Читать книгу Alaska, Its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago - Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore - Страница 7

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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 shimmering, pale blue and pearly lights the wonderful panorama of mountains. Though perfectly clear, the light was softened and subdued, and even on such a glorious sunny morning there was no glare nor harshness in the atmosphere. This pale, soft light gave a dreamy, poetic quality to the scenery, and the first ranges of mountains above the water shaded from the deep green and russet of the nearer pine forests to azure and purple, where their further summits were outlined against the sky or the snow-covered peaks that were mirrored so faithfully in the long stretches of the channel. The sea water lost its deep green tints at that point, and was discolored and tinged to a muddy tea green by the fresh current of the Stikine River, which there reaches the ocean.

The great circle of mountains and snow-peaks, and the stretch of calm waters lying in this vast landlocked harbor, give Fort Wrangell an enviable situation. The little town reached its half-century of existence last summer, but no celebrations stirred the placid, easy-going life of its people. It was founded in 1834 by order of Baron Wrangell, then Governor of Russian America and chief director of the fur company, who sent the Captain-Lieut. Dionysius Feodorovich Zarembo down from Sitka to erect a stockade post on the small tongue of land now occupied by the homes, graves, and totem poles of the Indian village. It was known at first as the trading post of St. Dionysius, and, later, it assumed the name of Wrangell, the prefix of Fort being added during the time that the United States garrisoned it with two companies of the 21st Infantry. The Government began building a new stockade fort there immediately after the transfer of the territory in 1867, and troops occupied it until 1870, when they were withdrawn, the post abandoned, and the property sold for $500. The discovery of the Cassiar gold mines on the head waters of the Stikine River in 1874 sent a tide of wild life into the deserted street of Fort Wrangell, and the military were ordered back in 1875 and remained until 1877, when General Howard drew off his forces, and the government finally recalled the troops from all the posts in Alaska.

During the second occupation of the barracks and quarters at Fort Wrangell, the War Department helped itself to the property, and, assigning a nominal sum for rent, held the fort against the protest of the owner. The Cassiar mines were booming then, and Fort Wrangell took on something of the excitement of a mining town itself, and being at the head of ocean navigation, where all merchandise had to be transferred to small steamers and canoes, rents for stores and warehouses were extravagantly high. Every shed could bring a fabulous price. The unhappy owner, who rejoices in the euphonious name of W. King Lear, could only gnash his teeth and violently protest against the monthly warrants and vouchers given him by the commandant of the post. Since the troops have gone, the Government has done other strange things with the property that it once sold in due form, and Mr. Lear has a just and plain claim against the War Department for damages. The barracks and hospital of the old fort are now occupied by the Presbyterian Mission. No alteration, repairs, or improvements having been made for many years, the stockade is gradually becoming more ruinous, weather-worn, and picturesque each year, and the overhanging block-house at one corner is already a most sketchable bit of bleached and lichen-covered logs.

The main street of Fort Wrangell, untouched by the hoof of horse or mule for these many years, is a wandering grass-grown lane that straggles along for a few hundred feet from the fort gate and ends in a foot-path along the beach. The “Miners’ Palace Restaurant,” and other high-sounding signs, remain as relics of the livelier days, and listless Indian women sit in rows and groups on the unpainted porches of the trading stores. They are a quiet, rather languid lot of klootchmans, slow and deliberate of speech, and not at all clamorous for customers, as they squat or lie face downward, like so many seals, before their baskets of wild berries. In the stores, the curio departments are well stocked with elaborately carved spoons made of the black horns of the mountain goat; with curiously-fashioned halibut hooks and halibut clubs; with carved wooden trays and bowls, in which oil, fish, berries, and food have been mixed for years; with stone pipes and implements handed down from that early age, and separate store-rooms are filled with the skins of bears, foxes, squirrels, mink, and marten that are staple articles of trade. Occasionally there can be found fine specimens of a gray mica slate set full of big garnet crystals, like plums in a pudding, or sprinkled through with finer garnets that show points of brilliancy and fine color. This stone is found on the banks of a small creek near the mouth of the Stikine River, and great slabs of it are blasted off and brought to Fort Wrangell by the boat-load to be broken up into small cabinet specimens in time for the tourist season each summer. None of the garnets are clear or perfect, and the blasting fills them with seams and flaws. The best silver bracelets at Fort Wrangell are made by a lame Indian, who as the chief artificer and silversmith of the tribe has quite a local reputation. His bracelets are beautifully chased and decorated, but unfortunately for the integrity of Stikine art traditions, he has given up carving the emblematic beasts of native heraldry on heavy barbaric wristlets, and now only makes the most slender bangles, adapted from the models in an illustrated jeweller’s catalogue that some Philistine has sent him. Worse yet, he copies the civilized spread eagle from the half-dollar, and, one can only shake his head sadly to see Stikine art so corrupted and debased. For all this, the lame man cannot make bracelets fast enough to supply the market, and at three dollars a pair for the narrower ones he pockets great profits during the steamer days.

