CHAPTER XXVII
In the district which comprises the entire coast from the southern boundary of Oregon to the northernmost point of Alaska there are but forty-five lighthouses. Included in this district are the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington Sound, the Gulf of Georgia, and all the tidal waters tributary to the sea straits and sounds of this coast. There are also twenty-eight fog signals, operated by steam, hot air, or oil engines; six fog signals operated by clockwork; two gas-lighted buoys in position; nine whistling-buoys and five bell-buoys in position; three hundred and twenty-two other buoys in position; and four tenders, to visit lighthouses and care for buoys.
The above list does not include post lights, the Umatilla Reef Light vessel, and unlighted day beacons.
It is the far, lonely Alaskan coast that is neglected. The wild, stormy, and immense stretch of coast reaching from Chichagoff Island to Point Barrow in the Arctic Ocean has two light and fog signal stations on Unimak Island and two fixed lights on Cape Stephens. A light and fog signal station is to be built at Cape Hinchingbroke, and a light is to be established at Point Romanoff.
No navigator should be censured for disaster on this dark and dangerous coast. The little _Dora_, running regularly from Seward and Valdez to Unalaska, does not pass a light. Her way is wild and stormy in winter, and the coasts she passes are largely uninhabited; yet there is not a flash of light, unless it be from some volcano, to guide her into difficult ports and around the perilous reefs with which the coast abounds.
A prayer for a lighthouse at the entrance to Resurrection Bay was refused by the department, with the advice that the needs of commerce do not require a light at this point, particularly as there are several other points more in need of such aid. The department further advised that it would require a hundred thousand dollars to establish a light and fog signal station at the place designated, instead of the twenty-five thousand dollars asked.
Meanwhile, ships are wrecked and lives and valuable cargoes are lost,--and will be while the Alaskan coast remains unlighted.
Along the intricate, winding, and exceedingly dangerous channels, straits, and narrows of the "inside passage" of southeastern Alaska, there are only seven light and fog signals, and ten lights; but where the sea-coast belongs to Canada there is sufficient light and ample buoyage protection, as all mariners admit.
Is our government's rigid, and in some instances stubborn, economy in this matter a wise one? Is it a humane one? The nervous strain of this voyage on a conscientious and sensitive master of a ship heavily laden with human beings is tremendous. The anxious faces and unrelaxing vigilance of the officers on the bridge when a ship is passing through Taku Open, Wrangell Narrows, or Peril Straits speak plainly and unmistakably of the ceaseless burden of responsibility and anxiety which they bear. The charting of these waters is incomplete as yet, notwithstanding the faithful service which the Geodetic Survey has performed for many years. Many a rock has never been discovered until a ship went down upon it.
Political influence has been known to establish lights, at immense cost, at points where they are practically luxuries, rather than needs; therefore the government should not be censured for cautiousness in this matter.
But it should be, and it is, censured for not investigating carefully the needs of the Alaskan Coast--the "Great Unlighted Way."
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Seward is situated almost as beautifully as Valdez. It is only five years old. It is the sea terminal of the Alaska Central Railway, which is building to the Tanana, through a rich country that is now almost unknown. It will pass within ten miles of Mount McKinley, which rises from a level plain to an altitude of nearly twenty-one thousand feet.
This mountain has been known to white men for nearly a century; yet until very recently it did not appear upon any map, and had no official name. More than fifty years ago the Russian fur traders knew it and called it "Bulshaia,"--signifying "high mountain" or "great mountain." The natives called it "Trolika," a name having the same meaning.
Explorers, traders, and prospectors have seen it and commented upon its magnificent height, yet without realizing its importance, until Mr. W. A. Dickey saw it in 1896 and proposed for it the name of McKinley. In 1902 Mr. Alfred Hulse Brooks, of the United States Geological Survey, with two associates and four camp men, made an expedition to the mountain. Mr. Brooks' report of this expedition is exceedingly interesting. He spent the summer of 1906, also, upon the mountain.
