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With Sack and Stock in Alaska

<h2 id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII YAKUTAT TO SITKA</h2> Thursday, the 23rd.—Up at sunrise, the blankets dripping with dew. As the morning was perfectly lovely, and the mountains quite clear, I roused De Groff to photograph, and then we went over in the big canoe to fetch Finn and our things, and said good-bye to the other two and to the missionaries. We then returned to the island and cooked our breakfast on De Groff’s stove, who was rather sad at our departure, but brightened up before we went. We managed to purchase a little hard tack and rice in the village, but could not get away till after nine o’clock, as Ned, in his delight at the prospect of such a lucrative voyage, was boozing with a few select friends on ‘hoochinoo,’ a vile decoction they distil from sugar, and was only got away when about half-seas over. At 8.30 H. came[138] across with a letter for his brother Alfred, and went back just before our departure. We pulled to Ocean Cape, which we reached at eleven o’clock, and then set both sails ‘wing and wing’ as the wind was dead aft though very light. The result of Ned’s potations was that we gybed with some frequency, and, apparently becoming aware of this, he transferred the steering-lines to his young brother Jack, who, with Ned’s wife and another Indian named Frank, made up the crew, and composed himself to sleep. We sailed steadily on all day, keeping five or six miles from the shore, which is here a low sandy beach on which the Pacific surf continually breaks, so that it is always difficult to land, and in bad weather becomes quite impossible, and therefore this was the most dangerous part of our canoe journey. At sunset we were nearly opposite the western end of Dry Bay, and as the wind died we pulled for a bit, but a land breeze from the north then came, and though, as it was on the beam, we were sure to make a lot of leeway, we kept the sails up, and proceeded to arrange ourselves as best we could for sleep. This is not very easy in a canoe even when forty feet[139] long, as the seats and cross-pieces prevent any extension movements of the body, but Ned’s bedding was allotted to me, and nicely filled the space aft of the stroke thwart. This canoe was fitted with four oars and, mirabile dictu, a rudder with yoke-lines, the only one I ever saw on a canoe, all the others being steered by paddles. Wash-boards had also been put on her for this ocean cruise, and we had had to cut holes in these for the oars. Friday, the 24th.—Splendid weather, almost too hot. At sunrise we had hardly cleared Dry Bay, but were some ten or twelve miles from land. About nine o’clock the west wind came again, but it was very light, and our progress was slow in the extreme. Swarms of little divers kept appearing all round us, and in the afternoon, when all were asleep but Ned and me, two small plover came on board and stayed for some time. At three o’clock the breeze died, and then a puff from the south-east rather alarmed us, and made us pull in for land, then about eight miles off, but it vanished again, and we pulled steadily on till just at sundown we reached the Indians’ regular camping-place, about four miles north of Cape Fairweather. [140] Though somewhat protected, the landing is through surf, and we had accordingly to unload the cargo, consisting of a few sea-otter skins and rather over a ton of seal-oil in square boxes, and then to pull up the canoe. We soon had a fire going, and cooked some soup and salmon, the former being much appreciated by Finn, who had been more or less sea-sick all day and got terribly chaffed by the Indians. The night was so fine that we did not pitch the tent, but just rolled it round us as we lay on the sand, with the roar of the surf lulling us to sleep. Saturday, the 25th.—Ned called us at five o’clock, and, after a hearty breakfast of fried salmon and corn-meal mush, of which latter we cooked a good quantity so as to be able to eat it cold in the canoe during the day, we got off at 7.30 with some difficulty, as the tide was ebbing, and the canoe kept sticking as we piled the stuff into her, and having to be moved down a little further. I did not envy Frank, who had to hold on to the stern of the canoe, which was bow on to the shore, for about half-an-hour, sometimes up to his shoulders in the icy surf,[141] in order to keep her straight, and we were all more or less wet by the time we got off. Our frying-pan, which had long lost its handle, still had the remains of the salmon in it, and, while Shorty was trying to wash it in the sea, it slipped from his fingers and vanished for ever. This was a terrible blow, as all our bread was baked in it. As we pulled to Cape Fairweather, clearing the point at half-past eight, I was able to do a little more to a sketch of Mount Fairweather, begun