On the water side of the main street there is a queer old flat-bottomed river-boat, stranded high and dry, that in its day made $135,000 clear each season that it went up the Stikine. It enriched its owner while in the water, and after it went ashore was a profitable venture as a hotel. This Rudder Grange, built over from stem to stern, and green with moss, is so settled into the grass and earth that only the shape of the bow and the empty box of the stern wheel really declare its original purpose. There is a bakeshop in the old engine-room, and for the rest it is the Chinatown of Fort Wrangell. A small cinnamon-bear cub gambolled in the street before this boat-house, and it stood on its hind legs and sniffed the air curiously when it saw the captain of the ship coming down the street, bestowing sticks of candy on every child in the way. Bruin came in for his share, and formed the centre for a group that watched him chew up mint sticks and pick his teeth with his sharp little claws.

The houses of the Indian village string along the beach in a disconnected way, all of them low and square, built of rough hewn cedar and pine planks, and roofed over with large planks resting on heavy log beams. One door gives entrance to an interior, often twenty and forty feet square, and several families live in one of these houses, sharing the same fireplace in the centre, and keeping peacefully to their own sides and corners of the common habitation. Heraldic devices in outline sometimes ornament the gable front of the house, but no paint is wasted on the interior, where smoke darkens everything, the drying salmon drip grease from the frames overhead, and dogs and children tumble carelessly around the fire and over the pots and saucepans. The entrances have sometimes civilized doors on hinges, but the aborigine fashion is a portière of sealskin or walrus hide, or of woven grass mats. When one of the occupants of a house dies he is never taken out by the door where the others enter, but a plank is torn off at the back or side, or the body is hoisted out through the smoke hole in the roof, to keep the spirits away.

Before many of the houses are tall cedar posts and poles, carved with faces of men and beasts, representing events in their genealogy and mythology. These tall totems are the shrines and show places of Fort Wrangell, and on seeing them all the ship’s company made the hopeless plunge into Thlinket mythology and there floundered aimlessly until the end of the trip. There is nothing more flexible or susceptible of interpretations than Indian traditions, and the Siwash himself enjoys nothing so much as misleading and fooling the curious white man in these matters. The truth about these totems and their carvings never will be quite known until their innate humor is civilized out of the natives, but meanwhile the white man vexes himself with ethnological theories and suppositions. These totems are for the most part picture writings that tell a plain story to every Siwash, and record the great events in the history of the man who erects them. They are only erected by the wealthy and powerful members of the tribe, and the cost of carving a cedar log fifty feet long, and the attendant feasts and ceremonies of the raising, bring their value, according to Indian estimates, up to one thousand and two thousand dollars. The subdivisions of each tribe into distinct families that take for their crest the crow, the bear, the eagle, the whale, the wolf, and the fox, give to each of these sculptured devices its great meaning. The totems show by their successive carvings the descent and alliances of the great families, and the great facts and incidents of their history. The representations of these heraldic beasts and birds are conventionalized after certain fixed rules of their art, and the grotesque heads of men and animals are highly colored according to other set laws and limitations. Descent is counted on the female side, and the first emblem at the top of the totem is that of the builder, and next that of the great family from which he is descended through his mother.

