Chapter 19

Miss Kate Field says, "In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty, air-holed ice that has fastened itself, like a cold porous plaster, to the side of an Alp. Distance alone lends enchantment to the view. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been suddenly frozen when about to plunge into the sea.... Think of Niagara Falls frozen stiff, add thirty-six feet to its height, and you have a slight idea of the terminus of Muir Glacier, in front of which your steamer anchors; picture a background of mountains fifteen thousand feet high, all snow-clad, and then imagine a gorgeous sun lighting up the ice-crystals with rainbow coloring. The face of the glacier takes on the hue of aquamarine, the hue of every bit of floating ice, big and little, that surround the steamer and make navigation serious. These dazzling serpents move at the rate of sixty-four feet a day, tumbling headlong into the sea, and, as they fall, the ear is startled by submarine thunder, the echoes of which resound far and near. Down, down, down goes the berg, and woe to the boat in its way when it rises again to the surface."

Charles Hallock in "Our New Alaska," pp. 172-733: "The glacier wall overhung us with its mighty majesty, three times the height of the steamer's mast or more, and we seemed none too far away to escape the constantly cleaving masses which dropped from its face with deafening detonations. The foam which gathered from the impetus of the plunges surged upward fully two-thirds of the height of the cliff, and the resulting swell tossed the large steamer like a toy, and rolled up in breakers of surf upon the beach.... The glacier is by no means smooth, but is seamed and riven in every part by clefts and fissures. It is hollowed into caverns and grottos, hung with massive stalactites, and fashioned into pinnacles and domes. Every section and configuration has its heart of translucent blue or green, interlaced or bordered by fretted frostwork of intensest white, so that the appearance is at all times gnome-like and supernatural....

"I cannot conceive how any one can sit by and contemplate without emotion the stupendous throes which give birth to the icebergs, attended with detonations like explosions of artillery, and reverberations of thunder across the sky, and the mighty wreckage which follows each convulsion. Nevertheless, I have seen a lady loll with complaisance in her steamer chair comfortably wrapped for the chilly air, and observe the astounding scene with the same languid contemplation that she would discuss her social fixtures and appointments. Zounds! I believe that such a human negation would calmly view the wrecks of worlds and hear the crack of doom at the final rendering, if it did not affect her set. She could watch, at a suitable distance, the agony of Christian martyrs, the carnage of great battles, the sweep of cyclones, the diluvial submergence. Dynamite would not appall her, but to me it would be the acme of satisfaction, ineffably supreme, to startle such clods of inanition by a cry of mouse, and electrify them into momentary emotion. No vinaigrette would ever mitigate the shock."...

Mrs. E. R. Scidmore, in "Journeys in Alaska," says, "Avalanches of crumbling snow and great pieces of the front were continually falling with the roar and crash of artillery, revealing new caverns and rifts of deeper blue light, while the spray dashed high and the great waves rolled along the icy wall, and, widening in their sweep, washed the blocks of floating ice up on the beaches on either side.... The nearer one approached the higher the ice-walls seemed, and all along the front there were pinnacles and spires weighing several tons, that seemed on the point of toppling every moment. The great buttresses of ice that rose first from the water and touched the moraine were as solidly white as marble, veined and streaked with rocks and mud, but farther on, as the pressure was greater, the color slowly deepened to turquoise and sapphire blues."

Alexander Badlam, in his "Wonders of Alaska," p. 42, quotes Professor Muir himself as saying that the front and brow of the glacier were "dashed and sculptured into a maze of yawning chasm, ravines, cañons, crevasses, and, a bewildering chaos of architectural forms, beautiful beyond the measure of description, and so bewildering in their beauty as to almost make the spectator believe he was revelling in a dream." "There were," he said, "great clusters of glistening spires, gables, obelisks, monoliths, and castles, standing out boldly against the sky, with bastion and mural, surmounted by fretted cornice, and every interstice and chasm reflecting a sheen of scintillating light and deep-blue shadow, making a combination of color, dazzling, startling, and enchanting."

