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ALASKA ITS SOUTHERN COAST AND THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO
ALASKA ITS SOUTHERN COAST AND THE SITKAN ARCHIPELAGO
“ Berlin , Sept. 5.—We have seen of Germany enough to show that its climate is neither so genial, nor its soil so fertile, nor its resources of forests and mines so rich as those of Southern Alaska.”— William H. Seward — Travels Around the World , Part VI. chap. v. page 708....
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
These chapters are mainly a republication of the series of letters appearing in the columns of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat during the summer of 1883, and in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the New York Times during the summer of 1884. To readers of those journals, and to many exchange editors, who gave further circulation to the letters, they may carry familiar echoes. The only excuse for offering them in this permanent form is the wish that the comparatively unknown territory, with its matchl
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CHAPTER I. THE START—PORT TOWNSEND—VICTORIA—NANAIMO.
CHAPTER I. THE START—PORT TOWNSEND—VICTORIA—NANAIMO.
Although Alaska is nine times as large as the group of New England States, twice the size of Texas, and three times that of California, a false impression prevails that it is all one barren, inhospitable region, wrapped in snow and ice the year round. The fact is overlooked that a territory stretching more than a thousand miles from north to south, and washed by the warm currents of the Pacific Ocean, may have a great range and diversity of climate within its borders. The jokes and exaggerations
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CHAPTER II. THE BRITISH COLUMBIA COAST AND TONGASS.
CHAPTER II. THE BRITISH COLUMBIA COAST AND TONGASS.
If Claude Melnotte had wanted to paint a fairer picture to his lady, he should have told Pauline of this glorious northwest coast, fringed with islands, seamed with fathomless channels of clear, green, sea water, and basking in the soft, mellow radiance of this summer sunshine. The scenery gains everything from being translated through the medium of a soft, pearly atmosphere, where the light is as gray and evenly diffused as in Old England itself. The distant mountain ranges are lost in the blue
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CHAPTER III. CAPE FOX AND NAHA BAY.
CHAPTER III. CAPE FOX AND NAHA BAY.
From the Tongass fishery, which is some miles below the main village of the Tongass Indians and the deserted fort where United States troops were once stationed, the ship made its way by night to Cape Fox. At this point on the mainland shore, beyond Fort Tongass, the Kinneys, the great salmon packers of Astoria, have a cannery that is one of the model establishments up here. Two large buildings for the cannery, two houses, a store, and the scattered line of log houses, bark houses and tents of t
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CHAPTER IV. KASA-AN BAY.
CHAPTER IV. KASA-AN BAY.
Kasa-an, or Karta Bay opens from Clarence Strait directly west of Naha Bay, and the long inlet runs in from the eastern shore of the Prince of Wales island for twenty miles. There are villages of Kasa-an Indians in the smaller inlets and coves opening from the bay, and carved totem poles stand guard over the large square houses of these native settlements. The bay itself is as lovely a stretch of water as can be imagined, sheltered, sunny, and calm, with noble mountains outlining its curves, and
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CHAPTER V. FORT WRANGELL AND THE STIKINE.
CHAPTER V. FORT WRANGELL AND THE STIKINE.
Those who believe that all Alaska is a place of perpetual rain, fog, snow, and ice would be quickly disabused could they spend some of the ideal summer days in that most lovely harbor of Fort Wrangell. Each time the sky was clearer and the air milder than before, and on the day of my third visit the fresh beams of the morning sun gave an infinite charm to the landscape, as we turned from Clarence Straits into the narrower pass between the islands, and sailed across waters that reflected in shimm
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CHAPTER VI. WRANGELL NARROWS AND TAKU GLACIERS.
CHAPTER VI. WRANGELL NARROWS AND TAKU GLACIERS.
If there were not so many more wonderful places in Alaska, Wrangell Narrows would give it a scenic fame, and make its fortune in the coming centuries when tourists and yachts will crowd these waters, and poets and seafaring novelists desert the Scotch coast for these northwestern isles. Instead of William Black’s everlasting Oban, and Staffa, and Skye, and heroines with a burr in their speech, we will read of Kasa-an and Kaigan, Taku and Chilkat, and maidens who lisp in soft accents the deep, gu
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CHAPTER VII. JUNEAU, SILVER BOW BASIN, AND DOUGLASS ISLAND MINES.
CHAPTER VII. JUNEAU, SILVER BOW BASIN, AND DOUGLASS ISLAND MINES.
Turning north from the mouth of Taku Inlet, and running up Gastineaux Channel, we were between the steepest mountain walls that vegetation could cling to, and down all those verdant precipices poured foaming cascades from the snow-banks on the summits. This channel between the mainland shore and Douglass Island is less than a mile in width, and the mountains on the eastern shore rise to two thousand feet and more in their first uplift from the water’s edge. The snowy summits of the ranges back o
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CHAPTER VIII. THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.
