; 7 avi ti
i “APs ale) eae
Ate. Oe
Sly vit. hanes ME
)
aes Per ee ‘ + EN Pe Te eae —— a
: A j r / :
+
rie pict ond ayy
ay)
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
HARRIMAN ALASKA SERIES
VOLUME II
HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY,
RESOURCES
BY
WILLIAM H. DALL, CHARLES KEELER,
B. E.FERNOW, HENRY GANNETT,
WILLIAM H. BREWER, C. HART MERRIAM,
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, and
M. L. WASHBURN
(Pusication 1991) Rat
d |
aya L
s |
y }
CITY OF WASHINGTON
PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
1910
ADVERTISEMENT.
The publication of the series of volumes on the
Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, heretofore pri-
vately printed, has been transferred to the Smithsonian
Institution by Mrs. Edward H. Harriman, and the
work will hereafter be known as the Harriman Alaska
Series of the Smithsonian Institution.
The remainder of the edition of Volumes I to V,
and VIII to XIII, as also Volumes VI and VII in
preparation, together with any additional volumes that
may hereafter appear, will bear special Smithsonian
title pages.
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
WasuinctTon, D.C., Juty, 1910
HARRIMAN ALASKA EXPEDITION
WITH COOPERATION OF WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
ALASKA
VOLUME II
HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, RESOURCES
BY WILLIAM H. DALL, CHARLES KEELER, B. E. FERNOW
HENRY GANNETT, WILLIAM H. BREWER, C. HART MERRIAM
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL AND M. L. WASHBURN
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1902
a
i ”
THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION OF
ALASKA
BY WILLIAM HEALEY DALL
JHE history of Alaska is practically the history
of exploration and trade along its coasts and
within its borders. It may be conveniently
14) divided into characteristic periods. First
comes the era of discovery and exploration by inde-
pendent parties of Cossacks, hunters, and fur-traders,
whose reports led to the dispatch of the official expe-
ditions commanded by Bering, whose discoveries, in
turn, opened the floodgates for a tide of adventurers.
This period may be said to comprise the whole of the
eighteenth century up to June, 1799. The second period
began with the chartering of an imperial monopoly, the
Russian-American Company, to which was confided in
that year the control and exploitation of the Russian pos-
sessions in America. The characteristic figure in the
panorama of the events of this era is Baranoff.
In 1867 a third period began with the American occu-
pation of the territory ; followed by the lease of the seal
islands to the Alaska Commercial Company, and by the
exploitation of the fisheries. A condition of anarchy pre-
vailed over the greater part of the Territory, due to legis-
lative neglect and executive indifference. With the open-
ing of the Klondike gold fields in 1895, a fourth era began,
into which the country has barely entered, and the outcome
of which it is yet too soon to predict. So far it has been
characterized by renewed exploration; by the grant from
(185 )
186 DALL
Congress of some tardy and far from adequate legislation
looking toward good order and settlement ; by the ex-
haustion of the fur trade; and by the development of
mineral resources in the line of the precious metals.
The geographer Gerhard Friedrich Muller during his
researches in Siberia about 1750, ransacked the archives
of Yakutsk and other East Siberian settlements for records
of early explorations. His extracts from them are all that
are saved to us of those invaluable reports, the originals
of which were long since destroyed by the fires which
have repeatedly ravaged the cities of eastern Siberia.
Among these extracts is found one relating to the journey
of Peter Iliunsen Popoff who was sent to East Cape in
January, 1711, with two interpreters, to endeavor to in-
duce the obstinate Chukchi natives to pay tribute, and to
obtain such information about the region as could be se-
cured. The party returned to the trading post on the
Anadyr River in the following September. They had not
been able to convince the Chukchi that there was any suffi-
cient reason for paying tribute, but they brought back,
among other items of information, the news that beyond
the islands off the Chukchi peninsula lay a large conti-
nent, forested, inhabited, with great rivers, where were a
people with tails like dogs, wearing skin clothing, and
living upon wild reindeer and sea animals. The learned
academician apologizes for recording this fable of the wild
Chukchi, which, however, carries with it the confirmation
of the story of Popoff’s visit ; since we now know that it is
a common practice of the American Eskimo to wear the
tail of a wolf or dog at the back of his girdle on cere-
monial occasions, or while traveling.
This is the first authentic mention of the continent east
of Bering Strait and its inhabitants, though mention had
been made by earlier explorers of accounts by the Chuk-
chi of the Diomede and St. Lawrence Islands.
MENDING HIS CANOE
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
SITKA INDIAN HuTS
BERING’S EXPLORATIONS 187
The exploration and gradual conquest and settlement
of eastern Siberia was the work of a multitude of adven-
turers, known generically as Promishleniki or hunters.
They included the more turbulent and enterprising of the
border population of Siberia, such skirmishers of half
savage, wholly unmoral, humanity as most nations drive
before them, in an advance into the wilderness. Power-
ful from the arms which they borrowed from civilization,
desperately energetic, they defied cold, starvation, war,
the perils of the sea, and the unknown terrors of the
wilderness, in their love of adventure and greed of gain.
Penetrating a region like a creeping conflagration, con-
suming and destroying, yet they leave it cleared, after a
fashion, for the advent of a real civilization. In Asia
nothing but the sordid poverty of the Chukchi could hold
its own against them.
Rumors of their discoveries gradually filtered through
the wastes of Siberia to Russia. An expedition was fitted
out to ascertain the facts and especially whether America
and Asia were really separated. Vitus Bering, a Danish
officer naturalized in Russia, was assigned to the com-
mand, with Alexis Chirikoff as his chief assistant. July
20, 1728, the expedition left Kamchatka for the north,
sailed through Bering Strait without seeing the Diomedes
or the American shore, and presently returned to Kam-
chatka. The next year in June he sailed eastward from
Kamchatka some sixty miles in vain search of the Ameri-
can continent, and then made his way back to Okhotsk.
A second expedition was projected in 1732, and under the
same commander sailed from Kamchatka June 4, 1741, to
find the American coast. On July 18th, Bering anchored
under the lee of Wingham Island near the mouth of the
Copper River and thence made his way westward along
the line of the Aleutian chain to be finally wrecked on
the island which now bears his name, where he died of
188 DALL
scurvy December 8, 1741. The survivors reached Kam-
chatka on the 27th of August, 1742.
The immediate result of the arrival of the survivors of
the expedition with their wonderful tales of the abundance
of fur animals and the near proximity of a great archipel-
ago, was to stimulate every inhabitant of the region who
could leave Kamchatka, to push out and secure riches.
As iron and most necessaries for shipbuilding had to
cross Siberia, and were correspondingly dear, the Promish-
leniki made themselves boats of planks sewed together
with rawhide thongs and caulked with moss and oil.
Cattle were few and precious, salt meat hardly to be had.
The traders stocked up with salmon and in their crazy
boats pushed boldly out to sea. On reaching Bering
Island they went ashore and hunted the sea-cow (Stel-
ler’s manatee) and salted down its beef-like flesh. When
fully supplied they pushed on to the Aleutian Islands.
There had long been traditions among the Kamchatkans
of islands off the Aliutorsk Cape; referring probably to St.
Lawrence and the Diomedes. These were known collo-
quially as the Aliutorski Islands. When Bering discov-
ered the archipelago it was concluded that these were the
islands of the tradition, and so the name of a Kamchatkan
cape became fixed upon a region and people in no other
way connected with it.
The Sibiriaks did not trouble themselves to buy furs
from the natives. Their firearms, though few and archaic,
were an argument which proved conclusive in any con-
troversy with a people armed only with bone-headed
hand-lances. On arriving at a native settlement the
people were corralled, their furs, if any, taken as ‘ tribute,’
the young girls captured as ‘ hostages,’ and the old people
sent out to hunt, bring driftwood, or catch fish for the
invaders. Resistance was useless, though frequently at-
tempted, and was punished by massacres which thoroughly
~
ELSON, BOSTON
Hut on Woop ISLAND
GOVERNMENT SURVEYS 189
terrorized the survivors. Within the memory of living
men, the Aleutian mother quieted her fretful child by
calling on Glottoff and Drusenin, who were of those who
reigned in this hell they had created. As one island after
another was depleted of its furs, succeeding parties pushed
further and further eastward.
In 1763 parties reached Kadiak and the peninsula of
Alaska. Here a more vigorous and courageous people,
true Eskimo, replace the Aleuts. Accustomed to meet
and conquer the mighty bears of the island, these people
resisted enslavement and slew many of their persecutors,
Moreover many of the Aleuts arose in desperation, happy
if in dying they could carry with them even one of their
tyrants. Many committed suicide; the population was
becoming scanty; the bands of Sibiriaks, too numerous to
be easily fed from the resources of the country, or to be
satisfied with the diminishing store of skins, turned their
arms sometimes upon each other. About this time the gov-
ernment began to send out officers to survey the new pos-
sessions and incidentally to establish order and secure the
imperial tribute. Among others Krenitzin and Levasheff,
two naval captains, after whom Captains Bay, Unalaska,
is named, wintered there in 1768. They made the first
charts of the archipelago and returned to Okhotsk in 1769.
Somewhat checked by the presence of officials and the
other difficulties of the situation, the fur-traders began to
combine in companies and to systematize the business.
Several corporations were formed which soon began to
clash with each other. Still, the climax of the saturnalia
had passed and the half-insane orgies of the first years
were no longer repeated.
The cream of the fur trade had been skimmed, the
Aleut nation diminished to a tenth of its original num-
ber. They were necessary to hunt the otter; it became
no longer profitable to waste the male population.
190 DALL
Meanwhile other nations had become dimly aware of an
unoccupied empire, rich in furs and affording a market
for trade, on the northeast border of the Great Ocean.
Spain, through her representatives in Mexico, made the
first move, and Ensign Juan Perez reached the latitude of
Dixon Entrance in 1774. The following year Bodega and
Maurelle attained to the vicinity of Sitka Sound, where
they saw and named Mount San Jacinto, now known as
Edgecombe. In 1776 the immortal James Cook sailed
from Plymouth, England, for a voyage of discovery in the
North Pacific. On the roster of his officers we read the
well-known names of Clerke, King, Bligh (later of the
Bounty), Burney, Gore (of Virginia), John Ledyard (of
Connecticut), and Vancouver (as midshipman). During
the spring of 1778 Cook traced the northwest Ameri-
can coast from Nootka to Icy Cape and then turned back
to meet his fate among the islands of Hawaii. Some
additions to the work were made the following year by
Clerke and Gore, while the Spanish vessels under Arteaga
and Bodega pushed their researches as far as Prince Wil-
liam Sound.
We owe to Cook the first generally accurate delinea-
tion and positions of the Northwest coast as a whole, and
it is surprising how near he came to the best modern re-
sults obtained with far superior instruments. Those who
followed him, for many years, added and elucidated chiefly
in details.
In 1781 Shelikoff, Golikoff, and other merchants of Si-
beria formed a corporation for the more effective manage-
ment of their business, and dispatched vessels to the
Northwest coast. The French naval captain La Perouse
with a shipful of young noblemen, who apparently dis-
dained to trouble themselves with navigation or seaman-
ship, touched in 1786 on the northwest coast near the
Fairweather ground, surveyed Lituya Bay and lost two
PHOTOGRAPH SY GILBERT JOHN ANDREW & SON
Mt. EDGECUMBE FROM BACK OF SITKA
SPANISH VOYAGES IgI
boats and twenty-one men who carelessly ventured into
the bore at the narrow entrance. About this time inde-
pendent fur traders began to visit the coast. James Hanna
of Macao traded at Nootka in 1785, and in a few years
numbers of ships appeared from various quarters of the
globe. Some of these men had a liberal education and
made their voyages contribute to geographical and natural
science as well as pecuniary profit. Among the better
known were Meares, Portlock, Dixon, Berkeley, and Cox,
all Englishmen; Ingraham, Gray, Sturgis, Kendrick, and
Cleveland from New England.
The Spanish authorities claimed the sole right to navi-
gate the waters of the Northwest coast though they had
never utilized any of its resources. To drive away the
‘Boston’ and ‘King George’ men, as the Yankees and
Englishmen were called in the trade jargon, they sent, in
1788, some armed vessels, under Martinez and Haro, on a
voyage of reconnaissance. These extended their investi-
gations as far as Kadiak and Unalaska before returning to
California. The following May the same officers pro-
ceeded to Nootka where they took possession in the
name of Spain, built a small fort, and seized three British
vessels under Colnett and Hudson which had been sent
from Macao by Meares. The American vessels were not
molested, and Gray, in the Columbia, after various explor-
ations sailed for Canton, where he exchanged his furs for
tea, with which he reached Boston, August 10, 1790, hav-
ing carried the United States flag around the world for the
first time.