The next sensation in store for the tourist is the climb to the top of the glacier. All the row-boats were lowered, and about a dozen passengers in each, armed with alpenstocks, were ferried in successive groups from the ship to the eastern beach, a distance of perhaps half a mile, instructions being given to each steersman to keep a sharp lookout for falling icebergs. And here your trouble commences unless you are well advised. The ascent is exceedingly difficult; what looks like a mountain of rock over which you must wend your way to the ice-fields, is really a mountain of ice covered by a layer of slimy mud, crusted with pieces of flinty granite, standing up on end like broken bottle glass on top of a wall. I wore India-rubber high boots when I started, and I needed crutches before I finished. It may be chilly as you leave the ship, according as the sun may be out or in; if chilly, get your escort to carry an extra shawl for you to wrap yourself in when you row back to the ship; if the weather is bright and warm, clothe yourself lightly, for it grows warmer with the glare from the ice and the physical exertion. Be very careful where you step, and if you are wise follow in the footsteps of others; do not undertake to lead, else one foot may be trying to ascertain the depth of a quagmire and the other exploring a fissure.

After an ascent of perhaps two and a half miles, which seem more like ten, you will find yourself on the edge of a frozen sea, frozen, as it were, while in the throes of a tempest, a bay of storm-tossed waves solidified as by a signal; and this extends as far as the eye can reach up into the mountains towards the north, and several miles across to the hills upon the opposite shore. The ice is by no means clear or brilliant, on the contrary, its color is milky and its formation honey-combed, plastic, porous, and yielding to the tread; besides which it is besmeared with sediment from mountain thaws which have traversed its rifts, and disfigured by fallen logs and drift-wood.

I confess if I visited Muir Glacier a hundred times I should always remain on deck and watch the pyrotechnics of the façade rather than undergo the thankless fatigue of climbing to the top, which is infinitely more laborious than the ascent of Vesuvius on foot through the lava, or any work to be done on the trails of the Yosemite. To those who are willing to undertake it, however, I suggest that when they have ascended the first mile, which will bring them on a line with the top of the wall of the glacier, they should look back at their little tiny ship, floating like the "Maid of the Mist" beneath Niagara, to fully realize the immense proportions of the glacier.

It is said that persons have been missed and never again found who made this ascent, and I know that at least one case is authentic, that of a young clergyman, who, straying away from his companions, was never again seen, though the most diligent search was made for him by his friends and the ship's crew. A slip into one of those crevasses which is covered by a thin coat of ice, means to be precipitated in an instant to a depth where no human aid can reach you. In fact, I would advise all who wish to preserve the impression of Muir Glacier in its pure, idealized, unsullied grandeur, to stay aboard and gaze on its beautiful face.

It is a Persian custom, after plucking the fruit, to tear it asunder in the middle, hand the sunny side to the friend and throw the other half away, the best portion being the only part good enough for those they love. It is my duty to present to you the better half of the glacier and to cast away the other. Tired, footsore, and muddy, we were all early in bed, and while dozing to sleep I was much impressed with the awful stillness of the hour; everybody had retired, not even the tread of the man on watch was heard, the very machinery was sleeping, but every now and then there was a splash and a report and an echo that brought with them the proof that the forces of nature were ever awake, and that what was, "is, and ever shall be, world without end."

A SUMMER TRIP TO ALASKA.

JAMES A. HARRISON.

[Nature possesses no scenery more beautiful than that to be found on the Pacific coast of Washington and in the island region leading to north Alaska. And the description of it given below is well worth reproduction, for its poetic appreciation of this rich scenic route.]

The whole fourteen hundred--one might say two thousand--miles of coast extending from Puget's Sound to Behring's Strait is a succession of beautiful and picturesque archipelagoes, consisting of hundreds, if not thousands, of islands, through which there are countless water-caves, lakes, bays, inlets, as smooth as Lake George and the Hudson, and far more lovely. The smoothness of the water is such that life on the steamer is a luxurious rest, and the stimulating coolness of the air in summer contributes to pleasant days and delightful nights. Our summer trip covered about two thousand five hundred miles from Portland and back, and we had ample opportunities to stop at the various settlements, talk with the Indians, and collect curiosities.

