewhat like 
 the Microptertis of the East. Their play on the rod and line 
 is not so vigorous, but upon the whole they answer very 
 well as substitutes for the favorite game-fish of our eastern 
 inland waters. Fishing for them after this method is better 
 sport than hauling up their deep-sea kindred hand over 
 hand, from hidden depths so many fathoms down that they 
 come to the top drowned dead, with their eye-balls out of 
 the sockets, and their air-bladders reversed and protruding 
 from their gaping mouths. There are seven species of 
 Chiridce, the largest of which — the " kultus cod " — reaches 
 sixty pounds' weight. Indians troll for them with a strip of 
 halibut belly-skin wound on a single hook. In such hours 
 of pastime, life afloat is enlivened by watching the bird-life 
 along shore — the enormous flocks of fish-crows which hang 
 around the islands and visit chosen places regularly to per- 
 form their ablutions and await the ebbing tide ; the solitary 
 sand-pipers which run about the rocks, and the wisps of 
 beach-birds which continually flit from cove to cove ; the 
 black brant, which also have their stated feeding-places on 
 the tidal flats, breeding here on the inshore lakes ; the bald 
 eagles and ospreys, which sit in stately watch on the tallest 
 firs or hover above the water spaces ; the big horned owls 
 in the secluded shadows ; and the few little song birds 
 which venture to lift their voices in this wilderness. Of the 
 avifauna of Alaska the sea-fowl constitute by far the largest
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. 159 
 
 proportion, breeding on the rocks along the shore in count- 
 less numbers, but other species find the coast too warm, and 
 so prefer the wooded districts and moss ''tundras " which 
 lie between the Yukon and the Arctic Ocean. Of such are 
 the snow goose, the white fronted goose, the painted goose 
 or wavy, the blue brant, and a majority of the ducks found 
 on the coast in the seasons of their northward and south- 
 ward migrations, among which may be included mergansers, 
 harlequins, brown ducks, widgeon, sprig-tails, surf-ducks, 
 canvas-backs, golden-eyes, oldwives, scoters, grebes, 
 shufflers, butter-balls, scaups, and lesser-scaups, all of which 
 remain in the vicinity of Sitka all winter, and fly north to 
 their nesting-places early in March. Canada geese and 
 mallards breed about the mountain lakes around Sitka. 
 Green-winged teal and blue-winged teal winter further south. 
 They are the first to come and the first to go in the fall. 
 Puffins, guilemots, coots, sea-pigeons, shags, terns, petrels, 
 hagden, and gulls are found in the south of Alaska, but they 
 all breed further north. There is a fine showing of beach 
 birds for variety, the list including golden-plover, upland- 
 plover, Wilson snipe, gray snipe, semi-palmated snipe, least 
 sand-piper^ Baird's sand-piper, jack curlew, black-bellied 
 sand-piper, ring-necks, and a rare kind of four-toed plover, 
 some of which are found in immense congregations, so that 
 fifty brace to a gun is no bag to mention. The flights of 
 wild fowl from North Alaska follow the coast down to San 
 Francisco and below, where they are so numerous that 
 farmers pay men to shoot them off their wheat fields. Those 
 which tarry or remain on the Alaskan coast afford great 
 sport among the islands in the narrow channels where the 
 kelp grows upon which they feed. Landing on the side 
 opposite to where they are feeding, parties send the boat to 
 stir them up, and the gunners, who have taken position, 
 shoot them as they rise through the openings between the 
 islands. 
 
 Alaska is without doubt a fascinating field for the nat- 
 uralist, as well as the fisherman, and also for summer vag- 
 abondizing. I venture to say that in the near future it 
 will become a favorite cruizing ground for steam yachts. 
 Perhaps the American Canoe Association will like to make 
 a trip to its land-locked waters in summers, and remain a 
 month between steamers. 
 
 If they should happen upon some of those inlets, into 
 which the salmon crowd, and where there is no presence of 
 man to disturb, they will not fail to discover the bears fish- 
 ing. It is not even sport to bruin, for the fish get jammed
 
 160 'PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 in so they can hardly move, and the bears have only to 
 "scoop" them with their paws, and fill their bellies to 
 satiety, after which, in berry time, they may take to the 
 woods for their dessert. In some localities, close to the 
 towns and villages, the bear-paths are plenty, and worn 
 quite smooth, and I have been fooled more than once by 
 following them to a terminus too abrupt to be pleasant. 
 During the month of August the mosquitoes and flies are so 
 blood-thirsty and persistent in the timber as to drive not 
 only the deer, but the bears themselves to high altitudes. 
 It is said that carcasses of dead bears have been found, 
 that have manifestly perished by starvation, having been 
 first blinded by the flies so that they could not forage. 
 Once, in the province of New Brunswick, I remember to 
 have seen a tame moose blinded in this way so that he was 
 unable to find his way home, and only a timely rescue saved 
 his life. In September the snow on the mountains drives 
 the deer (black-tails) down to the water, and they swim con- 
 stantly from the mainland to the islands, many of which are 
 interspersed with grassy flats, where good grazing is found. 
 They are then easily captured in transitu, often in pairs. 
 Bears also are caught in the same way, the one on board 
 the regular mail steamer having been picked up en voyage. 
 Deer shooting was once fine about Wrangell, and some of 
 the mission boys there once brought in forty as the result 
 of a five days' hunt. A saddle of venison was then sold 
 for a dollar. But it is different now. 
 
 The impenetrable jungle of the Alaskan forest, with its 
 windfalls of timber and profusion of berries and succulent 
 mosses, constitutes both a nursery and a protection for its 
 fauna. It is a veritable paradise for bears, whom neither 
 dogs nor men can reach, except at the very season when they 
 " hole in " for the winter. The boldest and most practiced 
 Indian is afraid to go into the woods for game, for fear of 
 bears. There are bears enough in Alaska — grizzly,cinnamon, 
 and black — to furnish every man on the Pacific with a cap 
 and overcoat, and leave breeding stock enough for next year's 
 supply. Besides, there is a small albino bear found on the 
 coast, which is known as the coast bear. Being white, and 
 a good deal about the ice in winter, some have supposed it 
 to be a variety of polar bear, but the zoologists dispute it. 
 
 Blue grouse, ruffed grouse, spruce grouse, and ptarmigan 
 are very abundant, but hard to shoot, and difficult to gather 
 when shot, by reason of the forest jungle. I have heard 
 from those who are familiar with them, their descriptions of 
 the grand scenery among the mountains, where crags and
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. 161 
 
 rocky peaks were alternated with deep canons in which were 
 located many beautiful lakes, fed by everlasting brooks, 
 which found their origin in great glaciers and immense 
 banks of perpetual snow; of lofty barren plateaus, where, 
 on the bare rocks, ptarmigan were in profusion and of 
 sky-parlors high above the timber line, where the mountain 
 goats and sheep make their aerial home; but, as I have 
 never reached the higher altitudes, and my own experience 
 in mountain-climbing has been chiefly confined to beaten 
 trails, I feel privileged to copy from one of Capt. Beard- 
 slee's letters the record of a characteristic trip accomplished 
 by himself when he had his " land tacks " in proper trim ; 
 and so I quote : 
 
 " Three-quarters of an hour carried us up a height of 
 one thousand feet and a distance of three-quarters of a 
 mile ; but we found, before the trip was finished, that three- 
 quarters of an hour was, in some cases, a very moderate 
 amount of time in which to advance a quarter of the dis- 
 tance. When at each step the perpendicular gain is twenty, 
 and the horizontal about three, inches, a mile is a long 
 journey. The trail wound its way through a dense forest 
 of great hemlocks and spruce trees, with a few yellow cedar. 
 Many of the former were of such dimensions that a spot in 
 the Adirondacks, so well covered, would, for its " bark " or 
 " counts," prove very valuable. When we reached Bald 
 Mountain, we had traveled three miles, and had ascended 
 over three thousand feet. 
 
 After the first sharp rise of a thousand feet, we had but 
 little ascent for a long distance, the trail leading along a 
 sharp ridge, or " hog-back," which, on each side, was flanked 
 by deep ravines, way down in whose depths we could hear 
 the rushing of waterfalls, and - occasionally the click of the 
 miners' picks, for they are prospecting in all directions ; but 
 we could see nothing, for a dense fog filled the ravine and 
 hid from us the grand mountain scenery which at this part 
 of our journey we knew still towered above us. An 
 occasional momentary clearing away of a small bit of the 
 curtain gave us provoking and tantalizing peeps, but for an 
 instant. Once a glacier, not far from us, cast loose from its 
 moorings and went crashing down with thunderous noise. 
 We were far above the timber ; our trail was no trail, for 
 we trod on the primitive rock ; but there was no danger of 
 our getting off from it, for it we could see, and nothing 
 else. Before we had got out of the timber my siwash gave 
 a low whistle and stopped. As I joined him he pointed to 
 " chicken," and then, not forty feet away, I saw my first
 
 1 62 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 ptarmigan. There were four, and they ran behind a bus! 
 of low hemlock, or ground pine. I advanced slowly, read) 
 to take them as they rose ; but they wouldn't rise, and 
 dodged in and around that clump like a woodpecker around 
 a tree. So at last, satisfying the sportsman part of my con- 
 science by resolving to aim only at their heads, I let go at a 
 couple, who were in line, and killed them, the other falling 
 to my friend's shot, as he rose at last. The birds were 
 simply beautiful ; their backs and tail feathers were like 
 those of our ruffed grouse ; their wings and breasts pure 
 white. 
 
 There seems to be two varieties of this bird. Those found 
 at this level are as I have described ; higher up they are 
 nearly snow white, with black tail feathers bordered with 
 white, and the dark feathers of the back, instead of as with 
 those found lower down, being brown grouse-colored and 
 predominating, are nearly black, and simply amount to spots, 
 for each dark feather is surrounded with white. They may 
 be the same bird, at different stages of transformation. 
 They weigh about a pound each (six averaged fifteen and 
 one-half ounces, the heaviest weighing eighteen), and are 
 very delicious, especially at this season, when their food is 
 almost altogether huckleberries ; later they feed on spruce 
 and other bitter food, and their flavor suffers. They are 
 very tender. No. 7 shot were very killing, and it was 
 impossible to preserve a good specimen. The feathers 
 came out in handsful, as they were gathered, and our dog's 
 mouth looked as though he had the hydrophobia, so 
 thoroughly blood-and-feathered was it. In skinning, the 
 skin tore like wet blotting-paper, and an attempt to carry 
 one by the leg involved a fracture of the same, if held at any 
 angle. They are full-blooded, bleed a great deal, and, I 
 should judge, very hot-blooded, for they spread themselves 
 in great flocks on the surface of the snow patches, with 
 wings extended, as hens when dusting themselves. They 
 have a peculiar call, a grating sound, which often betrayed 
 to us their vicinity when the fog was too dense for us to see 
 them. As we got above the snow we could get a view of a 
 portion of the banks nearest to us, and saw on it many 
 birds, but we soon learned that it was mere slaughter to 
 shoot them, or any flying over, for they would go sliding 
 and plunging into the abyss below, and our siwashes could 
 not be persuaded to trust themselves on to the snow, for 
 they feared the starting of the glacier. 
 
 " We arrived at the summit of this part of the mountains 
 f.t about 4:30, and it was clear erough for us to obtain a
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. 165 
 
 splendid view of Bald Mountain Peak, a few hundred feet 
 above us, and at our feet, a thousand feet below, two beau- 
 tiful lakes on terraces, connected by a stream, near which 
 we saw the cabins of the Witch miners, their arastra and 
 their mine some hundred feet up the opposite wall of the 
 canon. The second day the fog had turned into rain, but 
 we were as determined as the youth who "bore, mid snow 
 and ice," etc., and determined to go on and up, for beyond 
 and above us were ledges and birds well worth going for." 
 
 A recital of the remainder of the ascent would be chiefly 
 a repetition, but clambering among the rocks is far less 
 severe than tracking through the woods. There are those 
 who make it a business to hunt the wild goats in these 
 rough and almost inaccessible regions, and the number of 
 these animals killed must be very considerable to supply 
 the quantity of wool used in making the native blankets 
 and the horns for the manufacture of the many utensils and 
 ornaments in common use. Their pelts handsomely dressed, 
 are employed as floor rugs and bedding, and of late 
 many entire specimens as well as heads, have been stuffed 
 and mounted for museums and private collections. Until 
 comparatively recent years, very little accurate knowledge 
 of the habits of the mountain goat was possessed even by 
 well informed naturalists. It was often confounded with 
 the bighorn sheep, or when referred to, assumed to be 
 identical with it. At present, however, little remains to 
 discover, and it is, moreover, believed that in Alaska there 
 are not only one but two distinct species. The maximum 
 of the larger variety is fully 150 pounds. Its range is 
 from Montana to the extreme limit of the Alaskan chains, 
 though specimens are said to have been met with as far 
 south as northern Colorado. These goats are still in con- 
 siderable numbers in Washington Territory, no less than 
 six of them having been shot on Mt. Ranier by a single 
 party in the summer of 1884. In British Columbia they 
 are abundant, even in the southern portion. I have before 
 me the photographed result, taken in camp, of a single 
 day's shoot, on the Coast Range in the district of New 
 Westminster, which shows six goats to three guns, besides 
 three black bears and one grizzly. It is a long-bodied, 
 humpbacked animal, standing fully thirty inches high, not 
 at all like the domestic sheep in shape or fleece, with very 
 long hair, except on the face and legs, which is underlaid by 
 a fine, soft, thick wool, the whole coat being of a snow- 
 white color. The chin is ornamented with a beard-like tuft 
 of long hair, as in the common goat. The horns are six
 
 1 66 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 to eight inches long, awl-shaped, ringed at the base and 
 bending slightly backward. These, like the hoofs, are 
 shining black, like polished ebony, and for ^handles of 
 spoons, forks, etc., make beautiful ornaments when skillfully 
 carved. Notwithstanding its name, this animal is regarded 
 as an antelope by naturalists, and not a goat at all. Its 
 true home is among the loftiest peaks of the snow-clad 
 mountains, above timber line, where no vegetation grows 
 save mosses, lichens and a few alpine shrubs and grasses. 
 I have met those who liked the flavor of its meat when 
 young, but generally it is not esteemed. It is usually killed 
 by a method of hunting known as stalking, and the regula- 
 tion outfit of a native would be a belted shirt of squirrel- 
 skin, a grotesque head-dress made of fur, close seal-skin 
 bootees laced half way to the knee, old-time spears to serve 
 as alpen-stocks, bows and arrows, raw-hide ropes and Hud- 
 son Bay rifles. Up on the ridges back of Mt. St. Elias, 
 which constitute a favorite hunting-ground for goats, is 
 found a bear similar to the " roach-back " or "silver-tip" 
 of the Rockies, but of a beautiful bluish under-color, with 
 the tips of the long hairs silvery white. The traders call it 
 " St. Elias silver bear." 
 
 The range of the bighorn sheep extends much further 
 60uth than the goats, even to the mountains of Arizona on 
 the south, as well as to the sphagnous barrens of the 
 north. Its habitat is by no means confined to high 
 altitudes, much less summits, though it is restricted to 
 rough regions. It delights in table-lands and dry mesas, 
 not so much for the precarious pickings of their scant 
 vegetation as for the outlook they afford against sur- 
 prises from enemies. Up to six years ago it was not 
 unusual to shoot them on the Yellowstone river-bluffs from 
 decks of passing steamers, the land back of the bluffs 
 *Deing broken, but by no means mountainous. Stalking the 
 mountain sheep is extremely delicate work, requiring much 
 finesse, but as game the animal may be regarded more 
 valuable than the goat, since it affords not only pelt 
 and fleece, but estimable mutton and horns of much 
 value for dishes and sundry domestic utensils. Not nearly 
 so many of these are killed as goats in Alaska ; indeed the 
 latter are undoubtedly far the most numerous of the two. 
 Alaska seems to be the ultimate preserve of their breed, 
 which it will be a pity to exterminate without an effort at 
 domestication. The sheep is much the larger animal, 
 reaching upward of 200 pounds in weight. It has been 
 aptly described as having the head of a sheep and the body
 
 FUR, FISH AND GAME. i6j 
 
 of a deer. The horns of the male are marvelously 
 immense, curving backward and outward until they form a 
 circle whose circumference may reach three feet. Such a 
 horn would measure six inches in diameter at the base, and 
 make a dish which, when split, steamed, spread and shaped, 
 would measure almost a foot in width, with length to suit. 
 The horns are often badly splintered as the result of fight- 
 ing, but not from pitching headlong over precipices, accord- 
 ing to hunters' fables. The female horn is much smaller and 
 nearly erect, with very little backward curve, a fact which will 
 readily account for their being confounded with mountain 
 goats by inexperienced persons who perhaps never saw them 
 except at a distance. The color, however, should readily dis- 
 tinguish the two, as the sheep in summer area wood-brown, 
 and often darker, while in winter they are never pure white 
 like the goats. The legs and belly, however, and a portion 
 of the buttocks are white. In spring the old rams are a 
 dingy white. Outwardly the coat is stiff and wire-haired, 
 not half the length of the goat's, but it is underlaid by a 
 fine, thick wool. Successful hunters stalk them in the 
 early morning when they are feeding low down, after first 
 having climbed convenient heights to reconnoiter. When 
 a herd is discovered, the most cautious, patient and wily 
 hunter, who takes a judicious advantage of such inequali- 
 ties of the land as favor his approaching unobserved, will 
 bring in the most meat. At noon the sheep retire to the 
 sky-parlors for rumination and siestas. 
 