The action of the Spaniards in seizing the British ves-
sels did more for the exploration of the coast than all their
surveying expeditions. The British government protested
against the proceeding and, with the acquiescence of
Spain, George Vancouver was sent to the Northwest coast
to determine with the aid of a Spanish Commissioner what
192 DALL
indemnity was due the parties. He was also instructed
to survey the coast from the 35th to the 6oth parallel of
north latitude so as to set at rest finally the theories which
claimed, somewhere in this region, the existence of a
‘northeast passage’—a waterway leading eastward to
Hudson Bay. On his way north he missed the mouth of
the Columbia River, of whose existence he was later in-
formed by Gray. This omission may have served to. put
him on his mettle ; at all events the surveys which he
conducted during 1792-4, were worthy of the best ex-
plorer of his time. No other man has given to the world
a detailed survey of equal excellence of so many miles of —
intricate coast, and under analogous conditions. Van-
couver died, worn out by his exposure and heroic exer-
tions, just as his report was coming from the press. His
last days were saddened by the insults of a ruffian of the
nobility, Lord Camelford, who had been discharged from
the expedition for bad conduct before the Pacific was
reached. The only memorial in England dedicated to
Vancouver is a tablet erected by the Hudson Bay Com-
pany in the little parish church of Ham, near Richmond,
where he lies buried.
During these years Shelikoff and Baranoff had received
from the empire exclusive trading privileges in the Rus-
sian possessions. Several Russian expeditions had visited
the coast under Sarycheff, Billings, and Hall. By 1794 the
cries of the unfortunate Aleut reached even to St. Peters-
burg and the Emperor Paul contemplated withdrawing
the corporate franchises which had been so fearfully
abused. Some Russian missionaries had been sent out,
but the natives, except when terrorized, did not receive
them very cordially, naturally fearing ‘the Greeks bear-
ing gifts.’
In 1799 the Emperor Paul granted a charter for the
term of twenty years to a new company which was to
WMLIG LY HOUNHD ARHHO AML JO HMOIrSaALNI
Siiurs Ag Ha vwooLOHs
NOS "S MawONY NHOF
RUSSIAN-AMERICAN COMPANY 193
enjoy exclusive rights. Under the name of the Russian-
American Company the new organization was required to
organize settlements, promote agriculture, commerce, dis-
covery, and the propagation of the Greek Catholic faith,
and to extend Russian influence and territory on the
Pacific so far as it might be done without trespassing on
the territory of any foreign power. The government of
the colonies was confided to the Chief Director, who re-
sided at Kadiak. No appeal could be made from him ex-
cept to the Directory at Irkutsk which settled all regula-
tions and appointments and decided all questions which
might be raised, subject to the approval of the Imperial
Department of Commerce. Outside of Kadiak other dis-
THE FIRST RULER OF RUSSIAN AMERICA.
Alexander Andreivich Baranoff, administrator of the Russian colonies in America, 1792-1817 ;
died at Batavia, April 28, 1819.
tricts were ruled by inferior agents chosen from among
the employes and accountable only to the Chief Director.
194 DALL
The general regulations were just and humane, but the
enforcement of them was entrusted to men with whom
justice was always subservient to expediency. Baranoff
maintained for twenty years an absolute and despotic sway
over the colonies. The orders of the Directory were often
unheeded by him and it was almost as easy for complaints
to reach the Directory from another planet as from Rus-
sian America. He was a man of iron energy and nerve,
coarse, unfeeling, shrewd, and enterprising. Among his
subordinates were men far more intelligent and humane
than himself, but any improvements were proposed in vain
if in his judgment they conflicted with the interests of the
company. Krusenstern, one of the Russian naval officers,
remarks of the servants of the Company, “ none but vaga-
bonds and adventurers ever entered the Company’s ser-
vice as traders; it was their invariable destiny to pass a
life of wretchedness in America; and few had the good
fortune to touch Russian soil again.” Naturally most of
the personnel of the service in the colonies was drawn
from the ranks of those who had served in the Shelikoff
and other companies, and it is doubtful if the change of
masters made any perceptible difference to the Aleuts or
other natives under the control of the Russians. How-
ever, more business-like methods were introduced in the
general conduct of affairs; among the new officers of the
Company were some men of intelligence, refinement, and
kindly nature, as well as of scientific acquirements.
Though the Aleuts were treated as serfs of the Company
they were entitled toa certain amount of subsistence, and
the absence of competition took away many of the pre-
vious grounds for friction.
The official interest in the Company grew as explora-
tions by Russian naval officers increased. In 1800 the
chief officers were moved from Irkutsk to St. Petersburg.
Two years later the Emperor, Empress, and Grand Duke
PHOTO BY MERRIAM
Gitpozco
JUNEAU, ALASKA
DESTRUCTION OF SITKA 195
Constantine became shareholders in the corporation, and
the Loan Bank of St. Petersburg was directed to loan
250,000 silver rubles to the Company at eight percent.
As the operations of the Company became more wide-
spread, their vessels commanded by Russian naval officers
constantly explored new portions of the coast. The trad-
ing post established at Old Harbor, Sitka Sound, by Bar-
anoff in 1799 did a good business, and in the spring of
1800 Baranoff formally took possession in the name of
Russia of the region now comprised in southeastern
Alaska. In contrast with the relatively mild native of Es-
kimo stock with whom the Russian had dealt to the west-
ward, the pugnacious and turbulent Tlinkit of the Sitkan
Archipelago kept the settlers and traders constantly on the
defensive. In May, 1802, the Sitkan natives attacked the
Russian post and massacred the entire party excepting a
few who took to the woods and were rescued by Barbour,
the master of a British trader. Attacks were also made
on Russian hunting parties in various parts of the Archi-
pelago. During the same year the Stikine River was
discovered by the American ship Atahualpa of Boston.
An expedition under Krusenstern and Lisianski in the
ships Nadeshda and Neva sailed for the colonies in Au-
gust, 1803. The colonial officials pushed their explora-
tions some distance up the Copper River and sent hunting
and trading parties to Oregon and California.
In 1804 Lisianski in the Neva joined Baranoff before
Sitka, where the native stronghold was defended energet-
ically against the Russian cannon. It was evacuated by
the Tlinkit when their ammunition was exhausted and
the Russians immediately laid the foundation of a fortified
post on the very defensible peninsula which had been oc-
cupied by the natives. As the Archangel Gabriel, to
whom the post at Old Harbor had been dedicated, had
not protected it against the heathen, the new post was de-
196 DALL
voted to the Archangel Michael in hope of better results,
whence it was commonly called New Archangel, a name
which has now given place to Sitka, from the native des-
ignation of the bay upon which it is situated.
For some years the progress of discovery and trade was
slow, though not unimportant. In 1816-1817 Kotzebue
was engaged in the work of exploration in the Aleutians
and northward. In August, 1816, he entered the Arctic
Ocean and explored the sound which bears his name. In
1818 the eastern shores of Bering Sea, especially Bristol
Bay, were explored by Korsakoff and Kolmakoff. In
1819 an expedition for geographical discovery was fitted
out at St. Petersburg under Vasilieff and Bellingshausen,
Baranoff, returning to Russia, died at Batavia April 28th,
being about eighty years old, and leaving, in spite of his
active career and exceptional opportunities, no fortune.
His death made practicable the more exact fixing of
responsibility for colonial matters, and numerous much
needed reforms were carried out in the subsequent ad-
ministration of the Company’s business.
At this time the Russians had settlements or fortified
trading posts in California, Sitka Sound, Prince William
Sound, Cook Inlet, Kadiak, five of the Aleutian Islands,
the Pribilof Islands, and Nushagak in Bristol Bay.
A convention between Russia and the United States
relative to boundaries, privileges for hunting and fishing,
and regulations governing trade, was signed at St. Peters-
burg April 17, 1824. A less conspicuous event which
had for a large part of the Territory even more impor-
tant consequences was the arrival in the Colonies of
Father Innokenti Veniaminoff, who had been sent as a
missionary priest to Unalaska. It is one of the mysteries
of the human mind how a religion brought by men guilty
of every infamy could be accepted by their victims; and
it is probable that the reasoning, if any, indulged in by
uvidvy AYHN SHHOHS agMIT-wuyg
WVItMAW AG HdYHOOLOHd
xzsogsi9
ba
VENIAMINOFF 197
conforming Aleuts was that a religion and a God which
could save from eternal torment such men as Glottoff and
Solovioff, must be remarkably efficacious and powerful.
THE APOSTLE TO THE ALEUTS.
Ivan Veniaminoff, in religion Innokenti, born September r, 1797, missionary to the Aleuts
1823-33, to the Tlinkit 1834-40, Bishop of Kamchatka 1841-67, Metropolitan of Moscow 1867-79,
died April 22, 1879.
However this may be, in Veniaminoff came a man who
dealt justly and loved mercy; a man filled with the ra-
diant spirit of a savior of men. He made himself one
with his people, loving and beloved. Nor did he rest
satisfied with spiritual ministrations. He learned their
language, studied with affectionate comprehension their
manners and customs, recorded the climatic and physical
conditions under which they lived, and in his ‘ Notes on
198 DALL
the Unalaska District’ has built the only existing founda-
tion for the anthropology of the people he served so well.
For seven years he worked among them and his memory
is still dear in the land.
In 1825 aconvention between Great Britain and Russia
was signed, by which the boundaries of Russian territory
were established, the Hudson Bay Company definitely ex-
cluded from every part of the seacoast north of Lat. 54°
40’, and the unknown territory north of the St. Elias Alps
equitably divided by an astronomical line, the 141st
meridian west from Greenwich.
The interest in Arctic exploration which had been in-
strumental in promoting the voyages of Ross, Franklin,
Parry, Richardson, and Back on the northeastern shores
of America now instigated cooperative explorations in the
North Pacific. This work began with the work of
Beechey in H. M. S. Blossom, which sailed from England
in 1825. The following year one of the most fruitful of
Russian scientific expeditions to America sailed from St.
Petersburg in the corvette Seniavine, commanded by
Liitke, who was assisted by the naturalists Kittlitz, Post-
els, and Mertens. Beechey pushed northward as far as
the ice would admit his vessel and sent a boat party,
under Elson, which reached and named Point Barrow, the
most northern extreme of Alaska. During the same sum-
mer Franklin, pushing westward from the Mackenzie,
reached Return Reef, the most western point of his ex-
plorations, on the Arctic coast.
The Company’s officers continued their surveys in 1832,
established Fort Kolmakoff on the Kuskokwim River,
and a year later Tebenkoff built Redoubt St. Michael on
Norton Sound. In 1835 a meteorological and magnetic
observatory was established at Sitka, where for many
years a first class series of observations was kept up. In
1835 the delta of the Yukon and Kuskokwim was explored
heey,
é 3 en
DutcH HarsBor, UNALASKA
PH
WHALE FISHERIES 199
by Glasunoff, and the Yukon was ascended as far as
Anvik. In 1837 Dease and Simpson of the Hudson Bay
Company completed the survey of the Arctic coast be-
tween Franklin’s Return Reef and Point Barrow; and Sir
Edward Belcher in H.M.S. Sulphur made various ex-
plorations between Sitka and Kadiak. In 1838 the
trading post at Nulato was established on the Yukon by
Malakoff. Evacuated during the winter, it was burned by
the natives, but reestablished in 1841 by Derabin who re-
mained in command. In the course of 1842-1843, the
Yukon as far up as Nowikakat was examined and mapped
by Zagoskin. In 1847 McMurray of the Hudson Bay
Company coming from the Mackenzie, descended the
Porcupine River and built Fort Yukon near its junction
with the Yukon River.
In 1848 the Franklin search expeditions were sent out,
inaugurating the most active period of exploration of the
polar regions. The Herald and Plover were sent to
Bering Strait to cooperate with parties working from the
eastward. During this summer the first American whaler
to venture through Bering Strait, the ship Superior, Captain
Roys, was rewarded by a successful catch in a very short
time. The report of his success spreading, he was fol-
lowed in 1849 by a fleet of one hundred and fifty-four
American whalers, and the fishery was thus permanently
established north of the Strait.
During the summer of 1849 the Herald and Plover, as-
sisted by the private yacht Nancy Dawson, explored the
Polar Sea north of Bering Strait, landed on Herald Island
and probably had a glimpse of Wrangell Land. | Peo Se
as ‘ "7
joo
jez
pe*|
MAP OF
SHOWING
SEAS AL
¥
on FORESTED AREAS
p*
BY
eer ee B. E. FERNOW (
op: S| Interior forest Seale
mo 100 200 200 Miles
=e Coast forest on —
i | Forestless areas
AS0EM ACO BATTIMONE
FORESTS OF ALASKA
BY B. E. FERNOW
LASKA furnishes a field of unusual interest to
the student of forest distribution, and it may be
$i worth while to describe and discuss, from
Festa} both phytographic and economic points of
view, the forest conditions of the Territory.
Alaska may be divided into at least five regions, two
forested and three forestless, corresponding to climatic
and physical conditions.
A true forest country is found only along the southern
coast, on the islands of the Alexander Archipelago, and
in the panhandle of mainland separating the British
possessions from the ocean—a northward extension of
the Pacific coast forest. Here the evenly tempered climate
gives rise to forest-covered slopes out of which only the
higher elevations with their covering of eternal snow
reach above timber-line.
Separated from this coast by the high sierra of the St.
Elias and Fairweather coast ranges, and by mountain
ranges farther inland to the north and west, is the great
interior basin drained by the Yukon River, with its hills,
mountains, and plateaus, which, while in the main an open
country, is studded with more or less frequent islands of
forest growth varying in density and development. The
(235)
236 FERNOW
interesting fact to the plant geographer is that the forest
flora of this interior region is entirely different from that
of the coast region, being in its species essentially the same
as our northeastern Atlantic boreal flora.