On leaving Port Townsend early in August, our ship made for the Straits of Georgia, and for a long time followed the aqueous boundary-line between the British and American possessions. The fog dissolved, and we caught views of Smith's Island, Bellingham Bay, and other points. The scenery became river-like, the strait now opening into waveless lakes, now contracting, like the neck of a bottle, into channels where there were counter-currents and chopped seas.

At Active Bay we could not tell which way we were going, the passage seemed closed by lofty mountains, and the sea appeared to flow against their bases; but presently the wall of rock split into a wooded gorge, through which we shot with a graceful curve.

The long meandering line of Vancouver Island followed for three hundred miles on the left, and we crossed the Gulf of Georgia in water of enchanting tranquillity.

Our first days were spent in threading the wilderness of islands off Vancouver, and we were close enough to the coast on the right to see it distinctly. There was the continental coast range of the Cascade Mountains, vanishing streaks of snow and silver on our eastern horizon, rising from five hundred to two thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level. Its peaks lay in every imaginable shape, twisted, coiled, convoluted against the horizon-bar, now running up into a perfect cone, like the Silberhorn of Switzerland, now elongating in rippling lines along the east, now staining the sky with deep-blue masses of ultramarine flecked with pearly lines.

The smoke of the burning forests of Washington Territory and British Columbia had filled the air for days, and worried us not a little; but one morning we awoke in perfect sunshine, and found an atmosphere impregnated with frosty sparkles from the distant snow-peaks. Just before night-fall, when we were about to cross Queen Charlotte's Sound, a fog came up, and the pilot thought it advisable to lie by for the night, more particularly as the coast is a dangerous one and is strewn with reefs and rocks; so, while we were at dinner, the ship wheeled around, and we reversed our course, going south until we reached Port Alexandria, one of the most perfect little harbors conceivable. It is a cove just like the foot of a stocking; a tiny, circle-shaped island lies in its mouth, and richly-wooded heights throw their green shimmer on the placid water.

Here we lay till morning, as "snug as a bug in a rug." Just before entering the cove, which is only about two hundred yards wide, we saw in the distance an Indian sea-canoe, with its wet paddles flashing in the sun, and the agreeable thought was suggested, Suppose we should be surrounded and scalped in the night! Nothing could have been easier in this lonely neighborhood.

The perpetual wheeling of the vessel in her nautical evolutions as she steamed through each successive archipelago gave rise to ever-new comment on the new vistas and island-combinations before us. The coast of Maine is not to be mentioned in comparison with this, nor the island-dusted Caribbean Sea. These inland-sweeping seas open in long river reaches, beyond which, in sharp sunshine, rise the everlasting peaks, burnished with ice. The shores of British Columbia are densely clothed with diminutive needle-wood, much of which is dead, so that the pale yellow-green is toned with brown-gray. The water is intensely salt, and is skimmed by wild duck and by low-flying, tufted water-fowl.

As we were passing along one morning, an Indian crew came dashing out in a canoe, with a deer for sale. There were stunted-looking squaws in the boat, and all quacked and gesticulated and grunted after the peculiar linguistic fashion of the neighborhood. These Indians are wonderfully deft with their fingers, and weave bottle-cases, satchels, baskets, and table-mats out of split and dyed grasses with curious delicacy and skill. Their face-type is the homeliest I have seen: enormous skulls, high-angled cheek-bones, blinking black eyes, flattish noses, and shocks of horsehair. Evidently they are expert huntsmen and sportsmen: often we saw their camp-fires, or a canoe stealing along the silent water, filled with crouching forms.