CHAPTER VIII. THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.
Juneau is far enough north to satisfy any reasonable summer ambition, and with its latitude of 58° 16´ N., the young mining town and future metropolis is but little above the line of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Copenhagen, and Moscow. The deep waters of Gastineaux Channel are obstructed by ledges just north of Juneau, and the eighteen feet fall of the regular tides leaves islands and reefs visible in mid-channel. For this reason the ship had to return on its course, and round Douglass Island, before it
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CHAPTER IX. BARTLETT BAY AND THE HOONIAHS.
CHAPTER IX. BARTLETT BAY AND THE HOONIAHS.
From Pyramid Harbor the ship went south to Icy Straits and up the other side of the long peninsula to Glacier Bay, so named by Captain Beardslee in 1880. At the mouth of it, in unknown and unsurveyed waters, began the search for a new trading station in a cove, since known as Bartlett Bay, in honor of the owner of the fishery, a merchant of Port Townsend. Vancouver’s boats passed by Glacier Bay during his third cruise on this coast, and his men saw only frozen mountains and an expanse of ice as
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CHAPTER X. MUIR GLACIER AND IDAHO INLET.
CHAPTER X. MUIR GLACIER AND IDAHO INLET.
When Dick Willoughby told of the great glacier thirty miles up the bay, the thud of whose falling ice could be heard and felt at his house, and declared that it once rattled the tea-cups on his table, and sent a wave washing high up on his shore, the captain of the Idaho said he would go there, and took this Dick Willoughby along to find the place and prove the tale. Away we went coursing up Glacier Bay, a fleet of one hundred and twelve little icebergs gayly sailing out to meet us, as we left o
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CHAPTER XI. SITKA—THE CASTLE AND THE GREEK CHURCH.
CHAPTER XI. SITKA—THE CASTLE AND THE GREEK CHURCH.
At six o’clock in the morning the water lay still and motionless as we rounded the point from which Mount Edgecombe lifts its hazy blue slopes, and threaded our way between clearly reflected islands into this beautiful harbor, which is the most northern on the Pacific Coast. In the mirror of calm waters the town lay in shimmering reflections, and the wooded side of Mount Verstovaia, that rises sentinel over Sitka, was reflected as a dark green pyramid that slowly receded and shortened as the shi
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CHAPTER XII. SITKA—THE INDIAN RANCHERIE.
CHAPTER XII. SITKA—THE INDIAN RANCHERIE.
The doorway of the Greek church, and the dial on its tower, face toward the harbor, and command the main street. Beyond the houses at the right there is a little pine-crowned hill, with the broken and rusty ruins of a powder-magazine on its slope, and on a second hill beyond is the graveyard where the Russians buried their dead. An old block house, that commanded an angle of the stockade, stands sentry over the graves, and the headstones and tombs are overgrown with rank bushes, ferns, and grass
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CHAPTER XIII. SITKA—SUBURBS AND CLIMATE.
CHAPTER XIII. SITKA—SUBURBS AND CLIMATE.
Enthusiasts who have seen both, declare that the Bay of Sitka surpasses the Bay of Naples in the grandeur and beauty of its surroundings. The comparison is instituted between these two distant places, because the extinct volcano, Mount Edgecumbe, rears its snow-filled crater above the bay, as Vesuvius does by the curving shores of the peerless bay of the Mediterranean. Nothing could be finer than the outlines of this grand old mountain that rises from the jutting corner of an island across the b
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CHAPTER XIV. SITKA—AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.
CHAPTER XIV. SITKA—AN HISTORICAL SKETCH.
For a town of its size, strange, old, tumble-down, moss-grown Sitka has had an eventful history from first to last. Claiming this northwestern part of America by right of the discoveries made by Behring and others in the last century, the Russians soon sent out colonies from Siberia. The earliest Russian settlements were on the Aleutian Islands, and thence, moving eastward, the fur company, whose president was the colonial governor, and appointed by the Crown, established its chief headquarters
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CHAPTER XV. SITKA.—HISTORY SUCCEEDING THE TRANSFER.
CHAPTER XV. SITKA.—HISTORY SUCCEEDING THE TRANSFER.
A great event in the history of Sitka after the transfer was the visit of Ex-Secretary Seward and his party, and their stay was the occasion of the last gala season that the place has known. Mr. Seward and his son had gone out to San Francisco by the newly-completed lines of the Union and Central Pacific Railroad, intending to continue their travels into Mexico. He casually mentioned before Mr. W. C. Ralston, the banker, that he hoped some time to go to his territory of Alaska. Within a few hour
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CHAPTER XVI. EDUCATION IN ALASKA.