Intervening between the Pacific and Atlantic forest
flora, is the high, somewhat triangular-shaped plateau,
enclosed by the coast ranges and the more northern
mountains, some 15,000 square miles in extent according
to I. C. Russell,'.a region of absolute, stern, silent,
motionless winter, covered with snow and ice all the
year round, without a vestige of life.
Again, skirting the coast of Bering Sea from Kuskokwim
Bay northward and along the Arctic Ocean, is the tundra
—a belt of treeless country, though not entirely devoid of
woody vegetation, varying from a hundred miles or less
to several hundred miles in width.
Lastly we recognize as a different type the forestless
region of grassy slopes and snow covered peaks which
the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian and other islands
west of the 153d degree of longitude exhibit.
To explain this distribution of the arborescent flora,
both climatic and physiographic conditions must be ad-
duced. It is easily understood that the mechanical barrier
which the ice- and snow-bound mountain ranges interpose
should effectively separate the Pacific and Atlantic forest
flora. But to the westward toward the Alaska Peninsula
and the Aleutian and other islands no such mechanical
barrier exists, hence other causes must be found to ex-
plain the limits of distribution.
The separation of the coast and interior floras seems in
general complete, although an exchange of species may
occur here and there across the mountain passes and ~
along the river courses. Thus, a paper-barked birch ap- -
pears in numbers at the head of Lynn Canal, 1,000 feet
1Am. Journal of Science, 3d series, Vol. XLIII, p. 171, 1892.
PROTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
ENTRANCE TO WRANGELL NARROWS
ALASKA FORESTS 237
above sea level, and again at the head of Cook Inlet, -
where the traders state that birch canoes are used by
the Indians on Knik River, without its apparent exist-
ence in intermediate localities. This distribution would
indicate a species from the interior that has crossed the
range.
The associated occurrence of the eastern Populus bal-
samtfera with its western congener, Populus trichocarpa
(if indeed the two species can be separated), reported by
the late Dr. G. M. Dawson from the Pelly and Lewes
Rivers, and observed by us on Kadiak Island, is an
example of this interchange, and Pinus contorta (or
murrayana) reported by Dall at the confluence of the
above named rivers, furnishes another instance of wan-
dering.
The greatest interest in regard to this approach or inter-
change of the two floras would center in the region around
Iliamna Lake, at the base of the Alaska Peninsula. Here
the Pacific coast flora finds its western terminus, and the
interior or Atlantic forest flora descends along the Mul-
chatna and Nushagak Rivers almost to the very shores of
Bering Sea, while the low passes between Cook Inlet
and Lakes Clark and Iliamna should favor transmigration
of the two floras, unless other impediments bar their
progress.
While in a general way temperature and moisture con-
ditions are certainly the most influential factors deter-
mining the distribution of life groups, it must be evident
that with tree growth, combinations of these with factors
other than those which determine the distribution of an-
nual and perennial low growths, must be potent. The
winter rest in the seed, and the short cycle of develop-
ment in a single season, characteristic of the annuals;
the partial death in winter, and the low stature of the
perennials, warmly covered by the winter snows and pro-
238 FERNOW
tected against variations of atmospheric conditions, give
an advantage to these forms of life in northern regions
which is lacking in the arborescent flora, with its persistent
growth, its long period of life before maturity is reached,
and elevation above the ground.
The wintry blasts which are of no moment to the her-
baceous plants and shrubs, must be endured by the arbor-
escent flora ; and late frosts in the spring, which may find
the former in condition for withstanding their blight, will
nip the tree buds which an early warm spring sun has
called into premature activity.
Again, while the herbaceous plant readily survives an
extraordinarily unfavorable season, and with its prolific
annual seed production soon recovers lost ground, the tree
individual, after having weathered many winters, may fall a
prey to a single exceptional season; moreover, seed pro-
duction in the tree, coming only late in life and at longer
or shorter intervals, is less favorable to reestablishment.
Again, while the low vegetation is able to subsist on a
modicum of soil, the tree, as it grows in height, requires
corresponding root space, both to supply itself with water
and to brace itself against the winds—the leverage
increasing with the growth. Soil conditions in the
competition between different forms of vegetation may
become so important that climatic conditions are of
secondary moment; thus we find grass and weeds suc-
cessfully keeping out the arborescent flora where no
climatic impediments to the latter exist.
The combination of conditions influencing forest growth
is then, it must be admitted, more complex than that
which determines the distribution of smaller plants, and
hence not only does the composition of the forest vary
according to the adaptability of the species, but at the
same time the individual development and density of
stand vary with the different conditions.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MERRIAM BiL8o Zz
Woop ISLAND, NEAR KADIAK
THE INTERIOR FOREST 239
These general considerations will assist in understand-
ing the variety and changes in appearance of the Alaska
forest flora.
THE INTERIOR FOREST.
The interior of Alaska is but little known, and as a
rule only along the river courses. A few cross-country
routes have been traversed by explorers who, not being
botanists, leave us in doubt as to the exact species repre-
sented in their casual remarks on the forest conditions.
They generally mention spruce as the only conifer, and
cottonwood, aspen, birch, willow, and alder, as the decid-
uous-leaved species. The reference to fir and hemlock,
as occurring in the Yukon district, made by W. C. Green-
field in the Census volume of 1890, is probably an error.
So probably is Dr. C. W. Hayes’ in error, when, in
contrasting the vegetation of the Yukon with that of
the coast, he says: “This contrast consists more in
the amount of vegetation than in the difference of
species.”
The account in the ninth volume of the Tenth Census
of the ‘Northern Forest of the Pacific Region’ (p. 7) is
extremely vague, and in the light of newer information,
faulty; but it attempts at least to designate the species
found. The statement is as follows:
“The white spruce,’ the most important and most north-
ern species of the North Atlantic region, is here also the
most important species. It attains a considerable size as
far north as the sixty-fifth degree, forming in the valley
of the Yukon, forests of no little local importance. The
canoe-birch,’ the balsam poplar,‘ and the aspen,° familiar
1 Nat. Geog. Mag., Vol. IV., p. 136, 1892.
* Picea canadensis (Mill.) B.S.P.
* Betula papyrifera Marsh.
*Populus balsamifera Linn.
5 Populus tremuloides Michx.
240 FERNOW
trees of the North Atlantic region, also occur here. The
gray pine and the balsam fir of the Atlantic region are
replaced by allied forms of the same genera. The larch
alone, of the denizens of the extreme northern forest of
the Atlantic coast, finds no congener here in the northern
Pacific forest.”
These determinations of species we may accept for the
spruce, birch, poplar and aspen of the interior forest flora
of Alaska, but the occurrence of pine and fir seems very
doubtful, although Pinus contorta approaches the boun-
dary from the British possessions, and Adzes lastocarpa
was found at the top of White Pass and may be found at
timber-line elsewhere in the interior.
From the accounts of all explorers, it appears that the
interior is in general an open plateau, hill, and mountain
country, mostly moss-covered and devoid of trees; but with
scattered more or less open groves on the lower hill slopes
and ridges, and in some of the valleys (White River
basin’), the trees usually crowding together more densely
along the banks of rivers and lakes and covering with
dense thickets the many islands in the rivers. In some
localities the heads of all the streams are surrounded by
timber; Lieut. Henry T. Allen reports that his camp on
the Tozikakat River’ “was in a grove of larger timber
than any seen since leaving the Yukon; one tree was
nearly two feet in diameter”; and at another place he
mentions the use of aspruce for a bridge over a river forty
feet in width.
While the trees are mostly short, poorly developed,
dwarfed, and standing in open positions, in consequence
of which the timber is knotty and checked by frost, these
groves occasionally assume a real forest character and
contain trees developed to good size. Local conditions
of soil, and of shelter from the winds, seem to be largely
1Allen: Reconnaissance in Alaska, 1887.
THE INTERIOR FOREST 241
influential in this difference of development. The follow-
ing statement is from the Eleventh Census:
“ The whole Nushagak River valley, including Tikchik
River and Lake, is densely wooded with trees not more
than a foot in diameter, until the distance from the coast
and intervening natural obstacles protect the vegetation
from the blighting ice-laden Siberian storms, which,
though not so low in temperature as the interior blizzards,
are yet by far more dangerous, on account of their humid-
ity, to animal and vegetable life. Then the diameter of
the trees and the density of the primeval forest increase
rapidly, so that on the Mulchatna and the Kokhtuli (For-
est) Rivers exceptionally large trees may be found in
number. On my last winter’s exploring journey I meas-
ured in a Kokhtuli spruce grove nine trees, each of which
was over three feet in diameter.”
In Norton Bay, within a quarter of a mile of the sea,
groves of spruce grow thickly, but the height of the trees
never exceeds forty feet, and the diameter from six to ten
inches; and along the banks of the Tanana River Lieu-
tenant Allen reports that most of the spruce range from
three to eight inches in diameter. This dwarfed condition
may in some parts be accounted for by altitude.
In mountainous parts, as is well known, dwarfed trees
occur at high elevations. In this connection it is inter-
esting to note that the altitude of timber-line is higher in
the interior than on the coast. On the coast it varies from
1,800 to 2,400 feet, while in the interior it has been found
as high as 4,000 feet. And even in latitude 68° N., J. H.
Turner,’ who made a journey northward along the bound-
ary line from Rampart House on Porcupine River, found,
at an altitude of 2,500 feet and “ extending eastward to the
furthest horizon, a plain, covered with a dense growth of
Eleventh Census: Population and Resources of Alaska, p. 92, 1893.
* National Geographic Magazine, Vol. IV, p. 196, 1893.
242 FERNOW
spruce, birch, and cottonwood—a veritable oasis in the
midst of utter desolation.”
While certain mountains may limit the southern bound-
ary of this interior forest region, the western limit of tree
growth follows a line between the 161st and 163d degrees
of longitude, from Nushagak River to Golofnin Bay in
Norton Sound, then turning northeasterly to the Keewalik
River and the hills to the west of Noatak River and (at
about the 67th degree of latitude) changing to eastward
and following the watershed of the Kowak River to its
headwaters, when it assumes the northeasterly direction
of the Endicott Mountains along the watershed of the
Colville River to the low mountain ranges which skirt the
Arctic Ocean within twenty-five miles of the coast, as far
east as the Mackenzie River, where, between the 69th
and yoth degrees of north latitude, the northernmost
tree growth occurs. Timber is said to abound on the
dividing ridges of the interior, between Colville River
and the British possessions.’
The open and stunted character of the tree growth,
which is so general, may be in part a result of the com-
paratively dry climate—for this region, while blessed
with an abundant snowfall (eight to fifteen feet), suffers
from droughty summers (rainfall about thirteen inches).
In summer the temperature is said to exceed 112° Fahr.
in the shade, while in winter it has been known to fall to
—6o° and lower, a range of over 170 degrees. The dis-
tribution of forest areas is probably also largely influenced
by soil or drainage conditions: “The entire face of the
country is covered with a heavy growth of moss and
lichens, nearly as thoroughly saturated as a wet sponge,
which remains soggy and cold until late into summer, and
even on slopes the water drains off but slowly, while a
1H. D. Woolfe, in Eleventh Census: Population and resources of Alaska,
P- 134, 1893.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
SCRUB PINE IN BOG NEAR WRANGELL
q
Ne
e
ALASKA FORESTS 243
few inches below this cover is a bed of rock or ice or
frozen ground which thaws only for a foot or two in sum-
mer and prevents the water from sinking.” The oppor-
tunities for tree seeds to sprout are, therefore, found only
here and there on the better drained slopes and on the
alluvial sands of river bottoms and islands.
The lowlands which skirt Bering Sea and the Arctic
Ocean exhibit this inimical condition of soil, which is
sufficient to explain the absence of tree growth; but here
additional causes may be found in the absence of protec-
tion from the icy winter blasts, and perhaps in a defi-
ciency of summer rains, for, although the atmosphere is
humid, the low tundras furnish no causes for condensation.
The peculiarity which seems in general to characterize
the Arctic flora, namely, the appearance of species in
groups or islands, attaches also to the forest cover, for the
forest is not always mixed, but groves of one species by
itself are frequent. Numerically the spruce would appear
the commonest, the birch the rarest tree.
The economic importance of these limited forest areas
is growing with the development of the mining industry.
Not only must the scanty resources be drawn upon for
fuel to keep the houses warm, and to run the steamboats
and machinery, but the advantageous working of the
placers requires the use of fire in thawing the frozen
ground. Yet the usual carelessness and recklessness
which characterize pioneering has already shown itself
in the destruction of considerable areas by fire. It is said
that around Lake Lindeman, nearly all the timber is
burned off, none suitable for boat. building being left.
Lieutenant Allen reports burnt spruce in various lo-
calities and speaks of the “heavy smoke caused by the
extensive timber fires which obscured the sun the entire
day.” In this case it was the signal fires of the Indians
which were the cause.
244 FERNOW
THE COAST FOREST.
Entirely different in composition, manner of distribu-
tion, and development is the coast forest—a result of the
widely different character of the climate it enjoys.
