Читать книгу Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago - Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore - Страница 3

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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 that passed current at the time of the Alaska purchase, in 1867, have fastened themselves upon the public mind, and by constant repetition been accepted as facts. For this reason the uninitiated view the country as a vast ice reservation, and appear to believe that even the summer tourist must undergo the perils of the Franklin Search and the Greeley Relief Expeditions to reach any part of Alaska. The official records can hardly convince them that the winters at Sitka are milder than at New York, and the summers delightfully cool and temperate.

In the eastern States less has been heard of the Yukon than of the country of the Congo, and the wonders of the Stikine, Taku, and Chilkat rivers are unknown to those who have travelled far to view the less impressive scenery of the Scandinavian coast. Americans climb the well-worn route to Alpine summits every year, while the highest mountain in North America is unsurveyed, and only approximate estimates have been made of its heights. The whole 580,107 square miles of the territory are almost as good as unexplored, and among the islands of the archipelago over 7,000 miles of coast are untouched and primeval forests.

The Pribyloff or Seal Islands have usurped all interest in Alaska, and these two little fog-bound islands in Behring Sea, that are too small to be marked on an ordinary map, have had more attention drawn to them than any other part of the territory. The rental of the islands of St. Paul and St. George, and the taxes on the annual one hundred thousand sealskins, pays into the treasury each year more than four per cent interest on the $7,200,000 originally paid to Russia for its possessions in North America. This fact is unique in the history of our purchased territories, and justifies Secretary Seward’s efforts in acquiring it.

The neglect of Congress to provide any form of civil government or protection for the inhabitants checked all progress and enterprise, and kept the country in the background for seventeen years. With the development of the Pacific northwest, settlements, mining-camps, and fisheries have been slowly growing, and increasing in numbers in the southeastern part of Alaska, adjoining British Columbia. The prospectors and the hardy pioneers, who seek the setting sun and follow the frontiers westward, were attracted there by the gold discoveries in 1880, and the impetus then given was not allowed to subside.

Pleasure-travellers have followed the prospectors’ lead, as it became known that some of the grandest scenery of the continent is to be found along the Alaska coast, in the region of the Alexander or Sitkan Archipelago, and the monthly mail steamer is crowded with tourists during the summer season. It is one of the easiest and most delightful trips to go up the coast by the inside passage and cruise through the archipelago; and in voyaging past the unbroken wilderness of the island shores, the tourist feels quite like an explorer penetrating unknown lands. The mountain range that walls the Pacific coast from the Antarctic to the Arctic gives a bold and broken front to the mainland, and everyone of the eleven hundred islands of the archipelago is but a submerged spur or peak of the great range. Many of the islands are larger than Massachusetts or New Jersey, but none of them have been wholly explored, nor is the survey of their shores completed. The Yosemite walls and cascades are repeated in mile after mile of deep salt-water channels, and from the deck of an ocean steamer one views scenes not paralleled after long rides and climbs in the heart of the Sierras. The gorges and cañons of Colorado are surpassed; mountains that tower above Pike’s Peak rise in steep incline from the still level of the sea; and the shores are clothed with forests and undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a Florida swamp. On these summer trips the ship runs into the famous inlets on the mainland shore and anchors before vast glaciers that push their icy fronts down into the sea. The still waters of the inside passage give smooth sailing nearly all of the way; and, living on an ocean steamer for three and four weeks, one only feels the heaving of the Pacific swells while crossing the short stretches of Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance.

The Alaska steamer, however, is a perfect will o’ the wisp for a landsman to pursue, starting sometimes from Portland and sometimes from San Francisco, adapting its schedule to emergencies and going as the exigencies of the cargo demand. It clears from Puget Sound ports generally during the first days of each month, but in midwinter it arranges its departure so as to have the light of the full moon in the northern ports, where the sun sets at three and four o’clock on December afternoons.

When the steamer leaves Portland for Alaska, it goes down the Columbia River, up the coast of Washington Territory, and, reaching Victoria and Port Townsend three days later, takes on the mails, and the freight shipped from San Francisco, and then clears for the north. The traveller who dreads the Columbia River bar and the open ocean can go across overland to Puget Sound, and thence by the Sound steamers to whichever port the Alaska steamer may please to anchor in.