the night before. It bears a curious resemblance to Mount St. Elias, not only in its own shape, but also in that of the mountains immediately adjacent, having the same black ridge on the left, rising first into a Hump and then into a Huxley, but without the teeth on the left of the top of the latter, while on the right is a mountain wonderfully like Cook. A possible route from our last night’s camp for the ascent of Mount Fairweather would be through the bush to the glacier behind, along the course of the stream running into the sea close to the camping-place; then up the glacier for two easy days, or even one fair one, according to the state of the ice, and then right up the west arête; but the snow[142] looked bad, and the rocks, though nowhere very steep, seemed ominously smooth. A fine wind, increasing every moment, now sent us along at a grand pace, the water every now and then surging through the oar-holes, which we stopped as best we could by covering them with paddles. About seven to ten miles north of our camp is a very large glacier (the Grand Plateau?), of which the centre, covered with moraine, comes almost, if not quite, to the sea, while on either side is a stream of pure white ice. St. Elias was visible just over the point to the north of it, but we afterwards kept too close to the land to ever see it again, though it has been observed as far south as the entrance to Salisbury Sound, a distance of two hundred and eighty miles. As we got more to the south we could see that Fairweather’s ‘Hump’ was double-headed, while ‘Huxley’ looked very like the Rothhorn as seen from the Riffel. The west arête of Fairweather now seemed worse, there being a level jagged piece like the ‘Crête du Coq’ on the Matterhorn just before joining the main mass of the mountain. The upper part of the easternmost of the three southern arêtes looked feasible enough,[143] but the bottom was of precipitous dark-brown rock, to all appearance very little broken. This arête would be reached by the glacier which runs into the northern arm of Lituya Bay. The Indians now shouted out, ‘Schooner, schooner!’ and we were much excited, intending, if it should prove to be the ‘Alpha,’ to get some tinned luxuries and our mails from her, but we soon decided that it was only a canoe. We then lost sight of it for a bit, but came suddenly on it again, when it turned out to be only a floating spruce, to the huge amusement of my crew. With a real good wind we went flying along finely, and passed the mouth of Lituya Bay at eleven o’clock. The narrow entrance was quite smooth, and we could easily have gone in. We reached the Great Pacific Glacier at 2.30; this has a sea-front of white ice a mile and a half long, but, though great pieces are constantly breaking off, there are no bergs, as the surf pounds them up directly. The wind now began to slacken, and we did not reach Astrolabe Point, near which are some hot springs frequented by the Indians, till half-past six, while at sunset the breeze disappeared[144] altogether. Ned, with whom we, as passengers, never interfered in the management of his vessel, seemed undecided whether to go on all night or not, but the sunset had rather foreboded stormy weather, and he eventually headed for land. We pulled and paddled till ten o’clock, by which time it was quite dark, but the Indians found a little harbour known as Murphy’s Cove in a mysterious manner, and we tumbled out over sharp rocks to a tiny sandbeach, where we made a fire and had some coffee. Ned pitched his tent, Frank and Jack sleeping in the canoe, which was moored, while the rest of us lay about anywhere in the long rough grass. By the fire we found some porcupine quills, and there were other signs of Indians having been there recently. Sunday, the 26th.—I woke the others at five; the sky was grey and threatening, and the wind seemed to be from the east. All our stores were in a big rubber sack, the mouth of which had not been tied up, and Jack, in getting it from the canoe, managed to drop into the sea the bags which contained the rice and oatmeal. We promptly made porridge with the wet portion of the latter, and put the rice near the fire to dry; it swelled rather, but[145] there was not much of it, and it all got eaten before it went wrong. Ned’s big water-breaker had apparently once contained seal-oil, and the taste consequently imparted to the water was most loathsome, so that we were always careful to empty it out and fill it afresh before starting. For this purpose I went to a little stream only a yard or two wide, which ran into the corner of the harbour, and found it perfectly choked with salmon; in the first pool, which was about as big as a large hip-bath, were between twenty and thirty, varying from ten to twenty-five pounds in weight. In the stream and on the edges were so many dead and dying ones, that the water did not look tempting, but