Perret | i oe . w } - a4 ® —— Y ¥ + Vy J \ | i fe , A P Y 6 ‘ » - . : 7 « iy ’ » rs vib i is . : - ‘ i - . z i, < “Ss ( L r - ' «a y ne > a — af = 5 : : * : ‘ # r A ’ : ac j — Z in - ; a a \ i : fl ey y = hen t ’ ee eel Dupre 6 Cr ALASKA VOLUME I * 2 * - @ w - ro . i . a i ; bo = a oy . it . « 7 ' 4 i a : \ - y er 3 i ny 1 ? i , a i . J . i oe = Vi. > l ee ; ; : . r 7 fi ; . \ . ‘ , . ta Me A 4 i i gt > = -_ - 4 a a ¥, 7 = S > : noe : é sal + . 7 + 1 es SYOWLITVE O35 NSOH VY ‘punog WITT soutsg ‘pazoty wew1sse_y 01 s0uer} IY WaIOVI AuUVvE *GOHO3319 NIVMS “Y AG ONILNIVd HARRIMAN ALASKA EXPEDITION | % WITH COOPERATION OF WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ALASKA VOLUME I NARRATIVE, GLACIERS, NATIVES BY JOHN BURROUGHS, JOHN MUIR AND GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL _ ae -.contan Inesny Aw "She Ya? oS PNB 2 \ Pas Ne NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY A OrO ct CoPYRIGHT, 1901, BY Epwarp H. HarRIMAN. TI Seer al ) A } ri ‘neh i } pb 1 i, A sill - jae ee a CONTENTS an PAGE Distt, @OLOKCE Mk LACES sk are iss wien «in sauce: oe aloeee eee eee v—vi ict ot, MhoOtoptavure -cuute suede aaa een ee ee Drawn by W. EL. Shader from photograph by C. Hart Merriam. OldiJooschurch, at; Jumeaticy 5) aks liesiaede hata ea eee Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by W. H. Averell. WavidsonaGlacien,. luynm Canale..0. 25. 3s.0200edee ne eee Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by C. Hart Merriam. reson lynn Canal aiosiun mist, danid-ens Jah, a0 sde yn cee ee eee Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by U. S. Coast Survey. Looking down at head of Lynn Canal from White Pass Railroad.. Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by Charles Keeler. Ratlroad terminus, summit ot White Pass:...).y.s2204).s8eeeee Drawn by Baldwin from photograph by Curtis, June 7, 1599. Custom house and flags of both nations on provisional boundary, Siimmib ob VVinite Hass. atyaieace tat ee cbctaysnasdtee aetna re tee ee Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by Curtis, June 7, 1899. Sled-lozdiot-oram, W lite Pass.:.cosid anise. een eee eee Drawn by A. H. Baldwin from photograph by E. S. Curtis. vine G: Tae tery sae Ok GN ie es ciel As Lee Ae eee ee evan Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by Charies Keeler. Mining Cabin. Glacier Bayo.e. 622505 iacece. eae ie een ec nee Drawn by S. B. Nichols from photograph by C. Hart Merriam. Muir Glacier, from mountain on south side........5....scs0..ecese--e Drawn by Baldwin from photograph by G. K. Gilbert, June ro, 1899. Camp ot Harriman, party on Muir Glaciers, .29-45-5-2e Drawn by A. H. Baldwin from photograph by C. Hart Merriam, taken at 3 AM, June 9, 1899. @ampion tomt Gustavus, Glacier Baya. i403. .ut icy see ees Drawn by W. EB. Spader from photograph by Leon Jf. Cole, June 12. @revacsesson Miuin: Glacier sr. csts cocaine cnet eee po nae re Drawn by W. E. Spader from photograph by William H. Avereil. Large rock supported on column of ice, Muir Glacier............... Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by Wesley R. Coe. Resurrected forest, near Muir Glacier ..22 ec ciedi sesso echt ogss ost Drawn by W. BE. Spader from photograph by E. S. Curtis. OlduRnsstawwbarkack S(O kas elias, Muse Niet tii Mencle noieicictats se elaine Drawn by A. H. Baldwin from photograph by E. S. Curtis. dinee-cappedisletspmeataoitlca.. (ljys0 S45 eset tease oedic eos Seu otiocte Drawn by Louise M. Keeler from photograph by E. S. Curtis. Rear view of Greek church, Sitka........ Bei ch actsrtides. amit SN ie SN ae y NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION BY JOHN BURROUGHS : WV E left New York on the afternoon of May |_| 23, 1899, in a special train of palace cars, be. WS ‘ and took ship at Seattle the last day of be Pronk All west of the Mississippi was new land to me, and there was a good deal of it. Throughout the prairie region I, as a farmer, rejoiced in the endless vistas of beautiful fertile farms, all busy with the spring planting, and reaching from horizon to horizon of our flying train. As a home-body and lover of the cosy and picturesque I recoiled from the bald native farm houses with their unkempt surroundings, their rude sheds and black muddy barnyards. As one goes West nature is more and more and man less and less. In New England one is surprised to see such busy thriving towns and such in- viting country homes amid a landscape so bleak and barren. In the West on the contrary his surprise is that such opulence of nature should be attended by such squalor and makeshift in the farm buildings and rural villages. Of course the picturesque is not an element of the western (1) 2 JOHN BURROUGHS landscape as it is of the eastern. The predominant im- pression is that of utility. Its beauty is the beauty of utility. One does not say, what a beautiful view, but what beautiful farms ; not what an attractive home, but what a superb field of corn or wheat, or oats or barley. The crops and the herds suggest a bounty and a fertility that are marvelous, but the habitations for the most part look starved and impoverished. The country roads are merely dusty or muddy black bands, stretching across the open land without variety and without interest. As one’s eye grows fatigued with the monotony, the thought comes to him of what terrible homesickness the first set- tlers on the prairies from New England, New York, or Pennsylvania must have suffered. Their hearts did not take root here. They did not build themselves homes, they builded themselves shelters. Their descendants are trying here and there to build homes, trying by tree plant- ing and other devices to give an air of seclusion and domesticity to their dwellings. But the problem is a hard one. Nature here seems to covet the utmost publicity. The people must build lower and more rambling houses, cultivate more grassy lanes, plant longer avenues of trees, and not let the disheveled straw stacks dominate the scene. As children we loved to sit on the laps. of our fathers and mothers, and as children of a larger and older growth we love the lap of mother earth, some secluded nook, some cosy corner, where we can nestle and feel the sheltering arm of the near horizon about us. After one reaches the more arid regions beyond the Rockies, what pitiful farm homes one sees here and there —a low one-room building made of hewn logs, the joints plastered with mud, a flat mud roof, a forlorn looking woman with children about her standing in the doorway, a rude canopy of brush or cornstalks upheld by poles for shed and outbuildings; not a tree, not ashrub near; a few acres CROSSING THE ROCKIES 3 of green irrigated land not far off, but the hills and moun- tains around, bare, brown, and forbidding. We saw hun- dreds of such homes in Utah, Idaho, and Oregon, and they affected me like a nightmare. A night’s run west of Omaha a change comes over the spirit of nature’s dream. We have entered upon that sea of vast rolling plains; agriculture is left behind; these gentle slopes and dimpled valleys are innocent of the plow; herds of grazing cattle and horses are seen here and there; now and then a coyote trots away indifferently from the train, looking like a gray homeless kill-sheep shepherd dog; at long intervals a low hut or cabin, looking very forlorn; sometimes a wagon track leads away and disappears over the treeless hills. How I wanted to stop the train and run out over those vast grassy billows and touch and taste this unfamiliar nature! Here in the early morning I heard my first western meadow-lark. The liquid gurgling song fil- tered in through the roar of the rushing train. It was very sweet and novel and made me want more than ever to call a halt and gain the wild stillness of the hills and plains, but it contained no suggestion of the meadow-lark I knew. I saw also the horned lark and the black and white lark-bunting from the car window. Presently another change comes over the scene: We see the Rockies faint and shadowy in the far distance, their snow-clad summits ghostly and dim; the traveler crosses them on the Union Pacific almost before he is aware of it. He expects a nearer view, but does not get it. Their distant snow-capped peaks rise up, or bow down, or ride slowly along the horizon afar off. They seem to elude him; he cannot get near them; they flee away or cautiously work around him. At one point we seemed for hours approaching the Elk Mountains, which stood up sharp and white against the horizon; but a spell was upon us, or upon them, for we circled and circled till 4 JOHN BURROUGHS we left them behind. A vast treeless country is a strange spectacle-to eastern eyes. This absence of trees) seenis in some way to add to the youthfulness of the landscape; itis like the face of a beardless boy. ‘Trees and forests make the earth look as if it had attained its majority; they give a touch like that of the mane to the lion or the beard to the man. In crossing the continent this youthfulness of the land, or even its femininity, is at times a marked feature. The face of the plains in Wyoming suggests our eastern meadows in early spring—the light gray of the stubble, with a tinge of green beneath. All the lines are gentle, all the tints are soft. ‘The land looks as if it must have fattened innumerable herds. Probably the myriads of buffaloes grazing here for centuries have left their mark upon it. The hills are almost as plump and muttony in places as the South Downs of England. I recall a fine spectacle on the Laramie plains: a vast green area, miles and miles in extent, dotted with thou- sands of cattle, one of the finest rural pictures J ever saw. It looked like an olive green velvet carpet, so soft and pleasing was it to the eye, and the cattle were disposed singly or in groups as an artist would have placed them. Rising up behind it and finishing the picture was a jagged line of snow-covered mountains. Presently the sagebrush takes the place of grass and another change occurs; still the lines of the landscape are flowing and the tints soft. The sagebrush is like the sage of the garden become woody and aspiring to be a bush three or four feet high. It is the nearest nature comes to the arboreal beard on these great elevated plains. Shave them away and the earth beneath is as smooth as a boy’s cheek. Before we get out of Wyoming this youthfulness of nature gives place to mere newness—raw, turbulent, forbid- ding, almost chaotic. The landscape suggests the dumping THE BAD LANDS 5 ground of creation, where all the refuse has been gathered. What one sees at home in a clay bank by the roadside on a scale of a few feet, he sees here on a scale of hundreds and thousands of feet — the erosions and the sculpturing of a continent, vast, titanic; mountain ranges, like newly piled earth from some globe-piercing mine shaft, all furrowed _and carved by the elements, as if in yesterday’s rainfall. It all has a new, tran- sitory look. Buttes or table mountains stand up here and there like huge earth stumps. Along Green River we see where nature begins to dream of the great canyon of the Colorado. Throughout a vast stretch of country here her one thought seems to be of canyons. You see them on every hand, little and big— deep, rectangular grooves sunk in the plain, sides perpendicular, bottom level, all the lines sharp and abrupt. All the little dry water courses are canyons, the depth and breadth being about equal; the streams have no banks, only perpendicular walls. As you go south these features become more and more pronounced till you reach the stupendous canyon of the Colorado in Arizona. On our return in August we struck this formation in the Bad Lands of Utah, where our train was Stalled a day and a half by a washout. The earth seems to have been flayed alive in the Bad Lands, no skin or turf of verdure or vegetable mould anywhere, all raw and quivering. The country looks as if it might have been the site of enormous brickyards; over hun- dreds of square miles the clay seems to have been used up to the depth of fifty or a hundred feet, leaving a clay floor much worn and grooved by the elements. The mountains GREEN RIVER BUTTE, WYOMING. 6 JOHN BURROUGHS have been carved and sliced but yesterday, showing enor- mous transverse sections. Indeed, never before have I seen the earth so vivisected, anatomized, gashed — the cuts all looking fresh, the hills looking as new and red as butcher’s meat, the strata almost bleeding. The red and angry torrent of Price River, a mountain brook of liquid mud near which we lay, was quite in keeping with the scene. How staid and settled and old nature looks in the Atlantic States, with her clear streams, her rounded hills, her forests, her lichen-covered rocks, her neutral tints, in contrast with large sections of the Rocky Mountain re- gion. In the East the great god Erosion has almost done his work — the grading and shaping of the landscape has long since been finished, the seeding and planting are things of the remote past — but in this part of the West it is still the heat of the day with him; we surprise his forces with shovels and picks yet in hand, as it were, and the spectacle is strange indeed and in many ways repellent. In places the country looks as if all the railroad forces of the world might have been turned loose to delve and rend and pile in some mad, insane folly and debauch. In crossing the Rockies I had my first ride upon the cowcatcher, or rather upon the bench of the engine im- mediately above it. In this position one gets a much more vivid sense of the perils that encompass the flying train than he does fromthe car window. The book of fate is rapidly laid bare before him and he can scan every line, while from his comfortable seat in the car he sees little more than the margin of the page. From the en- gine he reads the future and the immediate. From the car window he is more occupied with the distant and the past. How rapidly those two slender steel rails do spin beneath us, and how inadequate they do seem to sustain and guide this enormous throbbing and roaring monster which we feel laboring and panting at our backs. The PHOTOGRAPH BY FISHER SHOSHONE FALLS, FROM THE NORTH PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRIMAN JOHN ANDREW & SON SHOSHONE FALLS, FROM THE WEST BA Oe Pane i Soba tT SHOSHONE FALLS 7 rails seem ridiculously small and slender for such task; surely, you feel, they will bend and crumple up or be torn from the ties. The peril seems imminent and it is some time before one gets over the feeling. During this ride of twenty-five miles we struck two birds — shore larks — and barely missed several turtle doves. A big hawk sat on the ground near the track eating some small animal, probably a ground squirrel. He was startled by our sudden ap- proach and in flying across the track came so near being struck by the engine that he was frightened into dropping his quarry. Later inthe day others of the party rode upon the front of the engine and each saw birds struck and killed by it. The one ever-present bird across the continent, even in the most desolate places, is the turtle dove. From Indiana to Oregon, at almost any moment turtle doves may be seen flying away from the train. SHOSHONE FALLS AND CANYON. The fourth