 Since the mining rush began in 1892, moose and cari- 
 boo have furnished most of the fresh meat for the eastern 
 camps and reindeer for the northwest. Hunting for big 
 game for sport has been much in vogue in southeastern 
 Alaska, and animals of immense size have been shot, moose 
 weighing 1,400 pounds and bears twelve feet long. Some 
 antlers had a spread of over six feet. Apprehending ex- 
 termination, a stringent game law has been formulated. 
 [See Appendix A.] The headwaters of the Kuskokwim 
 is now the principal big game region, about four hundred 
 miles square. Propagation of reindeer under government 
 auspices in northwestern Alaska provides for the eco- 
 nomic needs of that section. There are about 16,000 of 
 them now. The breeding of blue foxes for their hides, 
 which fetch from $35 to $75 a pelt in London and St. 
 Petersburg, is practiced on forty or more islands along 
 the coast, and a good many natives own blue fox ranches 
 on a small scale. A complete first-class ranche costs about 
 $15,000. The fur business in Alaska is looking up.
 
 THE GLACIER FIELDS. 
 
 The excursion steamers which make their weekly trips 
 from Seattle, Wash., to Sitka and beyond, cruise along- two 
 thousand miles of Alaskan coast. No fewer than six large 
 glaciers can be seen, including the Davidson, Sundown, 
 Brady, Patterson, Taku, and Muir. The foot of the Brady 
 glacier, in Taylor Bay, is estimated to be from four to six 
 miles wide. It has not been visited much and no measure- 
 ments have been made ; but on a clear day not only it and 
 its well defined moraine, but the magnificent Fairweather 
 group of mountains, sixteen thousand feet high, with La 
 Perouse and Crillon, in which so many glaciers take their 
 rise, are all in full view. A more magnificent sight is rarely 
 seen, and those who have had opportunities in Europe say 
 that there is nothing to compare with it there, certainly in 
 purely glacial scenery. The Muir and Davidson glaciers 
 are spurs or outflows of the same ice-field, which has an 
 unbroken expanse of four hundred miles — large enough to 
 lie over the whole domain of Switzerland. The Muir is the 
 ultimate objective point of sight-seers, who, by the time they 
 have become accustomed to the unfamiliar blending of 
 Mediterranean with Alpine scenery so exclusively charac- 
 teristic of the North Pacific coast, are partially prepared for 
 the astounding revelation which presently awaits them at 
 the head of Glacier Bay. This bay is about one hundred 
 and twenty miles north-east of Sitka, and lies in latitude 
 fifty-nine degrees and twenty minutes. It is, therefore, the 
 most northern point reached on the regular trips of the 
 excursion steamers. Sitka has yet to be visited, but 
 that polyglot settlement lies south. It occupies a secondary 
 place in the anticipations of those whose conceptions of a 
 glacier have been inspired by visions or readings of the 
 Matterhorn or Rhone. Briefly this whole region is full of 
 glaciers, although under the fervid sun of July it would 
 seem as if every thing in the shape of ice and snow would 
 speedily melt. 
 
 Until a comparatively recent period, glacial dynamics 
 have remained to a certain extent a matter of theory. The
 
 THE GLACIER FIELDS. 169 
 
 birth of an iceberg is said to be a phenomenon unknown in 
 Europe. On that continent the glacial force is almost spent, 
 and he who would witness the mighty outcome of its latent 
 power must seek it on the confines of the New World. He 
 will not find it in the fastnesses of Switzerland. There the 
 once overwhelming accumulations of snow, which filled the 
 mountain valleys to the level of their topmost peaks, no 
 longer supply the glacial streams with material for bergs. 
 The ice-fields have dwindled to insignificant areas, and 
 their discharge is, for the most part, fluvial, though much of 
 their bulk is dissipated by evaporation or absorption into 
 the warm earth of the lower altitudes. But in Greenland, 
 which has recently been investigated by sundry explorers, 
 the ice-fields are found to cover the country like a pall for 
 two thousand five hundred miles from Cape Farewell to 
 the furthest discovered point, and their breadth is not fully 
 determined. Out of the almost interminable waste of frigid 
 desolation pours the great glacier Sermitsialik, with a width 
 of from two to four miles, completely occupying the valley 
 out of which it debouches to the depth of two thousand feet 
 or more. It is only one of hundreds of similar frozen rivers, 
 all of which, as far as is known, are pigmies beside the great 
 Humboldt glacier discovered by Dr. Kane at the head of 
 Smith Sound. This is sixty miles in width, with inclosing 
 walls of rock a thousand feet high. Its front abuts the sea, 
 and is washed by the waves like any other coast line. 
 
 From these Titanic sources of perpetual supply are 
 emitted those stupendous icebergs which fill the north 
 Atlantic from June to August to such an extent that dozens 
 can be counted from the masthead within the scope of view. 
 The dimensions of some of them are incredible. I have 
 seen one off the coast of Labrador which was estimated to 
 be two miles long and three hundred feet high ; and this 
 great mass was sloughed off entire from the Humboldt sea 
 wall with one tremendous cleavage. From the Muir I have 
 seen the like cleavage occur. Such mountains of ice are 
 perpetually falling all along the line, with an intermittent 
 crash and roar like the tumult of a tempest. The din of the 
 great commotion can be heard for miles ; and even after 
 they are adrift in the warmer currents of more southern 
 latitudes where they melt and diminish by the sea's ero- 
 sion, they are constantly turning over and over in the ef- 
 fort to keep their balance, and the noise and commotion of 
 the heaving waters is heard for distances of miles. The 
 Eskimos, it is told by the Danish explorers, regard all 
 this as the work of evil spirits, and believe that to look
 
 170 
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 upon these agonizing throes is death ; so, while they were 
 innocently observing their phenomena through their 
 glasses, the timid natives, usually circumspect enough, 
 roughly ordered them to turn their backs ! 
 
 The glaciers of the North Pacific are much smaller than 
 those of Greenland, but the Muir, before the earthquake, 
 was three miles long, with a perpendicular face of four 
 hundred feet, stretching like a frozen waterfall or gigan- 
 tic dam entirely across the head of the bay. Its breast was 
 as blue as turquoise. At a distance it look like a fillet rent 
 from the azure sky and laid across the brow of the cliff. 
 When the full blaze of the south-western sun lights up its 
 opalescence, it gleams like the gates of the celestial city. I 
 suppose that an iceberg of no insignificant size is sloughed 
 off from some portion of its sea wall as often as once in 
 five minutes, but these detachments seldom represent more 
 than a limited section, and most of them break up into 
 comparatively small fragments before they are fairly 
 launched on their seaward journey. It is an axiom that 
 mechanical forces are best comprehended by their prod- 
 ucts ; so that no one can begin to realize what a stupendous 
 factor a glacier is until he sees the measure of its infinite 
 power thus made supremely manifest. Visitors are told 
 that glaciers move at the rate of so many feet or inches 
 daily. Ocular evidence may be obtained by fixed land- 
 marks, which indicate a stated progression. From the size 
 and frequency of the cleavages here it would seem that the 
 progress of the Muir must be several rods a day, though 
 an estimate can only be approximated, as there is no true 
 alignment, and the center moves faster than the sides. 
 
 Long before the steamer reaches the entrance of Glacier 
 Bay straggling lumps of ice appear, dazzling white, and 
 resting like blocks of marble on the polished sea, which is 
 scarcely moved by an imperceptible swell pulsating through 
 the Sound. The sun is warm and grateful, and the sky 
 without a cloud, excepting those which stretch like filmy 
 gauze from peak to peak, the temperature perhaps 60 de- 
 grees in the shade. Half of the passengers have never 
 seen an ice-cake, and they are eager with excitement to get 
 nearer the polar videttes which are drifting by, away off 
 under the land. The course of the vessel bears gradually 
 toward the headland at the entrance, and the lumps of ice 
 become more numerous. Bevies of ladies rush to the taff- 
 rail as one of them passes close under the counter. Pres- 
 ently a passing promontory opens out a large iceberg of 
 fantastic shape, and then another, tall and stately, with
 
 THE GLACIER FIELDS. 171 
 
 turrets like a castle. Sea gulls, hagden and shags hover 
 about their gleaming walls like snow-flakes in the air, or 
 sit in solemn ranks upon the battlements. Objects change 
 positions constantly, and countermarch across the field of 
 view. Fancies dissolve before they are formed. Reflections 
 from the land appear in darksome shades across the water, 
 and from the looming icebergs in tremulous semblances, 
 ghost-like and pallid. The scenic effects, at once so mag- 
 ical and duplicated everywhere, grow momentarily more 
 weird. 
 
 Meantime, the steamer slacks her headway, slows down, 
 and presently with a sullen thud, lies alongside a small 
 berg, whose rounded apex peers up over the deadeyes into 
 the head of the companionway, looking for all the world as 
 if it was going to come aboard. All the curious ladies pipe 
 a combination scream, and make for the door of the cap- 
 tain's stateroom. Then the quarter boat is swung out of 
 the davits and lowered away ; and the steward and the 
 mate and the sailors tackle the glistening harlequin with 
 pikes and axes, and, after much chopping and maneuvering 
 with bights and bowlines, contrive to split off a big lump, 
 and hoist it inboard with a sling. This supply is for the 
 ice-chest. How pure, and cold, and beautiful, and trans- 
 parent it is ! How precious to passengers who have been 
 for two days stinted, and to the steward whose meat was 
 likely to spoil ! The chunks cut off seem colorless, but the 
 central core of the berg itself glows like a great blue eye, 
 sentient and expressive, with that sort of poetical light 
 termed " spirtuelle." You never tire of gazing into the 
 translucent depths of the glacier ice, whose radiance emu- 
 lates the blue and green of beryl, turquoise, chrysoprase and 
 emerald. You gaze into them as into the arcana of the 
 empyrean, with some vague awe of their mysterious source, 
 and the intangible causes which gave them birth. And 
 the grand icebergs ! — so cold, yet so majestic ; so solid, yet 
 so unsubstantial ; so massive, yet so ethereal ! — whose bas- 
 tions are mighty enough to shiver an onset, and yet so vola- 
 tile that the warmth of wooing spring will dissipate them 
 into vapor. Children of the Arctic frost, conceived in the 
 upper air, inspired by the effulgent sun, and molded in 
 the bowels of intensest congelation : the human mind can 
 not contemplate them without a sympathetic inspiration, for 
 their duplex entity is so like our combination of soul and 
 body ! 
 
 Who will tell me what paints the ice-bergs, and gives the 
 sky its blue; colors the depths of the ocean, and imparts to
 
 1 72 'PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 Niagara its hues of intensest green ? Behind an intelligi- 
 ble explanation lies the revelation which all men wish to 
 know. Let us wait. 
 
 A stiff breeze was blowing as we entered Glacier Bay, 
 and the breath came bitterly cold from off the ice field. 
 The bay was filled with floating bergs and floes, and the 
 temperature dropped quite rapidly to 46 degrees. The 
 ruffled surface of the water assumed that peculiar tinge of 
 cold steel-gray which landscapes wear in winter. The at- 
 mosphere put on a sympathetic hue and grew perceptibly 
 denser. Snow covered all the peaks, and the me r de glace 
 spread out before us like a great white apron on the lap of 
 the mountain. It is fourteen miles from the entrance to 
 the head of the bay, and over the entire landscape nature 
 seemed dead. Not a living thing appeared — not a gull on 
 the wing, nor a seal in the gloomy fiords. Desolation 
 reigned throughout, for there was nothing to sustain life. 
 The creation was all new, and the glacier was still at work 
 gradually preparing it for the abode of organic life. Dark- 
 ness only was needed to relegate us to the primordium of 
 chaos. But the sun was bright on the distant peaks, which 
 inclosed the bay on all sides, and their intangible, ghostly 
 outlines, scarcely distinguished from the fleecy clouds 
 about them, seemed indefinitely beyond the convex line 
 of earth. Seldom are mundane gloom and supernal glory 
 contrasted by such startling juxtaposition. 
 
 As the steamer neared the glacier, speculations began 
 respecting the height of its perpendicular front, but no one 
 guessed higher than the vessel's topmast. It was only 
 when she lay anchored in ninety fathoms of water, close 
 under the ice, and not a quarter of a mile from shore, that 
 spectators began to conceive the magnitude of the glacier 
 and all its surroundings. The glacier wall overhung us 
 with its mighty majesty, three times the height of the 
 steamer's mast, or more, and we seemed none too far away 
 to escape the constantly cleaving masses which dropped 
 from its face with deafening detonations. The foam 
 which gathered from the impetus of the plunges surged up- 
 ward fully two-thirds of the height of the cliff, and the 
 resulting swell tossed the large steamer like a toy, and 
 rolled up in breakers of surf upon the beach. The vessel 
 was in actual danger from the fragments of ice which occa- 
 sionally thumped against her sides. Indeed, her wheels were 
 afterward badly mashed in making her way out of the bay 
 into open water. A paddle-wheel steamer is unfit for such 
 navigation.
 
 THE GLACIER FIELDS. 1 73 
 
 The glacier wall is by no means smooth, but is seamed 
 and riven in every part by clefts and fissures. It is hol- 
 lowed into caverns and grottoes, hung with massive stalac- 
 tites, and fashioned into pinnacles and domes. Every sec- 
 tion and configuration has its heart of translucent blue or 
 green, interlaced or bordered by fretted frost-work of 
 intensest white; so that the appearance is at all times 
 gnome-like and supernatural. No portion of the wall ever 
 seems to pitch forward all at once in a sheer fall from top 
 to bottom, but sections split off from the buttresses, or 
 drop from midway, or the top. The apparent slowness of 
 their descent is sublimity itself, because it carries with it 
 the measure of its stupendous vastness and inappreciable 
 height. 
 
 Impressions of magnitude and majesty, I opine, are not 
 conveyed so much by any relative standard of comparison 
 as by the degree with which we come within the range of 
 their power or influence. One must realize before he can 
 appreciate, and he can not realize fully until he becomes to 
 a certain extent a participator. Proximity shudders arid 
 trembles at what remoteness and impunity view with dis- 
 passionate equanimity. I can not conceive how any one 
 can sit close by and contemplate without emotion the stu- 
 pendous throes which give birth to the icebergs, attended 
 with detonations like explosions of artillery, and reverber- 
 ations of thunder across the sky, and the mighty wreckage 
 which follows each convulsion. Nevertheless, I have seen 
 a lady loll with complaisance in her steamer chair, com- 
 fortably wrapped from the chilly air, and observe the 
 astounding scene with the same languid contemplation that 
 she would discuss her social fixtures and appointments. 
 Zounds ! I believe that such a human negation would 
 calmly view the wreck of worlds, and hear the crack of 
 doom at the final rendering, if it did not affect " her set." 
 She could watch at a suitable distance the agonies of 
 Christian martyrs; the carnage of great battles ; the sweep 
 of cyclones; and diluvial submergence. Dynamite would 
 not appall her — but to me it would be the acme of satis- 
 faction, ineffably supreme, to startle such clods of in- 
 anition by a cry of " mouse," and electrify them into a 
 momentary emotion. No vinaigrette would ever mitigate 
 the shock. 
 
 I say, one can not estimate the magnitude of these glacial 
 phenomena by contiguous objects, because they are all un- 
 familiar. The steamer itself, although considerable in size, 
 seems like an atom. As for the rest, the fragments of ice
 
 174 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 which are seen stranded along the beach, looking no larger 
 than blocks, measure twelve feet high. Those lumps drift- 
 ing past yonder fiord are icebergs higher than our topmast. 
 The other side of the bay which, we imagine, one could swim 
 across with ease, is five miles off. The ice ledge itself is 
 four hundred feet high. The peaks in the distance, forty 
 miles away, are sixteen thousand feet above the level of the 
 sea. There is the Devil's Thumb, looking no higher than 
 the Washington Monument, a sheer monolith six thousand 
 feet high, with faces almost perpendicular. The timber 
 line around the feet of the distant ranges resembles a cinc- 
 ture of moss. 
 
 From a pinnacle of elevation overlooking the Muir ice 
 field, which is obtained by an arduous half day's climb, 
 although some expected to accomplish it in an hour, one can 
 count no less than fifteen tributary glacial streams, any one 
 of which is as large as the great Rhone glacier. 
 
 Drawn from the inexhaustible but annually diminishing 
 accumulations of snow which fill the mountain valleys to a 
 d*pth of at least 2,000 feet, these separate streams of plastic 
 congelation unite like the strands of a rope to form the 
 irresistible current of the Muir. The surface of the glacier 
 is not uniformly level and smooth like a boulevard. It has 
 its drifts and dykes, its cascades, riffs, and rapids, like any 
 unfrozen river. In the immediate front, and extending a 
 mile or more back, its whole surface is the most rugged 
 formation imaginable. It is utterly impossible for any 
 living creature to traverse it, being in fact a compacted 
 aggregation of wedge-shaped and rounded cones of solid ice, 
 capped by discolored and disintegrating snow. But away 
 back in the mountain passes it is easily traversed with sledges 
 or snow shoes. Indians cross the divide at sundry places 
 all along the coast from the Stickeen to Copper River. 
 