it was the best that could be had. We got off at 7.30, passing out by the canoe entrance, where we had tried to come in the night before, but had found the tide too low. We only just cleared the bar now by those of the men who had gum-boots on getting into the water and shoving. We pulled out through small islets of rock, but as we got to sea a strong squally east wind came on, and we had to take shelter at the Indians’ usual landing-place at Cape Spencer itself,[146] after going about five miles. The cape is rather like a four-or five-pronged fork, long promontories of rock running out, with very narrow bays between. We tried the most sheltered of these, but found too little water at the entrance, and had to go on to the next, which was a good deal more exposed. We got ashore at half-past nine, and as it was beginning to rain, we pitched our tent on the shingle, after which I went with Ned to the river, which was about a quarter of a mile off and ran into the bay that we had first tried to enter. It was a nice clear stream from ten to twenty yards wide, and full of salmon which fled before us, raising a great wave in the water. He speared ten in about twenty minutes, but they were all dogs but two. A great argument is at present raging in America as to whether these dogs, which have white flesh, are spent salmon or not; personally, I do not think they are, as at the mouth of this river there was a considerable fall at low water, and I saw there the doggiest of dogs waiting for the tide to come up so that they might ascend the river. When I returned Shorty and Lyons were asleep,[147] but Finn cooked me some lunch. He told me that the Tlinkits make hoolachan oil by stacking the fish in a canoe till they are rotten, they then add a little water to keep the canoe from burning, and pile heated rocks on the mass, drawing off the oil through a plug-hole at the bottom. In the afternoon it rained off and on, and the wind rather went down, but it would have been very bad in Cross Sound, and, though I think we might have got over, it would have been very risky to try, as we might so easily have been blown out to sea. We now made the discovery that our bacon had gone rancid and was quite uneatable, though the grease could be used for cooking. Though nothing would induce the white men to touch it, I had found that boiled salmon-roe, if well cleaned, was most excellent, so I prepared a piece and laid it on a stone, but, when I turned round a few minutes later, I saw a great raven flying off with it. I got some more later, as Finn and the Indians went to the river and speared and shot a lot of fish, only bringing back the good ones. They speared a salmon-trout of five or six pounds, but they threw each fish on the bank as[148] they got it, to be picked up on the way down, and somehow missed this one, so I never saw it. About four o’clock the sun came out; we seemed to be on the edge of the bad weather, as to the north and west it was fine and clear, but thick and grey to the south, towards which quarter our cove faced. In the evening it turned grey again and began to rain, so, after a supper of rice soup and boiled fish, we turned in early. Monday, the 27th.—There was a lot of rain in the night, and more wind, so that the Indians had to unload and pull up the canoe, in which Ned was sleeping. In the morning there was plenty of blue sky to the north, but the same strong east wind kept us prisoners. At breakfast our scanty store of sugar came to an end. This didn’t affect me much, but the men were grieved at having to eat their porridge plain. The Siwashes now discovered frogs in the vegetation where they had pitched their tent. They are very superstitious about these reptiles, whose image often appears on their totem-poles, and accordingly moved their tent down to ours, though at the same time they seemed to consider it rather a good joke. I borrowed Finn’s[149] gum-boots and went up the river with the spear, which had no barb, so that it was not very easy to secure the fish when struck. The Indians used to flip them out on to the bank, but my wrists were not strong enough for that with a thick twelve-foot pole, and I had to hold my captive down till I could shorten the spear, so sundry escaped, but I got eight or ten, following the river up for about a mile to where it got wider and shallower, and some Indians had at one time constructed a barrier and trap, now very dilapidated, with twigs and branches. When I returned I found that Ned’s wife had washed the blacking off her face with surprising results. I had sat at her feet for three days in the canoe under the impression that she was a hideous creature of about thirty, but now she appeared to be about seventeen, and really quite good-looking, being as fair as most Italians. Ned was himself a smart-looking fellow, and they made a handsome pair, though, like nearly all these coast