day from home we struck the great plains of the Snake River in southern Idaho and stopped at Sho- shone to visit the Shoshone Falls. Mr. Harriman had telegraphed ahead to have means of transportation in readiness to take us to the falls, twenty-five miles to the south across the sagebrush plains. Hence when we awoke at Shoshone in the early morning we found a nondescript collection of horses and vehicles awaiting us — buggies, buckboards, market wagons, and one old covered four-horse stage, besides a group of saddle horses for those who were equal to this mode of travel. The day was clear and cool and the spirits of the party ran high. That ride over the vast sagebrush plain in the exhilarating air, under the novel conditions and in the early honeymoon of our journey — who of us can ever forget it? My seat happened to be beside the driver on top of the old stage- coach, and we went swinging and rocking over the plain 8 JOHN BURROUGHS in the style in which I made my first journey amid the Catskills in my youth. But how tame were the Catskills of memory in comparison with the snow-capped ranges i ri i Pha ey TUN Le SAGEBRUSH PLAIN. that bound our horizon fifty or a hundred miles away — to the north the Saw Tooth Range and ‘ Old Soldier,’ white as a snow bank; to the southeast the Goose Creek Range; and to the south the Humboldts, far away in Nevada. Our course lay across what was once a sea of molten lava. Our geologists said that sometime in the remote past the crust of the earth here had probably cracked over a wide area, allowing the molten lava to flow up through it, like water through rents in the ice, and inun- date thousands of square miles of surface, extending even to the Columbia, many hundred miles distant. This old lava bed is now an undulating sagebrush plain, appearing here and there in broken, jagged outcroppings, or in broad, flat plates like a dark cracked pavement still in place, but partly hidden under a yellowish brown soil. The road was a crooked one, but fairly good. Its course SHOSHONE FALLS 9 far ahead was often marked to us by a red line visible here and there upon the dull green plain. Flowers, flow- ers everywhere under the sagebrush, covered the ground. The effect was as of a rough garment with a delicate many- colored silk lining. Great patches of lupine, then the deli- cate fresh bloom of a species of phlox, then larkspur, then areas of white, yellow, and purple flowers of many kinds. It is a surprise to eastern eyes to see a land without turf, yet so dotted with vegetation. It is as if all these things grew ina plowed field, or in the open road; the bare soil is everywhere visible around them. The bunch grass does not make a turf, but grows in scattered tufts like bunches of green bristles. Nothing is crowded. Every shrub and flower has a free space about it. The horsemen and horse- women careered gaily ahead, or lingered behind, resting and botanizing amid the brush. The dust from the leading vehicles was seen rising up miles inadvance. We saw an occasional coyote slink away amid the sagebrush. Dark- eared and dark-tailed gray hares bounded away or eyed us from cover. Horned larks were common, and the sage spar- row, the meadow- E= =A : == lark and other birds ECR Toy ny gr ae an wereseenand heard. | WiRR ae ie, A eed we | Shoshone Falls is SO SS in Snake River, 4 which later on be- comes the Colum- bia. The river does not flow in a valley like our eastern rivers, but in walled canyons which it has cut into the lava plain to the depth of nearly a thousand feet. The only sign we could see of it, when ten miles away, was a dark heavy OR x " i] O52 eS re SS Pep esi) KG ity Pee Tey NTN ye Gs SNAKE RIVER CANYON, NEAR SHOSHONE FALLS. Wye Ss He ~Q IO JOHN BURROUGHS line here and there on the green purple plain, the opposite rim of the great gorge. Near noon we reached a break, or huge gateway, in the basaltic rocks, and were upon the brink of the canyon itself. It was a sudden vision of elemental grandeur and power opening up at our feet. Our eyes have been rev- eling in purple distances, in the soft tints of the sage- brush plain, and in the flowers and long gentle flowing hills — when suddenly the earth opens and we look into a rocky chasm nearly a thousand feet deep with the river and the falls roaring at the bottom of it. The grand, the terrible, the sublime are sprung upon us in a twinkling. The chasm is probably a mile or more broad, with per- pendicular sides of toppling columnar lava eight hundred feet high. A roadway, carved out of the avalanches of loose rocks that hang upon the sides of the awful gulf, winds down to the river and to the cable ferry above the falls. Our party, in detached groups, make slow progress down to this ferry —there is so much to arrest and fasci- nate the attention; the new, strange birds, such as the white-throated swift, the violet-backed swallow, the strange and beautiful wild flowers in the rocks, the rocks themselves in toppling six-sided columns, the spray from the falls below us rising up over the chasm—these and other features make us tarry long by the way. In order to get to the front of the falls and pluck out the heart of the sublimity the traveler must cross to the south side of the river, at this point less than half a mile wide. Here the shore recedes in broad irregular terraces, upon one of which stands a comfortable summer hotel. Scaling slippery and perilous rocky points near it, we stand on the very brink of the chasm and take our fill of the awful and the sublime as born of cliff and cataract. We cling to stretched ropes and wires and peer down into the abyss. Elemental displays on such a scale crowd all SHOSHONE FALLS II trivial and personal thoughts out of the mind of the be- holder. It is salutary to witness them occasionally if only to winnow out of our minds the dust and chaff of the petty affairs of the day, and feel the awe and hush that comes over the spirit in their presence. Shoshone Falls is probably second only to Niagara— less in volume, but of greater height and with a far more striking and picturesque setting. Indeed, it is a sort of double Niagara, one of rocks and one of water, and the beholder hardly knows which is the more impressive. 12 JOHN BURROUGHS _ The river above the main fall is split up into several strands by isolated masses of towering rocks; each of these strands ends in a beautiful fall, forty or fifty feet in height; then the several currents unite for the final plunge down a precipice of two hundred and fifty feet. To get a different, and if possible, a closer view of the falls, we climbed down the side of the chasm by means of ladders and footsteps cut in the rock and soil, to the margin of the river below. Here we did homage at the foot of the grand spectacle and gazed upward into its awful face. The canyon below the falls is so broad that the river has an easy egress, hence there is nothing of that terrible agony upon the face of the waters that we see in the gorge below Niagara. Niagara is much the more impos- ing spectacle. Shoshone is the more ideal and poetic. It is a fall from an abyss into a deeper abyss. A few miles below the falls are still other wonders in the shape of underground rivers which leap out of huge openings in the side of the canyon—a subterranean water system cut across by a larger river. The streams that emerge in this dramatic manner are doubtless the same that suddenly take to earth far to the northward. Why they also did not cut canyons in the plain is an interesting problem. In the trees about the hamlet of Shoshone I first made acquaintance with the house finch, a bird with quivering flight and bright cheery song. It suggests our purple finch and seems to be as much of a house and home bird as the ugly English sparrow. The Arkansas flycatcher also was common here, taking the place of our kingbird. In Idaho we reach a land presided over by the goddess Irrigation. Here she has made the desert bloom as the rose. We see her servitors even in the streets of large towns in the shape of great water wheels turned by the THE SNAKE RIVER COUNTRY 13 current, out of which they lift water up into troughs that distribute it right and left into orchards and gardens. Here may the dwellers well say with the Psalmist, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” The Oregon Short Line railroad takes the general di- rection of the old Oregon trail along Snake River through Idaho and Oregon. It is a treeless country, save for the hand of man and the water from the hills. Vast patches of the original sagebrush alternate with vineyards and orchards — orchards of peaches, prunes, and apricots — or with meadows and grain fields. Where the irrigating ditch can be carried, there the earth is clothed with grass or grain or verdure. Baptize the savage sagebrush plain with water and it becomes a christian orchard and wheat field. Now we begin to see magpies from the car win- dows — twinkling black‘and white wings and a long-tailed body. Lombardy poplars stand lke rows of sentinels around the lonely farmhouses. These trees appear to be the only ones planted in this section. The near-by foot- _ hills are of a yellowish earth color, speckled as a thrush’s breast with sagebrush. In other places lupine and wild sunflowers cover the land ,for mules, the latter giving a touch of gold to the hills. After Snake River escapes from the deep lava canyon of : Shoshone Falls, it ie IRRIGATING WHEEL. flows for many miles between level banks, with here and there a slowly turning irrigating wheel lifting the water up to be emptied into troughs or ditches. Near the boundary be- tween Oregon and Idaho the Snake plunges into the T4 JOHN BURROUGHS mountains; plump, full-breasted, tan-colored heights close about it on all sides, now speckled with sagebrush, then lightly touched by the most delicate green, the first tender caress of May. All the lines are feminine and flowing, only here and there a touch of ruggedness as the brown rock crops out. Cover these mountains with turf, and they are almost a copy of the sheep fells and green ranges of northern England. They are marked by the same fullness and softness of outline. For many miles the Snake flows north, through these treeless, rounded, flower-painted, gereen-veiled mountains, until it enters the terrible canyon between the Seven Devils and the Wallowas ; reappear- ing at the mouth of the Clearwater it bends westerly and cuts another long canyon across the high plateau of east- ern Oregon and Washington; it does not traverse any flat country until it finally emerges on the sand plains near its junction with the Columbia. Our train made a long detour through Oregon and Washington and put us down at Lewiston in Idaho, that we might have a steamboat ride down Snake River to its mouth in the Columbia. I had somehow got the impres- sion that I should see great forests in Washington and Oregon, but we missed them. They are on the moist Pacific slope west of the Cascade range. We sailed 150 miles that afternoon down the Snake amid mountains two thousand or more feet high, as smooth and as treeless as the South Downs of England; very novel, very beautiful, their lower slopes pink in places with a delicate flower called Clarkia, in others blue-purple as the cheek of a plum. I say mountains, but they are only the sides of the huge canyon through which the Snake flows. How the afternoon sun brought out their folds and dimples and clinging delicate tints! The green of the higher slopes was often like a veil of thin green gauze, dropped upon them. The effects were all new to me and pleasing be- GORGE OF THE COLUMBIA 15 yond words — wild, aboriginal, yet with such beauty and winsome gentleness and delicacy. The river was al- most half the width of the Hudson and much more wind- ing. The geologists speculated upon the formation as it was laid bare in places; the botanists upon the wild flow- ers that painted the shore; the ornithologists upon the birds seen and heard. Swarms of cliff swallows were ob- served about the basaltic rocks near the water. There were not many signs of rural life — here and there low rude farmhouses on the deltas of land at the mouths of the side gorges, and at least one very large fruit farm ona low level area on our right. A novel sight was the long wooden and wire wheat chutes for running the wheat down from the farms back on the high mountain table lands to the river, where the boats could pick it up. They were tokens of a life and fertility quite un- seen and unsuspected. MULTNOMAH FALLS. The ride in the train along the south bank of the Co!umbia toward Portland, past The Dal- les, past the Cascades, past Oneonta Gorge and the Mult- nomah and Latourelle Falls, is a feast of the beautiful and the sublime—the most delicate et : tints and colors of moss and LATOURELLE FALLS. wild flowers setting off the most aoe ie rugged alpine scenery. In places the railroad embankment is decked with brilliant patches of red and purple flowers, as if garlanded fora festival. Presently the moss-covered rocks are white-aproned with the clear mountain brooks 16 JOHN BURROUGHS that cascade down their sides from the dark mantling scenery and cedars above. They are the prelude of what we are presently to see—the gem of all this region, and perhaps the most thrillingly beautiful bit of natural scenery we witnessed on the whole trip—the Multnomah Falls. The train gave us only five minutes to look at it, but those five minutes were of the most exquisite delight. There, close at hand, but withdrawn into a deep recess in the face of the mountain wall, like a statue in an alcove, stood this vision of beauty and sublimity. How the siren mocked us, and made the few minutes in which we were allowed to view her so tantalizingly brief! Not water, but the spirit of water, of asnow- born mountain torrent, play- ing and dallying there with wind and gravity, on the face of a vertical moss-covered rocky wall six hundred feet high. So ethereal, yet so massive; a combination of a certain coyness and unap- proachableness, with such elemental grandeur and power. It left nothing to be desired - but a day which to picnic upon the flower-covered carpet of moss at itsfeet.. Whe bres view warmed me up like a : Lee | great symphony. I+ was in- Rae POTENT | deed to the eye what the MULTNOMAH FALLS. sweetest and most stirring 600 FEET HIGH. music is to the on pee mony, delicacy, and power. Such an air of repose and completeness about it all; yes, and of the private and se- PROVISIONING THE SHIP 17 cluded. The nymph was withdrawn into her bower, but had left the door open. This element of mystery and shyness was afforded by the well hidden rocky basin into which the water fell, and by the curtain of rock which shut it off from our view. Out of this basin the current emerged near at hand and more familiar in a fall of fifty feet or more, whence it took its way to the river in a clear rapid stream. It was as if the goddess had reclothed herself in this hidden rock-screened pool and come forth again in more palpable everyday guise. I hardly expected to see anything in Alaska or anywhere else that would blur or lessen the impression made by those falls, and I did not, and probably never shall. We had hoped that at Portland and Seattle