In some cases two totem poles are erected before a house, one to show the descent on the female side, and one to give the generations of the male side, and a pair of these poles was explained for us by one of the residents of Fort Wrangell, who has given some study to these matters. The genealogical column of the mother’s side has at the top the eagle, the great totem or crest of the family to which she belonged. Below the eagle is the image of a child, and below that the beaver, the frog, the eagle, the frog, and the frog for a third time, show the generations and the sub-families of the female side. By some interpreters the frog is believed to indicate a pestilence or some great disaster, but others maintain that it is the recognized crest of one of the sub-families. The male totem pole has at the top the image of the chief, wearing his conical hat, below that his great totem, the crow. Succeeding the crow is the image of a child, then three frogs, and at the base of the column the eagle, the great totem of the builder’s mother.

TOTEM POLES AT FORT WRANGELL.

In front of one chief’s house a very natural-looking bear is crouched on the top of a pole, gazing down at his black foot-tracks, which are carved on the sides of the column. A crossbeam resting on posts near this same house used to show three frogs sitting in line, and other grotesque fantasies are scattered about the village. With the advance of civilization the Indians are losing their reverence for these heraldic monuments, and some have been destroyed and others sold; for the richest of these natives are so mercenary that they do not scruple to sell anything that belongs to them. The disappearance of the totem poles would rob these villages of their greatest interest for the tourists, and the ethnologist who would solve the mysteries and read the pictures finally aright, should hasten to this rich and neglected field.

In their mythology, which, as now known, is sadly involved through the medium of so many incorrect and perverted explanations, the crow or raven stands supreme as the creator and the first of all created things. He made everything, and all life comes from him. After he had made the world, he created woman and then man, making her supreme as representative of the crow family, while man, created last, is the head of the wolf or warrior’s family. From them sprang the sub-families of the whale, the bear, the eagle, the beaver, and the frog. The Stikine Indians have a tradition of the deluge, in which the chosen pair were given the shape of crows until the water had subsided, when they again returned to the earth and peopled it with their descendants. No alliances are ever made within the great families, and a crow never marries a crow, but rather a member of the whale, bear, or wolf families. The man takes the totem of his wife’s family, and fights with them when the great family feuds arise in the tribe.

GRAVE AT FORT WRANGELL.

On many of the totem poles the chiefs are represented as wearing tall, conical hats, similar to those worn by certain classes in China, and this fact has been assumed by many ardent ethnologists to give certain proof of the oriental origin of these people, and their emigration by way of Behring’s Straits. Others explain the storied hats piled one on top of another, as indicating the number of potlatches, or great feasts, that the builder has given. Over the graves of the dead, which are square log boxes or houses, they put full-length representations of the dead man’s totemic beast, or smooth poles finished at the top with the family crest. One old chief’s tomb at Fort Wrangell has a very realistic whale on its moss-grown roof, another a bear, and another an otter. The Indians cremated their dead until the arrival of the missionaries, who have steadily opposed the practice. The Indian’s idea of a hell of ice made him reason that he who was buried in the earth or the sea would be cold forever after, while he whose ashes were burned would be warm and comfortable throughout eternity.

These Thlinket Indians of the coast have broad heavy faces, small eyes, and anything but quickness or intelligence in their expression. They are slow and deliberate in speech, lingering on and emphasizing each aspirate and guttural, and any theories as to a fish diet promoting the activity of the brain are dispersed after watching these salmon-fed natives for a few weeks. Many of their customs are such a travesty and burlesque on our civilized ways as to show that the same principles and motives underlie all human action. When those expensive trophies of decorative art, the totem poles, are raised, the event is celebrated by the whole tribe. A common Indian can raise himself to distinction and nobility by giving many feasts and setting up a pole to commemorate them. After he owns a totem pole he can aspire to greater eminence. That man is considered the richest who gives most away, and at the great feasts or potlatches that accompany a house-warming or pole-raising, they nearly beggar themselves. All the delicacies of the Alaska market are provided by the canoe-full, and the guests sit around the canoes and dip their ancestral spoons into the various compounded dishes. Blankets, calico, and money are distributed as souvenirs on the same principle as costly favors are given for the German. His rank and riches increase in exact ratio as he tears up and gives away his blankets and belongings; and the Thlinket has satisfied pride to console himself with while he struggles through the hard times that follow a potlatch.