Indians, their legs were deformed from the continual canoe life. All the women of these parts, and a good many of the men, black their faces in summer, partly to preserve the complexion, and partly to[150] keep off mosquitoes. They used to employ a mixture of soot and seal-oil, but now that the advance of civilisation has introduced them to blacking, they much prefer that. My watch now took to going all right again, the fine glacier mud apparently dropping out as it dried. At noon it began to rain steadily and kept on till five, when it kindly left off for a little, so we turned out and had supper. In spite of the rain, Finn had managed to bake some sour-dough bread in our tin plates, and he persuaded it to rise by covering it with our warm blankets. Though a good deal burnt in baking, it was quite excellent, and I particularly appreciated it as being the only crusty bread we ever had, but the men didn’t care for it. A crusty loaf is always an abomination to an American, and our preference for the outside always surprised our men. It soon began to rain again, so we turned in at seven, and lay in bed talking. Lyons had been in France and Germany as a child, but did not remember much about his journey. Tuesday, the 28th.—In the middle of the night we heard the Indians making a great noise and[151] roaring with laughter, and, on one of the men going out to inquire, we found that the little lake behind had been so swollen by the continued rain, that a stream had burst up through the shingle in the middle of their tent and swamped them out. Like the episode of the frogs, they seemed to consider it an excellent joke, though I should have been exceedingly annoyed had I had to move tent and blankets under pouring rain in the dark. But the coast Indian is a cheerful personage, and quite unlike his statelier cousin of the plains. The question of his relationship to Japan I leave to wiser heads than mine. It rained nearly all night, and the wind was much stronger. We lay in bed till 8.30, when Shorty made us some corn-meal cakes, as the oatmeal was finished. It went on raining hard, and we lay in the tent, the wet coming through freely on to our blankets, till half-past three, when it began to clear and the sun came partly out. It soon went in again, but the wind had gone round to the south-west, so we had hope for the morrow. Wednesday, the 29th.—None of us except Finn were able to sleep much, owing partly to so much[152] lying in the tent, and partly to the influx of insect life which had appeared on the cessation of the rain. Small black spiders which bit like anything, swarms of mosquitoes, and the biggest sand-fleas I ever saw,—they kept up such a pop-popping all night by jumping against the tent, that we thought it was raining when it was really quite fine. We were up at five and off by 6.30, when we pulled east for an hour round the point into Cross Sound. Here we found a dense fog and an icy-cold north-east wind coming off the glacier in Taylor’s Bay, so we set sail and ran across the Sound in an hour and twenty minutes to Lisianski Channel, between Tchitchagoff and Jacobi Islands. This channel is extremely narrow, and we sailed down it with a light breeze for three hours, seeing quantities of white-headed eagles on the trees. We then reached the corner where the strait turns sharp to the west, and landed for about an hour. We found here a skull on the beach, about which Shorty and Finn had an argument which culminated in the former betting twenty dollars to Finn’s watch on its being a deer’s head; but he lost, for[153] Ned, whom they appointed umpire, pronounced it to be that of a seal. We went on again at one o’clock, pulling and paddling steadily against the tide, and had almost reached the open sea at 4.30, when the tide turned and a good north-west wind sprang up. We found a heavyish sea outside still running up from the south-east, but the wind drove us through it at a great pace, and we passed Cape Edwardes at about sunset. We then got in among the fringe of small islands, and landed at nine o’clock some six miles further on in a little harbour which took some finding in the dark. We landed over some rather broken rocks, and Lyons was much taken aback at finding himself at the edge of what seemed in the blackness of the night to be a bottomless chasm, though in the morning it proved to be only about four feet deep. We lit a fire and prepared some pea-soup, after consuming which we curled up on the moss under the trees, the men rolling up in the tent, while I had blankets enough to take a nook apart. The night was lovely and the starlight most brilliant. Thursday, the 30th.