This forest is an extension of the coast forest of Wash-
ington and British Columbia, but as it pushes northward it
gradually loses some of its species and deteriorates in indi-
vidual development. It covers the many islands of the
Alexander Archipelago and the panhandle alongthe main
coast as far as the head of Lynn Canal (only the steeper
and higher slopes remaining bare) and skirts the shore from
Cape Spencer westward with a narrow belt, rarely over
ten miles in width, along the foot of the snowy Fair-
weather and Mount St. Elias ranges, following up the
valley of the Copper River, surrounding the shores of
Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet, covering Afognak,
Spruce, and other neighboring islands, and coming to a
rather abrupt termination on the north shore of Kadiak
Island. Here groves of spruce are restricted to the
lower shore lands and sheltered localities. Ugak Bay on
the east, and Cape Uganuk on the west side of the island,
are the farthest western and southern points of forest
growth, Similar groves in similar situations occur on
the Alaska Peninsula around Kukak Bay.
There is some evidence that this western limit is not,
or may not remain, stable — that the spruce has wandered
in recent times, and may still wander. There is also evi-
dence that the treeless country beyond, made up of the
Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands, is not incapable
of growing trees.
An interesting evidence of the progress of the spruce
may be seen on Long Island, a few miles east of Kadiak,
where an extensive spruce grove has established itself
within the last century. Many trees had been freshly cut,
GRAPH BY GILBERT JOHN ANOREW & SON
East Coast OF VANCOUVER ISLAND
ALASKA FORESTS 245
and a count of the rings showed none older than ninety or
a hundred years, while on Kadiak and Wood Islands the
oldest growth was found to be between 125 and 150 years,
with some few rotten stumps possibly older. This difter-
ence in age of entire groves so near together allows the
inference that the older has furnished the seed for the
younger, and that the spruce has wandered from Kadiak
to Long Island.
This suggests another influential factor in the distribu-
tion of trees, namely the winds as carriers of seed: not
only the direction of the wind but the character of the
weather accompanying it influence this distribution. In
wet weather the cones close; it is only in dry weather that
they open and release the seed. To secure the southwest
extension of trees along the Alaska Peninsula, it would be
necessary that, after the ripening of the seeds and during
their release from the cones, which takes place gradually
through the winter, the winds should be dry and blow
from the north and east. But the contrary usually hap-
pens, for from September to May there is a constant suc-
cession of southeast and south winds, and the air is heavily
charged with mcisture. For this reason the spread of the
species is at least retarded, and only when, as may occa-
sionally happen, favorable wind direction at the right time
coincides with a seed year, is progress possible. That
seed production as far west as Kadiak can be most prolific
was evidenced by an enormous crop of cones which
ripened in 1898, turned brown, and remaining on the
branches in the summer of 1899, gave the trees at a dis-
tance the appearance of having been killed by fire. How
much of this seed is good and capable of germination, and
how often seed years occur could not be ascertained.
That trees can at least exist farther west, on the Aleu-
tian Islands, is proved by a few scattered spruces at
Unalaska, planted by a Russian priest in the year 1805.
246 FERNOW
One group of twelve and another of seven remain; the
trees are short and slowly grown, to be sure, but vigorous
and in good health, except where fire has damaged some
of them. At the time of our visit the largest measured
twenty-four inches, the smallest, six inches in diameter,
while all were of the same height, twenty-five to thirty
feet. The trees had been fruiting heavily the year before,
and two smaller ones at a distance were undoubtedly the
result of an earlier seed year. Evidently the chances of
natural propagation in competition with the heavy growth
of grass and weeds, with a late spring, short summer, and
cold winds are small, even if ample sources of seed sup-
ply were within reach.
The even tempered, moist climate which the islands of
the Alexander Archipelago and the western and southern
coasts enjoy, accounts for their luxuriant forest cover of
conifers. Luxuriance, however, is a relative term, for
while undoubtedly the vegetation, including the under-
shrubs and moss which cover the ground, is rank, the de-
velopment of the trees, as we shall see further on, is by no
means comparable with the matchless growth around
Puget Sound, nor is the variety of species as great.
The Alaska forest lacks the most important timber of
the Pacific coast, the red fir or Douglas spruce (Pseu-
dotsuga taxtfolia) whose northernmost specimens were
observed on Princess Royal Island. It lacks the pines,
with the exception of the inferior Pinus contorta, which
here and there occupies swampy and dry, gravelly situa-
tions. None of the magnificent firs of the Sierra and Coast
ranges are to be met, the northernmost specimens of
Abies amadbilis, usually a tree of high elevations, being
found on Lowe Inlet, at the very shore, though still in
superior form. The small Adzes lastocarpa in dwarfed
specimens, remains the only timber-line tree at White
Pass, which it has reached, perhaps, from the interior.
—o
“THE FOREST: UNALASKA.
(ONLY TREES ON ALEUTIAN ISLANOS ARE AT UNALASKA
THESE WERE PLANTED EARLY IN THE CENTURY.)
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
TREES ON KADIAK ISLAND
THE COAST FOREST 247
The giant arborvite or red cedar (Thuja plicata), to
be sure, enters this territory, but only in small numbers,
and is soon lost, not occurring farther north than Prince
of Wales Island, although on the inside passage it was
observed at Wrangell.
The Alaska or yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootka-
tensis), which in Sargent’s Silva is reported not farther
west than Yakutat Bay, appears to exist in a few isolated
localities on Prince William Sound. The stations were
not actually visited, but evidence of their existence was
found in the wood and bark used in buildings of an Aleut
village at the foot of Copper Mountain, and also in the
information furnished by traders that limited numbers of
this species are to be found on Hawkins Island, six or
seven miles from Orca, on Glacier Island, opposite Co-
lumbia Glacier, and in a few other confined localities.
This tree, although deriving its name from the country, is
really only sparingly represented in localized aggrega-
tions or clumps, occupying especially southern mountain
slopes from the shore to the very tops. It furnishes the
beautiful, fine-grained, yellow-tinted wood which the
Indians use for their carvings, totem poles, paddles, and
so on. The Oregon alder (Alnus oregona) was found
abundantly as far as the foot of La Perouse Glacier, a little
south of Mt. Fairweather, but was entirely absent at
Yakutat Bay and farther west.
Excepting, then, the more or less sporadic occurrence
of species mentioned, the composition of the forest is
simple indeed, for the bulk is made up of a mixture of two
species, the tideland or Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis)
and the coast hemlock ( 7suga heterophylla), to which
may be added, near timber-line and farther west on the
lower levels, the interesting and beautiful Alpine hemlock
(Tsuga mertensiana).
Numerically, the coast hemlock seems to be the most
248 FERNOW
common species, forming usually from 70 to 80 percent
of the mixture, the spruce only occasionally preponderat-
ing, especially along water courses and on newly forested
moraines, until the western limit of the hemlock is
reached at Prince William Sound. Even here the hem-
lock remains a prominent component. Farther west,
however, the spruce alone continues to form forests or
open groves, as on the shores of Cook Inlet and Kadiak
Island.
This sombre mixed forest of hemlock and spruce covers
with a more or less dense stand the slopes of the moun-
tainous islands and the shores of the Archipelago up to
timber-line, which varies from 1,800 to 2,400 feet near the
shore, but towards the inte-
rior gradually ascends with
the snow-line in protected
inland passes, like Taku
Pass, to over 5,000 feet.’
The stand is usually not
so dense as would be desir-
able to make the clean, long
boles which furnish the best
logs. Indeed, while individ-
ual development reminds us
occasionally of the giants of
the Puget Sound country,
while spruces six feet in
diameter and 175 feet in
height were found at Sitka,
and while even as far west
wad est is as Prince William Sound
diameters of over five feet with heights of 150 feet
were measured, the branchy trunks offer little induce-
ment to the lumberman. Only in some favored situations
1C, W. Hayes, in National Geographic Magazine, Vol. IV, p. 137, 1892.
ee
=
uw
- ee.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
INDIAN RIVER
THE COAST FOREST 249
is the growth denser, the boles less tapering and cleaner
of branches, and less knotty.
This generally undesirable development, due to open
stand, is probably caused less by climate than by soil.
The soil overlying the rocks of the rugged slopes is
scanty, and becomes more and more so as we go
north, until finally only the muck of decayed moss and
other vegetation furnishes a foothold for the trees. In
consequence, fallen timber frequently makes travel im-
possible.
The underbrush and lower vegetation is often dense
and luxuriant, comprising species of Vaccinium, Rubus,
Ribes, Menziesia and the spiny Echinopanax horridum,
which was found as far north as Point Gustavus in Glacier
Bay. A heavy cover of moss hides the mucky soil, which
is wet probably all the year.
Now and then swamps occur, which, so far as tree
growth is concerned, show only dwarfed specimens of
Pinus contorta, or possibly of hemlocks. Along the shores
and in the river bottoms deciduous trees and shrubs
relieve the monotony of the evergreens, among which
occasional clumps of Pyrus rivularis, Sambucus pubens,
Sorbus sambucifolia, and Viburnum pauciflorum and in
the lower latitudes Oregon alder are observed. Cot-
tonwoods (Populus trichocarpa and balsamifera) form
groves on the flats as far west as Kadiak Island, and wil-
lows, shrubby and in tree form (Salix sitchensis and alax-
ensis), fringe the water courses; and whatever other
space is left open, high or low, wet or dry, is at once oc-
cupied by the ubiquitous shrubby alder (Alnus sinuata)
with its many stout stems forming impenetrable thickets.
One of the most interesting examples of the evolution
of a forest growth in progress, which the writer had the
opportunity to study, was found in Glacier Bay. The
peninsula known as Point Gustavus which juts out from
250 FERNOW
the mainland about twenty miles below Muir Glacier is
formed by the moraines of the receding glacier, old
enough to be diversified into a maze of hills and valleys,
the top varying from dry, coarse gravel to pure sand and
finer silt towards the point. The interior portions, mostly
in the nature of sand dunes cut through by low, swampy
places and occasional clear rivulets, are more or less
without vegetation, at least without forest growth, except
on the compacter gravels, where Pinus contorta has
established itself in open growth.
Along the shores, however, is a belt of varying width,
consisting of a dense growth of spruce with an occasional
and poorly developed hemlock ( 7suga heterophylla) or
balsam poplar, while the shrubby alder and willows occupy
ravines and draws, and line the skirts of the spruce forest.
The soil under the spruces is densely covered with a
heavy carpet of mosses among which three or four species
are prominent, with the pretty Zzstera, the constant com-
panion of the shady spruce, and a Pyrola which grows
in the darkest corners, while a Vaccinium and the brake
(Pteris aguilina) occupy the more open places. Be-
sides these, species of Azbes, Viburnum, Sambucus,
Streptopus, Lycopodium, Aruncus, and the prickly
Echinopanax are present.
This spruce forest, as can be readily ascertained by
counting the internodes and the annual rings of a few cut
trees, is all between forty and fifty years old. The largest
trees are as much as thirty-six inches in diameter and
eighty feet in height, showing the remarkable rapidity of
growth which characterizes the tideland spruce.
The history of the evolution of this forest and of the
recovery of the ground by vegetation is written in clear
language. First the rough gravel of the moraine was
colonized by the prostrate willows and the Eguisetum
and E£fzlobium that grow on the moraine in front of
JOHN ANDREW & SON
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS
RESURRECTED FOREST NEAR MUIR GLACIER
THE COAST FOREST 251
Muir Glacier; with these soon appeared the ubiquitous
shrubby alder (Alnus sinuata) and the feather-seeded
balm of Gilead, which, as they grew in height, crowded out
the light-needing willows; then, some forty or fifty years
ago, a good seed year occurred in some neighboring forest
on the mainland, together with favorable wind conditions,
and at least the margin of the thicket of alders and
cottonwoods was sown to spruce. This shade-enduring,
yet rapid-growing and persistent species soon attained the
height of the low alders and shut in and finally killed the
light-needing cottonwoods, leaving only their dead and
decaying stumps and trunks as witnesses of their former
occupancy of the soil. Here and there a cottonwood has
persisted with its crown still in the sunlight—a tall,
slender pole, clean of branches— showing in the narrow
rings of the last years’ growth that it is doomed soon to
succumb to its stronger neighbor.
Meanwhile, this fringe of spruces forms an effectual
barrier to the dissemination of seeds in the interior from
outside sources and the light-needing species already
there will remain in undisturbed possession until the
spruces of the Point itself begin to bear seed freely;
finally, however, they must succumb to the more persist-
ent and shade-enduring spruce and hemlock, except where
soil conditions are too unfavorable for these species. Yet,
after their dominion is established, should the glacier
again advance, the same catastrophe may overcome the
victors as is revealed near Muir Glacier, in the uncover-
ing of a buried forest, established uncounted ages ago at
a different stage of glacial development—a catastrophe,
the possibility of which is exemplified in many places,
where the push moraines are crowding upon the forest.