we should get glimpses of the great mountains — Hood, Baker, Rai- nier — but we did not; fog and cloud prevented. A lady living upon the heights at Seattle told me that when a dweller there was out of humor, her neighbors usually ex- cused her by saying, “‘ Well, she has not seen the Olym- pics this morning.” I fancy they are rarely on exhibition to strangers or visitors. THE INLAND PASSAGE. The chapters of our sea voyage and Alaska experiences properly open on the afternoon of May 31st when we find our staterooms in our steamer, the ‘George W. EI- der,’ receive our California contingent, which includes John Muir, and make our final preparations for the trip. The steamer is a large iron ship specially fitted up for our party. Her coal bunkers are full and she is provisioned for a two months’ cruise. We have hunting parties among us that expect to supply us with venison and bear meat, but to be on the safe side we take aboard eleven fat steers, a flock of sheep, chickens, and turkeys, a milch cow, anda span of horses. The horses are to be used to 18 JOHN BURROUGHS transport the hunters and their traps inland and to pack out the big game. The hold of our ship looked like a farmer’s barnyard. We heard the mellow low of the red steer even in the wilds of Bering Sea, but the morning crow of our cockerels was hushed long before that time. And I may here anticipate events so far as to say that the horses proved a superfluity, their only association with game being the two fox skins for which Mr. Harriman traded them at Kadiak. But this was no ignoble ending as they were choice pelts of the rare and coveted black fox. Besides the live stock just mentioned, an inventory of our equipment would include one steam and two naphtha launches, boats and folding canvas canoes, tents, sleeping bags, camp outfits, and in fact everything such an expedi- tion could possibly need. Our completed party now numbered over forty persons besides the crew and the officers of the ship (126 persons in all), and embraced col- lege professors from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts — botanists, zoologists, geologists, and other specialists, besides artists, photographers, two physicians, one trained nurse, one doctor of divinity, and at least one dreamer. Dr. Dall was our Alaska specialist, having previously visited the territory thirteen times and having spent many years there. In John Muir we had an authority on glaciers, and a thorough one—so thorough that he would not allow the rest of the party to have an opinion on the subject. The Indians used to call him the Great Ice Chief. Dr. Fer- now was our professor of forestry and might be called the Great Tree Chief. Then what Professors Emerson, Pal- ache, and Gilbert could not tell us about the geology of the country, or Brewer and Gannett about the climate and physical geography, or Coville and Trelease about the plants, or Ritter and Saunders about the life in the sea, or Merriam about the mammals, or Ridgway and Fisher about the birds, or Elliot about the game birds, or Dever- THE INSIDE PASSAGE se) eux about mines, or Grinnell and Dellenbaugh about In- dians, it could hardly be worth our while to try to find out. We were in British waters on June ist and set foot on British soil at Victoria on the Island of Vancouver. Even the climate is British — mist and a warm slow rain — with dense verdure and thick green turf dotted with the Eng- lish daisy. Indeed, nature here seems quite as English as does the sober solidly-built town with its fine and impos- ing Parliament building—all but the birds. I hear the western highhole calling like ours at home; and the olive- backed thrush, the yellow warbler, and the white-crowned sparrow are in song along the woods and brushy fields. On June ist, after touching at Victoria, we were fairly launched upon our voyage. Before us was acruise of sev- eral thousand miles, one thousand of which was through probably the finest scenery of the kind in the world that can be seen from the deck of a ship—the scenery of fiords and mountain-locked bays and arms of the sea. Day after day a panorama unrolls before us with features that might have been gathered from the Highlands of the Hudson, from Lake George, from the Thousand Islands, the Saguenay, or the Range- ley Lakes in Maine, with the addition of towering snow- capped peaks thrown in for a) backeround... “The. edge of this part of the continent for a thousand miles has been broken into fragments, small and great, as by the stroke of some earth-cracking hammer, and into the openings and channels thus formed the sea flows freely, often at a depth VISTA OF INSIDE PASSAGE. 20 JOHN BURROUGHS of from one to two thousand feet. It is along these in- land ocean highways, through tortuous narrows, up smooth placid inlets, across broad island-studded gulfs and bays, with now and then the mighty throb of the Pacific felt for an hour or two through some open door in the wall of islands, that our course lies. , For two days Vancouver Island is on our left with hardly a break in its dark spruce forests, covering moun- tainand vale. Onour right is British Columbia, presenting the same endless spruce forests, with peaks of the Coast Range, eight or ten thousand feet high, in the background, and only an occasional sign of hu- man life on shore. I re- call a lone farmhouse in a stumpy clearing that drew our eyes. How remote and secluded it looked. The dark forests with a fringe of dead trees where the pioneer’s fire had raged, encompassed it about. The grass and grain looked green among the stumps, and near the house, which was a well-built, painted structure, we could see fruit trees and a garden. Not much wild life about us; now and then a duck or two, an occasional bald eagle, a small flock of phalaropes, which the sailors call ‘sea geese’ as they sit on the water like miniature geese. Our first dangerous passage is Seymour Narrows, which we strike at the right stage of the tide. Cautiously the ship feels her way through the contorted currents that surge above the sunken rocks. Fog clouds cling to the white peaks that rise above the dark forests about us and partly veil them. At times we are so near them that with a glass one can see where little snow balls have detached themselves and made straight lines down the smooth INSIDE PASSAGE. Er READ, Cee er Se 4 f. St Ja igels I? Por i : te po A j a he jORN BURROUGHS 0 crane. bey, Chahta ig ci ir js along these. land orgs highways ti ais Garrows; upaa ie eee ete Big AAEM RET Se _ as Calched eulfs and: Boil ae and thet tte i Al, ge ihe Pacifié felt f var or two threw: o# aon’ Fn. the ven : 1 ke “a2 ris. that OUT COM: dum ey -i . ot f a b> d sou | M Vy ) Cie ie oe een L Bae \ ‘ ae rly ests, With (at i | ed de: UU R: ANC, eigh ht or tem, | 7 honeee feet> -high, ites the 4 vackgroundy and aly. an occasional sign of hus man’ life on Snel I ress | lone farmhouse Iae@ = «€ ee that drew = z 1 Le) The dank | As ty _ a ~ i" . nag nak = ; m it ae y “sy % % Ws jana oi . OK OTCCT Aimee ; ia a ; pi a. = * i & ~~ | ; -h was 2 well-built, painted § str pe ttre. We eoutd SCC. = wit trees and a garden. Not much wild life about: tiga) | then a duck or two, an occasional bald eagle, @ « 5.4 >» €A all flock of phalaropes, which the sailors cali ‘seq | mriaii pnalaropes, ULE 7 Re ie gseese’ as they sit On the waver like miniature @eeS@;7 aan ia ngerers Da Shee iS seymour iN ay TOW S, which the fight stage of the tele, (eanh vesly the ge above the sum | white Deaks that Hise 2 23 rlass one can see wh a fe Sa eS a ee te themselves and made PAINTING BY F. S. DELLENBAUGH. A HOEN & CO. BALTIMORE ‘puUNSET) GuLr of GHORGIA FIORDS OF THE INSIDE PASSAGE 21 white surface. It is the 2d of June, but the wind that sweeps down the channel is as cold as that of an October morning at home. The event of this day was the sunset at 8:30 o’clock. I had often seen as much color and bril- liancy in the sky, but never before such depth and richness of blue and purple upon the mountains and upon the water. Where the sun went down the horizon was low, and but a slender black line of forest separated the sky from the water. All above was crimson and orange and gold, and all below, to the right and left, purple laid up- on purple un- til the whole body of the air between us and the moun- tains, in) the distance seem- ed turned to color. As we go north the scenery becomes more and more like that of the fiords on the coast of Norway, except that the mountains there are mostly deforested. Deep sea-blue water about us, dark spruce- and cedar-clad and torrent- furrowed mountains rising above us, touched with snow on their summits. Now and then a bald eagle flaps heavily along the mountain side, or a line of black oyster-catchers skim swiftly over the surface. We see Mount Palmerston on our left, five thousand feet high, covered with a heavy snow mantle in which his rocky bones have worn many holes. The brilliant sun brings out every line and angle. At noon we stop in a deep cove with a rapid stream coming into the head of it, to give some of our party an hour on shore. While we are waiting for them, two deer 22 JOHN BURROUGHS appear upon the beach, about a mile distant. They browse around awhile, then disappear in the woods. ‘To the west of us is a striking picture. In the foreground is the sea with a line of low, rounded, dark rocky islands; behind them, far off, a range of blue mountains with a broad band of dun-colored clouds resting upon them; rising above the band of clouds a series of snow-covered peaks, with the sun shining full upon them, probably the highest peaks we have yet seen. The cloud belt cuts off and isolates the peaks and gives them a buoyant airy char- acter. From the dark near-by tree-tufted chain of islands, to the white-illuminated peaks, what a wealth of blue and gray tints and tones! Near nightfall on this second day we begin to feel the great pulse of the Pacific around the head of Vancouver Island, through the broad open door called Queen Char- lotte Sound. For three hours the ship rolls as upon the open sea, and to several of us the ‘subsequent proceed- ings’ that night were void of interest. In the early morning we pass another open door, Mil- bank Sound, but are soon in Graham Reach, which is like a larger, wilder Hudson. When we look out of our win- dows the sun is upon the mountain tops, and the snow much farther down their sides than we have yet seen it. As we progress, many deep ravines are noted in vast recesses in the mountains, scooped out by the old glaciers. They are enormous rocky bowls which we imagine hold crystal lakes; foaming streams pour out of them into the channel. Far up, silver threads of water, born of the melting snows, are seen upon the vast faces of the rocks. Some of them course down the tracks of old landslides; others are seen only as they emerge from the dark spruces. The snow upon the mountain tops looks new fallen; our glasses bring out the sharp curling edges of the drifts. Here and there along the shore below are seen the rude HANGING VALLEY, FRASER REACH ~- aot a = == PHOTOGRAPHS BY MER RIAM INSIDE PASSAGE, BRITISH COLUMBIA LOWE INLET 2 huts of trappers and hunters. The eternal spruce and hemlock forests grow monotonous. The many dry, white trunks of dead trees, scattered evenly through the forest, make the mountains look as if a shower of gigantic arrows had fallen upon them from the sky. Gulls, loons, and scoters are seen at long intervals. Snow avalanches have swept innumerable paths, broad and narrow, down through the spruce forest. Those great glacier basins on our left invite inspection, so we send a party ashore to examine one of them. They do not find the expected lake, but in its stead a sphagnum bog, through which the creek winds its way. Fresh tracks and spoor of deer are seen. In mid-afternoon we turn into Lowe Inlet, a deep nar- row mountain-locked arm of the sea on our right, with a salmon cannery at the head of it, and a large rapid trout stream making a fine waterfall. Here, among the em- ployees of the cannery, we see our first Alaska Indians and note their large, round, stolid innocent faces. Here also some of us get our first taste of Alaska woods. In trying to make our way to the falls we are soon up to our necks amid moss, fallen timber and devil’s club. Progress is all but impossible, and those who finally reach the falls do so by withdrawing from the woods and taking to boats. Traversing Alaska forests must be a trying task even to deer and bears. They have apparently never been purged or thinned by fire—too damp for that—and they are choked with the accumulation of ages. Two or three generations of fallen trees cross one another in all directions amid the rocks, with moss over all like a deep fall of snow, and worse still, thickly planted with devil’s club. This is a shrub as high as your head, covered with long sharp spines and with large thorny leaves. It is like a blackberry bush with thorns ten times multiplied. It hedges about these mossy cushions as with the fangs of serpents. One 24 JOHN BURROUGHS can hardly touch it without being stung. The falls are the outlet of a most enticing deep hidden valley, with a chain of beautiful lakes, we were told, but our time was too brief to explore it. The winter wren was found here, and the raven, and a species of woodpecker. METLAKAHTLA. We were not really in Alaska waters until the next day, June 4th. This was Sunday and we spent most of the day visiting Metlakahtla, the Indian Mission settlement on Annette Island, where we saw one of the best object lessons to be found on the coast, showing what can be po Ne x yp be es ‘ 1 Pa fae a Ne Vas EAS 3 a Re alae oy eed aon Sa ac LS, re u/) Wrliae Rs ve G7, LES em Cow sf RARER dori ((/ YG LL 4 ‘ yy, SAMAR Dy 8S CA Quills AX. —— ay 1H ROSS 8 § me WE eg EN Se {uf S : = METLAKAHTLA. done with the Alaska Indians. Here were a hundred or more comfortable frame houses, some of them two stories, many of them painted, all of them substantial and in good taste, a large and imposing wooden church, a large school house, a town hall, extensive canning establishments, and so on, owned and occupied by seven or eight hundred Tlin- kit Indians, who, under the wonderful tutelage of William Duncan, a Scotch missionary, had been brought from a low state of savagery to a really fair state of industrial civ- ilization. The town is only twelve years old and is situated on a broad expanse of nearly level land at the foot of the mountains. The large stumps and logs on the surface between the houses show how recently the land has been METLAKAHTLA 25 cleared. The earth was covered with a coat of peat, the accumulation of ages of a thick growth of moss. Be- neath this the soil was red and friable. We strolled about the numerous streets on broad plank walks that reached from side to side above the rocks and stumps. Many of the houses had gardens where were grown po- tatoes, turnips, onions, strawberries, raspberries and cur- rants. The people were clad as well and in much the same way as those of rural villages in New York and New England. ah Pee Pail a i JOHN ANDREW & SO N SHA-LIONS, PRIBILOF ISLANDS, BERING SEA. se Ra) a . ee i Hae Neo Wid Asi LANDING AT BOGOSLOF 95 species of diver. With our glasses we could see the mur- res, when we were several miles away, making the air al- most thick about the rocks as with clouds of black specks. We could see the sea-lions too, great windrows of them upon the beach. We dropped anchor about two miles away and a party of seven or eight went ashore in a boat —a hazardous proceeding our Captain thought, as the fog seemed likely to drop at any moment and obliterate island and ship alike; but it did not drop— only the top of the island was obliterated. We could see the sea-lions lift themselves up and gather in groups as the boat approached their rookery. Then, after the landing was effected, they disappeared and we could see the spray rise up as the monsters plunged SEA-LIONS. into the water. Hundreds of them were in a small lake a few rods back from the shore, and the spectacle which the procession of the huge creatures made rushing across the beach to the sea was described as something most ex- traordinary. Those who were so fortunate as to witness it, placed it among the three or four most memorable events of their lives. 