—A beautiful morning. I[154] woke the rest at five, and after some coffee and corn-meal mush we got off at 6.30 and rowed to the end of the islands, by which time it was half-past nine, and the west wind came again according to custom. About this period I recognised the conical top of Mount Edgcumbe, and pointed it out to Finn, who had not been in these parts before. We reached the entrance of Salisbury Sound at noon, and ate our one precious tin of corned beef, which we had saved so carefully. We flew down the Sound at a great pace through crowds of porpoises, at which the men tried several futile shots. At one o’clock we rounded the corner opposite Peril Straits, and saw a vessel coming towards us, which we at first expected would be the ‘Idaho,’ which, on account of the crowd of tourists, had been doing some supplementary trips to those of the ‘Ancon’ and ‘Elder,’ but as she got nearer we recognised the ‘Pinta.’ Since we were going about nine knots we did not want to waste any of our wind, and merely ran past, exchanging salutes. About three o’clock the wind began to die away, and at four, just after we had passed St. John the Baptist’s Bay, we had to take to the oars,[155] and, pulling on steadily at a good pace, came in sight of Sitka at about seven, when I sent my previously untouched whisky-flask round, and half an hour later we were ordering a sumptuous supper of clam-soup, halibut, and venison, while half the population were crowding round to hear our tale. I was just in time to secure the ‘Leo,’ a steam schooner of about fifty tons, which would otherwise have sailed at midnight for Port Townsend, and for four hundred dollars her owner consented to go up to Yakutat and fetch the others. H. said they were wild with delight when they saw her round the point three days later, but after all, I had the best of it, for they encountered a fearful south-east gale, and, after springing a bad leak, had to run back to Yakutat, where they beached and repaired her, and did not reach Sitka till the 17th of September. Our expedition was a failure, chiefly from the want of trained men to convey camping material to a great height, and the next party would do well to take a couple of Swiss porters. We were wonderfully favoured by the weather, and were most fortunate in that, out of the party of fourteen[156] who went inland, the only casualty was Shorty’s strain, and that did not occur till we had commenced the return journey. But, should any one think of organising an expedition for climbing in the St. Elias Alps, I would strongly advise him to turn his attention to Mounts Fairweather and Crillon. For these Lituya Bay offers a first-rate starting point, since there is in its recesses ample anchorage even for men-of-war, while the peaks are probably not more than fifteen miles away, and sundry expeditions of great merit might be made. The height of Mount St. Elias suffered a rude onslaught at the hands of a party of American surveyors in 1890, but I feel tolerably sure in my own mind that the old height of nineteen thousand feet is the more correct one, for the following reasons. Firstly, the figures establishing the highest point reached as 11,375 feet were carefully worked out; previous observations had given the height of the crater’s rim as 7,500 feet; and the times taken by the other three, a very fast party, correspond very fairly, so that we may assume this height to be fairly exact. At this point they were[157] above the col, but not as high as Haydon Peak, and therefore probably about a thousand feet above the col. Now, from Yakutat it is clear at once that this col is barely half-way up the mountain. Secondly, as I went down the coast in the canoe the weather was absolutely perfect, and Mount St. Elias clearly in view till the third morning, when we lost it by getting behind Cape Fairweather. I can clearly recollect how, as we were pulling in to the landing-place north of Cape Fairweather on the second evening, the peak stood up clear and sharp against the sunset sky, with at least a third of its bulk above the horizon. The mountain had never been out of sight, and the sun was not shining on the snows, so I do not think any assistance was gained from refraction. As Cape Fairweather is distant 150 miles from Mount St. Elias, this would again make the peak about 20,000 feet high. Milmore, the steward of the ‘Pinta,’ who knew the appearance of the mountain well, assured me that, on their voyage down from Yakutat in 1886, it was in sight as far south as Salisbury Sound; but I cannot help thinking some mistake was made between it and perhaps Crillon.[158] However, other people assured me they had seen it when off Cross Sound. With reference to the supposed volcanic origin of the mountain, I think the main mass is certainly not volcanic; but I brought home from the moraine of the Tyndall Glacier two or three pieces of red amygdaloid lava, which I believe came from the Red Hills just south of the ‘crater,’ so that, possibly, this crater may be due, after all, to volcanic forces. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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