 Looking afar off into the blank perspective the icy re-en- 
 forcements which pour out of the mountain fastnesses like 
 gathering clans seem compacted into indefinable fleecy 
 masses, while in the immediate van they pass in review in 
 serried phalanxes of cowled and hooded monks twenty feet 
 tall, wrapped in dirty toques and capuchins, snow powdered, 
 and bedraggled, and pressing forward with never-ceasing 
 march, as if all the life-long denizens of the Gothard and 
 St. Bernard had set out at once to temper their frigid tongues 
 in the tepid waters which are warmed by the Kuro-Siwo. 
 In other places, where the mer-de-glace is level like a plain, 
 its surface is seamed with deep crevasses and slashed with 
 rifts and chasms whose sides and walls deep down for sixty
 
 THE GLACIER FIELDS. 175 
 
 feet are dazzling blue. Thus the incipient bergs are split 
 and carved and chiseled and prepared for their final segre- 
 gation, so that they will break off easily when they reach 
 the front. 
 
 Meantime the sub-glacial river which is flowing under- 
 neath buoys up the ice and floats it to the sea. It is esti- 
 mated, by soundings made as near as vessels dare approach, 
 that it is fully eight hundred feet deep. The water flows 
 beneath the glacier, just as it does under the deposit of a 
 snow-laden roof, forming icicles at the eaves. To this 
 mighty channel, between its flanking slopes of rock, the 
 glacier is at last restricted. Evidences are abundant that it 
 is continually receding. They are scored high up on the 
 abutting rocks by the adamantine ice. They are attested by 
 the stranded debris of the lateral moraines, and recorded 
 in the written narratives of Vancouver, who speaks of his 
 inability to enter this bay in 1793, which is now navigable 
 fourteen miles inland. Once the ice-field was level with 
 the distant mountain tops ; now it has settled, with melting 
 and thaw, until the peaks are far above the surface. The 
 annual accumulations are dissolving and diminishing faster 
 than they can be replenished, and centuries hence snow will 
 no longer be perpetual in the valleys. The warm hills will 
 throw off their useless mantle, and nothing will remain of 
 the Muir glacier except a goodly stream and some tribu- 
 tary rills leaping with a musical cadence from the vernal 
 melting among the peaks. The deep and cavernous gully 
 which now retains the sub-glacial outflow of the ice-field 
 will become an estuary of the ocean, and the legend of the 
 Muir will be illustrated in parti-colored tapestry lining the 
 verdant slopes and meadows with flowers and foliage. Per- 
 haps some goodly village will nestle at the terminal moraine, 
 as it now does in the Matterhorh among the Alps. Then all 
 the soil deposited in the valleys and upon the hillsides will tell 
 us of the wear and tear which even now is grinding down 
 the mountains, of the denudation, pulverizing, leveling, and 
 filling up of which the glacier has been the potent agent 
 since the world began. 
 
 Glaciers always carry on their frozen tide great bowlders 
 and masses of stones and rock wrenched from the mountain 
 sides, just as rivers carry logs and drift. Whatever is not 
 deposited along its course is carried out to sea by the ice- 
 bergs to strew the ocean bottom, precisely as we find them 
 on our Western plains, where they were deposited when the 
 salt waves covered their unlimited expanse. 
 
 Some of the lateral moraines (as the dry beds of spent
 
 176 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 glacial outlets are termed) are still underlaid by an ice 
 stratum 200 feet thick, which became detached from the 
 main body of the glacier many decades since. It will take 
 a half century to melt it. Clambering over these is no 
 child's play. Visitors should be prepared with waterproof 
 anglers' wading trowsers and alpen-stocks and hob-nail 
 shoes, leaving all top coats and superlluous wraps where 
 they can be resumed after the jaunt is finished. Rubber 
 shoes or boots are liable to be torn to shreds. There are 
 spots, looking like solid earth, which often prove to be mud- 
 holes of uncertain depth. Bowlders are everywhere — 
 bowlders, ice, and slimy silt, or till, and nothing else. Bot- 
 tomless crevasses head you off at every turn. To land dry- 
 shod from the boats is not easy, on account of the surf. 
 
 Altogether, it is astonishing what a minimum of distance 
 or altitude one can accomplish with a maximum of clamber- 
 ing and perspiration, even with the chill wind blowing fresh ; 
 for every object sought is at least five times the distance 
 guessed at, and the road is hard, indeed, to travel. Never- 
 theless, the ladies are generally foremost, and old Swiss 
 explorers will distance all the rest. 
 
 It is a consolation and a comfort, when on the apex of 
 the moraine, with the polar desolation all around, and every 
 resource of succor or deliverance clean cut off, to look far 
 down upon the little object which is our only hope — the 
 steamer, which seems an atom more than ever — and know 
 that although the bay be filled with floes, there is open water 
 and safety and genial climate just beyond, and that 
 no hopeless Arctic winters intervene. By some trivial 
 accident, possible enough, a party of excursionists might be 
 left in a situation almost as hopeless as the hapless sufferers 
 of the Lena. The perils are precisely the same, modified 
 only by the relative accessibility of succor, and therefore too 
 much stress can not be laid upon the stanchness of the ves- 
 sels sent into the ice. 
 
 Years ago the citizens of St. Paul built winter ice-pal- 
 aces, all illuminated with electric lights, and all the heav- 
 enly planets lent their aid to make resplendent. At night 
 when the full moon shone upon its crystal walls and battle- 
 ments, and their translucence was reflected, it looked more 
 like an ethereal creation than one of substance. It was 
 stately in its magnificence and overwhelming in its super- 
 natural majesty. But what shall compare with the Muir 
 glacier when the moonlight is upon it, and all the phosphor- 
 escence of the Pacific Ocean beats in billows of liquid flame 
 against its toppling, crumbling walls ? When lunar rainbows
 
 THE GLACIER FIELDS. 177 
 
 are tossed in air against the mounting columns of foam 
 that are shivered into spray by the plunging mountains of 
 ice ? In the everlasting tumult, and whirl, and crash of 
 explosions which seem to split the glacier itself from front 
 to mountain source, when nothing at all takes definite shape 
 upon the ghostly 'nterchange of lights and shades, one can 
 imagine only the revels of chaos and the scroll rolled back 
 to the genesis of creation. 
 
 But these are reminiscences. What of the Muir to- 
 day? Eh bienl In September, 1899, it was wrecked by 
 a stupendous earthquake, with Mount St. Elias as a 
 center, which shook up 4,000 square miles of the western 
 territory, shattering the glacier front and setting it back 
 a mile, exposing the stumps and trunks of an ancient for- 
 est which was growing before the ice sheet formed! It 
 was not a pleasant experience for any chance visitor. 
 Rev. Sheldon Jackson, who was at Yakutat at the time, 
 wrote : 
 
 "The first shock was experienced on Sunday, Septem- 
 ber 5. During the following five hours there were fifty-two 
 distinct shocks, culminating at 3 p. m. in a shock so se- 
 vere that people of Yakutat were hurled violently across 
 their room, or, if outside, they were thrown to the 
 ground again and again. Gaining the hills and looking 
 seaward, they saw a great tidal wave, thirty feet high, 
 approaching with the speed of a race horse, that would 
 engulf their village and sweep away their homes. Be- 
 fore the shore was reached the earth opened in the bot- 
 tom of the harbor, and into this chasm the tidal wave 
 spent its force, and around it the sea swirled like a great 
 maelstrom. This saved the village from destruction." 
 
 A special correspondent of the Scientific American 
 who was sent to the field wrote: "Many well-known 
 islands have been swallowed up and others risen in their 
 places. Landmarks well defined and known to every nav- 
 igator of the coast have disappeared, and every glacier 
 from Juneau and vicinity, including all those known to 
 tourists in Glacier Bay and elsewhere, have suffered 
 mutilation. Volcanoes are reported to have been seen in 
 ranges where they were never before observed. Along the 
 coast near St. Elias the upheaval was accompanied by 
 huge and devastating waterspouts, while enormous tidal 
 waves rushed in from the sea. Great rocks fell from 
 the sides of the mountains and crashed into the valleys 
 below. The earth moved with awful velocity and undu- 
 lation, shaking mountains from their bases and prostrate 
 
 inrr +V-if> V>iicrf» -fr>rf>cf trppc nrllioVi rrwrprcr] tlipir clnnpc I
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT.* 
 
 It is a " great day" for sleepy Sitka when the steamer 
 comes up to her wharf and makes fast. The whole town 
 rubs its eyes and turns out. 
 
 Ever since the previous sailing day, when the last box of 
 freight was leisurely trundled into the warehouse, it has 
 been supremely quiet. There has been absoltuely nothing 
 to do. The government vessels are off on duty ; the miners 
 away at the diggings ; the fishing season over ; half the ten- 
 ements vacant ; no entries nor clearance at the custom house ; 
 the governor is sticking type in his printing office ; and the 
 attorneys are matching kopecks to see who shall win the 
 next case. Down at the Indian " ranch " the dogs are dozing 
 in the sun ; occasionally a Siwash will stroll to the beach, 
 and straighten out the mats which cover his canoe ; a few of 
 the mission boys at the far end of the village come in to 
 visit their low-down relations ; groups of ravens are picking 
 offal out of the landwash ; a few cows graze on the parade ; 
 the black balls of the signal office anemometer scarcely turn 
 in the wind. 
 
 Meanwhile the melting snow from the mountains trickles 
 unceasingly into the sea, and the process of decay eats into 
 the solid timbers of the old houses vacated by the Russians ; 
 the rickety wharf all deserted, steams in the humid atmos- 
 phere, and the teredos bore insidiously into the piles below 
 the water line. 
 
 The last time the steamer made fast to the dock, her stern- 
 line pulled off a section of the worm-eaten piling, and the 
 splash woke up a couple of Siwashes who had been dozing 
 against the side of the warehouse ever since the trip 
 before. 
 
 But " steamer day" is an event. Then everything is dif- 
 ferent. The stars and stripes are run up from the marine 
 barracks and customhouse ; all the public offices are open ; 
 the marshal is on the qui vive, and the attorneys have two 
 pens behind each ear ; the war vessel comes into port ; the 
 governor shaves and cleans up to receive his guests ; tawdry 
 klootchmen open up their basket-work, berries and curios
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 179 
 
 at eligible stands ; and the distracted post-master is "just 
 too busy for any thing ; " even the cows on the parade are 
 too curious to graze for looking at the stir. 
 
 As soon as the brass gun of the expected vessel booms 
 among the islands of the bay, the wharf is crowded. There 
 are just 300 white people in town, and that is enough to 
 make a crowd. If the wharf should give way, it would en- 
 gulf the whole population — Siwashes excepted. There are 
 no drays nor omnibuses nor wagons to be seen, for there are 
 none in town, and only one horse to draw them ; no hotel 
 runners, for there are no hotels ; no loud voiced newsboys, 
 for there is but one paper in the place, and the editor is too 
 modest to have it hawked under his nose ; no boot-blacks, 
 no policemen, no peanut-vendors, no little flower-girls, no 
 any thing that one might expect to see at the chief com- 
 mercial port of one of the biggest territories in the world.* 
 A few impatient passengers get ashore before the gang- 
 plank is laid, and perhaps ten minutes later the entire com- 
 plement of sightseers is scattered about the town. Into the 
 Graeco-Russian church with its green-painted minaret and 
 dome ; into the museum of the marine barracks where there is 
 a collection of native curios which makes collectors envious ; 
 up to the " castle " on an eminence, which was once the 
 pretentious residence of the governors ; out to the Indian 
 " ranch " along the shore front, and to the Indian mission on 
 the curve of the beach, in the opposite direction ; up to the 
 queer looking cemeteries on the ridge, white and native ; 
 and to the old block-houses and the stockade, and trading 
 stores, the public offices and the photograph gallery. In- 
 deed there is " lots " to see in Sitka, and one can remain 
 over one steamer and spend a month most agreeably, ex- 
 tending his observations to the environs, and for miles 
 around. Miners and toughs who come by every steamer, 
 camp out in gipsy fashion, or roll up in their blankets in 
 some of the vacant rooms in the barn-like dilapidated gov- 
 ernment buildings, but fair boarding places can be found 
 by sojourners after a little inquiry. At the stores one can 
 buy almost any thing which is to be found at Victoria or 
 Portland. Washing is done by the Russian families. There 
 is no physician in the place except the naval surgeon, and 
 
 *This cursory sketch of the lull which followed the cession of 
 Alaska to the United States by the Russians, written in 1885, 
 will be referred to in future history when the "Arctic Provinces" 
 will have been subdivided into four States, each humming with 
 a remunerative business activity, beside which that of a majority 
 of the older States as heard to-day will be but a faint buzz,
 
 i8o PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 it occurs to the author that a fine opportunity is offered 
 for a worthy disciple of /Esculapius to establish himself in a 
 good business at Sitka, as the native Alaskans need the 
 services of a physician to an alarming extent. 
 
 During the twenty-four hours which the steamer is re- 
 quired by contract to remain in port, although she frequent- 
 ly stays two days, all the elite of the town — the " leading 
 ladies," the Creoles, the pure blood Russians, and the better 
 Klootchmen, crowd aboard to see their metropolitan sisters, 
 and inspect the latest fashions ; the merchants and officials 
 obtain their mail matter and invoices ; the naval officers " see 
 the boys " and receive their magazines and newspapers ; 
 if there is any fresh beef or fruit to spare, it is immediately 
 bespoken. Meanwhile the busy Siwashes on the dock are 
 unremittingly trundling freight, and small knots of privi- 
 leged rustics wander all over the ship and inspect her fittings 
 and machinery. Sometimes there is opportunity to make 
 side excursions to points of interest, in respect to which the 
 blue jackets are of essential service, as they have a steam 
 launch and light boats and are always hospitable. Festivi- 
 ties, too, are in order, and invitations are issued for a 
 " grand ball " at the castle, sans ccremonie, toilets at discre- 
 tion. The invitations are general, for the shore community 
 is not large enough to cut up into castes. If it were crit- 
 ically culled there wouldn't be waltzers enough to go round, 
 for the American population, all told, is but sixty. So 
 the floor is sifted over with spermaceti shavings, and an old 
 brass relic of a Russian chandelier is filled with candles and 
 hung up, while a couple of marines or waiters from the mail 
 steamer do excellent duty as musicians with banjo and ac- 
 cordeon. Slips and mishaps never mar such an occasion — 
 never; they embellish it. " Select your Klootchmen! " and 
 " swing your Siwash! " fill up the measure of shuffling feet, 
 and the ball succeeds until the antiquated dust of all the 
 Romanoffs is stirred. 'Twas ever thus in the ancient days, 
 I'm told ; for even then, no crucial distinctions could be 
 made if the necessary components of a ball would be forth- 
 coming. But alas! not a vestige of the old glory remains 
 to illuminate the dark bare walls. Desolation reigns through- 
 out the empty halls, and the wind whistles mournfully 
 through dozens of broken panes. Not a tenant holds the 
 venerable places in the castle except the U. S. signal man 
 aloft who keeps his lonely vigils in the cupola on the roof. 
 Up there, in the government sky parlor, the faithful 
 chronicler of the storms clings to his weather-beaten post. 
 Nothing moves him. Politics may change, civil service
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. i»i 
 
 reform may fail, silver coinage be repealed, or the rookery 
 itself collapse and fall! Whatever may betide, blow hot, blow 
 cold, whichever way the vane may turn, the four little cups 
 on the top of his tripod go round and round in the unremit- 
 ting whirligig of time. 
 
 In Sitka and northward, revelers, owls, and such, find 
 small indulgence for orgies claimed for hours of darkness, 
 for the sun is bright at 3 o'clock A.M., and he goes home 
 early who goes " when daylight doth appear." In the longest 
 days there is no interval of night so dark that all the stars 
 are seen. Only the brightest of the planets outvie the 
 twilight. So, long before the " wee sma' hours do come " 
 the candles have burned down in their sockets, and the 
 dancers in the castle repair to the parade for an Indian 
 performance on the grass ; or sometimes there is a wedding 
 in the church. Once in a while the fire company turns out 
 for review, 48 men strong, with hose-cart, fire engine, and 
 tin buckets improvised from oil cans. 
 
 I doubt if there is a more enchanting site in the world 
 than Sitka's. It has been compared with Naples ; but 
 Naples, though serenely sweet, is not so massive, nor near so 
 grand. In the varied combination of its picturesque envi- 
 ronment Sitka is both placid and stupendous, benignant and 
 majestic, alluring and severe. It entices while it warns. It 
 gathers its beautiful brood of verdant islets into its arms 
 and folds them tenderly to its bosom, while momentarily it 
 frowns in awful majesty from the beetling heights above. 
 Behind is a battlement of snow-clad mountains. Volcanic 
 peaks flank the range at either end — Edgecumbe and Vos- 
 tovia — lifted high against the firmament of blue, and welted 
 with great red ridges of hardened lava which radiate from 
 their pure white tops — the contrast of colors showing aloft 
 with striking effect. Edgecumbe, the nearest peak, some 
 fifteen miles away, but seeming close at hand, is nearly 
 3,500 feet above the sea level, but looks as if it were part 
 of a 5,000-feet peak which had been sliced off. This trun- 
 cated apex is a crater, said by those who have visited it to 
 be 2,000 feet in diameter by 200 feet deep. 
 