96 JOHN BURROUGHS On the afternoon of Sunday, July oth, we dropped anchor off St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilofs, the famous resort of the fur-seals. A special permit from the Secretary of the Treasury gave us the privilege. TWO-HATCH BIDARKA. There is no harbor here and the landing, even in calm weather, requires to be carefully managed. The island is low with a fringe of loose boulders around it, which in places looked almost like an artificial wall. The Govern- ment agent conducted us a mile or more through wild meadows starred with flowers and covered with grass nearly knee high, to the boulder-paved shore where the seals were congregated. Those of our party who had been there before, not many years back, were astonished at the diminished numbers of the animals— hardly one tenth of the earlier myriads. We visited eight or ten ‘harems,’ as they are called, groups of a dozen or more females, each presided over by a male or bull seal, whose position was usually upon a kind of throne or higher boulder in the midst of his wives. Every few minutes this male, who was much larger and darker in color than the females, would lift himself up and glance around over his circle as if counting his flock, then snarl at some rival a few yards away, or turn and threaten us. We gazed upon them and trained our cameras at leisure. ‘Often a young male, wifeless and crowded back by older bulls, threatened us near the edge of the grass with continued demonstrations of anger. These unmated males were in bad humor anyway, and our appearance Cer or PHOTOGRAPH BY MERRIAM ; 7 BILA@0 2 ca HAREM OF FUR-SHALS, PRiBILOF ISLANDS, BERING SHA AMONG THE SEALS 97 seemed to furnish them a good excuse to give vent to their feelings. In this market the females belong to the strong. We saw several forlorn old males hovering around who had played the game and lost. They looked like bankrupt gamblers at a watering place. The females are much smaller and lighter in color than their lords and masters. They lay very quietly among the rocks, now and then casting uneasy glances at us. Their heads are small and their jaws slender; their growls and threats are not very terrifying. Lying there in masses or wriggling about upon the rocks, all their lines soft and flowing, all their motions hampered, the fur-seals suggested huge larve, or some- thing between the grub and the mature insect. They appeared to be yet ina kind of sack or envelope. The males wriggle about like a man in a bag; but once in the water they are a part of the wave, as fleet and nimble as a fish, or as a bird in the air. In the sounds which they continually emitted they did not remind me of bulls or cows, but of sheep. The hoarse staccato bleating of the males was precisely like that of old rams, while the shriller calls of the females and the fine treble of the pups were equally like those of ewes or lambs. Some belated females were still arriving while we looked on. They came in timidly, lifted themselves upon the edge of the rocks and looked about as if to find a vacant place, or to receive a welcome. Much sparring and threatening was going on among the males, but I saw none actually come to blows. By careful movements and low tones we went about without much exciting them. On the island we first saw the yellow poppy. It was scattered everywhere amid the grass like the crimson poppy of Europe. A wonderful display of other wild flowers was about our feet as we walked. Here also the Lapland longspur was in song,and a few snow buntings 98 JOHN BURROUGHS in white plumage drifted about over the flowery meads. | K Ex | On a “bie uh Wy TA. exe em b SN LP Gy beach near + a> & e | ay as windrow of eo ewe “eS ee oes boulders \y GEE N i i * A BS ING tg No ner along the SS) oes ee where we ae co GO 2G qi. landed were AN a ae swarms of LITTLE AUKS, OR ‘CHOOCHKIES.’ noisy water- birds, mainly little auks called ‘choochkies’ by the natives. SIBERIA. According to our original program our outward jour- ney should have ended at the Seal Islands, but Mrs. Har- riman expressed a wish to see Siberia, and if all went | well, the midnight sun. “ Very well,” replied Mr. Harri- man, “we will go to Siberia,” and toward that barren shore our prow was turned. It was about 8 o’clock inthe evening when we left St. Paul; a dense fog prevailed, hiding the shore. We had not been an hour under way when a horrible raking blow from some source made the ship tremble from stem to stern; then another and an- other, still more severe. The shock came from beneath: our keel was upon the rocks. Many of the company were at dinner; all sprang to their feet and looked the surprise and alarm they did not speak. The engines were quickly reversed, a sail was hoisted, and ina few moments the ship’s prow swung off to the right, and the danger was passed — we were afloat again. The stern of the ship, which was two feet deeper inthe water than the bow, had raked across the rocks. No damage was done, and we had had a novel sensation, something analogous I fancy to the feeling one has upon land during an earthquake. Some of us hoped this incident would cause Mr. Harri- man to turn back. Bering Sea is a treacherous sea; it is EAST SD (Og | Ash PARA AINE) ial, PHOTOGRAPHS BY MERRIAM PLOVER Bay, SIBERIA ESKIMO SETTLEMENT ON Ser foyasy asanenaear SIBERIA 99 shallow; it has many islands; and in summer it is nearly always draped in fog. But our host was a man not easy to turn back; in five minutes he was romping with his children again as if nothing had happened. But the ship’s course was changed to southeast, around Walrus Island. It did indeed look for a while as if we had more than half a mind to turn back. But ina couple of hours we were headed toward Siberia again and went plunging through the fog and obscurity with our ‘ferocious whistle,’ as Pro- fessor Emerson characterized it, tearing the silence, and with it our sleep, to tatters. The next day, the roth, we hoped to touch at the Island of St. Matthew, but we missed it in the thick obscurity and searching for it was hazardous, so we went again northward. The fog continued on the 11th till nearly noon, when we ran into clear air and finally into sunshine, and in the early afternoon the coast of Siberia lay before us like a cloud upon the hor- izon— Asia at last, crushed down there on -the rim of the world as if with the weight of her cen- turies and her cruel Czar’s iniquities. As we drew near, her DL eray, crumbling, de- ESKIMO SKIN HUTS OR ‘ TOPEKS,’ PLOVER BAY, ° ° SIBERIA. crepit granite bluffs and mountains, streaked with snow, helped the illusion. This was the old world indeed. Our destination was Plover Bay, where at six in the afternoon we dropped anchor behind a long crescent-shaped sand spit that put out from the eastern shore. On this sand spit was an Eskimo encampment of skin-covered huts which was soon astir with moving forms. Presently eight of the figures ry oo Ie aa Bi Ms Mie ee if ) ; ) aM a ib J iy fy | i) 1 y yy Wd | Af if iy, ey by F 1k ry 100 JOHN BURROUGHS were seen moving down to the beach. A boat was launched and filled and came rapidly to the ship’s side. It was made of walrus skin stretched over a wooden frame and was a strong, shapely craft. Its occupants also were clad in skins. There were three women and nine men in the boat, but one had to look very closely to tell which was which. The men’s crowns were shaved, leaving a heavy fringe of coarse black hair around their heads. One of them, probably thirty or thirty-five years of age, stood up in the bow of the boat, and with his cloak of reddish-gray fur, was really a handsome man. He had a thin black beard and regular clear-cut features and looked as one fancies an old Roman of his age might have looked. They were evidently drawn to us partly by curiosity and partly by the hope of gifts of tobacco and whiskey. The tobacco was freely showered upon them by Mr. Harri- man, and was as eagerly seized, but the whiskey was not forthcoming. Our own boats were rapidly lowered and we were soon upon Asiatic soil, gathering flowers, observing the birds, and strolling about among the tents and huts of the na- tives. We bought skins and curios of them or bartered knives and cloth for such things as they had to dispose of. They would take our silver dollars but much preferred skinning knives or other useful articles. They were not shy of our cameras and freely admitted us to the greasy and smoky interiors of their dwellings. As the Eskimos stood regarding us they would draw their hands into their sleeves, after the manner of children on a cold morning. Their skin costumes gave them a singular stuffed appear- ance. One was reminded of grotesque dolls stuffed with bran or sawdust. This effect was due in part to the awk- ward cut of their garments and to the fact that the skins were made up hair side in. Some of the natives showed a strain of white or European blood; whalers bound for - >: PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS” : re soa ; ELSON, BOSTON Eskimo Toprx, Frover Bay, SIBERIA, JuLY 1899 SIBERIA IOI the Arctic Ocean sometimes stop here and corrupt them with bad morals and villainous whiskey. Throughout the village seals and seal oil, reindeer skins, walrus hides,and blubber were most in evidence. Back of the tent I saw a deep, partly covered pit in the ground, nearly filled with oil, and a few rods farther off oth- ens were Seen. @he- bones. of whales served [ab instead of tim- bers in most of the rude struc- tures. The win- ter houses were built by stand- ing up a circle of whale ribs about two feet apart, and filling up the in- terstices with turf, making a wall two feet thick. Fora roof they used walrus hides, resting upon poles. In my walk over this crescent of land I came here and there upon the huge vertebrz of whales, scattered about and looking like the gray weather-worn granite boulders on a New England farm. Beyond the present site of the encampment I saw the ruins of an older or earlier village, the foundations of whale bones partly overgrown by the turf. As we came in at one end of the encampment most of the dogs went out at the other end. They had never seen such looking creatures, and they fled off toward the mountain, where they sat down and howled their mournful protest. Some of the children were frightened too; one youngster of five or six years, stuffed like a small scare- GROUP OF ESKIMOS, PLOVER BAY. 102 JOHN BURROUGHS crow, riding astride its mother’s neck, cried and yelled vigorously as we approached. The sun was bright but the air was very chilly, the mer- cury standing at about 38° Fahr. We were with- lin 120 mulestor {the Arctic cir- =|cle. The slen- 1 der peninsula ae, WE Were On iS =|a few hundred Ce 7 A | feet wide +, tims UNFINISHED ESKIMO WINTER HOUSE: CIRCULAR FRAME marshy insome OF WHALE BONES, FILLED WITH SOD. places, but for the most part dry and covered with herbage. Here was the yellow poppy blooming, and two species of saxifrage. In my walk I came upon a large patch of ground covered with a small low pink primrose. The ground was painted by it. But the prettiest flower we found was a low forget- me-not, scarcely an inch high, of deep ultramarine blue —the deepest, most intense blue I ever saw in a wild flower. Here also we saw and heard the Lapland long- spur and the yellow wagtail. A flock of male eider ducks | was seen in the bay. PORT CLARENCE. We traveled two hours in Asia. I am tempted to write a book on the country, but forbear. At eight o’clock we steamed away along the coast toward Indian Point, in an unending twilight. We reached the point at midnight, but the surf was running so high that no landing was attempted. Then we stood off across Bering Strait for Port Clarence in Alaska, where we hoped to take water, PAINTING BY [UERTES = Kine EiperR, SOMATERIA SPECTABILIS. Port Clarence, July 12, 1899. Male in breeding plumage PORT CLARENCE 103 passing in sight of King Island and the Diamedes, and about noon again dropped anchor behind a long sickle- shaped sand spit, which curves out from the southern headland, ten or twelve miles away. In the great basin behind this sand bar a dozen vessels of the whaling fleet were anchored and making ready to enter the Arctic Ocean, where some of them expected to spend the winter. The presence of the fleet had drawn together upon the sand bar over two hundred Eskimo for trade and barter with the whalers. Their shapely skin boats, filled with people— men, women, children, and dogs, often to the number of twenty — soon swarmed about our ship. They ee J = eed =~ 4 iy ~Z Wily = 7 y ¢ ‘ Yi) ° : Z Y / ‘ a 4 DAG 7 ¢/ E, ped \ 19 ESKIMOS ALONGSIDE SHIP IN ‘“OOMIAKS’” OR SKIN BOATS. had all manner of furs, garments, baskets, ornaments and curios for sale or for barter. An animated and pictur- esque scene they presented and dozens of cameras were leveled at them. In dress they presented a much more trim and shapely appearance than the people we had just left in Siberia, though much the same in other respects. 