The first time that I essayed the Alaska trip, the steamship Idaho with its shining black hull, its trim spars, and row of white cabins on deck, slipped down the Columbia River one Friday night, and on Monday morning we left Portland to overtake it. It was a time of forest fires, and a cloud of ignorance brooded over Puget Sound, only equalled in density by the clouds of smoke that rolled from the burning forests on shore, and there was an appalling scarcity of shipping news. The telegraph lines were down between the most important points, and the Fourth of July fever was burning so fiercely in patriotic veins that no man had a clear enough brain to tell us where the ship Idaho was, had gone to, or was going to. For two restless and uncertain days we see-sawed from British to American soil, going back and forth from Victoria to Port Townsend as we were in turn assured that the ship lay at anchor at one place, would not go to the other, and that we ran the risk of losing the whole trip if we did not immediately embark for the opposite shore. The dock hands came to know us, the pilots touched their hats to us, the agents fled from their ticket-offices at sight of us, and I think even the custom-house officers must have watched suspiciously, when the same two women and one small boy paced impatiently up and down the various wharves at that end of Puget Sound. We saw the Union Jack float and heard the American eagle scream on the Fourth of July, and after a night of fire-crackers, bombs, and inebriate chorus-singing, the Idaho came slipping into the harbor of Port Townsend as innocently as a messenger of peace, and fired a shot from a wicked little cannon, that started the very foundations of the town with its echoes.

Port Townsend, at the entrance of Puget Sound, is the last port of entry and custom-house in the United States, and the real point of departure for the Alaska steamers. It was named by Vancouver in 1792 for his friend, “the most noble Marquis of Townsend,” and scorning the rivalry of the new towns at the head of Puget Sound, believes itself destined to be the final railway terminus and the future great city of this extreme northwest. The busy and thriving little town lies at the foot of a steep bluff, and an outlying suburb of residences stretches along the grassy heights above. A steep stairway, and several zig-zag walks and roads connect the business part of Port Townsend with the upper town, and it argues strong lungs and a goat-like capacity for climbing on the part of the residents, who go up and down the stairway several times a day. A marine hospital flies the national flag from a point on the bluff, and four miles west on the curve of the bay lies Fort Townsend, where a handful of United States troops keep up the traditions of an army and a military post. Near the fort is the small settlement of Irondale, where the crude bog ore of the spot is successfully melted with Texada iron ore, brought from a small island in the Gulf of Georgia. The sand spit on which Port Townsend society holds its summer clam-bakes, and the home of the “Duke of York,” the venerable chief of the Clallam tribe, are points of interest about the shores.

Across the Straits of Fuca there is the pretty English town of Victoria, that has as solid mansions, as well-built roads, and as many country homes around it, as any little town on the home island. It has an intricate land-locked harbor, where the tides rush in and out in a way that defies reason, and none have ever yet been able to solve the puzzle and make out a tide-table for that harbor. All Victoria breathes the atmosphere of a past and greater grandeur, and the citizens feelingly revert to the time when British Columbia was a separate colony by itself, and Victoria the seat of the miniature court of the Governor-General and commander-in-chief of its forces. There is no real joy in the celebration of “Dominion Day,” which reminds them of how British Columbia and the two provinces of Canada were made one under the specious promise of a connecting railway. Recent visits of Lord Dufferin and the Marquis of Lorne stilled some of the disaffection, and threats of annexation to the United States are less frequent now.

Victoria has “the perfect climate,” according to the Princess Louise and other sojourners, and there is a peace and rest in the atmosphere that charms the briefest visitor. Every one takes life easily, and things move in a slow and accustomed groove, as if sanctioned by the custom of centuries on the same spot. Business men hardly get down town before ten o’clock in the morning, and by four in the afternoon they are striding and riding off to their homes, as if the fever and activity of American trade and competition were far away and unheard of. The clerk at the post-office window turns a look of surprise upon the stranger, and bids him go across the street, or down a block, and buy his postage-stamps at a stationer’s shop, to be sure.

The second summer that my compass was set for the nor’-norwest, our party of three spent a week at Victoria before the steamer came in from San Francisco, and the charm of the place grew upon us every day. The drives about the town, along the island shores, and through the woods, are beautiful, and the heavy, London-built carriages roll over hard and perfect English highways. Ferns, growing ten and twelve feet high by the roadside, amazed us beyond expression, until a loyal and veracious citizen of Oregon assured us that ferns eighteen feet high could be found anywhere in the woods back of Astoria; and that he had often been lost in fern prairies among the Cascade mountains, where the fronds arched far above his head when he was mounted on a horse. Wild rose-bushes are matted together by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of Bulgaria. The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection in this climate, and covers and smothers the cottages and trellises with thickly-set blossoms. Even the currant-bushes grow to unusual height, and in many gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their red, ripe clusters high overhead.