The town site of Seward was purchased from the Lowells, a pioneer family, by Major J. E. Ballaine, for four thousand dollars. It has grown very rapidly. Stumps still stand upon the business streets, and silver-barked log-cabins nestle modestly and picturesquely beside imposing buildings. The bank and the railway company have erected handsome homes. Every business and profession is represented. There are good schools and churches, an electric-light plant, two newspapers, a library and hospital, progressive clubs, and all the modern luxuries of western towns.
When Mr. Seward was asked what he considered the most important measure of his political career, he replied, "The purchase of Alaska; but it will take the people a generation to find it out."
Since the loftiest and noblest peak of North America was doomed to be named for a man, it should have borne the name of this dauntless, loyal, and far-seeing friend of Alaska and of all America. Since this was not to be, it was very fitting that a young and ambitious town on the historic Voskressenski Harbor should bear this honored and forever-to-be-remembered name. If Seward and Valdez would but work together, the region extending from Prince William Sound to Cook Inlet would soon become the best known and the most influential of Alaska, as it is, with the addition of the St. Elias Alps, the most sublimely and entrancingly beautiful.
Voskressenski Harbor, or Resurrection Bay, pushes out in purple waves in front of Seward, and snow peaks circle around it, the lower hills being heavily wooded. There is a good wharf and a safe harbor; the bay extends inland eighteen miles, is completely land-locked, and is kept free of ice the entire year, as is the Bay of Valdez and Cook Inlet, by the Japan current.
It is estimated that the Alaska Central Railway will cost, when completed to Fairbanks, at least twenty-five millions of dollars. Several branches will be extended into different and important mining regions.
The road has a general maximum grade of one per cent. The Coast Range is crossed ten miles from Seward, at an elevation of only seven hundred feet. The road follows the shore of Lake Kenai, Turnagain Arm, and Knik Arm on Cook Inlet; then, reaching the Sushitna River, it follows the sloping plains of that valley for a hundred miles, when, crossing the Alaskan Range, it descends into the vast valley at the head of navigation on the Tanana River, in the vicinity of Chena and Fairbanks.
All of the country which this road is expected to traverse when completed is rich in coal, copper, and quartz and placer gold.
There is a large amount of timber suitable for domestic use throughout this part of the country, spruce trees of three and four feet in diameter being common near the coast; inland, the timber is smaller, but of fair quality.
There is much good agricultural land along the line of the road; the soil is rich and the climatic conditions quite as favorable as those of many producing regions of the northern United States and Europe. Grass, known as "red-top," grows in abundance in the valleys and provides food for horses and cattle. It is expected that, so soon as the different railroads connect the great interior valleys with the sea, the government's offer of three hundred and twenty acres to the homesteader will induce many people to settle there. The Alaska Central Railroad is completed for a distance of fifty-three miles,--more than half the distance to the coal-fields north of Cook Inlet.
Arrangements have been made for the building of a large smelter at Seward, to cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in 1908.
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Cook Inlet enjoys well-deserved renown for its scenery. Between it and the Chugach Gulf is the great Kenai Peninsula, whose shores are indented by many deep inlets and bays. The most important of these is Resurrection Bay.
Wood is plentiful along the coast of the peninsula. Cataracts, glaciers, snow peaks, green valleys, and lovely lakes abound.
The peninsula is shaped somewhat like a great pear. Turnagain Arm and an inlet of Prince William Sound almost meet at the north; but the portage mentioned on another page prevents it from being an island. It is crowned by the lofty and rugged Kenai Mountains.
Off its southern coast are several clusters of islands--Pye and Chugatz islands, Seal and Chiswell rocks.
In the entrance to Cook Inlet lie Barren Islands, Amatuli Island, and Ushugat Island.
On a small island off the southern point of the peninsula is a lofty promontory, which Cook named Cape Elizabeth because it was sighted on the Princess Elizabeth's birthday. The lofty, two-peaked promontory on the opposite side of the entrance he named Douglas, in honor of his friend, the Canon of Windsor.