CHAPTER XVI. EDUCATION IN ALASKA.
Although the pride of this most advanced and enlightened nation of the earth is its public school system, the United States has done nothing for education in Alaska. According to Petroff’s historical record, from which the following resumé is made, the Russian school system began in 1874, when Gregory Shelikoff, a founder and director of the fur company, established a small school at Kodiak. He taught only the rudiments to the native Aleuts, and his wife instructed the women in sewing and househ
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CHAPTER XVII. PERIL STRAITS AND KOOTZNAHOO.
CHAPTER XVII. PERIL STRAITS AND KOOTZNAHOO.
When the steamer gets ready to leave Sitka, there is always regret that the few days in that port could not have been weeks. There are always regrets, too, at not seeing Mount St. Elias, when the passengers realize that the ship has begun the return voyage. Mr. Seward was most desirous of seeing Mount St. Elias from the sea, but was deterred from carrying out his plan by the stories of the rough water to be crossed, and the certainty of fogs and clouds obscuring his view when he reached the bay
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CHAPTER XVIII. KILLISNOO AND THE LAND OF KAKES.
CHAPTER XVIII. KILLISNOO AND THE LAND OF KAKES.
Around the point from Kootznahoo, a sharp turn leads through a veritable needle’s eye of a passage to Koteosok Harbor, made by the natural breakwater of a small island lying close to the Admiralty shore. This island was named by Captain Meade as Kenasnow, or “near the fort,” as the Kootznahoos designated it to him. It is a picturesque, fir-crowned little island, and its dark, slaty cliffs are seamed with veins of pure white marble. Its ragged shores hold hundreds of aquariums at low tide, and in
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CHAPTER XIX. THE PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND.
CHAPTER XIX. THE PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND.
Like Kouiu and Kuprianoff islands, the Prince of Wales Island is another home of the yellow or Alaska cedar. It was named by Vancouver, and when the Coast Survey changed his name of the George III. Archipelago to the Alexander Archipelago, this largest island of the group retained its former designation. It is from one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles long, and from twenty to sixty miles wide, but the surveys have never been complete enough to determine whether it is all one island or a gr
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CHAPTER XX. HOWKAN OR KAIGAHNEE.
CHAPTER XX. HOWKAN OR KAIGAHNEE.
Thus in its commercial mission the steamer wandered among the islands, touching at infant settlements and trading posts, and anchoring before Indian villages with traditions and totem poles centuries old. Rounding the southern end of the Prince of Wales Island to Dixon Entrance, the fog and mist crept upon us as we neared the ocean. It was a wet and gloomy afternoon when the Idaho anchored in the little American Bay on Dall Island, not more than a mile from Howkan, an ancient settlement of the K
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CHAPTER XXI. THE METLAKATLAH MISSION.
CHAPTER XXI. THE METLAKATLAH MISSION.
On occasional trips the steamer anchors off Metlakatlah, the model mission-station of the northwest coast, and an Arcadian village of civilized Indians, built round a bay on the Chimsyan Peninsula, in British Columbia. Metlakatlah is just below the Alaska boundary line, and but a little way south of Fort Simpson, the chief Hudson Bay Company trading post of the region, where the great canoe market, and the feasts and dances of the Indians, enliven that centre of trade each fall. It was a rainy m
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CHAPTER XXII. HOMEWARD BOUND.
CHAPTER XXII. HOMEWARD BOUND.
Life on the waveless arms of the ocean has a great fascination for one on these Alaska trips, and crowded with novelty, incidents, and surprises as each day is, the cruise seems all too short when the end approaches. One dreads to get to land again and end the easy, idle wandering through the long archipelago. A voyage is but one protracted marine picnic and an unbroken succession of memorable days. Where in all the list of them to place the red letter or the white stone puzzles one. The passeng
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CHAPTER XXIII. SEALSKINS.
CHAPTER XXIII. SEALSKINS.
I have never been to the Seal Islands myself, and have no desire to cross the twenty-six hundred miles of rough and foggy seas that lie between San Francisco and the Pribyloff Islands, in Bering Sea. Considering that there are so many good people who think that the Seal Islands constitute Alaska, or that all Alaska is one Seal Island, it has been urged that I must include something about the seal fisheries if I mention Alaska at all. In deference to the prejudice which exists against having peop
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CHAPTER XXIV. THE TREATY AND CONGRESSIONAL PAPERS.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE TREATY AND CONGRESSIONAL PAPERS.
The following is the official text of the “Treaty concerning the cession of the Russian Possessions in North America by His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias to the United States of America; concluded March 30, 1867; ratified by the United States May 28, 1867; exchanged June 20, 1867; proclaimed by the United States June 20, 1867:”— Whereas a treaty between the United States of America and his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias was concluded and signed by their respective plenipotentiar
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