For a few days we watched anxiously every trail of smoke in the Straits of Fuca, and at last welcomed the ship, one sunny morning, when the whole Olympic range stood like a sapphire wall across the Straits, and the Angels’ Gate gave a clear view of more azure slopes and snow-tipped summits through that gap in the mountain front. Instead of the trim propeller Idaho, the old side-wheeler, the Ancon, was put on the Alaska route for the summer months, and the fact of its having taken five days for the trip up from San Francisco did not prepossess us with any false notions of its speed. The same captain and officers from the Idaho were on board, and after making the tour of Puget Sound again, we were quite resigned to the change of ships by the time we finally left Victoria.

At Victoria the steward buys his last supplies for the coming weeks of great appetites; for with smooth water and the tonic of sea and mountain air both, the passengers make great inroads on the ship’s stores. The captain often affects dismay at the way the provisions disappear, and threatens to take an account of stores at Sitka and bring the ship down by the outside passage in order to save some profit for the company. During the last hours at the Victoria wharf, several wagon-loads of meat had been put in the ice-boxes of the Ancon, when some live beef came thundering down the wharf, driven by hallooing horsemen. Each month the ship takes up these live cattle and sheep, and leaving them to fatten on the luxurious grasses of Sitka, insures a fresh supply of fresh beef for the return voyage. It was within half an hour of sailing-time when the herders drove the sleek fellows down to the wharf, and for an hour there was a scene that surpassed anything under a circus tent or within a Spanish arena. The sailors and stevedores had a proper respect for the bellowing beasts, and kept their distance, as they barricaded them into a corner of the wharf. The ship’s officer who had charge of loading the cargo is “a salt, salt sailor,” with a florid complexion; and it was his brave part to advance, flap his arms, and say “Shoo!” and then fly behind the first man or barrel, or dodge into the warehouse door. The crowd gathered and increased, the eighty passengers, disregarding all signs and rules, mounted on the paddle-boxes and clung to the ratlines forward, applauded the picador and the matador, and hummed suggestive airs from Carmen. When the lasso was fastened round one creature’s horns, and his head was drawn down close to a pile, there were nervous moments when we waited to see the herder tossed on high, or else voluntarily leaping into the water to escape the savage prods of the enraged beast. There was great delay in getting the belts ready to put round the animals so that they could be swung over into the ship, and while the great bull-fight was in progress and the hour of sailing had come, the captain rode down the wharf in a carriage, strode on to the ship and demanded, in a stiff, official tone, “How long have these cattle been here?” “More than an hour, sir,” replied the mate. “Turn those cattle loose and draw in the gang-plank,” was the brief order from the bridge, and the one warning shriek of the whistle scattered the spectators and sent the excited beasts galloping up the wharf. While the gang-plank was being withdrawn, two Chinamen came down on a dog trot, hidden under bundles of blankets, with balanced baskets across their shoulders, and pickaxes, pans, and mining tools in their arms. Without a tremor the two Johns walked out on the swaying plank, and, stepping across a gap of more than two feet, landed safely on deck, bound and equipped for the deserted placer mines on Stikine River.

We left Victoria at noon, and all the afternoon the passengers gave their preliminary ohs! and ahs! strewed the decks with exclamation points, and buried their heads in their pink-covered maps of British Columbia, while the ship ran through narrow channels and turned sharp curves around the picturesque islands for the possession of which England and America nearly went to war. San Juan Island, with its limekilns, its gardens, meadows, and browsing sheep, was as pretty and pastoral a spot as nations ever wrangled about, and the Emperor of Germany did just the right thing when he drew his imperial pencil across the maps and gave this garden spot of San Juan to the United States. The beautiful scenery of the lower end of the Gulf of Georgia fitly introduces one to the beauties of the inland passage which winds for nearly a thousand miles between the islands that fringe this northwest coast, and even the most captious travellers forgot fancied grievances over staterooms, table seats, and baggage regulations. The exhausted purser, who had been persecuted all day by clamoring passengers and anxious shippers, was given a respite, and all was peace, satisfaction, and joy on board. In the nine o’clock gloaming we rounded the most northern lighthouse that gleams on this shore of the Pacific, and, winding in and through the harbor of Nanaimo, dropped anchor in Departure Bay.