Between the capes, the entrance is sixty-five miles wide; but it steadily diminishes until it reaches a width of but a few miles. There is a passage on each side of Barren Islands.
The Inlet receives the waters of several rivers: the Sushitna, Matanuska, Knik, Yentna,--which flows into the Sushitna near its mouth,--Kaknu, and Kassitof.
Lying near the western shore of the inlet, and just inside the entrance, is an island which rises in graceful sweeps on all sides, directly from the water to a smooth, broken-pointed, and beautiful cone. This cone forms the entire island, and there is not the faintest break in its symmetry until the very crest is reached. It is the volcano of St. Augustine.
A chain of active volcanoes extends along the western shore. Of these, Iliamna, the greatest, is twelve thousand sixty-six feet in height, and was named "Miranda, the Admirable" by Spanish navigators, who may usually be relied upon for poetically significant, or soft-sounding, names. It is clad in eternal snow, but smoke-turbans are wound almost constantly about its brow. It was in eruption in 1854, and running lava has been found near the lower crater. There are many hot and sulphurous springs on its sides.
North of Iliamna is Goryalya, or "The Redoubt," which is a lesser "smoker," eleven thousand two hundred and seventy feet high. It was in eruption in 1867, and ashes fell on islands more than a hundred and fifty miles away.
Iliamna Lake is one of the two largest lakes in Alaska. It is from fifty to eighty miles long and from fifteen to twenty-five wide. A pass at a height of about eight hundred feet affords an easy route of communication between the upper end of the lake and a bay of the same name on Cook Inlet, near the volcano, and has long been in use by white, as well as native, hunters and prospectors. The country surrounding the lake is said to abound in large and small game. Lake Clark, to the north, is connected with Lake Iliamna by the Nogheling River. It is longer than Iliamna, but very much narrower. It lies directly west of the Redoubt Volcano.
Iliamna Lake is connected with Behring Sea by Kvichak River, which flows into Bristol Bay. The lake is a natural hatchery of king salmon, and immense canneries are located on Bristol Bay, which lies directly north of the Aliaska Peninsula.
It is comparatively easy for hunters to cross by the chain of lakes and water-ways from Bristol Bay to Cook Inlet--which is known to sportsmen of all countries, both shores offering everything in the way of game. The big brown bear of the inlet is the same as the famous Kadiak; and hunters come from all parts of the world when they can secure permits to kill them. Moose, caribou, mountain sheep, mountain goat, deer, and all kinds of smaller game are also found. There are many trout and salmon streams on the eastern shore of the inlet, and the lagoons and marshes are the haunts of water-fowl.
The voyage up Cook Inlet is one of the most fascinating that may be taken, as a side trip, in Alaska.
Large steamers touch only at Homer and Seldovia, just inside the entrance. There is a good wharf at Homer, but at Seldovia there is another rope-ladder descent and dory landing. There are a post-office, several stores and houses, and a little Greek-Russian church. Scattered over a low bluff at one side of the settlement are the native huts, half hidden in tall reeds and grasses, and a native graveyard.
Seldovia is not the place to buy baskets, as the only ones to be obtained are of very inferior coloring and workmanship.
My Scotch friend was so fearful that some one else might secure a treasure that she seized the first basket in sight at Seldovia, paying five dollars for it. It was not large, and as for its appearance--!
But with one evil mind we all pretended to envy her and to regret that we had not seen it first; so that, for some time, she stepped out over the tundra with quite a proud and high step, swinging her "buy" proudly at her right side, where all might see and admire.
Presently, however, we came to a hut wherein we stumbled upon all kinds of real treasures--old bows and arrows, kamelinkas, bidarkas, virgin charms, and ivory spears. We all gathered these things unto ourselves--all but my Scotch friend. She stood by, watching us, silent, ruminative.
She had spent all that she cared to spend on curios in one day on the single treasure which she carried in her hand. We observed that presently she carried it less proudly and that her carriage had less of haughtiness in it, as we went across the beach to the dory.