104 JOHN BURROUGHS Some of the younger women were fairly good looking and their fur hoods and fur cloaks became them well. I no- ticed that the babies cried very much, as at home. Most of the women were dressed in hair seal or reindeer skins, but some wore an outer garment of colored cotton cloth, hanging loosely to the knees. It was interesting to see them tuck their babies under this garment from the rear. The mother would bend for- ward very low, thrust the child under the garment at her hips and by a dexterous wriggling movement of her body propel it forward till its head protruded in its place above her shoulder. One marked its course along her back as he does a big morsel down a chicken’s gullet. pal Some of the captains of ESKIMO MAN, “WOMAN, AND CHILD, “the whalers came aboard sou Scare aiienng | ship to advise us about tak- ing water. They were large, powerful, resolute looking men, quite equal, one would say, to the task before them. Water was to be in from the tun- dra on the south- ern shore of the bay about a doz- en miles distant. Leaving part of our company to visit the whalers and the Eskimo, the ship steamed away with the rest of us for { 2 PHOTOGRAPH BY MERRIAM GiILBOxseco ESKIMO BOY AND GIRL, PORT CLARENCE, ALASKA PORT CLARENCE 105 water, and in due course anchored near the mouth of the little stream. This gave us an opportunity to spend sev- eral hours upon the real tundra. Cape Nome was on the other side of the peninsula, fifty miles away, but the fame of the gold fields had not then reached us. We may have walked over ground rich in gold but our mining expert failed to call our attention to the fact. As we approached the land it looked as smooth as if it had just been gone over with a mowing machine. My first thought was, “Well, the people are done haying here.” The tundra was of a greenish brown color and rose from a long cres- cent-shaped beach in a very gentle ascent to low cones and bare volcanic peaks many miles away. It had the appearance of a vast meadow lifted up but a few degrees above the level. This then was the tundra that covers so much of North America— where the ground remains perpetually frozen to an unknown depth, thawing out only a foot or so on the surface during the summer. How eagerly we set foot upon it; how quickly we dispersed in all directions, lured on by the strangeness. |. Inafew moments our | hands were full of wild flowers which we kept dropping to gather others more taking, to be in turn discarded as still more novel ones appeared. I found my- self very soon treading upon a large pink claytonia or spring beauty, many times larger than our delicate April flower of the same name. Then I came upon a bank by the little creek covered with a low nodding purple prim- rose; then masses of the shooting-star attracted me, then ESKIMO CHILDREN, PORT CLARENCE. 106 JOHN BURROUGHS several species of pedicularis, then a yellow anemone and many saxifrages. A complete list would be a long one of flowers blooming here within sixty miles of the Arctic circle, in a thin coat of soil resting upon perpetual frost. There were wild bees here too, to cross-fertilize the flowers, and bumble-bees boomed by very much as at home. And mosquitoes, how they swarmed up out of the grass upon me when in my vain effort to reach a little vol- canic cone that rose up there before me like a haystack in a meadow, I sat down to rest. I could not seem to get nearer the haystack, though I sometimes ran to get away from the mosquitoes. The tundra proved far less smooth to the feet than the eye had promised. It was wet and boggy. A tundra is always wet in summer as the frost prevents any underground drainage. But it was very uniform and the walking not difficult; moss, bogs, grass and flowering plants covered it everywhere. The Sa- vanna sparrow and the longspur started up before me as I walked, and, as I descended toward a branch of the little creek after an hour’s tramp, a new note caught my ear. Presently I saw some plovers skimming over the ground in advance of me, or alighting upon tussocks of moss and uttering a soft warbling call. They proved to be golden plovers; I had evidently invaded their breeding grounds and they were making their musical protest. At times the males, as they circled about me, warbled in the most delightful manner—truly a rich warble. There was in it, underneath its bright joyousness, a tone of soft pleading and entreaty that was very moving— the voice of the tundra—soft, alluring, plaintive, beautiful. The golden plover is mottled black and white with a rich golden tinge on his back. It is a wonderful flyer. We found it near the Arctic circle; six months later probably the same birds might have been found near the Antarctic in Patagonia. ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND 107 In a patch of willows along the creek the gray-cheeked thrush was in song, and the Townsend fox sparrow and Canada tree sparrow were found. I saw one of the thrushes do what I never saw any of the thrush kind do before: it hovered in the air fifty feet or more above the moor and repeated its song three times very rapidly. As there were no trees to give it a lofty perch, it perched upon the air. It was a very novel experience, this walking over the tundra; its vastness, its uniformity, its solitude, its gentle- ness, its softness of contour, its truly borean character — the truncated hills and peaks on the near horizon suggest- ing huge earthworks, the rounded and curved elevations like the backs of prostrate giants turned up to the sun, and farther off the high serrated snow-streaked ranges on the remote horizon to the north—all made up a curious and unfamiliar picture. We were fortunate in having clear bright skies during our stay in these high latitudes. But the nights were starless; the sun was so near, there was so much light in the sky that the stars were blotted out. The sun set about ten and rose about two, dipping down but a little way below the horizon. ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND. Port Clarence was the northernmost point we reached. A little farther north the ice pack closed the gateway to the Arctic Ocean. An excursion into the ice to see the midnight sun did not hold out inducements enough to offset the dangers. So in the early morning of July 13th, we steamed away on the return trip. Before noon we were again in the thick veil of fog with which Bering Sea always seems to cover her face. Near nightfall, with a stiff wind blowing, we anchored off St. Lawrence Island and two boat loads of our people went ashore. St. Law- 108 JOHN BURROUGHS rence is a large island at the gateway of the Arctic Ocean and in spring the ice floes from the north often strand polar bears upon it. Our hunters still dreamed of bears. The shore was low and marshy and the high land miles away hidden by the canopy of fog resting upon it. In his walk one of our doctors saw the backs of two large white objects, showing above a little swell in the land inside an inlet. Here evidently were the polar bears they were in quest of. The Doctor began to stalk them, replacing the shells in his gun with heavier ones as he crept along. Now he has another glimpse of the white backs; they are mov- ing and can be nothing but bears. A few moments more and he will be within close range, when lo! the heads and long necks of two white swans come up above the bank! The Doctor said he never felt so much like a Sy ‘n goose before in his life. The ———— birds and flowers found YOUNG SWANS CAUGHT ON ST. LAWRENCE were about the same as ae those we had already seen. Not many years ago there were on St. Lawrence Island many encampments of Eskimo embracing several hun- dred people. Late one autumn some whalers turned up there with the worst kind of whiskey, with which they wrought the ruin of the natives, persuading them to ex- change most of their furs and other valuables for it, and leaving them so debauched and demoralized that nearly all perished of cold and hunger the following winter. Village after village was found quite depopulated, the people lying dead in their houses. HALL AND ST. MATTHEW ISLANDS. From St. Lawrence Island our course was again through fog to St. Matthew Island, which we missed reomine mea Mutant ey) AT Ca ers ? STERCORARIUS LONGLCAUDUS. HALL ISLAND 109 on our way up and which we now found late in the after- noon of the next day. Our first stop was at Hall Island, which once probably formed a part of St. Matthew, but is now separated from it by only a narrow strait. This was our first visit to uninhabited land, and to a land of such unique grace and beauty that the impression it made can never be forgotten — a thick carpet of moss and many-col- ored flowers covering an open smooth undulating country that faced the sea in dark basaltic cliffs, some of them a thousand feet high. ‘The first thing that attracted our at- tention was the murres—‘ arries’ the Aleuts call them — about their rookeries on the cliffs. Their numbers dark- ened the air. As we ap-.- proached, the faces of the ~ rocks seemed paved with — - them, with a sprinkling of <= gulls, puffins, black cormor- = ants and auklets. On landing == = ata breakin the cliffs where a ooKERY Rock, oFF HALL ISLAND, little creek came down to the aes sea, our first impulse was to walk along the brink and look down upon the murres and see them swarm out beneath ourfeet. On the discharge of a gun the air would be black with them, while the cliffs apparently remained as populous as ever. They sat on little shelves or niches with their black backs to the sea, each bird covering one egg with its tail feathers. In places one could have reached down and seized them by the neck, they were so tame and so near the top of the rocks. I believe one of our party did actually thus procure a specimen. It was a strange spectacle and we lingered long looking upon it. To behold sea fowls like flies in uncounted millions, was a new experi- ence. Everywhere in Bering Sea the murres swarm like vermin. It seems as if there was a murre to every square IIO JOHN BURROUGHS yard of surface. They were flying about over the ship or flapping over the water away from her front at all times. I noticed that they could not get up from the water except against the wind; the wind lifted them as it does a kite. With the wind or ina calm they skimmed along on the surface, their heads bent forward, their wings beating the water impatiently. Unable to rise they would glance behind them in a frightened manner, then plunge beneath the waves until they thought the danger had passed. At all hours of the night and day one could hear this impa- tient flapping of the frightened murres. The bird is a MURRES. species of diver, nearly as large as a black duck. Their tails are so short that in flying their two red feet stretched behind them do the duty of a tail. It is amusing to see them spread or contract them in turning or changing their course, as the case required. After we had taken our fill of gazing upon the murres came the ramble away from the cliffs in the long twilight through that mossy and flowery solitude. Such patterns and suggestions for rugs and carpets as we walked over for hours; sucha blending sa [LYE -BOREAN ONOWFI ca ERBOREAN SNOWFLAKE, PASSERINA elt be ~ I = j Male and female HALL AND ST. MATTHEW ISLANDS LET of grays, drabs, browns, greens and all delicate neutral tints, all dashed with masses of many-colored flowers, it had never before been my fortune to witness, much less to walk upon. Drifting over this marvelous carpet or drop- ping down upon it from the air above was the hyperborean snowbird, white as a snowflake and with a song of great sweetness and power. With lifted wings the bird would drop through the air to the earth pouring out its joyous ecstatic strain. Out of the deep twilight came also the song of the longspur, delivered on the wing and touching the wild solitude like the voices of children at play. Then there was the large Aleutian sandpiper that ran before me and uttered its curious wild plaint. The robber jaeger was there too—a very beautiful bird, a sort of cross be- tween a hawk and a gull— sitting quietly upon the moss and eyeing our movements. On the top of the grassy bank near the sea some of the party found the nest and young of the snowy owl. Fragments of the bodies of murres and ducks lay upon the ground beside it. The most novel and striking of the wild flowers was a species of large white claytonia growing in rings the size of a tea plate, floral rings dropped here and there upon the carpet of moss. In the center was a rosette of pointed green leaves pressed close to the ground; around this grew the ring of flowers made up of thirty or forty individ- uals all springing from the same root, their faces turned out in all directions from the parent center. In places they were so near together one could easily step from one circle to another. The forenoon of the next day, the 15th, we spent upon St. Matthew, and repeated our experience of walking over ground covered with nature’s matchless tapestry. Here, too, a thick heavy carpet of variegated mosses and lich- ens had been stretched to the very edge of the cliffs, with rugs and mats of many colored flowers—pink, yellow, II2 JOHN BURROUGHS violet, white; saxifrage, chickweed, astragalus, claytonia— dropped here and there upon it. Sometimes the flowers seemed worked into the carpet itself, and a spe- cies of creeping willow spread its leaves out as 4 if stitched uponit. Scat- 4 — tered about were the yel- low poppies,a yellowand a red pe- _dicularis, andarare te ee. vandeeuse ae ; ous blue LANDING AT ST. ee ISLAND. = flower in heads — the name of which I have forgotten. On the highest point, the blue and purple astragalus covered large areas, but the most novel of all the flowers was a little spe- cies of silene with a bluish ribbed flower precisely like a miniature Chinese lantern. The highest point of the island was enveloped most of the time in fog and cloud. While groping my way upon one of these cloud summits, probably 1,000 feet above the sea which flowed at its base, I came suddenly upon a deep cleft or chasm which opened in the moss and flowers at my feet and led down between crumbling rocky walls at a fearful incline to the beach. It gave one a sense of peril that made him pause quickly. The wraiths of fog and mist whirling through and over it enhanced its dread- ful mystery and depth. Yet I hovered about it, retreat- ing and returning quite fascinated by the contrast between the smooth flowery carpet upon which I stood and the terrible yawning chasm. When the fog lifted a little and the sun gleamed out, I looked down this groove into the ti; 4 Kl Z j ef} Sye “yy guy vy ae my, 0 2 ee mS p ; ih or Zak Mil eB f LAAN ai) IN HALL AND ST. MATTHEW ISLANDS I13 ocean, and Tennyson’s line came to mind as accurately descriptive of the scene: ‘¢ The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls.” Another curious effect was the bottom of the sea visible a long way out from shore. The water seemed suddenly to become shallow or else to take on a strange transpar- ency; the color and configuration of the rocky floor were surprisingly distinct. A new species of small blue fox was found and killed upon the island, and a sorry apology for a fox it was.’ It looked as if it might have been singed or else skinned once and this was the second growth of fur. The polar bears which our sportsmen had hoped for were not found, though the deep broad unused trails leading back from the cliffs had doubtless been made by them. Nothing is plainer than that one cannot go to Alaska, or probably to any other country and say: “Come, now, we will kill a bear,” and kill it, except as a rare streak of luck. It isa game at which two can play, and the bear plays his part extremely well. All large game has its beat or range. The first thing to be done is to find this beat, which may take days or weeks, then the trial of strategy begins. If you outgeneral the bear you may carry off his pelt. We found the snowbunting nesting in crevices of the rocks. It was probably compelled to this course to escape the foxes. This was the type locality for this bird and it was very ee ee abundant: “The “se = , rosy finch also was seen along the clits. ‘here were snowbanks on the beach by the sea, and piles of driftwood, most of the large tree trunks doubtless brought CAPE UPRIGHT, ST. MATTHEW ISLAND. 