Day after day there was a never-ending succession of lake-scenery,--long, winding lanes of green water between steep snow-streaked domes and precipices. The evenings softened into singularly lovely nights, with close-hugging shores, volumes of dark, iodine-hued water, lingering stars, and phosphorescence. The light hung over the hyperborean landscape as if loath to leave. At ten o'clock one evening we went out and found the ship steaming up a lane of purple glass,--the water magically still, the air full of soft, plaintive cries from the breeding gulls, the tinkle of the parted sea around our bows, and the dim, spectral water lighted up at the end of the long avenue by a haunting aurora.

Many a time the cabin door formed a delightful frame for a forest-picture,--gliding water, pale-blue sky, a broken shore, and, behind, long lines of brilliant snow-peaks, with their chased and frozen silver. We would lie asleep for a few moments in the cool dark of the cabin-interior, and then wake up with one of these perfect, swiftly-moving views in the foreground. Before we caught it, often it had gone,--the pale, plenteous beauty of the fir-crowned shore, the dancing islets, the sedgy strand-line, the many-colored rocks, with their pools and fountain-basins of transparent water caught from the deep and held in by their rocky framework in a lightness and purity of crystal dew.

Then the ship ran dangerously near to the coast, or again out into the open sound, with its mediterranean sprinkle of islets, serrated walls of rocks, coves and island-mounds, wherein nested shadows of amethyst or indigo.

The flow of life in some of these coves and estuary-like indentations is marvellous, the fish coming in egg-laden, and looking for streams of fresh water in which to deposit their ova. We anchored in one of these inlets, and found on the land luxuriant ferns and splendid clumps of yellow cedar and hemlock, with snow-banks behind. Half a dozen little bucks and half-breeds were tumbling about in the water through the long afternoon light, which seemed to have an amaranthine quality and to be unfading. The sun did not set till after eight o'clock, and there was cold, ghostly, green light up in the north till nearly midnight. When darkness did come, it was of the genuine cuttle-fish kind,--inky,--splashed with stars. There was now and then a delicate shell of a moon incising the sky against a mountain-side and lending the most fragile transfiguration to its top.

As we approached Fort Wrangel, the ship's company turned out in the sweet evening sunshine and found a glorious panorama awaiting them. The sheen of a mighty mass of embattled peaks and pinnacles and feathery floating snow-points shone high up in the evening air, just mellowing under a magnificent sunset. These mountains guard the entrance to the Stickeen River and mount up the horizon after the Duke of Clarence Strait has been traversed.

Wrangel itself is most memorably situated just on one side of these sheeny peaks and glaciers, almost in the shadow of the Devil's Thumb, which rises about four hundred feet above its own mountain-cluster and forms one of a throng of confused and radiant _aiguilles_ overlooking the Stickeen. The sunset had not entirely faded at nine o'clock, when we touched shore and rejoiced our eyes with a series of wonderful semi-arctic color-pictures,--coal-black islands, purple islands, lilac islands, islands in india-ink and amber, lying in glacier-water of pale green, and above and beyond all the glorious flush of the sun stealing in between the white snow-needles and throwing them out and up into luminous relief.

Opposite the town is an island shaped like the cocked hat of a gendarme, where it was said that the curious polygonal garnets embedded in schist and peculiar to this region are found. There were plenty of them as large as walnuts for sale at twenty-five cents a dozen. Odd carved boxes, too, made of an unknown wood and inlaid with shells, were here in plenty; cases of buckskin, containing the conjuring-sticks or gambling-kits of the Thlinkit medicine-men; loin-cloths, ornamented with multitudes of rattling puffin-beaks; head-dresses of defunct warriors; fantastic and horrible masks; huge spoons carved out of the horns of the mountain-ibex; bead-work on leather; robes of many-colored skins quilted together; images carved to resemble otters; fleecy robes of wild sheep and goat; pipes cut with nude figures; antlers; stuffed animals; white-breasted loons, and the like.