 The town of Sitka, most picturesque herself, though dingy, 
 occupies the incurve of the crescent-shaped level, cuddling 
 like a trustful child between the knees of the great giants, 
 with her attendant satellites ranged in view among the 
 glancing waves, some cultivated as gardens or used as 
 pastures, and others natural gems of rock with verdure 
 clad. And all her lap is filled with wealth of evergreens, 
 back to the very bases of the mountains ; sparkling streams
 
 1 82 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 course through them ; and giant firs whose feet rest in the 
 shadows of the valleys, lift their tremendous spires high 
 into the sunlight of the upper air. The atmosphere is soft, 
 like Italy's, suffused with pink and yellow laid on blue, and 
 whenever the tall truncated cones catch the hues of sunset, 
 the lava of their ice-crowned tops glows red hot ! Right 
 in the harbor of Sitka is Japonskoi (Japanese) Island, 
 where government pastures cattle. Eighty years ago a 
 Japanese junk, drifting on the Kuro-Siwo from its native 
 moorings, crossed the sea and rested there — a waif from 
 Asia, to suggest to intellects obtuse the explanation of 
 ethnical possibilities not at all mysterious or unaccountable. 
 It is stated that the sympathetic Russians kindly cared for 
 the castaway survivors of that dreadful drift and returned 
 them to their country, as witnesses of a long-vexed problem 
 solved. Some ten miles from town is Silver Bay, with a 
 trout stream and a superb waterfall, which is often visited 
 by excursionists who go in boats towed by a steam launch 
 which tail out behind in a most exhilarating way. Indeed 
 a steam launch of light draft, is indispensable to pleasure or 
 business in those parts. Six miles north is Old Harbor, 
 where the Russian Baronoff built the first fort in 1799, call- 
 ing it Archangel. Three years later its garrison was massa- 
 cred by Sitka Indians, and the present site of Sitka was 
 occupied instead, and named New Archangel. The Hot 
 Springs are ten or eleven miles south of town, on the main 
 land, in a little bay which is protected by a break-water of 
 pretty islands. There are three mineral springs — two of 
 warm magnesia, and one of hot sulphur, the density of 
 which is indicated by heavy incrustations in their basins. 
 The temperature ranges from one hundred and twenty to 
 one hundred and twenty-five degrees. Almost every visitor 
 claims to have boiled an egg in them, but I have yet to 
 learn where each contrives to get his egg. It might be well 
 for future tourists who like positive tests to provide them- 
 selves with eggs in Boston, New York, San Francisco or 
 New Orleans, so as not to be disappointed when they finally 
 reach the place. A few rods off is a clear spring of cold 
 water, in which there may be trout convenient for the other 
 popular test. For myself, when I visit the Yellowstone 
 Park, or other noted place, I always catch my fish ready 
 boiled. In i860 the Russians built a hospital and bath, and 
 the treatment was said to have had wonderful remedial 
 powers in skin and rheumatic diseases. The buildings are 
 now badly dilapidated and ought to be restored at once. If 
 done, Sitka would soon become more than ever a popular
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 183 
 
 watering place, and an equivalent equal to the outlay would 
 flow into the official treasury daily. In summer, excursion 
 trips should be arranged to the springs at stated periods, so 
 that visitors can depend upon them. Some four miles from 
 Sitka is an old Russian redoubt, where there was also a 
 prison, which is well worth a visit, not only as a relic of the 
 former occupation, but for its beautiful scenery, the moun- 
 tains rising 3,000 feet almost perpendicularly, on one side 
 of the bay, and inclosing a lake (Ozersky) ten miles long, 
 which is much resorted to by anglers. There are five Rus- 
 sian houses still standing which are used for a salmon can- 
 nery, and there are besides several other houses for the 
 fishermen, and huts for the Siwashes. Substantial bridges, 
 also built by the Russians, cross the rapids between the 
 outlet of the lake and the bay, and form part of a long and 
 winding promenade. Indeed one may say that all the 
 vicinity of Sitka is suggestive of Russian America, which 
 we, before its purchase, looked upon askance, as hyper- 
 borean and savage ; but now are surprised to discover was 
 so far advanced that the humble people of Cape Cod, or 
 other shore settlements of the Atlantic, would have been 
 appalled at its magnificence. Every thing built by the 
 Russians was of a substantial character, and where the offi- 
 cial comfort was concerned, with elegance. 
 
 The old Baronoffs lived high. They enriched themselves 
 from the furs of the land, and subsisted on the appropria- 
 tions of the crown. All they earned was clear profit, and 
 whenever perchance a prince of the blood came over the 
 Strait from Siberia, he was royally entertained ; moreover, 
 their spiritual welfare was zealously cared for by the 
 church, which is able even now, so many years after the 
 retirement of the Muscovites to maintain gratuitously its 
 several missions at Sitka, St. Paul, St. Michael's, Anvic, 
 Oonalashka, and Andreavsky. And so it happens that 
 Greek priests still officiate for penitents of the great 
 Republic, and the three little brass bells that were cast in 
 Russia ring out from the tower of the Sitka sanctuary a 
 Slavic melody for all Americans who respect the Sabbath. 
 It is fortunate, indeed, that the little capital of Alaska was 
 not left wholly bereft of Christian influences, else would its 
 mongrel population have gone wholly to the bad ; for so 
 long as the suggestive spire stood in their midst, pointing 
 heavenward, duty received a reminder and wickedness a 
 check. At present there is a form of Protestant worship at 
 the Indian mission, and ere many months elapse I trust a 
 befitting chapel will be erected to meet the religious
 
 1 84 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 demands of a growing population. The public have long 
 been made familiar with the architecture of the Greekchurch, 
 its lofty dome, its shapely minaret, its gilt and gold and 
 silver ornaments, and costly vestments, and holy pictures ; 
 and since it is now so well preserved in photograph and 
 tourist's story, I can manifest no sincerer interest for the 
 saintly relic than to bespeak for it the trifling sum necessary 
 for its structural repair and preservation, or at least to 
 replace the old barrel which is now used as a baptismal tub. 
 It is a sin and a shame to let it drop piecemeal into ruin. 
 The green paint is nearly worn from off the metal dome, 
 and its wooden sides are weather-worn and stained ; the 
 doors are sprung, the bolts are rusted ; the interior is well 
 nigh despoiled by time and vandal hands ; the voice of one 
 of the bells is hushed, and in winter the main auditorium 
 can not be used with comfort ; yet I see that the gilding of 
 the spire and roof continues bright, and by that token a 
 new day is at hand. 
 
 The Russian population of Sitka pure and mixed, is about 
 250, and the church attendance is made up chiefly of 
 Indians and Creoles, although Father Metropolsky is a well- 
 instructed priest, pious and intelligent, and so might court 
 the attendance of the better classes in the absence of teachers 
 of other sects, especially and inasmuch as the services are 
 conducted in the Slavonic language, which is both impres- 
 sive and innocuous. The Indian communicants are always 
 devout and neatly dressed, observing all the periods and 
 crossing themselves at proper times with due observance of 
 the formula ; and as the services are conducted with form- 
 ality and proper ceremony no essential rites can be over- 
 looked. I agree with a most intelligent correspondent who 
 has written : " There is a very silly and unnecessary antipa- 
 thy existing between the missionaries here and this church, 
 and instead of working harmoniously together in their efforts 
 to Christianize the Indians, they work at cross purposes. If 
 the Greek Church or any other can succeed in making the 
 Indians clean themselves up one day in the week at least, 
 well and good ; it is a great step toward godliness, and it is 
 the purest nonsense to try to Christianize anybody before he 
 is civilized to a certain extent." Ever since the American 
 accession, the missionaries have antagonized the Greek 
 Church, and the public officials fight the missionaries ; and 
 I could only wish that the long-suffering Siwash might look 
 quietly on and pick up what drops in the melee to his own 
 advantage. 
 
 It has taken a good while for the country to adapt itself
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 185 
 
 to the changed circumstances which followed its relinquish- 
 ment by the Russians. The Muscovites left every thing in 
 good order when they evacuated Sitka, indeed they wisely 
 let go by degrees, and not all at once ; and they still retain 
 some hold on the missions which they established. Had 
 they not done so many years of utter neglect would have 
 left the place a useless ruin. That there is a house still 
 standing is largely due to the fact that they built of great 
 logs, both hewed and round, and often two feet square ; 
 the substantial structures which they have erected have not 
 only withstood the high winds of winter, but the wearing 
 tooth of time, very well for a climate whose rainfall is 
 55^ inches per year, soaking every thing with moisture. 
 The principal buildings which are now occupied by the ter- 
 ritorial and naval officers as custom-house, court-house, 
 barracks, and government warehouse have at some time 
 been coated with a dull yellow paint which still sticks to a 
 degree ; some of the roofs are either of iron painted red, or 
 they have grown rusty from rain. Once they were preten- 
 tious structures all, large, spacious, two-storied, with hard 
 wood doors elaborately carved, and some regard paid to 
 ornament in the shape of stained-glass panes inserted in 
 parts to be effective ; but now the foundation timbers are 
 eaten half through by rot, some of the 6-inch planking of 
 the floors has been torn up for fuel ; piles of rubbish fill 
 one-half of the apartments and with the exception of the 
 marine barracks there is not one of all the lot with its win- 
 dow-glass unbroken or the plastering intact. A fire once 
 cleared out several of the rooms in the custom-house, and 
 there the charred debris still remains ; only three rooms in 
 the entire great building are fit to be occupied and two of 
 these are used by the judge and attorney. I believe the 
 governor has to " rustle " for his quarters. The grand old 
 castle which crowns a rocky eminence that overlooks the 
 town, and was once the pride of all the Baronoffs and 
 Romanoffs, is now the worst of all the Badly-offs ; and 
 although it looks imposing in the uncertain twilight, noth- 
 ing but immediate relief will save it from the assaults of 
 time and weather. Once it was destroyed by earthquake, 
 once by fire, and now the grand staircase up the rocky 
 heights will scarcely stand another year, and after they 
 collapse only scaling ladders can be used. A half-dozen 
 unhappy barrels collect the rainfall from the roof ; the 
 whole structure is sprung in every joint and tenon, and ere 
 many moons have passed it will not be safe for the legend- 
 ary " ghost of the hapless princess " which wanders there-
 
 1 86 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 abouts, to ascend to light her periodical beacon on the roof, 
 without the help of the signal officer who has his crow's- 
 nest there. The marines who guard the warehouse and 
 magazine, keep an eye to the tottering walls when they make 
 their turns, and pedestrians who pass under the projecting 
 roof of the old trading-house, whence bullets were liable 
 to rain upon the intruders, look aloft with more appre- 
 hensions of dry rot than hot shot. The block-houses 
 which remain can scarcely stand, and but one side of the old 
 stockade guards the plaza, shutting off the Indian " ranch." 
 So it is throughout the town. With its population reduced 
 two-thirds and its business nine-tenths, with half the shops 
 and dwellings tenantless, there is not abuilding of any kind 
 I venture to say, without a window broken. There are 
 not more than two or three which indicate fresh paint on 
 their fronts, and not a new structure of any kind except in 
 the purlieus of the Indian " ranch," where the sight of a 
 fresh slab is richness to the eyes. On every side the grue- 
 some ravens croak, truly the " embodiment of spirits long 
 departed." Noting the abundant traces of a previous occu- 
 pancy, with the dead past buried all around them, antiqua- 
 rians already begin to speculate how many hundred years 
 ago these bastion towers were built, so dilapidated and gray 
 they look ; industriously they decipher the inscriptions on 
 the ancient coins ; and simple minded Yankees, when they 
 see their flag floating in the air, wonder if this is really their 
 own " God's country," or where they are. Nevertheless and 
 withal, the town has still a habitable and homelike look. 
 There are gardens filled with vegetables and flowers, gera- 
 niums in window pots, cows quietly grazing along the 
 streets. Occasionally the thrum of a piano is heard, which 
 is blessed music in the wilderness, though intolerable in 
 town. Some of the Russian houses preserve their national 
 characteristics, so that we have only to enter them to learn 
 how the people live in Russia. As ladies have a better fac- 
 ulty of observation and tact to describe domestic econo- 
 mies, I will save myself the trouble of doing so by copying 
 from my lady correspondent " Mintwood," who is accurate 
 and vivacious. She says : 
 
 " As I am writing in one of them at this moment, I will 
 describe it, as an illustration of one of the best Sitkan 
 houses of Russian origin. It fronts directly on the bay 
 with a charming outlook, and between the house and the 
 bay is a large garden, in which a Russian neighbor has a 
 fine colony of cabbages and some potato tops. The path 
 from the gate leads up a gentle eminence between two rows
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 187 
 
 of gooseberry bushes, which are loaded with fruit, and sup- 
 plemented in the rear with currant bushes, also in bearing 
 with green clusters. There is a row of pie-plant, in bar- 
 rels, and a hot bed, the sash of which is a fish net. There 
 are lines in the garden on which are strung pieces of shin- 
 ing tin to frighten the ravens and crows. There are elder 
 bushes and two fruit trees ; one, a crab-apple, was quite full 
 of blossoms. A clump of wild roses bloom beautifully 
 under one window, and under another is a fragrant bed of 
 spearmint. In the back yard are four outbuildings, all of 
 them having evidently at one time been dwelling houses ; 
 two are of logs. The house itself, of one story and a loft, 
 has a vestibule, opening into a hall, at the right of which is 
 the large parlor, and at the left the large kitchen. In addi- 
 tion to these rooms there are two good-sized bedrooms. 
 The parlor has five windows, each window consisting of six 
 panes, each pane a foot square, in two rows. The lower 
 part of the window, of four panes, opens like a French win- 
 dow. The window sills are deep, and at one window there 
 is a green roller curtain. The parlor furniture consists of 
 an old mahogany Russian sofa, with a high back entirely in 
 veneer ; the hair-covered cushioned seat is dilapidated, and 
 is temporarily upholstered with a rubber blanket. There 
 are three chairs in various stages of infirmity, and a number 
 of four-legged stools of ingenious construction. There is a 
 mahogany table, and a ditto bureau, a modern and proba- 
 bly native made piece of furniture, of yellow cedar, quite 
 pretty, and consisting of closets and drawers. The skin of 
 a mountain goat covers a considerable space on the bare 
 floor, and a large box stove, for wood, that was manufac- 
 tured in Philadelphia, has had a fire burning in it nearly 
 every day. The papered walls have their attractions — an 
 old Russian print of the Virgin Mary, and a local painting 
 of Sitka. The bedrooms have bedsteads — rickety — and 
 bureaus, and two pieces of broken looking-glass. The 
 kitchen is comfortably furnished ; an abundance of tables 
 and shelves, some dishes and glassware, an old brass 
 samovar, a heavy copper boiler, skillets, other culinary uten- 
 sils, a worn-out cooking stove that still serves the user of it 
 well, nevertheless, and a pair of wooden buckets." 
 
 From the center of the town a macadamized road extends 
 along the curve of the beach, amply wide for vehicles to 
 pass abreast, lined by cosy dwellings on the landward side, 
 and commanding a fine view of the bay and islands and the 
 overhanging mountains. Perhaps some day the fashion- 
 ables of Sitka will use it for a carriage drive, but as yet few
 
 1 88 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 vehicles have ever run over it. Quien sabe? who shall 
 tell ? This road leads past the Indian mission, and to In- 
 dian River, just beyond, which is a favorite resort for visi- 
 tors and towns-people as well. Since the occupancy of the 
 town by the government marines, they have devoted lots of 
 labor to building bridges, rustic seats and walks along this 
 sparkling stream, which is broken into falls and picturesque 
 reaches where trout disport ; and he who directed the work 
 has done it admirably well, for every natural beauty has 
 been left untouched, and as my friend already quoted de- 
 clares, " it is just like walking through a magnificently 
 wooded park which has gone wild for centuries, with only 
 the walks left civilized." Some of the firs and hemlocks 
 are simply immense, and the undergrowth is frightful to 
 penetrate. In the midst of the forest I found a small potato 
 patch which had been fenced, but it was hard in August to 
 find either potatoes or fence. Some of the Indian boys dis- 
 like to come to the river to fish for fear of bears, but no 
 bears ever yet seemed to take a liking to any of them. This 
 river furnishes the only good drinking water to be had, and 
 the good people of the town walk out along these beautiful 
 paths with tin pails and demijohns to bring in drinking 
 water. The barracks details fetch it in a canoe, and that 
 this inconvenience exists in Sitka is but one illustration of 
 the decay and amazing enervation of the town. If it did 
 not rain here so much, and barrels and casks under eaves 
 were not kept well filled most of the time, the water ques- 
 tion would be a more difficult one than it is. 
 
 Hitherto the management of local or territorial affairs 
 has not been happy. None of the appropriations made for 
 the support of the civil government or for specific purposes 
 appear to have been accounted for. Until two years ago 
 the government itself was not a success. Its seat was never 
 warm. There was no ownership in any thing. It did not 
 even know what belonged to it. A merchant claimed the 
 public warehouse as his private property ; another citizen 
 claimed the dock, and the navy had actually to build a 
 wharf for its own necessities. (N. B. When there is any 
 litigation in Alaska about wharves, the teredo steps in and 
 eats them up before a decision can be reached.) The last 
 administration was unfortunate. The governor broke his 
 arm and had a paralytic stroke, and the district attorney 
 was killed in California by falling from a railroad train. 
 When their successors took office, the district judge was 
 found not to be a success, and attempts were made to 
 prevent the confirmation of the new governor. Now, how-
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 189 
 
 ever, an auspicious era seems to have dawned. Immigra- 
 tion is pouring in apace. The newspaper recently started 
 at Sitka is a wide-awake journal, devoted heartily to the 
 development of the country, and from it the public can 
 obtain information which can be relied upon. Governor 
 Swineford means " straight business." Much depends 
 upon his sagacity and discretion. He is laboring to secure 
 a remedy for defects in the law governing territorial organ- 
 ization. There being no connection now between the 
 different towns, in sending a prisoner from one point to 
 another for trial, he is as liable to go via San Francisco as 
 otherwise, taking three months for the transit, so that it is 
 less expensive not to take than to make prisoners. What 
 the government needs is a revenue cutter and one or two 
 steam launches to serve as harbor police-boats and deputy 
 sheriffs in these strange water-ways. Their moral effect 
 alone would make all the difference in the world. It would 
 insure good order and stability. 
 