Of the many other interesting observations on local dis-
tribution and the relation of tree growth to soil, only two
may be noted. The first refers to the presence of trees
252 FERNOW
in close proximity to some of the great glaciers, showing
an astonishing indifference to the influence of the near-by
ice masses. Not only do the trees, wherever soil con-
ditions permit, grow close to the icy river, attaining (as
a measurement within one hundred yards of LaPerouse
Glacier showed) diameters of five feet and heights of
150 feet, but in places they even encroach upon the icy
field, when this has come to rest and has a scanty cover
of soil from the moraine material, upon which vegeta-
tion can establish itself. Thus, at the foot of Lucia Gla-
cier, on Yakutat Bay, the stream which runs in a wild
torrent from the glacier has cut a veritable canyon’ through
the ice, exposing an ice bank over one hundred feet in
height. This ice is overlaid with moraine material a
foot or more in depth, and this is sufficient to support a
dense cover, not only of herbaceous, but of woody vege-
tation—a thicket of the ever-present alder, with occa-
sional willows; and even spruces do not find the substratum
too cold. As the ice melts at the border, the soil and its
occupants may be seen from time to time tumbling down
into the stream, or else into the deep potholes with which
we find this ice plateau amply provided.
The other observation which I desire to record refers to
an example of the substitution of soil conditions for cli-
matic conditions.
The beautiful Alpine hemlock ( 7suga mertensiana),
the embodiment of unyielding perseverance, is par exced-
lence the tree at timber-line throughout the Cascade and
Sierra Nevada ranges; we do not expect to find it except
in the humid-cold atmosphere of high elevations, battling
with the storms in ice and snow. That single specimens
should occasionally find their way down among the vegeta-
tion of lower levels, as at Hot Springs, near Sitka, does
1See I. C. Russell’s full description in National Geographic Magazine, Vol.
Ill, pp. 176-185, 1891.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
FOREST OVERTURNED BY COLUMBIA GLACIER
ALASKA FORESTS 253
not astonish us; but when, as in Prince William Sound, it
becomes, as observed in some localities, the prominent tree
at the seashore, supplanting the coast hemlock, we look
for an explanation other than accident, especially as the
coast hemlock is by no means absent from the slopes, nor
the Alpine hemlock from the timber limit, which is here
above 2,200 feet. At Gladhough Bay as usual the typical
spruce and coast hemlock forest covers the slopes, and at
the timber-line, as usual, the Alpine hemlock first sup-
plants the coast hemlock and then becomes sole ruler.
But at the base, near the seashore, is found an interesting
feature in the openings occupied by sloping bogs, in which
the water stands in pools and only slowly drains through
the heavy moss and grass cover to the sea level. The
character of this ground may appear from the enumera-
tion of a few of the most common plants: among Car7-
ces, Juncus, and Eguisetum we find Menyanthes trifoli-
ata and cristagalli, Geum calthiflorum, and Phyllodoce
glandulifiora, besides Drosera, Iris, Dodecatheon, and
Myrica gale, the latter being the most common shrub.
In this wet, cold soil, the Alpine hemlock evidently has
an advantage over its congener, which, although not en-
tirely absent, shows in its development its antipathy to
this kind of feeding ground.
ECONOMIC ASPECTS.
This forest of Alaska has often been referred to as a
great resource of wood materials, on which the people of
the United States could fall back when the virgin supplies
of the home country might become exhausted, and glow-
ing accounts of the magnificence of this reserve have been
given. As has been pointed out, this forest growth occu-
pies a considerable area, probably not less than twenty to
thirty thousand square miles, but it is of a character which
makes the prospect of reliance upon its stores by no means
254 FERNOW
cheerful; for, while in certain favored spots good enough
material can be secured, most of this material is not of a
superior quality,and the larger portion of the area does
not contain trees fit for lumber.
Leaving out of consideration the two cedars, which are
found only in limited quantities and will soon be exhausted,
the other two species, spruce and hemlock, are, by their
nature, not capable of furnishing high class lumber. The
hemlock furnishes a material which would answer very
well for house-finishing purposes, but it is objected to be-
cause it is difficult to work and has the bad reputation of
its eastern congener, which the writer believes it does not
deserve. Enormous quantities, too, of far superior de-
velopment are now going to waste in the forests around
Puget Sound, because its value is not known or appre-
ciated in the market. Thespruce, being a rapidly-grown,
coarse-grained wood, even where it is best developed on
the Oregon coast, makes indifferent lumber, fit only for
packing cases, boxes, and common building material, un-
desirable as long as better material can be had.
In addition to the small value of these woods and their
comparatively unsatisfactory development, the conditions
under which lumbering on the rugged slopes would have
to be carried on are extremely difficult; add to these de-
tractions the distance from market, and we may readily
see the reasons why this reserve will, for an indefinite
time, be left untouched except for local use.
So unfavorable is the combination of conditions, natural
and economic, at present, that it pays to import lumber
from the Puget Sound country or other points of the lower
coast. The builders of the Yukon and White Pass railroad
across White Pass found it to their advantage to import
the railroad ties, as well as all trestle and bridge timbers,
although the road passes through a forested country; and
even the timber used in the cannery establishment at Orca,
RATE OF GROWTH OF SITKA SPRUCE 255
on Prince William Sound, as well as for other such estab-
lishments, is brought by vessel, a sawmill established in
the neighborhood being unable to compete. There are,
nevertheless, a number of sawmills at intervals along the
coast supplying local needs, notably at Sitka, Metlakahtla,
Wrangell, and Douglas City.
That the value of this forest resource must increase
with the development of the country and with the increase
of local needs allows of no doubt; as a field of exploita-
tion under present economic conditions, however, it does
not, in the belief of the writer, offer any inducements, un-
less it be that the spruce could be turned into paper pulp,
a good felting fiber being probably insured by the rapid
growth which is found at least in the Archipelago.
Farther north and west the rate of growth diminishes con-
siderably. In various localities a few measurements were
made, which will exhibit the rate of growth.
At Sitka, several large spruce trees, freshly felled,
showed a height of 175 feet and a diameter of 6 feet, with
ages varying between 400 and 500 years.
At Prince William Sound, a number of logs gave the
following measurements:
50 annual rings, 11 inches,
Taw, “ 12 to 15 inches,
so, “. 20inches,
fac «“ 22 inches,
which would indicate a rate of about five years to the inch
of diameter, a rather slow growth for this species.
At Kadiak, at the western limit of tree growth, the rate
appeared more rapid; the heights, to be sure, were reduced,
but the diameters still made a very fair showing, although
variations in width of annual rings greater than usual with
trees grown in such open position were apparent. Trees
50 to 60 years old showed diameters of 12 to 15 inches and
256 FERNOW
heights of 45 to 55 feet; trees 70 to go years old exhibited
diameters of 18 to 27 inches; trees too to 150 years old
varied between 20 and 36 inches and showed heights up
to 120 feet. The largest trees found, without chance of
ascertaining their age, were 45 inches in diameter and 120
feet in height.
From natural dangers these forests do not appear to suf-
fer much. Of insect damage little was noticed. The hu-
midity of the atmosphere and soil furnishes, no doubt, con-
siderable protection against fire, the greatest enemy of the
American forests; nevertheless, there are evidences that it
cannot be kept out entirely. Avalanches, here and there,
have ploughed through the forest slopes to the water’s
edge, and the hot ashes of Iliamna Volcano, near Cook
Inlet, are credited with the destruction of a considerable
area of spruce forest.
0D My Buarquequy “tT
» remo yy 49 Suruieg
GENERAL GEOGRAPHY
BY HENRY GANNETT
™, =a1LASKA, our northernmost possession, ex-
i tends over more than 20 degrees of latitude
a and 45 degrees of longitude — as far as from
=} Florida to Maine and from Maine to Utah.’
From the main body of the territory stretch two projec-
tions, one to the southeast, comprising the Alexander
Archipelago and the adjacent mainland, the other to the
southwest, comprising the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleu-
tian Islands.
The exact area of Alaska cannot at present be known,
owing to the fact that the boundaries are as yet located
only approximately. The seacoast, which forms by far
the greater part of the boundary, has not been accu-
rately mapped, except in small part, while the land boun-
dary on the southeast, which separates our territory from
Canada, has not been defined, except in the general terms
of the treaty of cession from Russia. Various measure-
ments have been made, based upon different maps, giving
areas ranging from 570,000 to 600,000 square miles. A
careful recent measurement from the large map published
"It lies between latitudes 51° and 71° 30’, extending 5 degrees within the
Arctic Circle, and stretches from longitude 130° to 175°. The great body of the
territory lies, however, between latitudes 60° and 71° 30’, and between longitudes
141° and 168°.
( 257)
258 GANNETT
by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (scale 1: 1,200,-
000) gives its area as 590,884 square miles. Of this the
portion lying east of the 141st meridian, popularly known
as southeastern Alaska, which is the best known part of
the territory, has an area of 43,710 square miles, of which
30,800 square miles consist of mainland and 12,910 square
miles of islands, forming what is known as the Alexander
Archipelago.
The Cordillera of North America enters Alaska at its
southeastern extremity and follows the Pacific coast around
to the Aleutian Islands. Beyond this mountain system,
and following its general trend, is a broad depression,
drained by the Yukon River and its tributaries. North
of this basin is a height of land which separates the
Yukon valley from the bleak shores of the Arctic Ocean.
THE PACIFIC COAST REGION.
This portion of the territory is mountainous throughout,
Although the coast of the mainland and of the islands is,
all together, several thousand miles in length, yet for the
entire distance there are very few square miles of level
ground. The land rises from the water almost every-
where at steep angles, without a sign of beach, to alti-
tudes of thousands of feet. It is a fiord coast. The
islands are separated from one another and from the main-
land by fiords, deep gorges whose bottoms are in some
cases thousands of feet below the surface of the water.
These fiords extend far up into the mainland and into the
islands, in deep, narrow U-shaped inlets.
The relief features of this region, its mountains and its
gorges partly filled by the sea, are all of glacial origin,
presenting everywhere the familiar handwriting of ice.
Every canyon, every water passage, whether called strait,
canal, or bay, is a U-shaped gorge, and its branches are
similar gorges, commonly at higher levels — ‘hanging
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS
A HANGING VALLEY; FRAZER REACH
GEOGRAPHY 259
valleys’ they have been called. Above the cliffs of the
gorges the mountains rise by gentle slopes to the base of
the peaks. The cross profile of each gorge and its sur-
roundings is that of ice, not of water carving. It is the
work of channel erosion, not of valley erosion, and the
channels were filled with ice. It is a colossal exhibition
of the eroding power of water in solid form. From Lynn
Canal, a fiord ninety miles in length, there have been car-
ried off and dumped into the Pacific more than 200 cubic
miles of rock, and from all the fiords of southeastern Alaska
the amount removed may be safely estimated at thousands
of cubic miles. The ice has but recently retreated from
these gorges, for since its retreat water has done but little
work, although the region is one of heavy rainfall and ex-
tremely steep slopes, where aqueous erosion is at a maxi-
mum.
Of the great glaciers which occupied this region a short
time ago, only trifling fragments remain in the upper ends
of the gorges, and comparatively few now reach the sea.
I use the word trifling, however, merely in relation to their
former extent, for absolutely these remnants are not at
all trifling. The ice cap of Greenland and the glaciers
of the Antarctic continent alone exceed them in magni-
tude. All the glaciers of Switzerland together would
form but a few rivulets of ice on the surface of the great
Muir Glacier, and the Muir is but one of many glaciers
of equal magnitude. Indeed, on this coast are scores of
live glaciers, glaciers which reach the sea, presenting to
it fronts of ice or ice walls rising from the sea bottom to
200 or 300 feet above its surface, and several miles in
length, and which drop bergs, with thundering sound,
into the sea. Of such glaciers about thirty were visited
by the Harriman Expedition, and others are known. Of
dead glaciers, or those whose fronts do not reach the sea,
hundreds are known.
260 GANNETT
The mountains increase in height toward the northwest,
but not at a uniform rate. They culminate near the coast
in the Fairweather Range, south of Yakutat Bay, at about
16,000 feet, and in the St. Elias Range, west of Yakutat
Bay, at 18,000 feet or more. These ranges are not regular
or continuous. While they follow the general direction
of the coast, toward the northwest, they are extremely
broken, being cut through on the mainland by many fiords
and by streams flowing into the heads of the fiords. The
Stikine, which reaches the coast near Wrangell, heads far
to the eastward, in Canada, and cuts across the entire
breadth of the Cordillera system. The same is true of
the Taku River, which, flowing through Taku Inlet,
reaches the coast near Juneau; and of the Chilkat, which
flows into one of the heads of Lynn Canal. Alsek River
heads far to the north, in Canada, and cuts a gorge through
the great Fairweather Range. These are the main rivers
of this coast, but there are many smaller ones, which head
either beyond the mountains to the north and east, or far
within them.
The coast line from Cross Sound northwestward to
Prince William Sound is comparatively smooth and sim-
ple, containing no inlet of magnitude, with the exception
of Yakutat Bay. As far as Yakutat Bay it is closely bor-
dered by the Fairweather Range, which rises abruptly
from 10,000 to 16,000 feet almost from the water’s edge,
bearing on the summit a succession of peaks and covered
with glaciers along both slopes. A day long to be re-
membered was that on which our ship steamed, between
8 o’clock in the morning and 6 in the afternoon, from
Yakutat Bay to Cross Sound, along the entire front of this
range, which was outlined against a cloudless sky.