After a short stop for landing the mails, the vessel was soon traversing Wrangel Strait, just under some splendid glaciers and snowy mountains, the water perfectly smooth, though full of small icebergs, which glittered in the sunshine and had broken off from the descending ice-mass. Enormous rivers of ice flow down between these mountains and debouch in the sea, their current mysteriously stayed by the low temperature. We were particularly fortunate in having fine, clear weather early in the morning, especially at this point, where we could see the great Pattison Glacier. The ship entered the enchanted region through a narrow passage, which one of us christened the "Silver Gates," the Beulah Mountains edging our Pilgrim's Progress in passionless white as we zigzagged along the course.

A little later, the scenery on Frederic Sound became truly transcendent: grand mountains, forms that would be awful but for the sunshine resting on their heads, the lake-like sound, with its blue spits of land and cameo-like promontories profiled against the sky, motionless _glace-de-Venise_ water reflecting a thousand shades of azure and gray and white, gulls resting on the water, with white bodies and black tips, almost a complete circle of brilliant snow-banks peeping above the clouds that hung to them amorously, and far-away vistas of blue-white glaciers coming down to meet the water-margin.

Schools of spouting whales played in the distance, and the passengers sent balls out of their pistols hissing on the water, but happily hitting nothing. During the last trip two lovely antlered creatures came swimming along in the water, trying to cross one of the channels to another grazing-ground. They were taken on board, but one of them died.

The next landing-place was Killimoo, a little Indian village on an island surrounded by dim-green heights and flickering, ever-changing mountain-views. It is a great station for drying cod-fish, long lines of which lay spread out on the wharf in the sun to dry. As night fell the squaws and Indian maidens gathered the rattling fish-carcasses under little ark-like receptacles, where they lay till morning out of the dew.

At Juneau some of the passengers walked or rowed off to the gold-mines in the mountains, where they picked up specimens of gold-quartz and some teacupfuls of sifted gold-dust. One of these was said to be worth six hundred dollars, another over twelve hundred dollars. One was reminded of the gold-dust story of Alkmaion in Herodotus.

Shortly after this the ship cast anchor at Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor, our two highest points in Alaska waters, about latitude 59° 12' north. We had but a poor glimpse of the glaciers on the Chilkat side,--one a magnificent down-flow of pale-blue ice, the other a frozen river caught and compressed in between strangling hills.

The location of Pyramid Harbor is very beautiful,--a wind-sheltered nook, a curving shore, covered with pebbles, alder-clad heights just behind, and dimly-flashing ice-peaks peeping out of the mist just over the shoulder of a huge green rock-slope. A salmon-cannery in the foreground, flanked by an Indian village, a semilune of pure green water, nearly fresh, and a curious pyramid-shaped knoll rising from it, constituted other features of the environment. The lifting mists drew aside for a while, and refreshed the sight with views of the great sculpture-lines of the surrounding mountains.

[We may pass the description of Sitka, and proceed.]

We were greatly favored when we left Sitka. Starting off in a rain, in which everything lay in muddy eclipse, we woke up next morning and found ourselves tracing the outside route to the Muir Glacier in sparkling sunshine. The transition was delightful, and, though most of the passengers were sick from the tossing of the ship on the long outside ocean-swell, I believe they all enjoyed the sunshine as it flashed into their cabin windows, played on the walls, and pricked and scattered the enormous vapor masses that hung over the mountains on our right. There were no longer the vaulted vapors of the preceding days, the dense counterpane of nebulous gray that covered the whole sky with its monotony. The heavy cloud-banks clung to the mountains, leaving an exquisite arc of sky, almost Italian in its sunny azure.

Nothing could be more superb than the deep, dark, velvety tints of the crinkled and crumpled mountains as they shelved to the sea and came in contact there with an edging of foam from the blue Pacific. Huge jelly-fish flapped about in the clear water, nebular patches of protoplasmic existence, capable, apparently, of no other functions than sensation, motion, and self-propagation. Some of them were richly streaked, long-tailed, delicately margined, with comet-like streamers, jelly-frills, and nuclei like a wide-open sunflower. Their motion was so indolently graceful that I could not help gazing at them.