 For whatever lies beyond Sitka, between it and Mt. St. 
 Elias, 200 miles further west, I can net speak from my per- 
 sonal experience. Recently excursion trips have been 
 extended to include those additional waters, within whose 
 limits are the greatest number of high and imposing peaks 
 to be found in any range in the world. In a pamphlet of 
 joo pages, beautifully printed and illustrated by the North- 
 ern Pacific Railway Company, to influence summer travel 
 to Alaska, I find the following synopsis from the pen of 
 Lieutenant Schwatka : 
 
 " Almost as soon as Cape Spencer is doubled, the south- 
 ern spurs of the Mount St. Elias Alps burst into view, 
 Crillon and Fairweather being prominent, and the latter 
 easily recognized from our acquaintance with it from the 
 waters of Glacier Bay. A trip of an hour or two takes us 
 along a comparatively uninteresting coast, as viewed from 
 the ' square off our starboard beam ; ' but all this time 
 the mind is fixed by the grand Alpine views we have ahead 
 of us, that are slowly developing in plainer outline here 
 and there as we speed toward them. Soon we are abreast 
 of Icy Point ; while just beyond it comes down a glacier 
 to the ocean that gives about three miles of solid sea-wall 
 of ice, while its source is lost in the heights covering the 
 bases of the snowy peaks just behind. The high peak to 
 the right, as we steam by the glacier front, is Mount La 
 Perouse, named for one of the most daring of France's 
 long list of explorers, and who lost his life in the interest 
 of geographical science. His eyes rested on this range
 
 19° PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 of Alpine peaks in 1786, just a century ago. Its sides are 
 furrowed with glaciers, one of which is the ice-wall before 
 our eyes, and which is generally known as the La Perouse 
 Glacier. The highest peak of all, and on the left of this 
 noble range, is Mount Crillon, named by La Perouse, in 
 1786, after the French Minister of the Marine ; while 
 between Crillon and La Perouse is Mount D'Agelet, the 
 astronomer of that celebrated expedition. Crillon cleaves 
 the air for 16,000 feet above the sea, on which we rest, and 
 can be seen for over a hundred miles to sea. It, too, is 
 surrounded with glaciers in all directions from its crown. 
 Crillon and La Perouse are about seven miles apart, nearly 
 north and south of each other. About fifteen miles north- 
 west of Crillon is Lituya Peak, 10,000 feet high ; and the 
 little bay-opening that we pass, between the two, is the 
 entrance to Lituya Bay, a sheet of water which La Perouse 
 has pronounced as one of the most extraordinary in the 
 world for grand scenery, with its glaciers and Alpine 
 shores. Our steamer will not enter, however ; for the pas- 
 sage is dangerous even to small boats — one island bearing 
 a monument to the officers and men of La Perouse's expe- 
 dition, lost in the tidal wave which sweeps through the con- 
 tracted passage like a breaker over a treacherous bar. 
 Some ten or twelve miles northwest from Lituya Peak is 
 Mount Fairweather, which bears abreast us after a little 
 over an hour's run from Lituya Bay. It was named by 
 Cook in 1778, and is generally considered to be a few hun- 
 dred feet shorter than Mount Crillon. It is in every way, 
 by its peculiar isolation from near ridges almost as high as 
 itself, a much grander peak than Crillon, whose surround- 
 ings are not so good for a fine Alpine display. Fair- 
 weather, too, has its frozen river flowing down its sides ; 
 but none of them reach the sea, for a low, wooded country, 
 some three or four miles in width, lies like a glacis at the 
 seaward side of the St. Elias Alps, for a short distance 
 along this part of the coast. The somber, deep green 
 forests add an impressive feature to the scene, however, 
 lying between the dancing waves below and the white and 
 blue glacier ice above. Rounding Cape Fairweather, the 
 coast trends northward ; and, as our bowsprit is pointed in 
 the same direction, directly before us are seen immense 
 glaciers reaching to the sea. From Cape Fairweather 
 (abreast of Mt. Fairweather) to Yakutat Bay (abreast of 
 Mt. Vancouver) no conspicuous peak rears its head above 
 the grand mountain chain which for nearly a hundred miles 
 lies between these two Alpine bastions ; but, nevertheless,
 
 ■ - -_~^'-;'
 
 SITKA SOMNOLENT. 191 
 
 every hour reveals a new mountain of 5,000 to 8,000 feet in 
 height, which, if placed anywhere else, would be held up 
 with national or state pride as a grand acquisition. Here 
 they are only dwarfed by grander peaks."
 
 THE SEALS OF PRIBYLOV 
 
 A treatise on Alaska, however ephemeral or unpreten* 
 tious, would hardly be complete without some reference 
 being made to its fur-seal fishery, upon which almost the 
 only revenue of the territory was based up to the year 1884. 
 Professor Henry W. Elliott's official report to the govern- 
 ment, made in 1882, comprising the result of many years in- 
 vestigation, is an exhaustive account of all there is to know 
 about the subject ; and from it I have gathered the facts ap- 
 pended. This is an illustrated volume of nearly 200 quarto 
 pages, comprising a history of the fur-seal fishery from 
 earliest dates ; the discovery of the Pribylov group in 1786 
 by the hardy Muscovite whose name they bear collectively ; 
 the configuration and natural history of the Islands ; their 
 acquisition by the United States ; the formation and opera- 
 tions of the Alaska Commercial Company ; and a descrip- 
 tion of the inhabitants, their occupation and mode of life. 
 The breeding-places and habits of the seals and all their 
 phocine kindred, the walrus, sea-lion, sea-otter, hair-seal, 
 etc., and the methods employed to secure their hides, and 
 to prepare and ship them to market, and to dye them to 
 suit the wearers, are all given in the most considerate man- 
 ner, with due regard to the sensibilities of the animals them- 
 selves, which, next to the ladies who hope to wear their 
 pelts, are unquestionably the parties chiefly interested. The 
 details are intensely interesting to the reader, and to the 
 seals excruciating, we may believe. 
 
 Located fourteen hundred miles west-north-west from 
 Sitka, as the ship sails, and nearly two hundred miles from 
 Oonalashka, the nearest land, sea-girt and beset with out- 
 lying reefs, continually befogged in summer, and in winter 
 swept by cruel icy blasts, the Pribylovs are hard to find. It 
 is said that navigators have even touched their cliffs with 
 their vessels' yard-arms before they were aware of their 
 close proximity. And it is because of this isolation, as well 
 as because they afford the only good resting place in Alaska, 
 that the seals frequent them. They are all of volcanic 
 origin, bearing some not remote traces of dynamic action,
 
 THE SEALS OF PRIB YLOV. 193 
 
 the crater of Otter island being " as distinctly defined, and 
 as plainly scorched as though it had burned out yesterday." 
 St. Paul island is thirteen miles in length by six in breadth, 
 composed of rough, rocky uplands, rugged hills, smooth 
 volcanic cones, parti-colored sand-dunes, grassy plats, and 
 wet and slippery flats, where the seals most congregate. It is 
 interspersed with pools and lagoons of good fresh water, in 
 which a pretty minute viviparous fish is found. St. George 
 is ten miles long by four and one-half miles wide, steep and 
 precipitous on all sides, except at three short reaches of 
 coast which the seals have appropriated for " rookeries." 
 Like St. Paul, it also has many pools of water. Its highest 
 land rises 930 feet, and St. Paul's 600 feet. Nearly half the 
 shore of St. Paul is a sandy beach, while on St. George there 
 is less than a mile of it all put together. Millions of sea- 
 fowl breed and hover perpetually over their ledges and in- 
 accessible terraces, and all the available spaces are filled 
 with eggs in spring. There would be valuable guano de- 
 posits except that they are annually washed clean off by the 
 beating storms of winter, during which period the birds are 
 discreetly absent. Each island has its village of resident 
 overseers and employes, its killing-grounds, salting and 
 packing houses, and its little harbor where vessels may load 
 and discharge in favorable weather only. As for the rest, 
 on St. George there is a water-fall which drops 400 feet per- 
 pendicularly into the sea in spring ; a little running stream 
 to diversify the asperity of the physical contour ; and on 
 every prominent eminence a Greek cross erected there by 
 Russians, some of them as long as sixty years ago. There 
 is a good deal of grass — a dozen varieties of different 
 lengths and quality, and a multitude of pretty flowers, ferns 
 and mosses. Snow melts at a. very low temperature, and 
 grass begins to grow at 34 degrees or 36 degrees even if it 
 be covered by melting drifts of snow and the frost has 
 hardened the ground for many feet beneath. Some success 
 has followed attempts at gardening, and lettuce, radishes, 
 turnips, and even small potatoes, have been grown in 
 favored spots. Countless sparrows come in early spring 
 and are gathered up for food by the thousands, just as the 
 Israelites gathered quails. These birds agreeably vary the 
 staple diet of seal meat, of which the little communities, 
 about 400 souls all told, consume some 1200 pounds a day. 
 The government allows them to catch 6,000 seals a year for 
 their subsistence. Excepting two or three mules for work, 
 the only animals on the islands are hosts of blue foxes, lem- 
 mings which honeycomb the softer earth with their burrows,
 
 194 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 mice, and stump-tail cats, which run wild and roam every- 
 where. On favorable nights when the air is still and the 
 moonlight full, these incorrigible cats join in such an un- 
 earthly caterwauling that the natives turn out en masse to in- 
 terdict them. The shrieks of the tempest can not compare 
 with the ferocity of the chorus. But for all, they decimate 
 the mice. There are no reptiles on the islands, and no 
 mosquitoes nor venomous flies ; but there is a variety of fly 
 which settles down upon the grass of the killing-grounds 
 making the surface appear as if it were bedaubed with liquid 
 stove-polish, for the color they impart. Their food is the 
 blood and offal of the slaughter. The perfume of the 
 Pribylovs is intense, and one may perceive the odor far at 
 sea when the wind is fair. On a hot day in the close cabins 
 of the village it would be overpowering to any body who was 
 not used to it. No fish can be caught within the vicinity, 
 as the seals devour all that approach. 
 
 Six miles north from St. Paul Island is Otter Island, once 
 frequented by herds of sea otters, a sheer, cold and un- 
 broken mural precipice, except at a low depression on the 
 north side. Its walls average 300 feet in height. It is 
 fairly over-run with blue foxes. Walrus Island lies six miles 
 southwest, once the abode of many of these animals, some 
 of which will weigh a ton. It is a mere ledge barely lifted 
 above the wash of angry waves, only a fourth of a mile long 
 and 100 yards wide. It literally swarms with wild fowl, and 
 is, therefore, very convenient for eggers, who, in other local- 
 ities, have to climb up precipices, and swing from jutting 
 ledges to gather their plunder. There is an island 200 
 miles north of St. Paul, but having no commercial connection 
 with it, called St. Matthew, which is of volcanic origin, and 
 fairly swarms with polar bears, which sometimes measure 
 eight feet long and weigh 1,200 pounds. They are very 
 timid, and flee precipitately, old and young, upon the ap- 
 proach of man. There are deserted Russian cabins on the 
 island, which were built and once occupied by bear-hunters, 
 who did a big business in meat, pelts and oil. The tradi- 
 tional ferocity of these animals seems to have wholly petered 
 out in this sub-Arctic ursine community. 
 
 The Pribylov Islands were first peopled by a native colony 
 brought over from Oonalashka and other Aleutian neighbor- 
 hoods by the Russian fur-sealers in 1786, and were employed 
 in their service ; but they lived miserably in hovels which 
 were half dug-out. Now, under the American regime, and 
 the fostering care of the Alaska Commercial Company, their 
 progeny are happy and well provided for in all those respects
 
 THE SEA L S OF PR IB YLOV. 1 95 
 
 which make a sealer's life worth the living 1 . There are two 
 hundred and forty- four people on St. Paul,of which twen- 
 ty-two are whites, four are women ; on St. George ninety- 
 two people, of whom eight are whites. On both islands each 
 family lives in a snug frame dwelling, painted, and lined 
 with tarred paper, furnished with a stove and fuel, and out- 
 houses complete. Streets are laid out, and regularly platted ; 
 there is a large church at St. Paul, and a smaller one at St. 
 George ; a hospital at St. Paul, with a complete stock ol 
 drugs, and physicians on both islands to take care of the 
 people ; a school-house on each island, for which teachers 
 are paid by the company for eight months in the year to 
 instruct the youth, one of these teachers being a native 
 Aleut who accomplished a four years course of study in 
 Rutland, Vt. ; and a store on each island, where once a year 
 the trading ship brings the latest fashions, and every body 
 enjoys a holiday opening. The church services are held in 
 the Russian language, and their support is maintained 
 entirely bv native contribution. There are eighty families 
 and eighty dwellings on St. Paul, and twenty-four at St. 
 George, besides eight other structures, ecclesiastical and 
 commercial, all painted and built by skilled mechanics, so 
 that the settlements present an appearance up to the average 
 of Eastern villages. The people all dress in modern attire, 
 and eagerly discuss the newest fashion plates, but as yet 
 silk " tiles " are unknown. Except during the sealing 
 season, they have absolutely nothing to do but go to church 
 and vegetate. Fully two hundred and ninety days of the 
 year are occupied in observing the religious calendar. 
 Many sleep away their time ; a few gamble ; some play the 
 fiddle and accordeon. The population is very orderly. 
 There are no policemen, no courts of justice, no fines, no 
 crimes, and no instituted penalties for crimes. Quite 
 frequently the islanders make a journey to their relatives 
 on the mainland ; and to visit Oonalashka is like a rustic 
 " doing " the metropolis. Oonalashka is no insignificant 
 burg, be it known, for it discounts Sitka. 
 
 These islands are leased by the United States Govern- 
 ment to the North American Commercial Company, and 
 since 1870 have returned to the treasury the lump sum of 
 $8,561,791.07. The schools are supported at the expense 
 of the company, with 98 per cent, of the children in at- 
 tendance. The seal catch is at present much less than it 
 has been at former periods, but is likely to be restored by 
 protection. Poachers are the cause of decimation, Japa- 
 nese, Canadians, and Yankees.
 
 196 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 The methods of the company are very complete, and it 
 seems almost impossible to improve upon them. Abuses 
 and breach of trust are almost impossible within the environ- 
 ment of restrictions by which they are hedged about, and 
 it would be utterly impossible to catch more than the stipu- 
 lated quota of seals without the fact becoming known at 
 once. Only once have they caught the full complement 
 (one hundred thousand) allowed by law, and then only 
 inadvertently. Their rule is to make the number one 
 thousand scant so as to avoid carping criticisms. The 
 breeding grounds are protected, and obstreperous old males 
 diligently kept off from them, but they are allowed to come 
 to all other localities. One million seal pups are born every 
 year, and of these there is a loss of fifty per cent, by whales, 
 sharks, and predatory creatures, after they leave for their 
 foraging grounds. While breeding they strictly fast. When 
 they leave they go in independent gangs, and not all at once, 
 and they range as far south as the forty-seventh parallel. 
 Seals are in their prime at from four to five years of age, 
 and only those which are desirable are selected for the 
 annual drive. An average seal will measure six and a half 
 feet long and weigh four hundred pounds, but they are 
 caught up to six hundred pounds and seven and a half feet 
 long. It is estimated, within the power of accurate calcula- 
 tion, that there are over three millions of seals on each 
 island in the breeding season, not counting the non-breeders, 
 " old bachelors," etc. The entire catch of one hundred 
 thousand seals is now made in about thirty working days, 
 included between the; 14th day of June and the 1st of 
 August. Seals do remain longer than the latter date, but 
 their fur deteriorates rapidly. The sealers work under the 
 direction of foremen, who receive the wages due for their 
 work, according to the tale, and divide it among them, 
 making up a number of extra shares over and above the 
 men's, which go to the widows, the priest and the church. 
 They receive forty cents per seal, and fifty cents to one 
 dollar per day for incidental labor. It is estimated that 
 more than four millions of sealskins have been taken from 
 the Pribylovs since 1797. When the killing season has 
 arrived, details of men run in between the sleeping seals 
 and the surf-wash, and drive them slowly to designated 
 slaughtering grounds, at a speed of half a mile an hour, 
 halting them occasionally to rest and cool off, for heating 
 injures their fur ; and it is a comical sight to see the long 
 procession, urged on by shouts and clapping of whale thigh- 
 bones, and gesticulating arms on the flanks and rear, wad*
 
 THE SEALS OF PRIB YLOV. 197 
 
 dling, panting, gasping and shuffling along like so many 
 fat men, in the most awkward manner conceivable. Some- 
 times an old bull-seal, adipose and unwieldy, who can not 
 travel with the younger ones, falls to the earth supinely, 
 entirely exhausted, hot, and " clean done up." Another, 
 too weary to travel any more, will stand up in his tracks 
 and fight. These old recalcitrants are at once dismissed, 
 abandoned and ignored, as of little value, their under-wool 
 which gives price to the pelt, being much shorter, coarser, 
 and scantier than that of the younger seals. When a halt 
 is called and the men drop back from the line for a few 
 moments, the march at once ceases, and every seal fans 
 himself with his hind flippers, while his flanks heave with a 
 subdued panting sound. It is a grievous sight to behold, 
 but I have seen worse at a soldiers' parade on a 4th of July, 
 when the sun stood at a hundred in the shade, and there 
 was not lemonade enough to go round. When the seals 
 have partially cooled off, the march to death is resumed. 
 Finally the slaughter-ground is reached and the seals are 
 told off in squads of one hundred and fifty, and at a given 
 signal the executioners let go with clubs and lay them out 
 right and left, after which they are knifed and skinned at 
 the rate of one in every four minutes, although experts have 
 done the job in a minute and a half. The clubs are six 
 feet long, three inches in diameter at the but, made of hard 
 wood, and manufactured in New London, Ct., expressly 
 for this service. There is an excellent opportunity here to 
 indulge in sentimentalism, but I forbear to speak of the 
 languid eyes that plead before the uplifted club, and the 
 heart-rending moans which come from those not dead. My 
 real opinion is that there is little occasion to complain of 
 needless cruelty. 
 