1This was the Hall Island Arctic fox ( Vulpes hallensis Merriam ) in worn sum- mer dress ; in winter it is snow white.—Ed. I14 JOHN BURROUGHS down by the Yukon, and many hewn and sawed timbers from wrecked vessels. THE RETURN TRIP. Returning to Unalaska we tarried a few hours at Dutch Harbor to take in water and coal, and then, for the first time, our good ship pointed eastward and toward home. A steamer from the Yukon was also in Dutch Harbor with a couple of hundred returning gold seekers on board. As we steamed away I saw several of them far up on the green mountain side on our left looking down upon us. They were barely distinguishable on that broad high emerald slope. Just out of the harbor we saw myriads of fulmars, a kind of petrel. The sea for miles was black withthem. We touched again at the Shumagin Islands to pick up the party we had left there on the 7th; and on the 20th were again at sweet pastoral Kadiak. The wild roses were in bloom, very large and fine, and armfuls of them were brought in to deck the table in celebration of the birthday of one of Mr. Harriman’s daughters. While here we took an afternoon to visit Long Island, ten or twelve miles away, where there was another fox farm. It was a low wooded island of several hundred acres stocked with about a thousand blue foxes. Some of the animals peeped shyly at us from around the corner of an old barn, others growled at us from be- neath it, while others still lifted up their voices in protest from : the woods. | YT ' yr a ' ’ ff ie hou) ‘ wv A : ‘ ' - i i, "! ‘ ‘ : , \ ‘ / . u 4 f i ‘ ” ' > _ . s ‘ . ( ‘ Wye ay rd neoty 4, NE Ee PLOVER BAY 135 cadence in accordance with conditions of snowfall, tem- perature and so on, like those of lower latitudes. When the main glacier which filled the fiord was in its prime it was about thirty miles long and five to six wide, with five main tributaries, which, as the trunk melted, became separate glaciers, and these melting in turn left many smaller tributaries ranging from less than a mile to several miles in length. These, also, as far as I have seen, have vanished, though possibly some wasting rem- nants may still exist in the snowiest recesses of the mountains. From Port Clarence we turned back, homeward bound and Heaven-favored, for all the mountains between Prince William Sound and Cross Sound, veiled in clouds on the way up, were now revealed to us in all their glory. The sky was pure azure, the sea calm, and the mountains in their robes of ice and light towered in awful majesty. In passing the Malaspina Glacier we ran in for a nearer view of the ice bluffs at Icy Cape, then skirted the moraine- and forest-covered border, gaining glorious views of the immense ice-field and its tributaries pouring in from their sublime sun-beaten fountains. The sail down the coast from St. Elias along the mag- nificent Fairweather Range, when every mountain stood transfigured in divine light, was the crowning grace and glory of the trip and must be immortal in the remem- brance of every soul of us. PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON COLUMBIA GLACIER, FROM HEATHER ISLAND tf) ite WG i iy i aa BOM a Jest ii. a ARG Lk ah | BN Weva te a? ee a ; NB beet A 4 ‘pe Hes ie Baer, i Se MAN ny ONIN Atay 1) a A IOs Piva OF hee an aie faite AVON; ent iN SAR ray CA WOT ! ri at Ns bead ak ai walt ey. Al A as Kane pod var y Ua’ laa a a eine Oo £ WA) w) nA VYISVTY XOT add Vv‘) Ow LT NVYION] GHLSESa[, NOtsog ‘nasa <= “5 SileYnd AB HdAVYHDOLOWHd ASHC 6 al SR eee oe THE NATIVES OF THE ALASKA COAST REGION BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL THE COASTWISE INDIANS m LL along the southeastern coast of Alaska, AN from Port Tongass to Kachemak Bay, are a X%& scattered the villages of the Alaska Indians. : ‘They are a hardy race. Living on the shore, bold mariners and sea hunters, they are also mountaineers, familiar with the towering peaks, the dreadful : cliffs, and the mighty glaciers of the HALIBUT HOOK. = jron-bound coast. In their frail canoes they venture far to sea in pursuit of the fur-seal, the sea- otter, and the whale; or thread their perilous ways among crowding ice-bergs fomcapture the hair seal. In spring, when the coat of the white goat is long and shaggy, they clamber | | jo en skyward, first through the [Xj eo uit forests, and then over the Sea broken rocks, until they NATIVE WOMEN AND Garona oes reach his feeding ground, BAY, BRITISH COLUMBIA. hb M4, (137) 138 GRINNELL and there kill him for his flesh, and for his fleece, which they weave into blankets. High up among the rocks, too, they trap the marmots and ground squirrels whose skins sewn together serve them for robes. The changing seasons give them their seal, their salmon, and their berries; their fish, their fowl, and their deer — the latter driven down from the high moun- tains by the deep snows of winter, or in sum- mer forced by the flies out of the forests to feed along the beach. They fish, they hunt, they feast, they dance; and, until the white man came and changed all their life, they " lived well. Although belonging to three different lin- guistic families, Koluschan, Skittagetan, and Chimmesyan, their environment is essentially the same, and this means that their ways of life do not markedly differ. Although they are now greatly changed from what they were when the Russians first came to Alaska, they still preserve not a few of their ancient cus- toms and beliefs. Unlike the Indian tribes of our Western States, most of which have treaties with the government by which they are supported TLINKIT WAND, wholly or in part, these dwellers along the Egicenaes Alaska coast depend for their subsistence wholly on their own exertions and draw their food largely from the sea. They are essentially a race of fishermen. Their main dependence is the salmon, of which enormous numbers are caught, but they also secure an abundance of halibut, and, at certain seasons of the year, of other fish. The introduction of the products of civilization has done away with the use of the old-time fish-line, which was made of knotted lengths of the stem FOOD OF INDIANS 139 of the giant kelp, but they still use hooks of primitive form, though now the unwieldy implements are tipped with iron, instead of with bone as in ancient days. Not only do they procure their animal food largely from the sea, but it yields them as well two or three sorts of seaweed, one of which is eaten fresh, while an- other is dried, pressed into cakes, and used as an ingredi- ent of soups and stews. The salmon are captured in a variety of ways; by means of spears and gafis, but also very largely in traps. These commonly consist of a barrier extending across the stream, but with an opening through which the salmon can pass. Above the opening is a trap from which the fish cannot escape. Sometimes merely a i 3 TLINKIT DANCE RATTLE. close barrier is built. The instinct of the salmon, when seeking their spawning beds, teaches them to always push onward toward the head of the stream; they never turn TLINKIT HALIBUT HOOK. back. And if a barrier is built which prevents their working their way up against the current, they will remain below it, always trying to force their way through, until they die. When captured in large numbers, the salmon are dressed and hung on the poles of the drying scaffold, exposed to sun and wind, until at last they are dry enough 140 GRINNELL to be packed away. In this condition they will keep in- definitely. Besides the fish that they catch, the Indians do much hunting in the mountains and on the islands along the coast. Deer are abundant, and great numbers of them are killed at all seasons of the year. In winter, the na- tive steals along in his canoe, close to the shore, looking for deer that have ventured out of the forest to feed on the seaweed and the grass along the beach. Very quietly he slips up to the game, and when near enough, kills it by -. a shot from his rifle. Many “—~ of the men are good hunters ee tae and do not fear to attack —* the great brown Sitka bear, which is larger than the grizzly and quite as much dis- posed to fight. On the Alaska coast the water is the common highway. Away from the settlements there are no roads nor trails, for the many wide inlets and rivers which run back into the mountains at frequent intervals prevent land travel up and down the coast. The Indians make all their journeys by canoes, and in the handling of these they are most ex- pert. A child is scarcely out of its cradle before a tiny paddle is thrust into its fist. Infants not more than three or four years old may be seen paddling for hours at a stretch. Thus trained from childhood, these Indians are enormously strong in their arms and hands, and can ac- complish a wonderful amount of work of this kind with- out showing fatigue. The upper part of the body is much more robust than in the Indians of the Plains, Different types of canoes are in use in different locali- ties. All the sea travel is done by means of paddles, but in ascending rivers where the current is too swift to be INDIAN CANOES I4I overcome by paddling, poles are used. An Indian, as he drives his canoe upstream against the turbulent current, keeps close to the bank and takes advantage of all the eddies, pushing along quietly until he has almost reached the swiftest water; then fixing his pole firmly against the bottom he leans back against i it and sends the light shell Ze a darting upstream. Before its ls dee way has ceased he has again =f Bar secured a good hold on the 2 4 YY bottom, and no matter how __-.2==—%) furious the rapid, the little --===-3% craft, held perfectly straight, moves steadily forward until the quiet water above has been reached, and the pole is laid aside for the paddle. These canoes are always made from a single piece of = timber. In southern Alaska a and British Columbia where HUNYA SEAL HUNTERS, GLACIER BAY. the white cedar grows, this is the favorite wood, and from its trunks canoes are hollowed out which are sometimes eighty feet in length. Such were the great war canoes in which the fierce Haida and other peoples of the north used to make their war journeys to harry their enemies to the southward, to plunder their villages, and to make cap- tive their people, whom they brought away to their island home as slaves. These great war canoes were very wide and so deep that a man standing in the bottom of one could not see over its sides. In making the canoe, the log is first roughly shaped and hollowed out by fire, water or moist earth being used to control the burning. After this has progressed as far as is safe,a chisel formed of a piece of steel fixed in a 142 GRINNELL wooden handle, is used to chip off the wood in little flakes, both from the outside and inside until the shell is reduced to the proper thickness. After the canoe is shaped, the gunwales are slightly sprung apart, by wetting with water brought almost to CARVING OF TLINKIT CANOE. the boiling point by means of heated stones, so as to give greater flare to the sides, and in the larger canoes are held in position by braces or narrow strips of timber stretch- ing across the boat, and sewed or lashed to the gunwales by cedar twigs made flexible by steaming. Smaller canoes need no such braces. The Indians have no models and the eye is the only guide in making the canoe, but the lines are always correct and always graceful. Paddles are variously made of spruce, hemlock, and sometimes of maple brought from the south. They are from four to five feet long, and vary in shape of blade and handle with the different tribes. Some have across piece for a handle ; others are straight. Usually the blade is about four inches wide and terminates in a long, sharp point. Sometimes the blades are ornamented with carv- ings. The canoes are never left in the water. When brought to shore the occupant steps out on the beach and lifts or drags the canoe up above high-water mark. This must be done, for a very little battering by the sea, or a knock or two on the beach, might split and ruin the boat. When on the beach, exposed to the air and sun, it is always covered by cloths or skins which are kept wet, TLINKIT BASKETS 143 for if the wood of the canoe should become dry and heated it would warp and crack. The canoes used by the Indians of Koluschan stock are not commonly carved as are those of the Indians of north- ern British Columbia, but this is not because these Indians are not skillful carvers. In the totem poles and in the ornamentation of their houses and of many of their imple- ments and utensils we — the high artistic talent of these Indians. They are expert weavers, and make blankets __ from yarn that .~ = is twisted from the fleece of the white goat. They also make mats of great beauty, hats from the inner bark of the cedar, and baskets from cedar bark or from roots, which are abso- lutely water tight. In ancient times they cooked their \Y Nie we 3 oe) ny | t | h i | | S3 Pay i Hn) TLINKIT BOX, CARVED AND PAINTED. TLINKIT BASKETS. food in such baskets, boiling the meat or fish in the water which they held, made hot by the introduction of red-hot stones. Ropes and lines are twisted from the bark of the cedar and are still used for many purposes. Their bas- kets, oil boxes, ceremonial blankets and clothing are, as is 144 GRINNELL well known, beautifully ornamented, and they carve elab- orately in wood and stone. Like other Indians more to the southward, those in Alaska are great respecters of wealth. The rank of any fam- ily depends rather on the ac- cumulation of riches and the subsequent giving them away by its head, than on bravery or success in war or in hunting. The highest ambition of these Indians is to acquire property in order that they may give it away again, and wealth so evi- denced seems to form among them the standard ofrank. He TLINKIT CARVING REPRESENTING who gives away most is the rare ereatest chief, and at subse- quent ‘potlatches,’ or occasions for presenting gifts, he receives a present proportionate to the amount of his own gift. Therefore, when an In- dian has accumulated more or less money or other prop- erty, he is likely to: pur- chase great quantities of food, calico, and blankets, and then to invite all his friends up and down the 3 : | coast toa potlatch. In old parr or House FRAME, ALERT BAY, times, the feast consisted of BEUTISH COLUM EES boiled deer meat and salmon, with unlimited crackers, tea, sugar,and molasses. Each guest has all the food he can eat, and each one is given so many yards of calico. The im- portant visitors receive blankets, and part of the blankets are tossed from the housetop into a crowd of young men, TLINKIT VILLAGES T45 and scrambled for by them. The festal occasion may last for several days or a week, and when it is at an end the Indians go their several ways, leaving the giver of the potlatch a poor man. When the next one takes place, however, he recovers a portion of his wealth, and after a few more he is better off than ever —for the time being. Canoes may be given away at these feasts, or guns and ammunition, and the greater the gift the more is due the giver, when those who have been his guests themselves give potlatches. DESERTED VILLAGE, CAPE FOX. The villages occupied by these Indians are permanent. The houses are made of rough planks, split or hewn from large trees — to the southward the cedar and to the north- ward the spruce—and roofed with shingles split from the trees, though in olden times the roofs were more commonly of planks similar to those used in the construc- tion of the walls. These houses, which are often forty feet square, and sometimes even larger, were usually without floors in old times, though the bed places which run around the walls were raised a foot or two from the ground, and were formed of planks hewn smooth bya slow process of chipping, which must have been very laborious. Often gravel is brought into the house, and the floor 146 GRINNELL covered with it, so that even in wet weather it does not become muddy. The fire is built on the ground in the middle of the room, and the smoke escapes through nar- row openings in the roof, for usually the planks do not quite meet at the ridgepole, so that the sky may easily be seen. Such houses are occupied by a number of families, us- ually related in some degree. Such a village may consist of ten, fifteen, or twenty large houses placed side by side on the bank just above the beach, and not more than two or three feet above high- water mark. ‘The striking feature of the village is the totem poles, some of which are fifty or sixty feet high, erected by chiefs or prin- cipal men in front of their houses. They are elabor- ately carved with figures of men, frogs, birds, and various mammals. x, Some of them indicate ' the descent of the man who erected them ; iN bes which are deposited the ; le iN iA a \ \ : \ \i ! ‘ \ WK y ae =< ashes of the dead. Notin- a LSS sh frequently more than one ee EE “c \totem pole is erected before a = a ee ; : == = = = == house, and in 4 deserted) village ee pa = SsSeca~ ~ which the Harriman expedition : : visited there were nineteen poles, nee Cae Fe while the- houses numbered -only fourteen. The illustrations give a very clear idea of the character of these poles. One represented a succession of bears, one above the other, while the pole was sur- DUB aN Y PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON BEAVER TOTEM, DESERTED VILLAGE ie | Prawasa soy « ey Sue at Lae & “ wa * =" he wa Livida ay , ‘3 \ ‘ ; : \ \ Y bY Rt .