Yakutat Bay is a deep funnel-shaped bay, penetrating
far into the heart of the mountain region. At its apparent
head it turns sharply upon itself to the south and extends
a | on
CARON A
—
PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRIMAN JOHN ANOREW & SON
RUSSELL Frorp
GEOGRAPHY 261
‘back nearly to the sea in a narrow fiord, bordered on
either side by high mountain walls. This extension, here-
tofore named Disenchantment Bay, has been rechristened.
The story of the locality is as follows: More than a cen-
tury ago Malaspina, the Spanish navigator, entered Yakutat
Bay while in search of the Northwest Passage. Sailing
on up the bay and finding that open water extended far
inland, he for a time thought that for him had been reserved
~ the fame and satisfaction of discovering the long-sought
route through the North American continent. His dream
was short, however, for on nearing the bend in the bay he
found his way blocked by a solid wall of ice. This ice
was the front of the combined Hubbard and Turner gla-
ciers, which then extended far beyond their present limits,
completely closing the entrance to the fiord above, which
at that time was probably an open lake some 200 feet
above the level of the sea, and overflowing southward into
the Pacific. In memory of his disappointment, Malaspina
named the upper part of Yakutat Bay ‘ Disenchantment
Bay.’
Prof. I. C. Russell, when exploring the head of the
bay in 1891, discovered the fiord, and in an open boat
traversed it for its entire length. Instead of naming it,
he extended the application of the name Disenchantment
Bay to cover it. We have rechristened it, in honor of its
discoverer and first explorer, Russell Fiord. Our ship,
the George W. Elder, was the first large vessel to go to
the head of this fiord. We made the passage under the
pilotage of a Yakutat Indian and lay at anchor over night
at its head.
Northwest of Yakutat Bay for many miles the shore is
covered by a field of ice, Malaspina Glacier, which is in
the main a stagnant pool, wasting only under the heat of
the summer sun, and supplied by ice streams from the
St. Elias Alps, which border it on the north and east.
262 GANNETT
Farther to the northwest stretches a low coast, rising into
mountains a score or two of miles inland. Through these
mountains flows Copper River, at whose mouth is an
enormous delta, built up of detritus which it brings down
from the interior.
Then comes Prince William Sound, a bay of irregular
shape, with many tentacle-like fiords extending in various
directions into the land. Its entrance is nearly closed by
islands between which are several navigable passages.
The islands near the shores are everywhere mountainous,
and on the north shore mountains rise to about 10,000
feet, the higher ones everywhere skirted with glaciers,
many of which come down into the sea. Several of the
fiords are of great length, reaching far inland. Thus Port
Valdez, up which the Copper River route to the interior
passes, extends inland more than thirty miles, and Port
Wells, on the northwest of Prince William Sound, pushes
forty miles into the interior, far up among the high moun-
tains, and each of its branches terminates in a living gla-
cier. Passage Canal, too, up which runs the portage route
to Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, has a length of thirty miles.
Prince William Sound, in the mountainous character of
its shores, in its multitude of islands and fiords, and in the
almost total absence of level land, resembles southeastern
Alaska. It was, until recently, but little known, all our
information concerning it being derived from the explo-
rations of Vancouver and Malaspina, made a century or
more ago. Within the past two years, however (1898
and 1899), exploring parties under Captain Abercrombie
and Captain Glenn have supplemented the work of Van-
couver and Malaspina, and have added materially to our
knowledge of the coast and adjacent lands. Some addi-
tional information also was gained by the Harriman Expe-
dition, especially concerning Columbia Fiord and Glacier,
and of Port Wells and its glaciers, in the form of sketch
PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRIMAN JOHN ANDREW & SON
HARRIMAN GLACIER
HEAD oF HARRIMAN FIORD
GEOGRAPHY 263
maps and photographs of these localities. The head of
Port Wells and a large branch coming in from the west
were explored and mapped. This western branch, shown
on the sketch map as Harriman Fiord, was in all prob-
ability closed at no very remote time by the front of
Barry Glacier, which extended across the fiord to the op-
posite shore; indeed, until our visit, it was still supposed
to be closed. In bringing our ship close to the glacier
front to obtain photographs of it, our party discovered
the opening between its point and the land, and as we
steamed through we saw unfolded before us a magnificent
vista of mountain and glacier.
‘6 We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.”
It was sunset when we entered the portals, and through
the long twilight of the Arctic evening, we passed up the
fiord with mile-high mountains and great glaciers on
either hand. A little before midnight we reached its
head, where it is terminated by the front of Harriman
Glacier. A surveying party was landed there, and two
days were spent in making a reconnaissance of the fiord
and its surroundings. In this fiord, in a length of 15
miles, there are, besides a score of ‘ dead’ glaciers, five live
glaciers, four of them of the first magnitude, and all
reaching the sea and discharging bergs into it.
The general direction of the coast, which trends north-
west to a point beyond Mount Saint Elias, gradually
swings to the westward, and beyond Prince William
Sound turns toward the southwest in the Kenai Peninsula.
Beyond the end of this are mountainous islands, Afognak:
(594 square miles) and Kadiak (3,642 square miles) the
latter the largest island in Alaska waters. These continue
the line of Kenai Peninsula to the southwest, and are
separated by the waters of Cook Inlet and Shelikof Strait
264 GANNETT
from the Alaska Peninsula. This latter peninsula bears
the backbone of the mountain system which follows the
coast, the westward extension of the Cordillera. Of its
structure little is known, except that here and there are
upturned stratified beds and occasional volcanoes, some
extinct, others still smoking, as if the internal fires were
banked, but not extinguished. Among these are Redoubt,
Iliamna, St. Augustine (on an island near the coast),
Pavlof and many others. Beyond the west end of the
Alaska Peninsula its general direction is continued by
groups of islands and islets, as if the mountain range of
which it is composed were sunken below the sea and
only the summits of its peaks protruded above the waves.
These are the Aleutian Islands. Upon them also are
many volcanoes, some alive, some dormant.
BERING SEA.
Just north of the Aleutian Islands, which run in a broad
curve, convex southward, over ten degrees of longitude,
are two islands, Bogoslof and Grewinck. These are very
young, the older having come into being 104 years ago,
the other being but 17 years of age. Only half a genera-
tion ago it rose from the sea, with great fury and turmoil
of escaping steam, and although for 17 years its shores
have been bathed in the icy waters of Bering Sea and its
summit wrapped almost constantly in chilling fogs, it is
still hot and gives out steam. Its older brother has long
since cooled and is now the nesting place of millions of
birds, and the breeding ground of hundreds of sea-lions.
North of these rocks, far in the gloom of the eternal
fogs of Bering Sea, lie the Seal Islands or Pribilofs, St.
George and St. Paul, little islands of hills and gentle slopes
of tundra, clothed in summer with a rich mantle of grass
and flowers. Still farther north, in the midst of this
dreary sea, where the sun seldom shines, are St. Matthew
PHOTO BY MERRIAM GipBo
MT. PAVLOF, ALASKA PENINSULA
GEOGRAPHY 265
and Hall Islands, buttressed by cliffs, above which are
undulating slopes of tundra, grassy and gay with flowers;
and beyond them St. Lawrence, a mountain island fringed
by a boggy plain.
The Alaska coast of Bering Sea is mainly low and
marshy, rising very gently inland, and consisting al-
most entirely of tundra. The Yukon, the great river of
Alaska and one of the great rivers of the earth, ends its
long journey seaward in an enormous delta, which covers
thousands of square miles. Through this great area of
low, level land its distributaries meander sluggishly to the
sea, bringing from the interior mud and gold and drift-
wood, to be spread along the coast by the currents.
Such is the Alaska coast: where it faces the Pacific,
bold, rugged, and bordered throughout by a mountain
barrier; where it faces Bering Sea, low, tundra-clothed,
and affording easy access to the interior by means of its
great river.
THE INTERIOR.
Of the interior of Alaska we know much less than of
its borders. Not only did the early explorers confine
their attention almost entirely to its coasts, but the inhab-
itants, both natives and Europeans, owing to the difficul-
ties of land travel in the interior, have always lived upon
the coast or upon the larger streams, and have made their
journeys by the water routes. It is only in recent years
that definite geographic information concerning the interior
has been obtained, and at present, through the extensive
explorations carried on by the U. S. Geological Survey and
officers of the U. S. Army, such information is rapidly
increasing.
The primary slope of the land is toward the west and
southwest, as is indicated by the courses of the great
rivers of the Territory, the Yukon, Kuskokwim, Koyukuk,
and others. The trend of the mountain uplifts, on the
266 GANNETT
Pacific side, swings around from northwest to southwest,
thus following the general course of the coast. Of the
great features of the territory this chain forms the south-
ernmost, and is the key to the structure of the country.
Succeeding it on the north is the great valley of the Yukon,
which is separated from the Arctic coast by ranges of low
mountains and broken country probably nowhere exceed-
ing 5,000 or 6,000 feet in altitude.
The Cordillera attains its greatest breadth and altitude
between longitudes 142° and 152°. Here are many sum-
mits reputed to exceed 12,000 feet in height, with Mount
Wrangell, said to be 17,500 feet, and Mount McKinley,’
so far as known the highest summit on the North Amer-
ican continent, rising to an altitude of 20,464 feet. In
this portion of the mountain system are the sources of
many large rivers, the White, a branch of the Yukon, the
Copper, well named on account of the enormous deposits
of copper ore found near it, the Sushitna, flowing into the
head of Cook Inlet, the Tanana, another branch of the
Yukon, and finally the Kuskokwim, which, heading in the
western part of this group, flows southwest into Bering
Sea. Inthe region north of the Yukon valley originate
many streams, including several large branches of the
Yukon, as the Porcupine and Koyukuk; other streams,
as the Noatak and Kowak, flow into Kotzebue Sound,
and still others, as the Colville, flow northward into the
Arctic Ocean.
The country is intersected by a network of rivers and
lakes navigable for canoes, although navigation is much
interrupted by rapids and falls. The great highway of the
territory is the Yukon River, which, heading in British
Columbia, flows northwestward through a succession of
lakes and rapids, and crosses the boundary line in latitude
65°. It reaches its most northern point just on the Arc-
1 Latitude 63°, longitude 149°.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MERRIAM
MT. FAIRWEATHER Mr. Liruya
ALT. 15,292 Fr ALT. 11.832 Fr.
CLIMATE 267
tic Circle, in longitude 146°, and thence flows southwest-
ward to its mouth. It is navigable for small steamers
throughout its course in Alaska, and when not closed by
ice, that is, from June to October, carries much traffic,
since the greater part of the food, supplies, machinery and
other goods for the support of the mines in Alaska and
the Klondike come by this route.
North of the Yukon most of the land is permanently
frozen at a depth, thawing only near the surface in sum-
mer. Wherever the slopes are at all gentle such ground
is marshy, forming the well-known tundra of the Arctic
regions.
CLIMATE.
We must speak of the climates rather than the climate
of Alaska, for different parts of the Territory differ in
climate, not in degree only, but inkind. The Pacific coast
has a climate of its own, the coast of Bering Sea has an-
other, and both differ widely from that of the interior.
The climate of the Pacific coast, from Portland Canal in
the extreme southeast to Attu Island at the west end of
the Aleutian chain, may be characterized, in a word, as
‘chilly.’ Take the well-known climate of San Francisco
with its dampness, fogs, and cold sea winds, reduce the
temperature 15 to 18 degrees and increase the dampness
and fog in proportion, and you have a fair idea of the
climate of the Alaska Pacific coast. At Sitka, in latitude
57°, the mean annual temperature is 43° Fahr., which is
about the same as at Eastport, Maine, 12 degrees farther
south, The extreme range of temperature on record at
Sitka is from a trifle below zero Fahrenheit to go° above,
and the monthly mean temperatures range from 31° to 56°
only, illustrating the wonderfully uniform temperature of
the Pacific coast. At Kadiak, 16 degrees farther west
and a degree farther north, the mean temperature is 2°
268 GANNETT
lower and the extreme range of temperature less. At
Unalaska, 3 degrees south of Sitka, the mean temperature
is only 36° and the range of temperature is still smaller.
While the mean annual temperature on this coast,
whose latitude ranges from 54° to 60°, does not differ ma-
terially from that of Eastport, Maine, on the Atlantic coast
in latitude 45°, the summer temperature is much colder
and the winter temperature much warmer. The statement
has been made that it is no colder at Sitka than in
Georgia. I believe this to be true in the sense that the
minimum temperature is no lower, but it represents only
a part of the facts, and much the less important part. It
is also true that it is no warmer at Sitka than it is on the
Arctic Circle, that is, the maximum temperature is no
greater, and for most economic purposes except the mak-
ing of ice, it is warmth, not cold, that concerns us.
The annual rainfall is heavy over this entire coast. At
Sitka it is more than double that of the Atlantic coast, 105
inches a year being the record, and it diminishes but little
westward. At Unalaska the record is 92 inches. Rain
falls mainly in the autumn and winter, the summer being
comparatively dry.