 After the skins are flayed off, they are salted and piled in 
 kenches as high as a man can toss them, " hair to fat and 
 salt between," and having been allowed two weeks in which 
 to pickle, are tied up in bundles of two skins each, hair out- 
 side, and shipped to London via New York or Panama, to 
 be dyed ; for few natural skins are less attractive than the 
 fur seals, the fur not being visible, but concealed by a 
 coat of stiff hair, dull gray, brown and grizzled. The art 
 of dying in its perfection is said to be possessed by only 
 one concern in London, although there are many other 
 dyers ; and there is at Albany, in the state of New York, a 
 firm which does splendid work, but their dye color, is said 
 to be lighter and not so rich as the Englishman's. The 
 cost of a fur comes from a combination of causes and
 
 198 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 expenses which, it is affirmed, will keep the price up always 
 to near its present figure. The Alaska Company has 
 stations all over the Aleutian Islands west and north of 
 Kodiak, and employs four steamers, and a dozen ships, barks 
 and sloops, besides working boats. Its lease expires in 1890, 
 but there is no doubt that it will be renewed. 
 
 Fur seals and sea otters are sometimes caught in large 
 numbers off the Straits of Fuca and the west coast of Van- 
 couver's Island, and in limited numbers by the Indians on 
 the Alaskan coast. Last winter the fur seals seemed to 
 be frequenting the waters of southeastern Alaska in 
 increased numbers. Old residents along the shores say 
 that the last large run was twenty years ago, and was fol- 
 lowed immediately after by a run of sea otter, and they are 
 hoping for a like result now. The Sitka paper says that a 
 good many fur seal skins, both of pups and grown seals, 
 have lately reached the Sitka market. In 1883 there were 
 ten schooners engaged in British waters, employing forty 
 sailors and 296 hunters, the latter chiefly Indians, who used 
 148 cedar canoes, and they took upward of 9,000 fur seals 
 and 3,000 hair seals, valued at $93,000. The former are 
 worth $10, and the latter fifty cents. Only ninety-six sea- 
 otters were caught, marketable at $50 each. 
 
 This brief synopsis will suffice to convey an idea of an 
 interesting industry and locality of which very little is 
 known at large.
 
 - 
 
 X 
 
 O 
 X 
 H 
 
 > 
 H 
 
 o
 
 SEASONAL PHASES. 
 
 As soon as the snow disappears in May the country- 
 springs into a wealth of verdure and glows with many 
 varieties of pretty wild flowers. Strawberries ripen in 
 June beside belated melting banks of snow. The snow 
 never disappears entirely until late in June. From the 
 first of May until the middle of August daylight is con- 
 tinuous, and sunshine all pervading, accelerating the 
 growths of all kinds of vegetables so that the transition 
 from winter to summer, E. S. Harrison writes, is so sud- 
 den as to seem almost magical. At Nome on the shortest 
 day, he says, the sun is hidden less than three hours, but 
 it is so near the horizon that the land is flooded with a 
 soft light by which one can see to read ordinary print. 
 This continuous daylight lengthens the ordinary working 
 season, as there is no cessation of work caused by night. 
 At the mines the hum of machinery never ceases. Nurses 
 roll their baby carriages about the streets, scanning the 
 shop windows by daylight at eleven o'clock P. M., and 
 saunterers view the firmament and the aurora borealis 
 from the park benches at the midnight hour the same as 
 they would watch the stars in lower latitudes from under 
 the electric lights. It is warmer in Nome than it is in 
 Winnipeg, excepting that they have less hours of sun- 
 light. Quoting from his valuable work, "The Seward 
 Peninsula," the text runs: 
 
 "The early part of the summer season is usually clear 
 and dry, and a more beautiful and salubrious climate 
 could not be desired. The latter part is filled with storms 
 and almost constant rain, and it is hard to imagine a 
 more tempestuous climate. There is no springtime, as 
 indicated by the usual signs. We have but two seasons — 
 a short summer and a long winter." 
 
 What follows is interesting: — 
 
 "Evidences of the approach of winter are seen late in 
 September, sometimes in the latter part of August. The
 
 200 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 first frost changes the hue of the landscape. In October 
 ice forms on the streams, a passing cloud brings a snow 
 squall. Miners begin to have difficulty with frozen water 
 in their sluice boxes, and by the 15th or the 20th of the 
 month mining operations are pretty generally suspended. 
 After this the snow usually comes to stay. Nights are 
 cold and the days generally shorten, so that the sun does 
 not have an opportunity to undo the work that King 
 Frost does during the night. The waters of Bering Sea 
 become mushy from partial congealation, and great floes, 
 which are formed farther north and have been detached 
 by winds and currents, flow down the sea in front of 
 Nome. They may attach themselves to the shore to be 
 broken again by winds and waves and float away. Be- 
 fore this occurs, however, the last steamer has sailed 
 from Nome, small crafts have been brought into the 
 mouth of the Snake River to their winter quarters, and 
 numerous lighters used for transferring freight and pas- 
 sengers from steamers to the land have been brought to 
 the shore and beached. The roadstead, in which there 
 were steamers all summer long, and which during this 
 time was a scene of great activity, is deserted. On a 
 morning usually in November, but sometimes as late as 
 December, the inhabitants of Nome awaken and look out 
 from their homes over a sea of ice. Winter has begun 
 in earnest, and the community realizes that for the next 
 seven months it is sequestered, isolated, and shut off from 
 the balance of the world by barriers of ice and snow. 
 From this time until the ice goes out, the only means of 
 communication with the outside world are dog and rein- 
 deer teams and the telegraph. 
 
 "The winters are not as severe as one would imagine. 
 In a few years a person becomes acclimated, and all 
 dread of the cold disappears. At Nome the thermometer 
 sometimes falls to forty degrees below zero. Inland, a 
 distance of fifty miles or more, the thermometer drops 
 much lower, sometimes indicating fifty-eight degrees or 
 sixty below zero. This temperature is endurable by 
 adopting the native dress of fur parka and using felt 
 shoes, or mukluks, the native skin boot, and protecting the 
 hands with fur mittens. People travel from one part of 
 the peninsula to another. Commerce between the camps 
 of the peninsula is interrupted only by blizzards. It is 
 when the wind blows that there is danger on the trail.
 
 SEASONAL PHASES. 2 0I 
 
 Between Nome and Council City hot air stages run 
 pretty regularly, the schedule being interrupted only 
 when a blizzard blows. A low temperature does not 
 cause great inconvenience to the man who is properly 
 clothed if the air be still, but the cutting blast of the bliz- 
 zard in zero weather cannot be withstood for any great 
 length of time. Blizzards are of frequent occurrence, 
 and they often come suddenly with little or no warning. 
 The men who have lost their lives in the blizzards of 
 Northwestern Alaska generally were people who did not 
 understand the lore of the land or else exercised poor 
 judgment in attempting to travel at a perilous time. Since 
 the settlement of the country and the establishment of 
 road-houses along the trails the danger of freezing is not 
 serious. The miner prepares a cache for his meats and 
 such stores as will not be injured by freezing, as the 
 Northland in winter is a very successful cold storage 
 plant. 
 
 "As there is almost continuous day in June, so there is 
 almost continuous night in December. In the shortest 
 day the sun describes an arc in the southern heavens of 
 about one-eighth of his circle. He rises in the south and 
 sets in the south, and is so far away that there is scarcely 
 a trace of coronal rays. He looks like a big disk of bur- 
 nished gold, and his rays furnish a weak light, but no 
 perceptible heat. In the winter there is an absence of 
 almost all color except white, save in the mornings and 
 evenings. Before sunrise and at sunset frequently the 
 southern skies are flooded with the most gorgeous colors. 
 If one has not seen a sunrise or a sunset in high latitudes, 
 one cannot imagine the intensity of the colors. With the 
 exception of these color interludes, the perspective in 
 every direction, landward or seaward, is an unbroken 
 white. The white level tundra reaches back to the white 
 hills, the white hills to the white mountains, and over all 
 'That inverted Bowl they call the Sky' is gray and cold. 
 
 "At Nome a winter day sees a city partially covered 
 with snow. Smoke from a thousand chimneys curls 
 through the crisp air. A door of a store or a saloon is 
 opened, and the warm air rushing from the interior of 
 the building makes a fog as it rushes out. The water 
 vendors, some of them still using the primitive coaloil- 
 can as a receptacle for the water which they have taken 
 from holes made through the ice of the river, may be
 
 202 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 seen driving their frost-covered teams through the streets. 
 Men with dog teams are hurrying along the trails, up 
 or down the beach, or across the tundra. Out on the ice 
 of Bering Sea may be sec- 1 a dozen or a hundred fisher- 
 men bobbing through holes in the ice for torn cod." 
 
 Residents of Nome devote a great deal of time to so- 
 cial entertainments. Out of door sports are varied, and 
 there is a Ski Club which gives tournaments. Sleighing 
 behind dog teams is a favorite pastime. Ladies snugly 
 wrapped in their furs, sitting in a sled behind a team of 
 huskies, the driver running behind, holding on to the 
 handle-bars, jumping upon the runners, and riding 
 whenever it is convenient, is a very common sight. 
 People winter through comfortably. Many residences 
 and store buildings are provided with heaters or base- 
 burner stoves in which anthracite coal is burned. Even 
 those who live in cabins keep warm. No hardship or 
 inconvenience is experienced by those who have no occa- 
 sion to travel. The temperature is not always low. 
 There are many days when the thermometer registers 
 above zero, and once in a while there is a thaw. All sup- 
 plies required for winter use are shipped in and stored 
 before the close of navigation. Coal and provisions are 
 in good supply. There is a hot-house where winter vege- 
 tables are furnished to such as can afford to pay the 
 price. When spring approaches people begin to look 
 anxiously and longingly for the first steamer. On some 
 bright day, or in the dimmer light of the night early in 
 June, a keen-eyed Eskimo raises the shout: 
 
 "Oomiakpuk!" 
 
 This is his native language for steamboat. 
 
 Then everybody rushes to the harbor front, no matter 
 what the hour ; bells ring and whistles blow. Its arrival 
 marks the renewal of business activity.
 
 THE SAMOVAR. 
 
 An Alaskan Mi Netoscope. 
 
 I remember it well, although the incidents are some- 
 what confused in respect to their procession and sequence. 
 Some are vivid, and others shadowy as the clouds which 
 rest on Edgecombe and Vostovia. It was shortly after 
 the Treaty Cession, just at the gathering of dusk, near 
 the end of one of those brief winter days when the sun 
 describes but a low arc above the Alaskan horizon ; hardly 
 three o'clock of the afternoon by standard time. The de- 
 serted castle of the Baranovs stood stark and gaunt upon 
 the rocky eminence which overlooks the Bay of Sitka. 
 One could hardly trace its blurred outlines in the gloam- 
 ing. The staircase which led up the stoop to its portals 
 was already rickety. Its great chambers were empty, and 
 dust had gathered thickly in the court apartments and 
 throne-room since the evacuation. The retiring Musco- 
 vites had left absolutely nothing but the empty echo of 
 their long-continued occupation, and that was well-nigh 
 hushed. Impelled by a sentimental curiosity, I had pene- 
 trated with aimless quest where footsteps seldom fell in 
 those vacuous days, and in an isolated suite of rooms I 
 fancied I had found the boudoir of "my lady of the 
 castle," for there was just perceptible the faintest sus- 
 picion of an agreeable perfume, with traces here and 
 there of faded frescoes, bits of crimson glass from a 
 broken window, and other intimations, familiar and en- 
 trancing, of a blessed feminine occupancy in days past. 
 The situation was suggestive and full of sentiment. It 
 inspired reveries and stimulated fancies; and just here, I 
 remember, my strange experiences began. I stood, una- 
 wares, upon the very threshold of my vision. 
 
 While I lingered there floated through a door ajar a 
 decided and unmistakable aroma of steeping tea, as if 
 blent with fragrance of sweet blossoms. Startled first,
 
 204 
 
 'PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 and then sensibly assured of the proximity of an actual 
 presence, I ventured further, by no means cautious of 
 intrusion, and peering into the adjoining room, forth- 
 with discovered two priests of the Greco-Russian Church, 
 in sombre garb. These, I made no doubt, were a part of 
 the clerical contingent left by the abdicating Bishop to 
 take charge of the sacred properties, for which a special 
 fund is provided by the Russian Government to this day.* 
 One of the priests was seated on a rude cedar chest; the 
 other stood beside a cylindrical stove of sheet-iron, such 
 as are still seen in some Russian dwellings in Sitka, upon 
 the top of which was steaming an old brass samovar of 
 antique pattern. 
 
 With the exception of a lighted chandelier swung from 
 the lofty ceiling, there was no other furniture in the 
 apartment. Some other impulse than volition carried me 
 past the door, and as I watched, apparently without being 
 observed, it seemed as if such volumes of vapor never 
 emanated from so small a vessel before. They fairly 
 rolled out of the urn, filling the apartment, rendering ob- 
 jects indistinct, and creating unstable outlines. Even the 
 figures of the priests became clouded in the obscurity. 
 The penetrating quality of the exhalations at once con- 
 vinced my nerves that the decoction was something 
 more than mere tea. Its fumes set my brain in a whirl, 
 and my consciousness assumed altogether a nebulous 
 character. I could not have articulated if I had tried. 
 Had I succeeded in speaking, the whole phantasm would 
 have undoubtedly passed off at once. It is always so, I 
 believe, in nightmares. Whenever the victim can give ut- 
 terance, he wakes. However, this was a different sort of 
 a trance. I fancied I heard the priest who supervised 
 the samovar distinctly inquire of his companion, "Has 
 my lady set the lights in the cupola ?" t 
 
 "She has, comrade; and so has she done for fifty 
 years." 
 
 "Correct. By my faith ! were it not for my lady, poor 
 ghost ! I don't know what our beacon would do for light, 
 since our supplies of oil are no longer forthcoming. 
 Alack! the navies of the Czar may never sail into this 
 harbor more ; yet it is befitting the Christianity which we 
 profess, and I hope observe, that a beacon should be ever 
 lighted for such anxious and benighted voyagers as may 
 chance this way."
 
 THE SAMOVAR. 205 
 
 "Methinks, brother Andreas, the lady will hardly keep 
 her vigils after the premises are occupied by these Yankee 
 new-comers. Yet, I make no doubt there is more of self- 
 interest than philanthropy in her method. Has the citizen 
 arrived?" 
 
 "He is here." 
 
 So? I was expected, then, if not announced! The 
 thought naturally presented itself, yet the priests had 
 shown no sign. Unwittingly I had become particeps in 
 the play. Without more ado, the officiating priest turned 
 to me in a perfunctory way, while the nimbus of vapor 
 grew luminous about his features. 
 
 "I may tell you," he said, as he mechanically stirred the 
 contents of the samovar, "that we are brewing here a 
 sort of exegetical punch, the basis of which is tea — tea 
 brought to Russia from the Steppes of Chinese Tartary 
 on the backs of dromedaries, and bartered in this country 
 for the furs of Alaska. In a manner it is a symposium 
 of history. You perceive that we have here the essence 
 of three great empires presented at once. We have 
 already infused some flavor of Japan and Mexico, to say 
 nothing of a soupcon of France and Great Britain, which 
 you will perceive illustrated on the ethnological profile of 
 the coast. All that is needed to make a combination 
 worthy of record is to stir in a little of the dust of an- 
 tiquity. And if we add a modicum of piety, such as the 
 Greek Church affords and dispenses, and [he nodded sig- 
 nificantly] a spice of American politics, we shall have a 
 concoction that will not shame the ingredients." 
 