¥ airven { ‘ ’ ey Y i f ’ ' abi tits ‘ ) Weary a . vA) i , nh 1 ‘ my iy f ‘ ‘ iin at « ‘ ’ ‘ : 2} ' y $ és 4 J ‘ r hs \ 1 { ~ 4 . 3 { . \ - | | . . ¢ y * ‘ A f ji at ites iy rf ‘ney ‘ ASV cp siteed ti { r a y . is ¥ PER Ler Oey ir ea) ¥ iN TAN ir ay MMe SIE TOTEM POLES 147 mounted by the carved figure of an eagle; this was the tallest pole in the village. Another, which from its ap- pearance seemed to have been standing for very many years—for it was gray with weather, and long strings of lichen hung down from it — consisted of the stout upright twenty feet in height, surmount- ed by an almost equally stout cross pole, on either end of which sat a large carved toad. One much taller than this was sur- mounted bya beaver holding a stick across his jaws. Another, not very tall, had near the top a large hole from which a bear’s head and shoulders protruded. Repre- sentations of the tracks of the bear were painted on the pole from the ground up to the hole from which he looked. The sear rote rors, topmost figure on most of these totem se poles was a bird, presumably an eagle, but in one or two cases albus Bente was a man wearing a conical hat. The i Se frog, the bear, the eagle, and: the (killer whale were frequent- ly represented on the posts, and on one very large pole were carved the figures of three enormous hali- but, one above the other. In this village the , {4 na | PLS 2 front of the principal ,Wi@Ayap = anions Oe, house was highly or- “= ALERT BAY. namented by paint- TOTEM POLES, WRANGELL. ing. The decoration represented a conventionalized bear 148 EAGLE GRINNELL BEAR INSIDE OR ROOF-POST TOTEM POLES, CAPE FOX. el =| \ 3 sek ae) pa {yt hh ‘, Wh i nite AL i), " Y) ith Ain TOTEM POLE, WRANGELL. e : jPare ie split from the tail to the nose along the middle line, and the two halves painted one on either side of the front of the house, so that the two halves of the nose met above the door. The ear on either side pro- truded above the sloping roof line. The ornamentation is by no means confined to the exteriors of the houses. In some cases the roof posts, or uprights supporting the enormous rafters which uphold the roof on either side of the house are highly carved and painted, and at times other carvings, usually also painted, are set up in different parts of the building. Most of the totem poles seen by tourists visiting Alaska are at Wrangell. Several of these are shown in the accom- panyingillustrations. Inthe houses ay ta PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS ANDREW & SON CHIEFS HOUSE, DESERTED VILLAGE ,CAPE Fox TLINKIT MASKS 149 are kept the elaborately carved and painted masks used in ceremonial and religious dances, and highly reverenced for the mysterious power they are supposed to possess. They are of diverse forms and patterns: some represent the heads of birds and beasts; others the hu- man face in repose or distorted. (he variety in these masks is quite extraor- dinary. They are an important feature of all the ceremonial dances practiced by these In- dians, and as these cere- TLINKIT MASKS. monies occupy a considerable portion of the people’s lives, it may be imagined that the masks are numerous and diverse. Besides the forms mentioned, masks often represent conventionalized animals hardly to be recognized 150 GRINNELL except by one who has made the subject a study, while still others represent mythical and sacred personages. Certain rayed masks, not unlike the one shownon page 149, are re- garded as sun masks. Masks are often ornamented with fringes of hair, down, cedar bark, or quills; others are in- laid with pieces of abalone shell or bits of ivory. Those representing the heads of huge birds are sometimes so arranged that by pulling certain strings the bills may be rapidly opened and shut so as to make a clattering sound. Masks of another class are double. The outer portion is divided vertically — and sometimes horizontally —in two or four pieces, which are. hinged’ “to: “the solid immer piece: These outer pieces, when strings’ are pulled, fly apart and outward and reveal another face within. Of the two faces the outer one may be that of an animal and the inner of a man. The most common form of animal mask represents the eagle, raven, puffin, hawk, bear, wolf, or deer. To the left on page 149 is a puffin mask. At a little distance from the village, usu- ally overlooking the water, sometimes on a steep side hill, or on a little point which forms the side of a bay, are the graves of INDIAN GRAVE AT WRANGELL. INDIAN GRAVES ISI some of the dead. Common people are usually burned and their ashes put away, either in a hole bored in one of the totem poles, which is afterwards plugged up, or in a little box on a pole in the common burial ground, or in a dead house as shown in the sketch on p. 152, but the shamans, or mystery men, are not burned. They are buried with ceremony, on or under the ground, and over them is often erected a platform which supports one or more im- ages, sometimes of colossal size. On such a grave in the village above referred to were the carved wooden figures of two bears, perhaps six or seven feet tall, sitting on their haunches. Over another was a more ancient im- age, a huge bird built of wood, with outstretched wings GRAVES OF SHAMANS, CAPE FOX, ALASKA. and a long beak. Ina general way it resembled a heron flying, and reminds one strongly of the mythical bird 152 GRINNELL HoXhoq spoken of by Dr. Boas in his account of the social organization of the Kwakiutl. At Taku Harbor we visited the deserted remains of a small Indian village near which were several dead houses. These were examined by Dr. Merriam who found in them charred human bones and teeth. After the bodies had been burned the bones had been gathered up and put into wooden boxes, or in some cases simply laid on pieces of board and placed inside the dead houses. t ly (7 ¢ vs ‘ | y 35 e yt AM ; i et jee ie i ae te re Ay yy Ny : Nay Me eS RR “yl Ly ef Ai 9 ea . = Le ara, fr a B Br 1m ‘ 2 Nit TAN Ss iL S| sacs TAS AW ED Eo N Caan We Ee Ye NM FW : \ PP SERENITY 1 ; \ Se es I ee B \ RNG qe ane: BN NS’) SASS es Re Oy | \) \N ANON VARESE ta \ \ \ \\ Sa eet YRS AES Ss i INDIAN DEAD HOUSES CONTAINING CHARRED HUMAN BONES, TAKU HARBOR. In striking contrast to this village and to the Tlinkit camps seen farther to the northward, was the spectacle witnessed during our call at the colony of New Metla- kahtla, on Annette Island. It was to this barren island that Mr. William Duncan, in 1887, brought his little flock of civilized Metlakahtla Indians, when the combined per- secutions of Church and State had made British Columbia too hot to hold them. Abandoning all the property they had accumulated in the town that they had made, they pushed their way across the straits to this island in the METLAKAHTLA 153 United States, and like any colony of settlers in a new country, began to fell the timber to build themselves houses, to erect a sawmill, and to cultivate the ground. WAN \ oy, “ay fe Sg Sy Wi wis ee eee = AY PK) aC aoe VESpader a. 1909 ii a Hi} fh ii iy GaN x Y) WAW 7) it, z)) ee oe: GUE i f ¢ rom Wy 2 K WP Ry eed fi = et ae oe fi ors vf TOWN HALL AND CHURCH, NEW METLAKAHTLA. Only a few years had passed when the property of the colony was as great as it had ever been, and since that time it has gone on prospering. The town is laid out with straight, broad streets, and wide board sidewalks. Each house and its garden is surrounded by a fence; the people wear civilized clothing, work at the fishing, in the sawmill, or in the cannery for six days in the week, and rest on the seventh, attending church service in the edifice which they erected with their own hands, and which is a piece of architecture which would be called beautiful in any land. Except for their color, and for the peculiar gait, which seems to be common to all these fishing In- dians, these people and their wives and children could hardly be told from any civilized community of a thousand souls anywhere in the country. It took many years for Mr. Duncan to change these In- dians from the wild men that they were when he first met 154 GRINNELL them, to the respectable and civilized people that they now are. Whatever they are to-day Mr. Duncan has made them, and he himself and no other is responsible for the change in the individuals that have been born and lived and died, and still live in this colony during the period of his wise and beneficent influence over them. He has kept them by themselves, teaching them to live as the white man lives, and yet not letting the white man come in among them. They govern themselves in town- meeting fashion, consulting Mr. Duncan frequently as to what they ought todo. Liquor is unknown among them, except when occasionally some of the young men go off to a distance to visit other villages, or to work in other canneries, and while absent drink and get into trouble. Then they return to Metlakahtla and receive good advice, and are strengthened anew to resist temptation. Within the past two or three years, since the discovery of gold in Alaska, persistent efforts have been made to in- duce Congress to deprive these Indians of the home they have made for themselves on Annette Island; it has been proposed to confine the Indians to a small portion of the island, and to throw the remainder open to settle- ment. The ostensible reason advanced for such a course is that deposits of precious metal have been found on the island, and ought to be worked. As a matter of fact, this is not true. The island has never been prospected at all, for the reason that whenever white men land Mr. Dun- can’s police promptly arrest and expel them. This is done in accordance with the agreement made with the colony by the United States Government, which, before they moved to Annette Island, promised that if they would take it for their home they should never be dis- turbed. This promise should be kept. To open a part of this island to settlement, as proposed, would be to de- prive the Indians of their means of subsistence, for it METLAKAHTLA 155 would take away from them the water power which runs their sawmill, and the salmon on which they depend for support. Such a wrong should not be permitted. The Harriman expedition first saw Alaska Indians at this village of New Metlakahtla. We landed here on NEW METLAKAHTLA. Sunday morning, early in June, and were most kindly re- ceived by Mr. Duncan, who showed us about through the public buildings, talked entertainingly of his experience with these Indians, and later preached in Tsimpsian a ser- mon to a large congregation of Indians. The village, as we wandered through it that Sunday morning, was like an old-fashioned New England hamlet in its peaceful quiet. There was no one abroad. Until the church bell began to ring the people remained in their houses, and then from each door a little family stepped out, and all took their way toward the church until the broad board walks near the edifice were crowded with the people. It would be hard to imagine a more deco- rous and attentive audience; obviously their thoughts were fixed on the discourse to which they were listening, 156 GRINNELL and neither man, woman, nor child turned eyes toward the company of strange white people which crowded into the church behind them. Their sawmill, salmon cannery, and four stores give the community a comfortable support. Among the men are blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, and other handicraftsmen. They have built their own houses, their church, their school-house, guest-house,and council-house. Some of the dwellings are two stories and a half in height, comfortable in appearance, and neatly kept. At Juneau a few Indians were seen, chiefly men in their canoes starting out for the fishing, or women sitting on the wharves offering their bas- kets and other simple articles made for trade. At Sitka, however the Indians were more numerous. Here we had an opportunity not only to see something of the Indians and of how they lived in their old-time way, but also to examine the Shel- don Jackson Museum, and in some of the stores, a great deal of material in the way of the primitive implements which are now practically discarded. When the Russians reached _ the place where Sitka now “ stands they found a camp of CARVED DANCING MASK. CARVED DISHES, SITKA. Indians from a village called Sitko, on the opposite side of the island. The Russians questioned the Indians as to who SITKA INDIANS 157 they were, what was the name of the place, and on other matters; but as the Russians could speak no Tlinkit, and the SS ——~" TLINKIT CARVINGS. Indians no Russian, they did not very well understand each other. The Indians told the Russians that they were the Sitko, the people from that village; but the Russians under- stood them to mean that this was the nameof the place where they were camped, and so they called it Sitka, and Sitka it has been ever since, although the real Sitko is far away. At Sitka as everywhere on the coast, the houses of the Indians are built close above the beach. In exterior ap- pearance they do not differ from those of the white man, but usually there is 1 o Ar wept only a single room ES within on the ground Sees S| floor. Occasionally a house front is orna- mented with elabor- ate paintings, in the old style. The Indians still observe many of their old customs and possess not a few of their ancient ceremonial and religious dresses, though PAINTING ON FRONT OF HOUSE OF CHIEF ANNAHOOTS, SITKA. 