A description of climate would be incomplete if it
did not include the amount of sunshine and cloudiness,
since these are important factors in the growth of plant
life. At Sitka it is cloudy two-thirds of the time, and
nearly half of the time it is raining or snowing. At
Kadiak the conditions are a little better; at Unalaska
they are worse, for Unalaska is unrivaled for bad weather.
Only eight days in the year, during several years of record,
were entirely clear, and only 45 partly clear, the remain-
ing 312 being cloudy, and 271 of those were rainy or
snowy.
Before attempting to explain these peculiarities of cli-
mate it should be stated that the sea commonly produces
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS
JOHN AND
ISLETS IN SITKA HARBOR
CLIMATE 269
two modifications of temperature. It may reduce the ex-
tremes, making the atmosphere cooler in summer and
warmer in winter, and it may reduce or increase the mean
annual temperature. The Pacific coast of Alaska is within
the range of the prevailing westerly winds of the North-
ern Hemisphere. These winds come off the ocean, bring-
ing to the coast the temperature of the sea. As the sea
absorbs heat slowly, in comparison with the land, and
parts with it as slowly, the winds blowing off it are cool
in summer and warm in winter. Moreover, since the
ocean has waves, tides, and currents, by which its waters
are moved about, the cold water of the north toward the
south, and the heated water of the tropics toward the north,
there is a tendency to establish an equilibrium of tem-
perature. Thus the northern seas are warmer on the
whole — that is, the mean annual temperature is higher —
than land in the same latitudes, and through the agency
of the westerly winds the coast shares in this amelioration
of temperature.
These same westerly winds are responsible for another
feature of the climate, the heavy rainfall. They come
from the sea saturated with moisture, and if they find the
land colder than they are, as it is in fall and winter, they
are chilled below the point of saturation and disgorge
copiously; but if they find the land warm, as it is in
summer, they carry their moisture inland and the coast
enjoys a comparatively dry season. This season is, how-
ever, dry only in comparison with the winter, the wet
season. The rainfall of the three winter months at Sitka
is commonly about 30 inches, while that of the three
summer months is 16 inches, or more than half that of
winter.
The fogs of this coast, really the most obtrusive feature
of the climate, occur whenever the wind blows from the
sea, which it does most of the time, evenin summer. For
270 GANNETT
obvious reasons they seldom or never occur with a land
breeze.
The coast of Bering Sea has a climate widely different
from that of the Pacific coast. The mean annual temper-
ature is much lower, even after due allowance for the dif-
ference in latitude. At St. Michael it is 26°, and at Port
Clarence, in Bering Strait, it is 20°. The range of tem-
perature is much greater. The mean temperature of the
coldest month at St. Michael is —2°, of the warmest month
54°, showing a range of 56°. Similarly, at Port Clarence
the coldest month is —11°, the warmest 50°, a range of
61°. The highest temperature on record at St. Michael
is 75°, the lowest —55°, a range of 130°. The contrast
with the Pacific coast is still greater in the matter of rain-
fall, which at St. Michael is very light, amounting to only
14 inches annually. Moreover, rain falls in the warm
rather than in the cold season.
The temperature of this coast is not much modified by
the sea. Bering Sea is practically a closed sea, the Aleu-
tian Islands forming a partial barrier against the warmer
waters of the Pacific; consequently its waters retain, to a
large extent at least, the temperature incident to the lati-
tude. Its mean annual temperature is little affected by
outside influences, and the greater part of it is frozen for
half the year. The extremes of temperature, however, are
reduced by the slow absorption and radiation of heat, just
as with the Pacific. As this region is north of the terri-
tory of the prevailing westerlies, the winds have no prev-
alent direction, but blow whithersoever they list. For
the same reason the rainfall is light. ‘Though the air over
the sea is saturated with moisture, little of it drifts over
the land to supply rain.
If there is a region more infested with fogs than the
Pacific coast of Alaska it is Bering Sea. Here fog is the
normal condition, and clear, bright weather the rare ex-
PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRIMAN
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS
MOUNTAINS
ENTRANCE TO
ON ALASKA PENINSULA
SALDOVIA, KENAI
PENINSULA
CLIMATE 271
ception. It is no uncommon experience for vessels bound
for the Pribilofs to miss the islands in the fog, and to
spend days searching for them, as for needles in a hay-
stack. They are a small target to shoot a vessel at from
Unalaska, 250 miles away, and once missed, are not easily
found in this great foggy waste.
The climate of the great interior region is that common
to the interior of all continents. The mean annual tem-
perature is practically the same as in the same latitude on
the coast of Bering Sea, but the range of temperature is
much greater. It is warmer in summer and colder in
winter, since the land heats and cools much more rapidly
than the sea. At the point where the international boun-
dary crosses the Yukon River the mean temperature of the
coldest month (in 1889) was —17°, that of the warmest
month 60°, a range of 77°. Contrast these figures with
those given above for Sitka, where the corresponding
range was only 26°. Furthermore, consider that the
mean temperature of the warmest month on the Yukon,
in latitude 64° 41’, was 4° higher than at Sitka, over 500
miles farther south. These figures are instructive in
pointing the conclusion that if any part of Alaska can be-
come of agricultural importance it is the interior rather
than the Pacific coast. But it is doubtful whether even
this region will admit of profitable farming. In connec-
tion with this question the experience of the Canadians is
instructive. On Peace River, in latitude 56°, 600 miles
farther south, many and persistent attempts at farming
have been made, but without financial success, although
it is doubtless true that certain crops have been matured
there.
The extreme range of temperature in the interior is sur-
prising, even to those accustomed to roast by day and
freeze by night in our western deserts. At this same
point on the Yukon, temperatures of — 60° and of 87°
CLIMATE 271
ception. It is no uncommon experience for vessels bound
for the Pribilofs to miss the islands in the fog, and to
spend days searching for them, as for needles in a hay-
stack. They are a small target to shoot a vessel at from
Unalaska, 250 miles away, and once missed, are not easily
found in this great foggy waste.
The climate of the great interior region is that common
to the interior of all continents. The mean annual tem-
perature is practically the same as in the same latitude on
the coast of Bering Sea, but the range of temperature is
much greater. It is warmer in summer and colder in
winter, since the land heats and cools much more rapidly
than the sea. At the point where the international boun-
dary crosses the Yukon River the mean temperature of the
coldest month (in 1889) was —17°, that of the warmest
month 60°, a range of 77°. Contrast these figures with
those given above for Sitka, where the corresponding
range was only 26°. Furthermore, consider that the
mean temperature of the warmest month on the Yukon,
in latitude 64° 41’, was 4° higher than at Sitka, over 500
miles farther south. “Ihese figures are instructive in
pointing the conclusion that if any part of Alaska can be-
come of agricultural importance it is the interior rather
than the Pacific coast. But it is doubtful whether even
this region will admit of profitable farming. In connec-
tion with this question the experience of the Canadians is
instructive. On Peace River, in latitude 56°, 600 miles
farther south, many and persistent attempts at farming
have been made, but without financial success, although
it is doubtless true that certain crops have been matured
there.
The extreme range of temperature in the interior is sur-
prising, even to those accustomed to roast by day and
freeze by night in our western deserts. At this same
point on the Yukon, temperatures of — 60° and of 87°
272 GANNETT
have been recorded, a range of 147°. Again contrast this
with Sitka, where go° is the extreme range record.
The rainfall in the interior is light, ranging at various
places and in different years from 10 to 25 inches. With
the cold climate and consequent slight evaporation, it
is probably sufficient in the majority of years for agri-
cultural requirements. Differing radically from the coast
climates, this climate is bright and sunny. There is
little dull, cloudy weather, and practically no fog. There
is more sunshine here in a month that at Sitka in a year.
FORESTS
The coast, as far to the westward as Cook Inlet, is
densely forested up to the timber-line, which ranges with
the latitude from 3,000 to 2,000 feet above sea-level. The
timber is mainly, indeed almost entirely, Sitka spruce.
There is some hemlock at higher levels, and in the
southern part a little cedar also, but these are of little com-
mercial importance. Red or Douglas fir, which forms the
bulk and principal value of the forests of Washington,
disappears in British Columbia. The spruce is large and
fine, as judged by eastern standards, but as compared with
the timber of Oregon and Washington, which is the
standard on the Pacific coast, it is inferior, and little use
is at present made of it, most of the timber needed being
brought from Puget Sound. On Kadiak and the adjacent
islands there is little timber, and farther west on the
Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands, none what-
ever; nor are there any trees on the islands in Bering
Sea. Why the timber should thus suddenly disappear on
the peninsula and islands is an open question. The rain-
fall is ample, and the climate little more severe than at
Sitka, and less severe than about Prince William Sound.
The suggestion that high, cold winds prevent tree growth
is negatived by the fact that such winds occur all along
COLUMBIA GLACIER AT CONTACT WITH ISLAND
POPULATION 273
the coast, in forested as well as non-forested parts. More-
over, the forest-fire fiend has not been here.
The interior of the territory is forested, mainly with
spruce, as far north as the valley of the Koyukuk, and as
far westward as the delta of the Yukon. In this enormous
region there must be a very large amount of coniferous
timber, sufficient to supply our country for half a gen-
eration in case our other supplies become exhausted.
POPULATION.
The population of Alaska in 1900, according to the
Twelfth Census, was 63,592, having nearly doubled in
the preceding ten years. Of the total increase, 31,540,
about three-fourths was acquired by that portion of the
territory lying north of the Yukon River, and only one-
fourth by that portion south of that river, including south-
eastern Alaska. Half of the increase in northern Alaska
consisted of the people of Nome, which had a population
of 12,486, by far the largest aggregation of people any-
where in the Territory; the remainder were scattered
widely over its great area, but mainly in the valley of the
Yukon and along the coast north of the mouth of that
river,
In southern Alaska the population increased almost
everywhere, but not by any means at so rapid a rate as in
certain localities in northern Alaska. Skagway had a
population of 3,117, Sitka of 1,396, Juneau, 1,864, Doug-
las, 825, Wrangell, 868, and the Indian village of Metla-
kahtla, 465.
Of this total population about 25,000, or a little more
than two-fifths, were Indians, Eskimos, or mixed bloods,
the remainder being whites. The increase during the
past ten years probably consists entirely of whites.
The population is in high degree a floating one, with
the slightest possible attachment to localities, and subse-
274 : GANNETT
quent censuses will doubtless show radical changes in its
distribution.
RESOURCES
The natural resources of Alaska are enormous. The
skins and furs, the fish, the gold, copper, and coal, and the
timber of the territory are in value almost beyond calcu-
lation, and the mere reaping of this harvest sown and
ripened for us by nature will occupy an industrial army
for many years. The wealth thus collected will add
greatly to the well-being and happiness of our people.
Some of these natural resources, however, have begun
to suffer from the drain to which they have been subjected.
The gathering of furs and skins, which has been in prog-
ress since the early Russian occupancy of the territory,
has been prosecuted so actively that the fur trade is now
of comparatively little consequence. Blue foxes are now
so valuable that systematic attempts are being made to
breed them for their skins. The sea otter has become
very rare, and the value of its skin correspondingly high.
The fur-seals, on account of pelagic sealing, are now re-
duced to a small fraction of their former number and only
24,000 skins were obtained at the seal islands in 1899.
Even the great brown bear has become scarce and shy,
and hides in the fastnesses of the interior, away from the
seaboard, where he was formerly abundant.
The seabirds, once plentiful all along the coast, are
now driven to the rarely visited parts, where, particularly
on the islands of Bering Sea, they may yet be found by
millions.
Fish are still abundant, but the salmon canneries have
already reduced the supply in many of the rivers, and the
erection of new canneries along the coast will soon make
the reduction more apparent. During the year 1899 these
canneries packed and shipped 1,100,000 cases and 25,000
barrels of this fish.
. Ss a Z = - GilBoz co
PH Y MERRIAM
FurR-SeA cs, OT. Paun Isnano.,Berine Sea
RESOURCES 275
- The mineral resources of the Territory are yet in an
undeveloped condition, but unless all signs fail, the chief
wealth to be obtained from Alaska will be taken from
the ground. Coal is known to exist in many localities,
but is nowhere, as yet, mined on a commercial scale,
owing mainly to its inferior quality; the coal in use at
present is brought from Nanaimo or Puget Sound. Cop-
per vein deposits of great magnitude and richness have
been found, notably on Copper River and the shores of
Prince William Sound, but as yet none of them have
been developed, beyond the shipping of a few hundred
tons of ore for testing. Gold deposits, both placer and
vein, have been found in various places all over the terri-
tory. They are so widely distributed and so rich as to
lead to the conclusion that with more extended and thor-
ough prospecting, the known auriferous areas will be
vastly increased and the yield of the yellow metal mul-
tiplied many times. Some of the quartz mines, as the
Treadwell, near Juneau, have been worked productively
for many years. This mine alone has produced about
$10,000,000. Others ‘have recently become productive,
and still others, more numerous, are yet in the develop-
ment stage. The mines near Juneau produced, in 1899,
gold of the value of nearly two million dollars. At sey-
eral localities in southeastern Alaska and on the Shu-
magin Islands quartz mines have been discovered, but at
present placers are far more abundant. They have been
found on many of the tributaries of the Yukon, especially
on those from the south, the Sushitna, the Kuskokwim,
and the Koyukuk, and in the north, the Ambler and the
Noatak. At several places gold has been found in the
beach sands on the seashore, and last, but by no means
least, on the beach and the stream-beds at Cape Nome
and Port Clarence. These last discoveries seem to be
the greatest of the whole northwest, rivaling, and prob-
276 GANNETT
ably exceeding, the great Klondike discovery, for many
millions appear to be in sight, awaiting the pan or
rocker to separate the golden sand. The harvest of gold
from Cape Nome during the summer of 1900 was $5,000-
ooo and the total product of the Territory from placers in
1899 was $5,500,000.