In the summer season Fort Wrangell is a peaceful, quiet place; the climate is a soothing one, and Prof. Muir extolled the “poultice-like atmosphere” which so calms the senses. The Indians begin to scatter on their annual fishing trips in June, and come back with their winter supplies of salmon in the early fall. Many of the houses were locked or boarded up, while the owners had gone away to spend the summer at some other watering-place. One absentee left this notice on his front door:—

LET NO ONE OPEN OR SHUT THIS

HOUSE DURING MY ABSENCE.

Over another locked door was this name and legend, which combines a well-witnessed and legal testament, together with the conventional door-plate of the white man:—

ANATLASH.

Let all that read know that I

Am a friend to the whites. Let no

One molest this house. In case of my

Death it belongs to my wife.

Thus wrote Anatlash, a man of tall totems and many blankets; and stanzas in blank verse after the same manner decorated the doorway of many Thlinket abodes.

The family groups within the houses were as interesting and picturesque as the totem poles without; and strangers were free to enter without formality, and study the ways of the best native society without hindrance. These people nearly all wear civilized garments, and in the baronial halls of Fort Wrangell there are imposing heaps of red-covered and brass-bound trunks that contain stores of blankets, festal garments, and family treasures. In all the houses the Indians went right on with their breakfasts and domestic duties regardless of our presence; and the white visitors made themselves at home, scrutinized and turned over everything they saw with an effrontery that would be resented, if indulged in in kind by the Indians. The women had the shrewdest eye to money-making, and tried to sell ancient and greasy baskets and broken spoons when they had nothing else in the curio line. In one house two giggling damsels were playing on an accordeon when we entered, but stopped and hid their heads in their blankets at sight of us. An old gentleman, in a single abbreviated garment, crouched by the fireside, frying a dark and suspicious-looking dough in seal oil; and the coolness and self-possession with which he rose and stepped about his habitation were admirable. He was a grizzled and surly-looking old fellow, but from the number of trunks and fur robes piled around the walls, he was evidently a man of wealth, and his airy costume rather a matter of taste than economy. Many of the men showed us buckskin pouches containing little six-inch sticks of polished cedar that they use in their great social games. These gambling sticks are distinguished by different markings in red and black lines, and the game consists in one man taking a handful, shuffling them around under his blanket, and making the others guess the marks of the first stick drawn out. These Indians are great gamblers, and they spend hours and days at their fascinating games. They shuffle the sticks to see who shall go out to cut and gather firewood in winter, and if a man is seen crawling out after an armful of logs, his neighbors shout with derision at him as a loser.

SILVER BRACELETS.

LABRETTES.

In addition to their silver bracelets, their silver earrings and finger rings, many of the women keep up the old custom of wearing nose rings and lip rings, that no amount of missionary and catechism, seemingly, can break them of. The lip rings used to be worn by all but slaves, and the three kinds worn by the women of all the island tribes are marks of age that take the place of family records. When a young girl reaches marriageable age, a long, flat-headed silver pin, an inch in length, is thrust through the lower lip. After the marriage festival the Thlinket dame assumes a bone or ivory button a quarter or half inch across. This matronly badge is a mere collar-button compared to the two-inch plugs of wood that they wear in their under lips when they reach the sere and yellow leaf of existence. This big labrette gives the last touch of hideousness to the wrinkled and blear-eyed old women that one finds wearing them, and it was from the Russian name for this trough in the lip—kolosh—that all the tribes of the archipelago were known as Koloshians, as distinguished from the Aleuts, the Innuits, and Esquimaux of the northwest.