She took the basket down to the engine-room to have it steamed. I do not know what the engineer said to her about her purchase, but when she came back, her face was somewhat flushed. The Scotch are not a demonstrative race, and when she ever after referred to the chief engineer simply as "that engineer down there," I felt that it meant something. She never again mentioned that basket to me; but I have seen it in six different curio stores trying to get itself sold.
At Seldovia connection is made with small steamers running up the inlet to the head of the arm. Hope and Sunrise are the inspiring names of the chief settlements of the arm.
The tides of Cook Inlet are tremendous. There are fearful tide-rips at the entrance and again about halfway up the inlet, where they appeared "frightful" to Cook and his men. The tide enters Turnagain Arm, at the head of the inlet, in a huge bore, which expert canoemen are said to be able to ride successfully, and to thus be carried with great speed and delightful danger on their way.
Cook thought that the inlet was a river, of which the arm was an eastern branch. Therefore, at the entrance of the latter, he exclaimed in disappointment and chagrin, "Turn again!"--and afterward bestowed this name upon the slender water-way.
He modestly left only a blank for the name of the great inlet itself; and after his cruel death at the hands of natives in the Sandwich Islands, Lord Sandwich directed that it be named Cook's River.
The voyage of two hundred miles to the head of the arm by steamer is slow and sufficiently romantic to satisfy the most sentimental. The steamer is compelled to tie up frequently to await the favorable stage of the tide, affording ample opportunity and time for the full enjoyment of the varied attractions of the trip. The numerous waterfalls are among the finest of Alaska.
Even to-day the trip is attended by the gravest dangers and is only attempted by experienced navigators who are familiar with its unique perils. The very entrance is the dread of mariners. The tide-rips that boil and roar around the naked Barren Islands subject ships to graver danger than the fiercest storms on this wild and stormy coast.
The tides of Turnagain Arm rival those of the Bay of Fundy, entering in tremendous bores that advance faster than a horse can run and bearing everything with resistless force before them. After the first roar of the entering tide is heard, there is but a moment in which to make for safety. There is a tide fall in the arm of from twenty to twenty-seven feet.
The first Russian settlement of the inlet was by the establishment of a fort by Shelikoff, near the entrance, named Alexandrovsk. It was followed in 1786 by the establishment of the Lebedef-Lastuchkin Company on the Kussilof River in a settlement and fort named St. George.
Fort Alexandrovsk formed a square with two bastions, and the imperial arms shone over the entrance, which was protected by two guns. The situation, however, was not so advantageous for trading as that of the other company.
In 1791 the Lebedef Company established another fort, the Redoubt St. Nicholas, still farther up the inlet, just below that narrowing known as the "Forelands," at the Kaknu, or Kenai, River. At this place the shores jut out into three steep, cliffy points which were named by Vancouver West, North, and East Forelands.
Here Vancouver found the flood-tide running with such a violent velocity that the best bower cable proved unable to resist it, and broke. The buoy sank by the strength of the current, and both the anchor and the cable were irrecoverably lost.
Cook did not enter Turnagain Arm, but Vancouver learned from the Russians that neither the arm nor the inlet was a river; that the arm terminated some thirty miles from its mouth; and that from its head the Russians walked about fifteen versts over a mountain and entered an inlet of Prince William Sound,--thereby keeping themselves in communication with their fellow-countrymen at Port Etches and Kaye Island.
Vancouver sent Lieutenant Whidbey and some men to explore the arm; but having entered with the bore and finding no place where he might escape its ebb, he was compelled to return with it, without making as complete an examination as was desired.
The country bordering upon the bays along Turnagain Arm is low, richly wooded, and pleasant, rising with a gradual slope, until the inner point of entrance is reached. Here the shores suddenly rise to bold and towering eminences, perpendicular cliffs, and mountains which to poor Whidbey, as usual, appeared "stupendous"--cleft by "awfully grand" chasms and gullies, down which rushed immense torrents of water.
The tide rises thirty feet with a roaring rush that is really terrifying to hear and see.