The coal mines of Nanaimo have given it a commercial importance upon which it bases hopes of a great future; but it has no bustling air to it, to impress the stranger from over the border with that prospect. In early days it was an important trading-post of the Hudson Bay Company, and a quaint old block-house still stands as a relic of the times when the Indian canoes used to blacken the beach at the seasons of the great trades. The traders first opened the coal seams near Nanaimo, and thirty years ago used to pay the Indians one blanket for every eight barrels of coal brought out.

Geologists have hammered their way all up the Pacific Coast without finding a trace of true coal, and on account of the recent geological formation of the country they consider further search useless. The nearest to true coal that has been found was the coal seam on the Arctic shore of Alaska near Cape Lisburn. Captain Hooper, U.S.R.M., found the vein, and his vessel, the Corwin, was supplied with coal from it during an Arctic cruise in 1880. Otherwise, the lignite beds of Vancouver Island supply the best steaming coal that can be had on the coast, and a fleet of colliers ply between Nanaimo and the chief ports on the Pacific.

The mines nearest the town of Nanaimo were exhausted soon after they were worked systematically, and operations were transferred to Newcastle Island in the harbor opposite the town. A great fire in the Newcastle mine obliged the owners to close and abandon it, and the whole place stands as it was left, the cabins and works dropping slowly to decay. Even the quarry from which the fine stone was taken for the United States Mint at San Francisco is abandoned, and its broken derricks and refuse heaps make a forlorn break in the beauty of the mild shores of the island.

Richard Dunsmuir found the Wellington mines at Departure Bay by accident, his horse stumbling on a piece of lignite coal as he rode down through the woods one day. The admiral of the British fleet and one other partner ventured £1,000 each in developing the mine, and at the end of ten years the admiral withdrew with £50,000 as his share, and a year since the other partner sold out his interests to Mr. Dunsmuir for £150,000. At present the mines pay a monthly profit of £8,000, and Yankee engineers claim that that income might be doubled if the mines were worked on a larger scale, as, with duty included, this black lignite commands the highest price and is most in demand in all the cities of California and Oregon. Mr. Dunsmuir is the prime mover in building the Island railway, which is to connect Nanaimo with the naval harbor of Esquimault near Victoria. Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific road are connected with Mr. Dunsmuir in this undertaking, and to induce these capitalists to take hold of it the colonial government gave a land grant twenty-five miles wide along the whole seventy miles of the railroad, with all the timber and mineral included.

The great Wellington mines have had their strikes, and after the last one the white workmen were supplanted by Chinese, who, though wanting the brawn and muscle of the Irishmen, could work in the sulphur formations without injuring their eyes. By an explosion of fire-damp in May, 1884, many lives were lost, and gloom was cast over the little settlement on the sunny bay.

On this lee shore of Vancouver Island the climate is even softer and milder than at Victoria, and during my three visits Nanaimo has always been steeped in a golden calm of steady sunshine. While waiting for the three or four hundred tons of coal to be dropped into the hold, carload by carload, the passengers amuse themselves by visiting the quiet little town, stirring up the local trade, and busying the postmaster and the telegraph operator. A small boy steers and commands the comical little steam-tug that is omnibus and street car for the Nanaimo and Wellington people, and makes great profits while passenger steamers are coaling.

When all the anglers, the hunters, the botanists and the geologists had gone their several ways from the ship one coaling day, the captain made a diversion for the score of ladies left behind, by ordering out a lifeboat, and having the little tug tow us around the bay and over to Nanaimo. When the ladies had all scattered into the various shops, the captain made the tour of the town and found that there was not a trout to be had in that market. Then he arranged that if the returning fishermen came back to the ship in the evening and laid their strings of trout triumphantly on deck, a couple of Indians should force their way into the admiring crowd and demand pay for fish sold to the anglers. Can any one picture that scene and the effect of the joke, when it dawned upon the group?

A great bonfire on the beach in the evening rounded off that coaling day, and the captain declared the celebration to be in honor of Cleveland and Hendricks, who had that day been nominated at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. Although the partisans of the other side declined to consider it a ratification meeting on British soil, they helped heap up the burning logs and drift-wood until the whole bay was lighted with the flames. With blue lights, fire-crackers, rockets and pistol-popping the fête continued, the Republicans deriding all boasts and prophecies of their opponents, until the commander threatened to drop them on some deserted island off the course until after the election. History has since set its seal upon the prophecies then made, and some of the modest participants of the Democratic faith think their international bonfire assisted in the result.