 The purport of his words was not altogether clear to 
 my mind, a fact which the expression of my face no 
 doubt disclosed, for, after a scrutinizing glance, he said 
 amiabJy: "I will be more explicit." But instead of fur- 
 ther discourse, he simply agitated the samovar gently, and 
 forthwith a column of steam rose to the ceiling in fleecy 
 convolutions, clinging to the walls in a drapery of clouds. 
 Then from the nucleus of each misty fold came out, one 
 by one, the portraits of old explorers, priests, and traders 
 who had been identified with the history of Alaska since 
 nearly a century and a half ago. Bering, Valdez, La 
 Perouse, Cook, Vancouver, Lisianski, Quodra, Juan 
 de Fuca, Veniaminoff, Wrangell, Shellikov, Bara- 
 nov, and, conspicuous among all the rest, with features 
 fresher and outlines more distinct, the familiar likeness
 
 2o6" PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 of William H. Seward! Then the priest gave a compre- 
 hensive sweep of his arm, and lo! the misty canopy be- 
 came diaphanous, and transparent, and luminous, with 
 undulating scintillations like the aurora borealis, and from 
 coruscating plaques vivid reminiscences came to view, 
 like the ethereal refractions of a mirage, and I seemed to 
 see the fleets of Russia swarming in the Aleutian Archi- 
 pelago and dominating all the waters from the Gulf of 
 California to the gateway of the Arctic Sea, entrepots 
 and trading posts at all commercial points, missionary 
 stations scattered throughout the land, agricultural 
 areas tenanted with flocks and herds, and teeming 
 with garden vegetables, shipyards where fleets were 
 built and fitted out, foundries where bells were cast for 
 all the churches and chapels hence to Mexico, factories 
 of woolen fabrics, woodenware and farm implements, 
 mines of lead and iron and coal, supplying steamers 
 which plied to Russian ports ; great walrus and sea-otter 
 camps, with substantial warehouses and dwellings, and 
 whaling vessels by the score cruising northward to the 
 land's end. The hardships of the early discoverers, the 
 struggles of Russians, English, French, and Spaniards 
 for possession ; the conflicts with the natives, the cruel 
 orgies of the aborigines; the introduction of Christianity 
 among them by the missionaries as long ago as 1759; 
 their laborious instruction in grammar and the ruder arts, 
 all culminating in the pomp of the old court at Sitka, 
 passed in successive phantasmagoria. Incidentally there 
 came to view a panorama of volcanic eruptions, earth- 
 quakes, upheavals, cleavages, mountain floods, and tidal 
 waves, some recent, destroying whole towns and obliter- 
 ating entire populations and races of men; and back of 
 all these were penumbra of prehistoric peoples — referred 
 to in ancient literature as "dwellers in Cimmerian dark- 
 ness beyond the sea" — whose race characteristics have 
 been transmitted through all the generations to Innuit, 
 Thlinkit, Haida, Ingaleek, and Aleut — typical enigmas 
 even now to all ethnologists. 
 
 What I saw was a veritable stereopticon of Alaskan 
 history from its beginning, covered chiefly by the epoch 
 of Russian occupation. I was impressed with the mar- 
 velous resources of the country, and especially with the 
 wonderful achievements of the Slavonic regime, of which 
 I had formed no adequate conception ; but the true signi-
 
 THE SAMOVAR. 207 
 
 ficance of the allegory did not immediately present itself. 
 There was an insinuating touch of diplomacy in the 
 method and manner of the priest which I could not fully 
 comprehend. The suggestions compassed some hidden 
 contingency which I could not fathom. 
 
 I would fain have contemplated the strange phenomena, 
 but even while I looked they melted into thin air, and 
 only a diminutive spiral was seen to issue from the samo- 
 var; nay, I would have bespoken a literal interpretation 
 had I not been cautioned by an uplifted finger of the 
 priest. Then, simultaneously a puff of vapor mounted 
 from the rim, whiter than before, spreading itself abroad 
 and enfolding with its translucent fleecy drapery the be- 
 atific figure of the Genius of Liberty! It lingered for an 
 instant only and then vanished, and in the fading I fan- 
 cied I detected the evanescent semblance of an Imperial 
 Presence supporting it behind, massive and august, but 
 god-like and benignant. A moment later the room was 
 as clear of vapor as the outdoor atmosphere after a sum- 
 mer shower. 
 
 I leaned forward with feverish interest. 
 
 "Ask me no questions," the priest interposed. "The tab- 
 leaux which you have seen must convince you of the in- 
 domitable power of Russia and the energy which vitalizes 
 her remotest extremities. For a century and a half she 
 has possessed this Alaskan land. She subdued it, she de- 
 veloped it, and she has converted it. It is yours now to 
 cherish and enlighten. Her whole future is fraught with 
 political and economic possibilities of most momentous 
 character. In the old days the hand of the Muscovite 
 has lain heavily upon his subjects, but the world pro- 
 gresses and the prerogatives of serfs enlarge. Let the 
 spirit of intellectual liberty and republicanism now illu- 
 mine and pervade the land, and the result will be remu- 
 nerative beyond calculation. The welfare of Russia and 
 the great republic are intimately involved with each 
 other. When your country was wrenched with the 
 throes of threatened dissolution, the Muscovite stood 
 ready to aid in a last extremity, and her whole armada 
 was at your service. It may happen again in the com- 
 plications of international politics that the United States 
 will welcome the grip of a helping hand, and that the 
 hand of the greatest Power on earth. The intermediate 
 position of Alaska binds the two countries in close affinity,
 
 2o8 PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 and toward her former ward Russia will always stand 
 in the light of a foster parent." 
 
 A jarring of a window here momentarily drew my at- 
 tention, and when I turned again the priestly occupants 
 of the room were gone. 
 
 But the impressions left by that ghostly seance will 
 never be effaced. I believe the day is not far distant 
 when, prompted by common sense and wise counsel, a 
 naval station will be located on the northwest coast, and 
 an overland railroad and telegraph wire stretch across 
 Alaska to Bering Strait, joining the two contiguous con- 
 tinents by marine cable across the narrow ocean gap 
 which intervenes. Then our long-neglected province 
 will not only resound with busy industry, but vie with 
 her active British neighbor for commercial supremacy on 
 the Western seas.
 
 X 
 
 — 
 
 r. 
 W 
 
 H 
 
 >
 
 ALASKA OF TO-DAY. 
 
 When the last of the miners came out from the upper 
 Yukon gold region on October 15, 1896, they made the 
 time from Forty-Mile Creek to Juneau in twenty-five 
 days, travelling by steamboat, bateau, and pack-horses, 
 and those who made the trip allowed that the time could 
 be materially shortened. Previously the journey had re- 
 quired several months and great hardship in poling up 
 the chain of lakes and against an eight-mile river current, 
 a distance of 700 miles, to the Dyea Pass, over which an 
 Indian trail led to Chilkat at the head of tide-water; 
 from which point the remainder of the trip was easy. 
 Everything had to be packed on the backs of native 
 porters at a cost of fifty to seventy-five cents a pound, 
 grub included, from Skagway over the summit and vice 
 versa. Between the Chilcoot Pass and the Dyea Pass it 
 was "Hobson's choice." Two years later, when George 
 A. Brackett's wagon road over the ridge was finished and 
 open for use at a cost of some $200,000, the rate dropped 
 to twelve cents. Now over the busy Yukon railroad it is 
 two cents, with a corresponding reduction of time in 
 transit. 
 
 This is destined within two years to be the history of 
 all the transportation lines leading to going mines of 
 whatever sort — coal, gold, copper or tin. Railroads now 
 building and planned for central Alaska, of which 300 
 miles had been completed in 1907, according to Gov. 
 Hoggatt's annual report, comprise 2,000 miles of track. 
 From Skagway to White Pass is the most important. 
 This has 20 miles in American territory and 92 miles 
 in British-America. There are a number of short roads 
 about Nome, and one at Yakutat on the southern coast. 
 At Fairbanks there is the Tanana Mines railway, and 
 plans are being pushed along the Copper River valley. 
 Starting from Valdez, there are two roads partly built, 
 a main line to St. Michael and a branch to Eagle, the
 
 2io 'PEERLESS 'ALASKA. 
 
 latter following up the Copper River valley, thence over 
 an imperceptible divide to the Tenana River, thence to 
 the headwaters of Forty-Mile River and down to the 
 Yukon, the distance being 115 miles, against 594 via 
 Skagway and Canadian territory. Valdez, on Cook Inlet, 
 is the only feasible starting point, geographically, for an 
 all- American route to the interior of Alaska. It is the 
 distributing point already for seven mail routes. Its 
 post-office is of the Presidential class. Military telegraph 
 lines extend to all Yukon and Tenana River points, and 
 to Cape Nome (wireless and cable from St. Michael 
 across Morton Sound), and the overland mail routes, 
 soon to be followed by the railroad already begun, have 
 dog, horse, and reindeer winter service, and heated 
 stages running over across country which only a few 
 years ago was a terra incognita except to Indians, trap- 
 pers, and fur hunters. Many hundreds of interior post 
 roads, wagon roads, and trails with bridges, have been 
 opened up within three years under the direction of the 
 Board of Road Commissioners, authorized by Congress 
 in 1905. Outfitting points for miners have been removed 
 from Seattle to Valdez and Juneau, so that the cost is 
 little more than wholesale prices with freight added, and 
 the buyer is saved wharfage, care of shipping, etc. 
 
 Under the improved situation gold mining in the inte- 
 rior is stripped of much of its former hardship, and the 
 influx of gold seekers has greatly multiplied. There are at 
 least 8,000 miners distributed over the expansive Yukon 
 gold region and 12,000 in the Nome district throughout 
 the Seward Peninsula. A dozen "cities" have grown up 
 at the mining centers, of which Circle City, Nome, Val- 
 dez, Eagle City, Seward, and Fairbanks are the chief. 
 Nome has a summer population of several thousand, and 
 a three-story 80-room hotel with all modern equipments. 
 St. Michael has 4,000 residents with large warehouses 
 and hotels to accommodate the miners, and spacious 
 warehouses, barracks, and officers' quarters, and other 
 buildings for the U. S. military post. The government 
 has eight military stations in Alaska, namely, at Dyea, 
 Wrangell, Circle City, St. Michael, Rampart City, Pyra- 
 mid Harbor, Sitka, and on the military road north of 
 Valdez. In the matter of coast navigation the govern- 
 ment has provided aids and appliances so liberally, light- 
 houses, buoys, fog horns, tripods, and the like, that Gov.
 
 ALASKA OF TO-DAY. 211 
 
 Hoggatt asks for a separate lighthouse district for 
 Alaska. So far as southeastern Alaska is concerned, the 
 railroads have not come, because the coast is so easily 
 accessible by the sea and the channels so readily navi- 
 gated that, in the very nature of the case, the sea has 
 furnished the easiest and most economical way of ap- 
 proach. 
 
 It does not take long to move a large migration and 
 occupy a territory where there is sufficient inducement in 
 sight. Oklahoma passed from nonentity to statehood in 
 ten years. Kansas filled up in an equal time. Utah was 
 settled by 40,000 people in ten years. Ten thousand per- 
 sons had moved to California one year after gold was 
 discovered there. Fifty thousand people have moved 
 into the Arctic Circle within ten years. One hundred 
 and fifty thousand into the subarctic wheat fields of the 
 Canadian northwest during the five years past. 
 
 Mining on the Seward Peninsula is no longer restricted 
 to a few summer months. Subterranean placers belong- 
 ing to an ancient geological period have been discovered 
 under the tundra back of Nome, between the coast and 
 the mountains, where men can mine the whole year 
 round wita a twelve- foot roof of frozen earth over their 
 heads, quite comfortable out of the surface cold, and 
 working by electric light. Copper and tin mines are 
 being worked in regions wide apart. Extensive coal 
 fields are being opened out. Petroleum, gypsum, silver, 
 lead, and marble are possible assets, and railroads are 
 hastening to reach them. All known modern contrivances 
 to facilitate work are in use. In the days of the early 
 prospectors everything was crude and done by hand. 
 Now there are gravity railroads and electric and steam 
 tramways, compressed-air drills, snowsheds, protecting 
 apparatus, and work is prosecuted in the drifts and tun- 
 nels the whole year round. Gold is everywhere, but it is 
 truth to say that the only interior mines which it pays 
 to work pending transportation are the high-grade placers 
 such as those on the Shushitna, Chisna, Slate, Nizina, 
 and Bremner. Anticipating the railroads, the Seward 
 Co-operative Telephone Company have constructed last 
 year 600 miles of double wires from Nome to Candle 
 City, and from Nome to Kougarok via Salmon Lake, and 
 thence to Teller and the tin region, and were planning 
 to run a line to Penny River and eastward, The phones
 
 212 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 are of the automatic central battery system, which do 
 not require the user to "ring central." Alaska is always 
 up to date in these days. She does nothing by halves. 
 
 Until a few years ago all Yukon miners used to drop 
 down the river to St. Michael or clamber over the tough 
 "divide" into Juneau and spent their dust at Dick Wil- 
 loughby's or one or another of the semi-reputable resorts 
 of the town, in the weary effort to while away the tedious 
 winter. Those who have been to the camps know how 
 it is themselves. But now there are no more dives and 
 "Nips and Tucks" and "Damfinos" in Juneau. Aleck 
 Choquette, King Lear, J. B. Whitford, McFarland, Pow- 
 ers, Starr, Vanderbilt, Lynch, and the other old-timers 
 who located the place under the original name of Harri- 
 sonburg would not recognize it now. Everything is po- 
 liced and proper, and the Klootchmen of years ago, who 
 were the prey of adventurers, are now the wards of the 
 sisters and missionaries, and the foot that slipped on the 
 side hill then is now stayed by substantial sidewalks. Be- 
 sides, there is a veritable bishop (Rowe), with his own 
 diocese and an assistant bishop right there in Juneau, 
 with a rectory and church edifice, with stained-glass win- 
 dows and everything in keeping. Every churchman 
 knows what this means. They all know that when the 
 flock increases the supervision widens and extends, and 
 that licentiousness and barbarism disappear when the 
 totem of St. Hubert is held aloft; for the canonized 
 churchman and the knights of St. Hubert are all in close 
 communion together. But you should see the good Dr. 
 Rowe on his annual visitation ! His diocese embraces a 
 semi-continental area, and a continuous circuit of 10,000 
 miles by water lines which formerly were traversed 
 mainly by canoes, was then a mere episode in the career 
 of his busy Christian life. 
 
 I remember when I first went to Alaska, in 1885, and 
 took a venture in the first fissure prospect that was de- 
 veloped at Lake Mountain, near Sitka, how individual- 
 ized each dusky Siwash was at the time, and how he 
 gave imposing "potlatches," whose cost can only be esti- 
 mated, and buried ill-starred slaves under the four foun- 
 dation posts of his new slab palace by way of a house- 
 warming! Now, to-day, within sight of the spot where 
 the dead were incinerated on funeral piles, the good and 
 reverend ShHdc.n J.iH^nn ]>■>. -. >„, i.- >..<n;*.m hrp*
 
 ALASKA OF TO-DAY. 
 
 213 
 
 and well-appointed edifices, two and three stories high, 
 included in his Presbyterian Seminary at Sitka, whose 
 dusky uniformed pupils are builders of model dwelling- 
 houses and artificers in all kinds of handiwork. And so 
 it goes on steadily, progressively, and rapidly. 
 
 No geographical division of the United States has im- 
 proved in such ratio as Alaska. The old regime has been 
 totally superseded, and the beneficence of the new dis- 
 pensation has reached to its remotest confines and inner- 
 most parts. The other day a returned lay teacher an- 
 nounced a lecture in one of our chief Western cities, and 
 collected a numerous audience to be informed how badly 
 the natives of the Golden Province District smelled of 
 fish-oil, and what barbarous crudities cropped out all 
 along the line of their progress since the date of the ces- 
 sion ; and when I ventured to hint in the presence of her 
 credulous hearers that she must have been chiefly em- 
 ployed at Kilisnoo (which is a porpoise-oil factory with 
 a plant costing $100,000), she would fain have had us all 
 believe that the present population of southeastern Alaska 
 were little better than the Eskimos of Kotzebue Sound, 
 who live on blubber and sea-oil, chiefly, because other 
 provender is hard to get — or was until the benificent 
 Sheldon Jackson imported reindeer from Siberia to keep 
 the feeble spark of life aglow until times should better 
 and every wearer of the sealskin kamelik secure a grub 
 stake on the coast. 
 
 And what do we see to-day in Alaska as the result of 
 the past twenty-five years' work, not to hark- back fur- 
 ther ? What do we discover ethically as well as econom- 
 ically? Why, there are no less than fifty mission sta- 
 tions, and as many mission schools, operated by a dozen 
 different evangelical denominations, besides half a hun- 
 dred government public schools, working harmoniously 
 together in the common cause of pkilanthropy, covering 
 coast and interior alike, from the Aleutian chain to the 
 land's end in the Arctic Circle, with their dark-skinned 
 pupils dressed in the neat and telling garb of modern 
 civilization, and the faces of every child and unsophisti- 
 cated adult beaming with the consciousness of enlarged 
 intelligence. 
 
 And development has taken place equally on all indus- 
 trial lines. Three lines of well-appointed freight and
 
 214 
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 passenger steamers ply regularly to trading posts and 
 populous towns on the Upper Yukon. Several local lines 
 of coastwise steamers connect Seattle and intermediate 
 ports with Unalaska. Regular communication is kept up 
 between St. Michael's in Bering Sea and San Francisco ; 
 and a regular monthly mail service over a winter route 
 is maintained with stations within the Arctic Circle as 
 far north as Point Barrow, where there is a life-saving 
 post as well as a school and mission. Steamboats tra- 
 verse the interior lakes and rivers. They run up the 
 Kuskokwim 500 miles. Far up on all the principal water- 
 ways and tributaries there are schools, stores, and mis- 
 sions; all the old barbarism abolished and savage tradi- 
 tions obsolete ! And the whites who are seeking ven- 
 tures in the province keep pace with those in the States, 
 aesthetically as well as commercially. There are summer 
 yachting excursions to the Aleutian Islands, diurnal vis- 
 itors to the Hoonah Hot Springs. Alpine clubs and 
 mountain-climbers prospect the supreme altitudes of the 
 Fair weather group and the intricacies of the glacial 
 fields. Summer residents and mine operators pass their 
 winters in the east and south, Seattle, New York, and 
 Florida. The latest fashions prevail in all the principal 
 coastwise towns. 
 