158 GRINNELL neither the customs nor the dresses are often seen by the whites. Through the great kindness of Lieutenant Em- mons of the Navy, we were enabled to visit one or two of the prin- cipal men, and see ob- jects, such as elabor- ate dancing ‘eer ri : masks, sha- cane a bi mana hats, TLINKIT SHAMAN’S HEADDRESS. eB Chilkat blankets, and other things rarely exposed to the , common eye. < While at Sitka we learned that many of the Indians were absent at Yakutat Bay, where they were catching the hair seals, whose oil throughout the year furnishes an important part of their subsistence. On reaching Yakutat Bay we found three camps of Indians all engaged in the hair seal fishery. ‘The three camps were thought to represent Indians from different localities, Juneau, Yakutat, and Sitka. They were camped on the grav- elly beach, just above high water, and for the most part occupied ordinary can- vas wall-tents, though some few lived in the square bark-covered shelters which in ancient times were their summer homes. These shel- ters consist of a square frame of poles, loosely covered by strips of spruce bark, from a foot to eighteen inches z: by F Dy =e ise = a 2 r tren te eh ames 88 A it en ete 2m ae eet ee EIEN a eee SET ae Sa a: DBs LER eg Bey de aah ge SEL GAPS Ey ore ees sl oe Nik UA ag, San Sra See See: Ss SBF oe Se =e oie Bae spe TLINKIT SHAMAN’S HAT. a Laan ei fE es se Neurakey : cane CAMP OF INDIAN SEAIZFIUNTERS Head of Yalutat Bay YAKUTAT SEALING VILLAGE 159 wide and eight or ten feet long, laid on the framework, and held in place by slender poles placed over them. This bark must of course be brought from a distance, PRIMITIVE BARK SHELTER, YAKUTAT BAY. since trees large enough to furnish such bark do not grow inthe neighborhood. At most of these bark shelters, skins of the hair seal still on the drying frames, were leaning against the wall, outside, and in some cases had been thrown up on the roof. In the center of this shelter is the circle of stones forming the line place, and over the ‘fire, resting on the stones, is the pot full of strips of seal blubber, from which the oil is being tried out. The woman who watches the pot from time to time ladles out) the ‘oil’ into small kegs and old tin cans, or OIL BOX. rarely into ornamented rectangular boxes of a primitive type. These boxes, as is well known, are made in three 160 GRINNELL pieces, the cover, the bottom, and the sides. The thin plank which forms the sides is cut part way through in the line where the corners are to come, and is then steamed and gradually bent, and at last when the opposite ends come together to form the fourth corner of the box, they are fitted in a tight joint and sewed together with twigs or sometimes with cedar bark. Such boxes were once universally employed to hold oil, but at present their use has been largely superseded by articles of white man- ufacture. From the poles which support the roof of the shelter hang delicacies of various sorts, all from the hair seal’s body. There are flippers, sides of ribs, strips of blubber and braided seal intestines. All these things are eaten; and, in fact, during this fishing the Indians must subsist chiefly on the flesh of the seal. The flippers appear to be regarded as especially choice. We saw many women roasting them over the fire. After they were cooked the women pulled them out of the ashes, and heating an iron in the fire singed the hair which remained on the skin and then tore the flippers to pieces and picked the meat from the bones. Here was seen a primitive form of kettle, common perhaps to all North American tribes; it was a large seal skin, laced by its margin to a square frame of poles, hanging down in the middle eighteen inches or two feet, and full of strips of blubber; it would hold from one to two bushels. The process of ‘ butchering’ the seals absolutely rever- ses the method common in other regions. The product sought for is the blubber, which is attached to the hide. This being the case the Indian woman does not skin her seal, but opens it by a long gash along the belly and cuts out from the inside of the hide the meat and the bones, leaving the blubber attached to the skin. The flippers are cut off, the legs, the ribs, and loins taken from the AVG LYLOMYWA ‘dWyvO SUATYHO NVICN] SILYND AG HdvVedSOLOHd NOS 72 MAYXANY NHOLF YAKUTAT SEALING VILLAGE 161 body and put to one side, and the remainder, consisting of head, backbone, and attachments, lifted out of the skin and thrown away upon the beach. All the cutting is done with a broad cres- cent-shaped knife of ifon or stone, the back of which, if of iron, is set in a round- ed wooden handle, in which a thumb hole is sometimes made. When a woman has removed half a dozen seal skins, she kneels on the ground behind a board which she rests against her knees, and spreading the hide, hair side down on the board, rapidly strips the blubber in one large piece from the hide, which as she draws it toward her is rolled up by a twisting motion into a thick rope. The great sheet of pinkish-white blubber is then cut into strips and put to one-side, to be tried out a little later: The Indians kill the seals not for the flesh, although this is eaten, nor for the hides, though these are used, but for the oil, which is a necessity to them. They drink it, pre- serve berries in it, and use it for cooking, so that it really forms a considerable and important part of their food. The month of June, therefore, is usually spent in Yakutat Bay, on what is perhaps the greatest hair sealing ground on the coast. When the Harriman expedition reached that point there were between three and four hundred people gathered there to secure the annual supply of oil. The seals are hunted in small canoes, usually occupied by two persons. They are light, and until one has be- come accustomed to them, seem cranky and likely to tip over. The shape of the cutwater is peculiar, for under FLENSING SEAL HIDE, YAKUTAT BAY. 162 GRINNELL the prow the wood is cut away backward, and beneath this again projects forward just above the water’s level, with the result that this projecting point of wood first ——— oe Seo = YAKUTAT SEALING CANOE. strikes and pushes away the ice cakes which so thickly float upon the water’s surface, and prevents them from battering and chafing the bows of the canoes. The two seal hunters in the canoe may be two men, or a man and his wife, or a man and boy. The hunter sits in the bow and his companion in the stern, while amid- ships are placed three or four large stones for ballast, weighing in the aggregate 150 or 200 pounds. Each oc- cupant sits or kneels on a little platform fitted into bow and stern, or perhaps on a pile of branches covered by a blanket, a coat, or a skin, so as to keep him above the water, of which there is always more or less in the canoe. To the right of the bowman, and so of course immedi- ately under his hand, are his arms, usually a Winchester rifle, or double-barrel shot gun, and a seal spear ten or SEAL HUNTING 163 twelve feet in length. Sometimes the hunters wear white shirts and hats, made of flour sacks, and sometimes white cloth is hung over the gunwales of the boat, so as to make it seem like a piece of floating ice. This precau- tion is less commonly employed where ice is abundant, as in Yakutat Bay, than in places where there is less fees i Namy or ihe beras here are cov- ered with dirt, and are of all shades from white toblack SEALER’S HUTS OF DRIFTWOOD, GLACIER BAY. Nich ae hives HUNYA INDIANS. surface of the upper end of Yakutat Bay is covered with floating ice which is continually falling from the fronts of the glaciers which pour into it, and it is among this floating ice that the sealing is done. The hunters paddle along slowly, keeping a sharp lookout for the seals. When one is observed they sit still, but as soon as it dives they paddle as swift- ly as possible to- ward the spot, continuing their efforts until it is almost time for the seal to reap- pears “heysare so familiar with the habits of the animal that they can gauge the time very closely. SEALER’S HUT, YAKUTAT BAY. 164 GRINNELL When the seal is about due at the surface the paddlers stop and look for him, the hunter holding his gun in readi- ness to shoot. If the seal appears within range the shot is fired, and if the animal is wounded both men paddle to him as fast as possible, and the hunter tries to spear him, either by throwing or thrusting with the spear. A long, light line is attached to the shaft of the spear near its head, and the end of the line is retained in the boat.~) Dhespean point, being barbed on one side, seldom or never pulls out, and the seal is dragged to the side of the canoe, struck on the head with a club, and taken on board. If the first shot should have merely wounded the seal, and it is impossible to spear him, he is pursued and shot again whenever he HUNYA SEALER’S CAMP, GLACIER BAY. comes to the surface. Few seals are lost unless they can get among the thick ice where the canoe moves with diff- culty, and the floating blocks interrupt the view. When a seal is taken into the boat an equivalent weight of stones is thrown overboard to lighten the canoe. Often before noon the canoe has all the seals that it can carry, and re- turns to the camp. YAKUTAT SEALING VILLAGE 165 When the village is reached women help unload the canoe and carry the seals up the beach, while the men take the boat up above high-water mark. It would be difficult to form a close estimate as to the number of seals killed by these Indians, but more than 500 skins were counted in the camp where we spent most of our time, and it would seem that a thousand seals would not be too large a number to be credited to the three camps that were located near the head of the bay. For many generations this has been a sealing ground for the Indians, and in some places the beach is white with weathered bones and fragments of bones that repre- sent the seal catches of many years. The surroundings are not attractive, for the place resembles a slaughter- house. ‘The stones of the beach are shiny with grease; seal carcasses and fragments of carcasses are spread along the shore, and there is an all-pervading odor of seal and seal oil. The place is a busy one. Back of the beach is a lagoon of fresh water, from which the Indians get their drinking water, in which the children wade about, sailing their canoes, and in which the mothers bathe their babies. North of Yakutat Bay no Indians were met with, all the natives seen from that point onward being Aleuts or Eskimo. DEATH’S HEAD CARVINGS. THE ESKIMO WE SAW It was at Prince William Sound that the Harriman Ex- pedition saw the first Eskimo. According to Dr. Dall, the native people of Kadiak, the eastern end of Alaska Peninsula, and Cook Inlet down to Copper River, are genuine Eskimo and speak a dialect closely like that of the Arctic Eskimo and quite different from that of the Aleuts. The Aleuts do not come farther east than the Shumagin Islands. We first met them at Unalaska; afterward at the Pribilof Islands. At the present day the Aleuts are supposed to number less than 2,000 people, though the old navigators who dis- covered their existence gave them a population of from 25,000 to 30,000, which seems not unreasonable when we consider the conditions of their life in their primitive estate, and the abundance of their food supply. These people are of Eskimoan stock, but the separation of the two branches must have been long ago for they speak a language which the Eskimo do not understand. Their traditions are so similar to those of the Eskimo, and the implements which they used in primitive times so much the same that there is no longer any doubt about their relationship. (167) 168 GRINNELL The Aleuts have long been under the influence of the Russian Church, and have largely abandoned their primi- tive ways. They are now Christianized and in a degree civilized. They are a hard-working people, but never- theless find it difficult to gain a subsistence under the changed conditions which surround them, and the in- creasing scarcity of the wild creatures on which they used to depend for food. At Unalaska all the laborers are Aleuts, as are also all those employed in the fur-seal fisheries on the Pribilof Islands. The name Aleut was applied by the Russians to the in- habitants of the Aleutian Archipelago as well as to the a 5 Tia “MUU cme 8 tier ne a Pelie ne anny / i Dal Wit = ™, = = ieeaeels od ” 2 & wy AYy 4 “MUM iy 0 UG fi BIDARA OR ALEUT SKIN BOAT, ST. PAUL ISLAND, BERING SEA. inhabitants of Kadiak Island and the southeast shores of the Peninsula of Alaska. Dr. Dall believes that at one time, until driven out by the Indians, these people also occupied the north shore of the Alaska Peninsula. He believes further that the Aleutian Islands were populated at a very distant period, and that those who first occupied them were more like the lowest grades of the Eskimo than to the Aleuts of historic times; and that while the development of the Eskimo went on in the direction in which it first started, that of the Aleuts was modified and given a different direction by the conditions of their THE ALEUTS 169 surroundings. Population entered these islands from the eastward, that is, from the continent, and little by little spread along the chain of islands. Many hints as to the change and development in the people and their ways of life have been found by Dr. Dall in the shell heaps which he has so carefully studied, and on which he has reported so fully and so entertainingly. The Aleuts of to-day are not only greatly changed from their primitive conditions by the partial civilization forced on them by the Russians during the period of their occu- pation, but they are also modified by a considerable infu- sion of Russian blood due to that occupation. Away from the settlements, however, they still live somewhat in their old fashion, and at the remoter villages, such as Kashega, Chernofski, and Akutan, occupy the barabara, an oblong, rect- angular house with vertical walls onlytwo ie it e : : iv ? aS ar 9 = 7 * . hd - : i yi a Y i = e ' . 4 a y 5 - > ; i3 “4 , . - i , @ : . ‘ 4 ¢ 7 7 y ) . 7 . ‘ a € s i ® 9 b . ia A a } ‘ ‘ - z ‘ , a ml i 7 oa > i n > _ Pe Con ae f ‘ AP ‘ t , 7 + @ o 1 w = 4 ° TF ® a — Yves tnt % sail an vy: iep ar a) ee. ie ay i goes 7 ee irs Dy lta ey us PY ‘3h fe 4 the 4 f : , Pies’ Pet 4 Tee » ane oe m Da et ae: ae 7 uel na « oma - fare inne pei a ihe Roe bel eine irl i oH ae ree =~ OO 7 ‘tour a 7 _ > ay a : Oe sia SF in See en aan : aos a - at i. 7 > 7 7 ad ans 4 on ce 0 ae * re oe aa 8 re ae : co t - ta s : Pas 7 ee > a - a - : mn 7 7 . “ss - vi. ifn *“@ > sae >a 7 So a | Se . . 7 - fae af SRR ile ere ae 2 lly > -_ iv ' LP : = & q ~~ rae eee i. i oe _ oe - 7 _ - - a Sau vid Rie! . ) <7 2 oe ~ aa 4‘. 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