Far less picturesque than the natives in their own houses were the little Indian girls at the mission-school in the old fort. Combed, cleaned, and marshalled in stiff rows to recite, sing, and go through calisthenic exercises, they were not nearly so striking for studies and sketches aboriginal, but more hopeful to contemplate as fellow-beings. Clah, a Christianized Indian from Fort Simpson, BC, was the first to attempt mission work among the Indians at Fort Wrangell. In 1877 Mrs. McFarland was sent out by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, after years of mission work in Colorado and the west, and, taking Clah on her staff, she labored untiringly to establish the school and open the home for Indian girls. Others have joined her in the work at Fort Wrangell, and everyone on the coast testifies to good results already attained by her labors and example. She is known and reverenced among all the tribes, and the Indians trust in her implicitly, and go to her for advice and aid in every emergency. With the establishment of the new industrial mission-school at Sitka, Mrs. McFarland will be transferred to the girls’ department of that institution. The Rev. Hall Young and his wife have devoted themselves to the good cause at Fort Wrangell, and will continue there in charge of the church and school. The Presbyterian missions have the strongest hold on the coast, and the Catholics, who built a church at Fort Wrangell, have given up the mission there, and the priest from Nanaimo makes only occasional visits to his dusky parishioners.

The steep hillside back of Fort Wrangell was cleared of timber during military occupancy, and on the lower slopes the companies had fine gardens, which remain as wild overgrown meadows now. In them the wild timothy grows six feet high, the blueberry bushes are loaded with fruit, salmon berries show their gorgeous clusters of gold and scarlet, and the white clover grows on long stems and reaches to a fulness and perfection one can never imagine. This Wrangell clover is the common clover of the East looked at through a magnifying glass, each blossom as large and wide-spread as a double carnation pink, and the fragrance has a strong spicy quality with its sweetness. The red clover is not common, but the occasional tops are of the deepest pink that these huge clover blossoms can wear. While the hillside looked cleared, there was a deep and tangled thicket under foot, the moss, vines, and runners forming a network that it took some skill to penetrate; but the view of the curved beach, the placid channel sleeping in the warm summer sunshine like a great mountain lake, and the ragged peaks of the snowy range showing through every notch and gap, well repaid the climb through it. It was a most perfect day when we climbed the ridge, the air as warm and mellow as Indian summer, with even its soft haze hung round the mountain walls in the afternoon, and from those superior heights we gazed in ecstasy on the scene and pitied all the people who know not Alaska.

When Professor Muir was at Fort Wrangell one autumn, he climbed to the summit of this first mountain on a stormy night to listen to the fierce music of the winds in the forest. Just over the ridge he found a little hollow, and gathering a few twigs and branches he started a fire that he gradually increased to quite a blaze. The wind howled and roared through the forest, and the scientist enjoyed himself to the utmost; but down in the village the Indians were terrified at the glow that illuminated the sky and the tree-tops. No one could explain the phenomenon, as they could not guess that it was Professor Muir warming himself during his nocturnal ramble in the forest, and it was with difficulty that the minister and the teachers at the mission could calm the frightened Indians.

On a second visit to Fort Wrangell on the Idaho, there was the same warm, lazy sunshine and soft still air, and as connoisseurs we could the better appreciate the fine carvings and ornamental work of these æsthetic people, who decorate every household utensil with their symbols of the beautiful. Mr. Lear, or “King Lear,” welcomed us back to his comfortable porch, and as a special mark brought forth his great horn spoon, a work of the highest art, and a bit of bric-a-brac that cost its possessor some four hundred dollars. Mr. Lear is that famous man, who “swears by the great horn spoon,” and this elaborately carved spoon, made from the clear, amber-tinted horn of the musk ox, is more than eighteen inches long, with a smooth, graceful bowl that holds at least a pint. This spoon constituted the sole assets of a bankrupt debtor, who failed, owing Mr. Lear a large sum; and the jocose trader first astonished us by saying that he had a carved spoon that cost him four hundred dollars. The amateur photographers on shipboard raved at sight of the beautiful amber spoon with its carved handle inlaid with abalone shell, and, rushing for their cameras, photographed it against a gay background of Chilkat blankets. Mr. Lear has refused all offers to buy his great horn spoon, routing one persistent collector by assuring him that he must keep it to take his medicines in.