 Juneau, the metropolis, boasts a theatre and opera- 
 house, several churches, first-class hotels, a hospital 
 heated by steam, a fire department, telephone service, an 
 electric light and power company, a woolen mill which 
 manufactures suitings, steam laundries, hot and cold 
 baths, a public reading-room and library, a high school 
 and academy, a kindergarten, and a complement of doc- 
 tors, dentists, and attorneys. Juneau has a shipyard, an 
 iron foundry, bank, two newspapers well edited, a 
 monthly illustrated magazine, millinery establishments, 
 breweries, a dramatic club, an athletic society. She has 
 meat markets and seasonable vegetables home grown, 
 plank sidewalks and macadamized wagon roads, spacious 
 warehouses, and docks 700 feet long. At Douglas Island, 
 across Gastineaux Channel, are the famous Treadwell 
 mines and smelters. In all respects this neighborhood 
 is fully up to date. Already in Alaska there are twenty- 
 five daily and weekly newspapers published. Everywhere 
 the government, which was so slow to "take en" at th«
 
 ALASKA OF TO-DAY. 215 
 
 outset, keeps pace with private enterprise, and the two 
 go hand in hand, working out the salvation of the 
 people, natives and new-comers alike, and grinding out 
 wealth like a corn-sheller. Nearly all of its vast area 
 of 600,000 square miles is in process of development. 
 The total gold output since the purchase is stated At 
 $110,348,000.00. Copper, coal, fish, lumber, and fur add 
 another great sum. Verily "Our Cache near the Pole" 
 is a bonanza which is likely to hold out for generations 
 to come.
 
 2l6 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 Game Legislation for Alaska. 
 
 A BILL to amend an Act entitled "An Act for the pro- 
 tection of game in Alaska, and for other purposes/' 
 approved June 7, 1902. 
 
 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives of the United States of America in Congress as- 
 sembled, That an Act entitled "An Act for the protection 
 of game in Alaska, and for other purposes," approved 
 June 7, 1902, be amended to read as follows: 
 
 "From and after the passage of this Act the wanton 
 destruction of wild game animals or wild birds, except 
 eagles, ravens and cormorants, the destruction of nests 
 and eggs of such birds, or the killing of any wild birds, 
 except eagles and ravens, other than game birds, for the 
 purpose of killing the same or the skins or any part 
 thereof, except as hereinafter provided, is hereby pro- 
 hibited. 
 
 "Game Defined. — The term 'game animals' shall in- 
 clude deer, moose, caribou, sheep, mountain goats, brown 
 bear, sea lions and walrus. The term 'game birds' shall 
 include water fowl, commonly known as ducks, geese, 
 brant, and swans ; shore birds, commonly known as 
 plover, snipe, and curlew, and the several species jf 
 grouse and ptarmigan. 
 
 "Exemption. — Nothing in this Act shall affect any law 
 now in force in Alaska relating to the fur seal, sea otter, 
 or any fur-bearing animal, or prevent the killing of any 
 game animal or bird for food or clothing at any time by 
 natives, or by miners or explorers, when in need of food ; 
 but the game animals or birds so killed during close 
 season shall not be shipped or sold. 
 
 "Sec. 2. Season. — That it shall be unlawful for any 
 person in Alaska to kill any wild game animals or birds, 
 except during the season hereinafter provided ; North of
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 217 
 
 latitude 62 degrees, brown bear may be killed at any time ; 
 moose, caribou, sheep, walrus, and sea lions from August 
 first to December tenth, both inclusive; south of latitude 
 62 degrees, moose, caribou and sheep, from August 
 20th to December 31st, both inclusive; brown bear from 
 October 1st to July 1st, both inclusive; deer and moun- 
 tain goats from April 1st to February 1st, both inclusive; 
 caribou on the Kenai Peninsula before August 12th, 
 1912; grouse, ptarmigan, shore birds, and water- fowl 
 from September 1st to March 1st, both inclusive: Pro- 
 vided, That the Secretary of Agriculture is hereby au- 
 thorized, whenever he shall deem it necessary for the 
 preservation of game animals or birds, to make and pub- 
 lish rules and regulations prohibiting the sale of any 
 game in any locality modifying the close seasons herein- 
 before established, providing different close seasons for 
 different parts of Alaska, placing further restrictions and 
 limitations on the killing of such animals or birds in any 
 given locality, or prohibiting killing entirely for a period 
 not exceeding two years in such locality. 
 
 "Sec. 3. Number. — That it shall be unlawful for any 
 person to kill any female or yearling moose or caribou 
 or for any one person to kill in any one year more than 
 the number specified of each of the following animals: 
 Two moose, one walrus or sea lion, three caribou, three 
 sheep, three brown bear, or to kill or have in his posses- 
 sion in any one day more than twenty-five grouse or 
 ptarmigan or twenty-five shore birds or waterfowl. 
 
 "Guns and Boats. — That it shall be unlawful for any 
 person at any time to hunt with dogs any of the game 
 animals specified in this Act ; to use a shotgun larger 
 than No. 10 gauge, or any gun other than that which 
 can be fired from the shoulder ; or to use steam launches 
 or any boats other than those propelled by oars or pad- 
 dles in the pursuit of game, animals or birds. 
 
 "Sec. 4. Sale. — That it shall be unlawful for any per- 
 son or persons at any time to sell or offer for sale any 
 hides, skins, or heads of any game animals or game birds 
 in Alaska, or to sell, offer for sale, or purchase, or offer 
 to purchase, any game animals or game birds, or parts 
 thereof, during the time when the killing of such ani- 
 mals or birds is prohibited : Provided, That it shall be 
 lawful for dealers having in possession game animals or 
 game birds legally killed during the open season to dis-
 
 218 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 pose of the same within fifteen days after the close of 
 said season. 
 
 "Sec. 5. Licenses. — That it shall be unlawful for any- 
 non-resident of Alaska to hunt any of the game animals 
 protected by this Act, except deer and goats, without 
 first obtaining a hunting license, or to hunt on the 
 Kenai Peninsula without a registered guide, and such 
 license shall not be transferable and shall be valid only 
 during the calendar year in which issued. Each applicant 
 shall pay a fee of one hundred dollars for such license, 
 unless he be a citizen of the United States, in which 
 case he shall pay a fee of fifty dollars. Each license 
 shall be accompanied by coupons authorizing the ship- 
 ment of two moose if killed north of latitude 62 degrees, 
 four deer, three caribou, three sheep, three goats, and 
 three brown bear, or any part of said animals, but no 
 more of any one kind. 
 
 "A resident of Alaska desiring to export heads or 
 trophies of any of the game animals mentioned in this 
 Act shall first obtain a shipping license, for which he 
 shall pay a fee of forty dollars, permitting the shipment 
 of heads or trophies of one moose, if killed north of 
 latitude 62 degrees, four deer, two caribou, two sheep, 
 two goats, and two brown bears, but no more of any 
 one kind ; or a shipping license, for which he shall pay 
 a fee of ten dollars, permitting the shipment of a single 
 head or trophy of caribou or sheep; or a shipping 
 license, for which he shall pay a fee of five dollars, per- 
 mitting the shipment of a single head or trophy of any 
 goat, deer, or brown bear. Any person wishing to ship 
 moose killed south of latitude 62 degrees must first 
 obtain a special shipping license, for which he shall pay 
 a fee of one hundred and fifty dollars, permitting the 
 shipment of one moose, or any part thereof. Not more 
 than one general license and two special moose licenses 
 shall be issued to any one person in one year: Pro- 
 vided, That before any trophy shall be shipped from 
 Alaska under the provisions of this Act the person desir- 
 ing to make such shipment shall first make and file with 
 the customs office at the port where such shipment is to 
 be made an affidavit to the effect that he has not violated 
 any of the provisions of this Act ; that the trophy which 
 he desires to ship has not been bought or purchased and 
 has not been sold and is not being shipped for the purpose
 
 APPENDIX A. 219 
 
 of being sold, and that he is the owner of the trophy 
 which he desires to ship, and if the trophy is that of 
 moose, whether the animal from which it was taken was 
 killed north or south of latitude 62 degrees; Provided, 
 further, That any resident of Alaska prior to September 
 1st, 1908, may without permit or license ship any head 
 or trophy of any of the game animals herein mentioned 
 upon riling an affidavit with the customs office at the port 
 where such shipment is to be made that the animal from 
 which said head or trophy was taken was killed prior to 
 the passage of this Act. Any affidavit required by the 
 provisions of this Act may be subscribed and sworn to 
 before any customs officer or before any officer competent 
 to administer an oath. 
 
 "The Governor of Alaska is hereby authorized to issue 
 licenses for hunting and shipping big game. On issuing 
 a license he shall require the applicant to state whether 
 the heads or trophies to be obtained or shipped under 
 said license will pass through the ports of entry at Seat^e, 
 Washington, Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco, Cali- 
 fornia, and he shall forthwith notify the collector of 
 customs at the proper port entry as to the name of the 
 holder of the license and the name and address of the 
 consignee. All proceeds from licenses, except one dollar 
 from each fee, which shall be retained by the clerk issu- 
 ing the license to cover the cost of printing and issue, 
 shall be paid into a game protection fund and shall be 
 expended under the direction of the Governor for the 
 employment of wardens or the payment of other expenses 
 for the protection of game in Alaska. And the Gov- 
 ernor shall annually make a detailed and itemized report 
 to the Secretary of Agriculture, in which he shall state 
 the number and kind of license issued, the money re- 
 ceived, and how the same was expended, which report 
 shall also include a full statement of all trophies ex- 
 ported and all animals and birds exported for any pur- 
 pose. 
 
 "And the Governor of Alaska is further authorized to 
 employ game wardens, to make regulations for the regis- 
 tration and employment of guides, and fix the rates for 
 licensing guides and rates of compensation for guiding. 
 Every person applying for a guide license shall at the 
 time of making such application, make and file with the 
 person issuing such license an affidavit to the effect that
 
 220 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 he will obey all the conditions of this Act and of the 
 regulations thereunder, that he will not violate any of 
 the game laws or regulations of Alaska, and that he will 
 report all violations of such laws and regulations that 
 come to his knowledge. Any American citizen or native 
 of Alaska, of good character, upon compliance with the 
 requirements of this Act, shall be entitled to a guide 
 license. Any guide who shall fail or refuse to report 
 such violations by the person employing him, or who 
 shall himself violate any of the laws or regulations, shall 
 have his license revoked, and in addition shall be liable 
 to the penalty provided in Section 7 of this Act, and shall 
 be ineligible to act as guide for a period of five years 
 from the date of conviction. 
 
 "Sec. 6. That it shall be unlawful for any persons, 
 firm, or corporation, or their officers or agents, to de- 
 liver to any common carrier, or for the owner, agent, or 
 master of any vessel, or for any other person, to receive 
 for shipment or have in possession with intent to ship 
 out of Alaska, any wild birds, except eagles and ravens, 
 or parts thereof, or any heads, hides, or carcasses of cari- 
 bou, deer, moose, mountain sheep, or mountain goats, or 
 parts thereof, unless said heads, hides, or carcasses are 
 accompanied by the required license or coupon and by a 
 copy of the affidavit required by Section 5 of this Act: 
 Provided, That nothing in this Act shall be construed to 
 prevent the collection of specimens for scientific purposes, 
 the capture or shipment of live animals and birds for ex- 
 hibition or propagation, or the export from Alaska of 
 specimens under permit from the Secretary of Agricul- 
 ture, and under such restrictions and limitations as he 
 may prescribe and publish. 
 
 "It shall be the duty of the collector of customs at 
 Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, to keep strict ac- 
 count of all consignments of game animals received from 
 Alaska, and no consignment of game shall be entered 
 until due notice thereof has been received from the Gov- 
 ernor of Alaska or the Secretary of Agriculture, and 
 found to agree with the name and address on the ship- 
 ment. In case consignments arrive without licenses they 
 shall be detained for sixty days, and if a license be not 
 then produced said consignment shall be forfeited to the 
 United States and shall be delivered by the Collector of
 
 APPENDIX A. 221 
 
 Customs to the United States Marshal of the district for 
 such disposition as the court may direct. 
 
 "Sec. 7. Penalties. — That any person violating any of 
 the provisions of this Act or any of the regulations pro- 
 mulgated by the Secretary of Agriculture or the Gov- 
 ernor of Alaska, shall be deemed guilty of a misde- 
 meanor, and upon conviction thereof shall forfeit to 
 the United States all game or birds in his possession, and 
 all guns, traps, nets, or boats, used in killing or cap- 
 turing said game or birds, and shall be punished for 
 each offense by a fine of not more than two hundred 
 dollars or imprisonment not more than three months, 
 or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion 
 of the court. Any person making any false or untrue 
 statements in any affidavit required by this Act shall be 
 deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction 
 thereof shall forfeit to the United States all trophies in 
 his possession, and shall be punished by a fine in any 
 sum not more than two hundred dollars or imprison- 
 ment not more than three months, or by both such fine 
 and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court. 
 
 "Enforcement. — It is hereby made the duty of all mar- 
 shals and deputy marshals, collectors or deputy collectors 
 of customs, all officers of revenue cutters, and all game 
 wardens to assist in the enforcement of this Act. Any 
 marshal, deputy marshal, or warden in or out of Alaska 
 may arrest without warrant any person found violating 
 any of the provisions of this Act or any of the regula- 
 tions herein provided, and may seize any game, birds, or 
 hides, and any traps, nets, guns, boats, or other parapher- 
 nalia used in the capture of such game or birds and 
 found in the possession of said person in or out of Alaska, 
 and any collector or deputy collector of customs, or 
 warden, or licensed guide, or any person authorized in 
 writing by a marshal shall have the power above pro- 
 vided to arrest any persons found violating this Act or 
 said regulations and seize said property without warrant 
 to keep and deliver the same to a marshal or a deputy 
 marshal. It shall be the duty of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury, upon request of the Governor or Secretary of 
 Agriculture, to aid in carrying out the provisions of 
 this Act. 
 
 "Sec. 8. That all Acts or parts of Acts in conflict with 
 the provisions of this Act are hereby repealed."
 
 222 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Homestead Entries in Alaska. 
 'By T. J. Donohoe, Attorney, Valdez. 
 
 Homestead entries of public lands in Alaska may be 
 made under the provisions of an act of Congress ap- 
 proved March 3, 1903, extending the homestead laws 
 and providing for a right of way for railroads in the 
 District of Alaska. 
 
 This act provides that a citizen of the United States 
 may, under the provisions of the homestead laws of the 
 United States, not in conflict with the provisions of this 
 act, enter 320 acres of the unoccupied and unappropri- 
 ated non-mineral public lands of Alaska; that no entry 
 shall be allowed extending more than one hundred and 
 sixty rods along the shore of any navigable water. If 
 any of the land settled upon is unsurveyed, it must be 
 located in a rectangular form not more than one mile in 
 length and located by north and south lines run accord- 
 ing to the true meridian, and the location so made shall 
 be marked upon the ground by permanent monuments at 
 each of the four corners thereof, so that the boundaries 
 may be readily traced. The record of said location shall 
 within ninety days from the date of settlement be filed 
 for record in the recording district in which the land is 
 situated. Said record shall contain the name of the set- 
 tler, the date of settlement, and such a description of the 
 land by reference to some natural object as will identify 
 the same. 
 
 If at the expiration of the time required by law the 
 public surveys have not been extended over the land 
 located, the locator may secure patent for the same by 
 procuring at his own expense a survey of the land, which 
 must be made by a deputy surveyor. When the survey 
 is approved by the surveyor general, the same procedure
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 22$ 
 
 is followed as in soldiers' additional certified rights, in 
 addition to which the settler must furnish the required 
 proof of residence and cultivation. Patent may be ob- 
 tained without the payment of any purchase price or 
 other charges except the ordinary office fees and commis- 
 sions of the register and receiver. Should the settler so 
 desire, he may commute under Section 2301, Revised 
 Statutes, one hundred and sixty acres of his entry by 
 paying, in addition to the fees and commissions as in 
 final homesteads, the price of one dollar and a quarter 
 per acre.
 
 224 
 
 PEERLESS ALASKA. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Table showing rate of wages and cost of living. 
 
 District. 
 
 Rate of wages 
 
 Cost of 
 
 Mechanics. 
 
 Miners. 
 
 Laborers. 
 
 per day. 
 
 Ketchikan 
 
 $5.00 
 5.00 
 5.00 
 5.00 
 5.00 
 15.00 
 10.00 
 
 $3.50 to $4.00 
 3.50 
 
 $3.00 to $3,50 
 3.00 
 3.00 
 2.75 
 3.00 to 3^50 
 7.00 
 5.00 
 
 $1.00 
 
 
 1.00 
 
 
 1.00 
 
 
 
 1.00 
 
 
 3.50 to 4.00 
 7.50 
 6.25 
 
 1.00 
 
 Fairbanks 
 
 2.50 
 1.25 
 
 
 
 *•&& 
 
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