At a Russian settlement Whidbey found one large house, fifty by twenty-four feet, occupied by nineteen Russians. One door afforded the only ventilation, and it was usually closed.
Whidbey and his men were hospitably received and were offered a repast of dried fish and native cranberries; but because of the offensive odor of the house, owing to the lack of ventilation and other unmentionable horrors, they were unable to eat. Perceiving this, their host ordered the cranberries taken away and beaten up with train-oil, when they were again placed before the visitors. This last effort of hospitality proved too much for the politeness of the Englishmen, and they rushed out into the cool air for relief.
Indeed, the Russians appeared to live quite as filthily and disgustingly as the natives, and to have fallen into all their cooking, living, and other customs, save those of painting their faces and wearing ornaments in lips, noses, and ears.
The name "inlet," instead of "river," was first applied to this torrential water-way in 1794 by Vancouver, who also bestowed upon Turnagain the designation of "arm."
Vancouver, upon the invitation of the commanding officer who came out to his ships for that purpose, paid the Redoubt St. Nicholas, near the Forelands, a visit. He was saluted by two guns from a kind of balcony, above which the Russian flag floated on top of a house situated upon a cliff.
Captain Dixon, the most pious navigator I have found, with the exception of the Russians, extolled the Supreme Being for having so bountifully provided in Cook Inlet for the needs of the wretched natives who inhabited the region. The fresh fish and game of all kinds, so easily procured, the rich skins with which to clothe their bodies,--inspired him to praise and thanksgiving.
For the magnificent water-way pushing northward, glaciered, cascaded, blue-bayed, and emerald-valed, with unbroken chains of snow peaks and volcanoes on both sides,--up which the voyager sails charmed and fascinated to-day,--he spoke no enthusiastic word of praise. On the contrary, he found the aspect dreary and uncomfortable. Even Whidbey, the Chilly, could not have given way to deeper shudders than did Dixon in Cook Inlet.
The low land and green valleys close to the shore, grown with trees, shrubbery, and tall grasses, he found "not altogether disagreeable," but it was with shock upon shock to his delicate and outraged feelings that he sailed between the mountains covered with eternal snow. Their "prodigious extent and stupendous precipices ... chilled the blood of the beholder." They were "awfully dreadful."
Dixon, as well as Cook, mentions the wearing of the labret by men, but I still cling to the opinion that they could not distinguish a man from a woman, owing to the attire.
Dixon also reported that the natives have a keen sense of smell, which they quicken by the use of snakeroot. One would naturally have supposed that they would have hunted the forests through and through for some herb, or some dark charm of witchcraft, that would have deprived them utterly and forever of this sense, which is so undesirable a possession to the person living or travelling in Alaska.
The climate of Cook Inlet is more agreeable than that of any other part of Alaska. In the low valleys near the shore the soil is well adapted to the growing of fruits, vegetables, and grain, and to the raising of stock and chickens. Good butter and cheese are made, which, with eggs, bring excellent prices. Roses and all but the tenderest flowers thrive, and berries grow large and of delicious flavor, bearing abundantly.
"Awfully dreadful" scenes are not to be found. It is a pleasure to confess, however, that many features, by their beauty, splendor, and sublimity, fill the appreciative beholder with awe and reverence.
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The coal deposits of the region surrounding the inlet are now known to be numerous and important. Coal is found in Kachemak Bay, and Port Graham, at Tyonook, and on Matanuska River, about fifty miles inland from the head of the inlet. It is lignitic and bituminous, but semi-anthracite has been found in the Matanuska Valley.
Lignitic coals have a very wide distribution, but have been, as yet, mined only on Admiralty Island, at Homer and Coal Bay in Cook Inlet, at Chignik and Unga, at several points on the Yukon, and on Seward Peninsula.
The new railroad now building from Cordova will open up not only vast copper districts, but the richest and most extensive oil and coal fields in Alaska, as well.
Semi-anthracite coal exists in commercial quantities, so far as yet discovered, only at Comptroller Bay. A fine quality of bituminous coal also exists there, extending inland for twenty-five miles on the northern tributaries of Behring River and about thirty-five miles east of Copper River, covering an area of about one hundred and twenty square miles.