The skies were as blue as fabled Italy when the Idaho “let go” from Fort Wrangell wharf that glorious afternoon, and we left with genuine regret. The Coast-Survey steamer Hassler came smoking around the point of an island just as we were leaving Fort Wrangell; and our captain, who would rather lose his dinner than miss a joke, fairly shook with laughter when he saw the frantic signals of the Hassler, and knew the tempestuous frame of mind its commander was working himself up to. After giving the Hassler sufficient scare and chase, the Idaho slowed up, and the mails that she had been carrying for three months were transferred to the Coast-Survey ship, while the skippers, who are close friends and inveterate jokers, exchanged stiff and conventional greetings, mild sarcasm, and dignified repartee from their respective bridges. The pranks that these nautical people play on one another in these out-of-the-way waters would astonish those who have seen them in dress uniforms and conventional surroundings, and such experiences rank among the unique side incidents of a trip.

A boat-race of another kind rounded off the day of my third and last visit to Fort Wrangell, and the Indians who had been waiting for a week made ready for a regatta when the Ancon was sighted. It took several whistles from our impatient captain to get the long war-canoes manned and at the stake-boat; and, in this particular, boat-races have some points in common the world round. Kadashaks, one of the Stikine chiefs, commanded one long canoe in which sixteen Indians sat on each side, and another chief rallied thirty-two followers for his war-canoe. It was a picturesque sight when the boatmen were all squatted in the long dug-outs, wearing white shirts, and colored handkerchiefs tied around their brows. While they waited, each canoe and its crew was reflected in the still waters that lay without a ripple around the starting-point near shore. When the cannon on the ship’s deck gave the signal, the canoes shot forward like arrows, the broad paddles sending the water in great waves back of them, and dashing the spray high on either side. Kadashaks and the other chief sat in the sterns to steer, and encouraged and urged on their crews with hoarse grunts and words of command, and the Indians, paddling as if for life, kept time in their strokes to a savage chant that rose to yells and war whoops when the two canoes fouled just off the stake-boat. It was a most exciting boat-race, and bets and enthusiasm ran high on the steamer’s deck during its progress. The money that had been subscribed by the traders in the town was divided between the two crews, and at night there was a grand potlatch, or feast, in honor of the regatta.

The trade with the Cassiar mines at the head of the Stikine River once made Fort Wrangell an important place, but the rival boats that used to race on the river have gone below, and the region is nearly abandoned. As early as 1862 the miners found gold dust in the bars near the mouth of the river; but it was twelve years later before Thibert and another trapper, crossing from Minnesota, found the gold fields and quartz veins at the head-waters of the stream, three hundred miles distant from Fort Wrangell, within the British Columbia lines. Immediately the army of gold-seekers turned there, leaving California and the Frazer River mines, and in 1874 there were two thousand miners on the ground, and the yield was known to have been over one million dollars. Light-draught, stern-wheel steamers were put on the river, and the goods and miners transferred from ocean steamers at Fort Wrangell were taken to Glenora at the head of navigation, one hundred and fifty miles from the mouth. From that point there was a steep mountain trail of another one hundred and fifty miles, and pack trains of mules carried freight on to the diggings. Freights from Fort Wrangell to the mines ranged at times from twenty to eighty and one hundred and sixty dollars per ton; and in consequence, when the placers were exhausted, and machinery was necessary to work the quartz veins, the region was abandoned.

The official returns as given by the British Columbia commissioners are not at hand for all of the years since the discovery of these mines, but for the seven years here given they show the great decrease in the bullion yield of the Cassiar fields:—

Years.	Number of miners.	Gold product.
1874	2,000	$1,000,000
1875	800	1,000,000
1876	1,500	556,474
1877	1,200	499,830
1879	1,800	… . …
1883	1,000	135,000

During this year of 1884 the steamers have been taken off the river, and Indian canoes are the only means of transportation. There are few besides Chinamen left to work the exhausted fields, and another year will probably find them in sole possession. While the mines were at their best, Fort Wrangell was the great point of outfitting and departure; and after the troops were withdrawn, the miners made it more and more a place of drunken and sociable hibernation, when the severe weather of the interior drove them down the river. They congregated in greatest numbers early in the spring, many going up on the ice in February or March, before the river opened; although no mining could be done until May, and the water froze in the sluices in September.

The Cassiar mines being in British Columbia, the rush of trade on the Stikine River caused many complications and infractions of the revenue laws of both countries, and great license was allowed. The exact position where the boundary line crosses the Stikine has not yet been determined by the two governments, and in times past it has wavered like the isothermal lines of the coast. The diggings at Shucks, seventy miles from Fort Wrangell, were at one time in Alaska and next time in British Columbia; and the Hudson Bay Company’s post, and even the British custom house, were for a long time on United States soil before being removed beyond the debatable region. The boundary, as now accepted temporarily, crosses the river sixty-five miles from Fort Wrangell at a distance of ten marine leagues from the sea in a direct line, and, intersecting the grave of a British miner, leaves his bones divided between the two countries; his heart in the one, and the boots in which he died in the other.

Vancouver failed to discover the Stikine on his cruise up the continental shore, and, deceived by the shoal waters, passed by the mouth. It then remained for the American sloop Degon, Captain Cleveland, to visit the delta and learn of the great river from the natives in 1799. The scenery of the Stikine River is the most wonderful in this region, and Prof. John Muir, the great geologist of the Pacific coast, epitomized the valley of the Stikine as “a Yosemite one hundred miles long.” The current of the river is so strong that while it takes a boat three days at full steam to get from Fort Wrangell up to Glenora, the trip back can be made in eight or twelve hours, with the paddle-wheel reversed most of the time, to hold the boat back in its wild flight down stream. It is a most dangerous piece of river navigation, and there have been innumerable accidents to steamboats and canoes.

Three hundred great glaciers are known to drain into the Stikine, and one hundred and one can be counted from the steamer’s deck while going up to Glenora. The first great glacier comes down to the river at a place forty miles above Fort Wrangell, and fronting for seven miles on a low moraine along the river bank, is faced on the opposite side by a smaller glacier. There is an Indian tradition to the effect that these two glaciers were once united, and the river ran through in an arched tunnel. To find out whether it led out to the sea, the Indians determined to send two of their number through the tunnel, and with fine Indian logic they chose the oldest members of their tribe to make the perilous voyage into the ice mountain, arguing that they might die very soon anyhow. The venerable Indians shot the tunnel, and, returning with the great news of a clear passageway to the sea, were held in the highest esteem forever after. This great glacier is from five hundred to seven hundred feet high on the front, and extends back for many miles into the mountains, its surface broken and seamed with deep crevices. Two young Russian officers once went down from Sitka to explore this glacier to its source, but never returned from the ice kingdom into which they so rashly ventured. Further up, at a sharp bend of the river called the Devil’s Elbow, there is the mud glacier, which has a width of three miles and a height of two hundred or three hundred feet where it faces the river from behind its moraine. Beyond this dirt-covered, boulder-strewn glacier, there is the Grand Cañon of the Stikine, a narrow gorge two hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, into which the boiling current of the river is forced, and where the steamboats used to struggle at full steam for half an hour before they emerged from the perpendicular walls of that frightful defile. A smaller cañon near it is called the Klootchman’s, or Woman’s Cañon, the noble red man being always so exhausted by poling, paddling, and tracking his canoe through the Grand Cañon as to leave the navigation of the second one entirely to his wife. The Big Riffle, or the Stikine Rapids, is the last of these most dangerous places in the river; and at about this point, where the summit line of the mountain range crosses the river, the mythical boundary line is supposed to lie. The country opens out then into more level stretches, and at Glenora and Telegraph Creek, the steamboats leave their cargoes and start on the wild sweep down the river to Fort Wrangell again. As the boats are no longer running on the river, future voyagers who wish to see the stupendous scenery of this region will have to depend on the Indian canoes that take ten days for the journey up, or else feast and satisfy their imaginations with the thrilling tales of the old Stikine days that can be picked up on every hand, and study the topography of the region from the maps of Prof. Blake.