Southwestern Alaska includes the Cook Inlet region, Kodiak and adjacent islands, Aliaska Peninsula, and the Aleutian Islands. Coal, mostly of a lignitic character, is widely distributed in all these districts. It has also been discovered in different localities in the Sushitna Basin.
All coal used by the United States government's naval vessels on the Pacific is purchased and transported there from the East at enormous expense. Alaska has vast coal deposits of an exceedingly fine quality lying undeveloped in the Aliaskan Peninsula, two hundred miles farther west than Honolulu, and directly on the route of steamers plying from this country to the Orient. (It is not generally known that the smoke of steamers on their way from Puget Sound to Japan may be plainly seen on clear days at Unalaska.)
This coal is in the neighborhood of Portage Bay, where there is a good harbor and a coaling station. It is reported by geological survey experts to be as fine as Pocahontas coal, and even higher in carbon.
Possibly, in time, the United States government may awaken to a realization of the vast fortunes lying hidden in the undeveloped, neglected, and even scorned resources of Alaska,--not to mention the tremendous advantages of being able to coal its war vessels with Pacific Coast coal.
During the spring of 1908 the Alaska-coal land situation was discouraging. A great area of rich coal-bearing land had been withdrawn from entry, because of the amazing presumption of the interior department that the removal of prohibitive restrictions upon entrymen would encourage the formation of monopolies in the mining and marketing of coal.
Secretary Garfield at first inclined strongly to the opinion that the Alaska coal lands should be held by the government for leasing purposes, and that there should be a separate reservation for the navy; and he has not entirely abandoned this opinion.
The withdrawal of the coal lands from entry caused the Copper River and Northwestern Railway Company to discontinue all work on the Katalla branch of the road; nor will it resume until the question of title to the coal lands is settled and the lands themselves admitted to entry.
The fear of monopolies, which is making the interior department uneasy, is said to have arisen from the fact that it has been absolutely necessary for several entrymen in a coal region to associate themselves together and combine their claims, on account of the enormous expense of opening and operating mines in that country. The surveys alone, which, in accordance with an act passed in 1904, must be borne by the entryman, although this burden is not imposed upon entrymen in the states, are so expensive, particularly in the Behring coal-fields near Katalla, that an entryman cannot bear it alone; while the expense of getting provisions and tools from salt-water into the interior is simply prohibitive to most locators, unless they can combine and divide the expense.
These early discoverers and locators acted in good faith. The lands were entered as coal lands; there was no fraud and no attempt at fraud; not one person sought to take up coal land as homestead, nor with scrip, nor in any fraudulent manner.
There was some carelessness in the observance of new rules and regulations, but there was excuse for this in the fact that Alaska is far from Congress and news travels slowly; also, it has been the belief of Alaskans that when a man, after the infinite labor and deprivation necessary to successful prospecting in Alaska, has found anything of value on the public domain, he could appropriate it with the surety that his right thereto would be recognized and respected; and that any slight mistakes that might be made technically would be condoned, provided that they were honest ones and not made with the intent to defraud the government.
The oldest coal mine in Alaska is located just within the entrance to Cook Inlet, on the western shore, at Coal Harbor. There, in the early fifties, the Russians began extensive operations, importing experienced German miners to direct a large force of Muscovite laborers sent from Sitka, and running their machinery by steam.
Shafts were sunk, and a drift run into the vein for a distance of one thousand seven hundred feet. During a period of three years two thousand seven hundred tons of coal were mined, but the result was a loss to the enterprising Russians.
Its extent was practically unlimited, but the quality was found to be too poor for the use of steamers.
It is only within the past three years that the fine quality of much of the coal found in Alaska has been made known by government experts.
It was inconceivable that Congress should hesitate to enact such laws as would help to develop Alaska; yet it was not until late in the spring that bills were passed which greatly relieved the situation and insured the building of the road upon which the future of this district depends.