But after the enumeration of these latent resources of the
Territory few are left to describe. Alaska is not a country
for agriculture, nor for home-making. It has paid us its
purchase price many times over, and in the future will pour
much wealth into our laps, but it will never pay, as other
accessions to our territory have paid, in making homes for
our people. At present few people go to Alaska to live;
they go merely to stay until they have made their stake.
Farming as a business is impossible under the climatic
conditions prevalent on the coast. It is granted at once
that it is possible to mature certain hardy crops in favor-
able seasons, but this is quite a different thing from raising
crops in competition with California and the Willamette
valley, even when the cost of freight is added. It must
be done at a profit or not at all. It is of no avail to raise
potatoes when they can be brought from Portland and
sold for less than the cost of production in Alaska. If
there is any part of the Territory in which farming can be
successfully carried on, it is the interior, which has a much
more favorable summer climate than the coast; but even
there success is doubtful. However, as the higher rate of
freight to the interior will have the effect of a protective
tariff on home products, it may be possible to raise grain
and vegetables at a profit under conditions which would
be prohibitory on the coast.
SCENERY.
There is one other asset of the Territory not yet enumer-
ated, imponderable, and difficult to appraise, yet one of the
i ile A ee
SCENERY 297
chief assets of Alaska, if not the greatest. This is the
scenery. There are glaciers, mountains, and fiords else-
where, but nowhere else on earth is there such abundance
and magnificence of mountain, fiord, and glacier scenery.
For thousands of miles the coast is acontinuous panorama.
For the one Yosemite of California Alaska has hundreds.
The mountains and glaciers of the Cascade Range are
duplicated and a thousand-fold exceeded in Alaska. The
Alaska coast is to become the show-place of the earth, and
pilgrims, not only from the United States, but from far
beyond the seas, will throng in endless procession to see
it. Its grandeur is more valuable than the gold or the fish
or the timber, for it will never be exhausted. This value,
measured by direct returns in money received from tour-
ists, will be enormous; measured by health and pleasure
it will be incalculable.
There is one word of advice and caution to be given
those intending to visit Alaska for pleasure, for sight-see-
ing. If you are old, go by all means; but if you are
young, wait. The scenery of Alaska is much grander
than anything else of the kind in the world, and it is not
well to dull one’s capacity for enjoyment by seeing the
finest first.
AVG itvLouvy ‘LASNNS
THE ALASKA ATMOSPHERE
BY WM. H. BREWER
wees) LIE aspects of the sky and atmosphere along
: Oy the Alaska coast have a character unlike that
; so of any other part of the United States, and
fs} give an especial interest and charm to the
scenery. For a better understanding of its
peculiarities, a short statement of a few elementary facts
regarding the air may be given by way of preface.
The gases which compose the atmosphere are all trans-
parent and if the air contained nothing else, we would
have clear weather all the time. We should then see dis-
tant objects more plainly, but all the other effects of light
and shade and color in landscape and sky would be very
unlike what we actually see in nature. The difference
in the appearance of the landscape from what it naturally
is, would be greatest in the warmer and least in the colder
climates. There would then be little color in the landscape
and none at all in the black cloudless sky. But the at-
mosphere contains dust and smoke and haze and fog and
cloud, and these, in one way or another, give it all its
varying aspects. The clouds may be of fine particles of
water or of ice. _
The phenomena of color are due to the different wave-
lengths of light, longer waves producing red, shorter ones
(279)
280 BREWER
violet, the different lengths of the light-waves producing
all the colors observed in the rainbow. When the dust-
particles in the air are smaller than a wave-length of sun-
light, they break up the waves and cause a variety of
color effects dependent on the size and other conditions
of the particles. The afterglow, seen in the sky just
after the sun sets, is caused by particles of dust or ice
suspended in the air. The color of the glow is red or
orange or yellow, according to the coarseness of the par-
ticles, the brilliancy of the coloring being related to cer-
tain other conditions. The red color of the disk of the
sun or the moon, seen through the smoke of burning for-
ests, or through the dense haze in very dry weather, is
due to the same cause. So too is the green sun, some-
times seen through air laden with finer dust from volcanic
eruptions, or even the dust from deserts.
All the haze and turbidness of the atmosphere and
all the colors of the sky are due to suspended particles
of dust or smoke or water or ice. Cloud consists of fine
particles of water, which become frozen into very fine
particles of ice in the cold upper air. The different de-
grees of fineness of the suspended particles give different
colors to the sky itself. The dust particles are finer in
the upper air and they make the sky blue, and the sky is
deepest blue where the suspended dust is finest. For this
reason the sky is always of a deeper blue when seen from
the summits of high mountains. From very high peaks
the very dark blue sky has often a violet tinge, due to the
exceeding fineness of the dust in the thin, dry, upper air.
No region has yet been discovered in which the air is
entirely free from dust. The shadows of high mountains
are often projected against the sky at sunrise and sunset
in clear weather and are due to it. The general fact has
often been described, particularly as observed from the
higher mountains of the western United States, and pho-
AHOEN 6.00. BALTIMONE
PAINTING BY FS. CELLENBAUGH
Lows Mountarm, UnanasKa, FROM DutcH HARBOR
ATMOSPHERE 281
tographs have been taken of the shadows of Pikes Peak
and of Mount Hood and perhaps of other mountains.
When seen under the best conditions, this shadow consti-
tutes a phenomenon of indescribable impressiveness. I
have a most vivid recollection of such a scene from one
of the high volcanic cones of northern California, which
may be cited as an illustration. We had climbed the peak
in the night and were on the summit until midday. The
sky was absolutely cloudless and the air still and excep-
tionally clear, having been purified by a recent storm.
Never before nor since have I had a wider view. Points
two hundred miles distant were sharply defined on the
horizon, yet, even in that clear air, there was dust enough
to serve as a screen on which the grand picture was
thrown. As the sun rose, a giant spectral mountain ap-
peared against the opposite sky. It was of deep cobalt
blue sharply defined against the lighter ‘azure-blue’ of
the sunlit air about it. An optical illusion greatly mag-
nified its size. Owing to the curvature of the earth’s sur-
face, it reached high in the sky and far above the Coast
Ranges on the western horizon. It was much higher than
any real mountain on earth, but as the sun mounted higher
the spectre sunk lower until it disappeared.
The shadow of the earth itself may often be seen in
the eastern sky on a clearevening. Just after the sun dis-
appears, a dark band appears along the opposite horizon
and slowly creeps upward. It is darker blue in color than
the sky above it and is often bordered on its upper edge
by a fringe of faint rose-color which sometimes takes on
a distinctly purple hue.
When farthest north on our Alaska cruise, the earth
shadow was especially interesting, and its appearance in-
dicated the great purity of the air there as related to dust
or smoke. The long Arctic twilight is sufficient evidence
282 BREWER
that there is enough suspended matter, even there, to make
a luminous sky on which shadows can be cast. The night
we steamed across from the Asiatic to the American coast,
just below Bering Strait, the southern sky was cloudless,
there was no moon, and the earth shadow was very dis-
tinct. It was a grand arch of deep blue which slowly
rose and crept along the southern sky, attaining at mid-
night the height of thirty or forty degrees. It was very
much higher than I have ever seen the shadow in lower
latitudes. It was very distinct as to shade, although not
so sharp in outline as we see at home. There was no
tinge of rose or purple, although we had some red and
crimson clouds in the north. The arch moved westerly
across the southern sky and vanished before it sank to the
horizon.
It was discovered, some twenty years ago, that when
the vapor of water condenses and forms fog or cloud, it
must have dust particles to condense upon. Without dust
there is no fog nor cloud; the more abundant the parti-
cles, the denser the fog or cloud may become. This dis-
covery has attracted much attention among meteorolo-
gists, and ingenious methods have been devised to count
the number of dust-particles contained in a measured
quantity of air. Thousands of such countings have been
made. The air has been examined in many countries and
many places—over sea and land, on mountains and in
valleys, in cities and in the country. Numerous tables
giving the numbers found in various localities, have been
published in scientific works. It is enough here to say,
that the number varies greatly, ranging from a very few
in the purer air on high mountains to many thousands
of particles in a single cubic inch of city air, but I am not
aware that any such observations have ever been made in
any high latitude. The vast arctic region is mostly cov-
ered by water, ice or snow, and with its scanty population
PHOTOGRAPH BY MERRIAM
DAVIDSON GLACIER. LYNN CANAL
ATMOSPHERE 283
and its abundant storms to wash the atmosphere, the
amount of dust in its air must be very much less than in
the air over more densely inhabited countries and in
warmer climates. A few years ago I made a series of
observations on atmospheric appearances along the coasts
of Labrador and Greenland and in Baffin Bay up to the
Arctic Circle. All the phenomena there are in accord-
ance with what we might expect from an atmosphere
containing only fine dust and vastly less in quantity than
is found in all warmer latitudes. I made similar observa-
tions on the aspects of the sky and air every day of the
Harriman Alaska Expedition.
Westerly winds prevail along the western coast of
North America from Mexico northward. Coming over
the broad Pacific, they lose on the way much of the dust
that had been gathered from other regions. This explains
the cause of the very clear air of California and the other
Pacific States. Near the coast the air when dry and with-
out fog is marvelously clear. From California northward
to Alaska, forest fires later in the season often make a
very smoky atmosphere... As we steamed up the inland pas-
sage northward, the blue haze, due mostly to smoke, rap-
idly diminished, its softening effects upon the landscapes
grew less and less, and from Glacier Bay on our way out
until we reached Yakutat on our return, we saw practi-
cally none of the effects of a smoky or a dusty atmosphere.
We sometimes had a haze when the air was nearly satu-
rated with moisture, but it was never a blue haze — always
white like a faint transparent fog. When the air was dry,
the atmosphere was then always very transparent and dis-
tant objects were marvelously distinct. When the moon
rose, it was bright and white and without color. I watched
its rising several times when it was as white and clear at
the horizon as it was when it reached mid-sky, without a
tinge of color and with no perceptible diminution of its
284 BREWER
light. I have in mind one evening while on the way up,
the half full moon when rising seemed poised, as it were,
on the very summit of a low peak which was but a short
distance inland. The dark crags of the peak were sharply
cut on the intensely white face of the planet, which by the
contrast, seemed even brighter than when in mid-sky. A
year before, I had watched the moon rise and set behind
the mountains of the Mont Blanc group. Although it
seemed clear and bright in that mountain atmosphere, yet
it was not so white as we saw it in Alaska. Mont Blanc
has densely populated countries on all sides of it, the
smoke from cities and towns, the dust from highways and
tilled fields, the various kinds of pollution which civilized
regions furnish, affected the atmosphere sufficiently to be
seen even on the whiteness and brightness of the moon.
The Queen of Night keeps her whitest robes for dis-
play in the higher latitudes. It is, however, only fair to
say that on our way home, by the time we reached Yaku-
tat the forest fires had already begun inland and the moon
rose with a blushing face.
The peculiar clearness of the air lends a special charm
to the near views of a flower clad landscape. Examples
of this we often had on the islands. But the more distant
landscapes lack the softening shades we are familiar
with at home; their beauty is of entirely another kind but
not less interesting. They lack the soothing quality of the
landscapes in hazy air, such as we have in warmer cli-
mates and more populous countries, where landscapes fade
away by insensible gradation into the dreamy distance,
and the horizon is indefinite and mysterious. In Alaska,
the horizon often seems wonderfully close to us even
when we know it is distant. We are so accustomed at
home to see distant objects more dimly because of the
haze, that we think objects must be near if they are sharply
distinct.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CURTIS JOHN ANOREW & SON
BOTANIZING ON HALL ISLAND
ATMOSPHERE 285
‘When we had fogs they were rarely so opaque as those
we are familiar with at home, and very much less dense
than the fogs off the coast of Nova Scotia and New-
foundland. It is probable that there is not dust enough
in the air to form sufficient nuclei for the quick con-
densation of such thick fog as is common off the east-
ern coast below Labrador. The fogs were, however,
wet enough to make up for their lack of opacity, although
not so wet as occur on Baffin Bay and along the coast of
Greenland.
It is the dust and the particles of ice or half condensed
watery vapor suspended in the air that scatter the light
and make the atmosphere seem luminous. Much dust
in the air diminishes sensibly the actual amount of light
that reaches the surface of the earth and also changes its
character. Therefore, we often had an abundance of light
on cloudy days, in fact more than one would suppose.
The wonderful clearness of some of the photographs
which were taken by the party on cloudy days is one evi-
dence of this. This quality of the light in Alaska was a
factor in the production of so many successful photographs
by the party and gave many of them exceptional beauty
and excellence.
As to the clouds, we saw none with rounded heads
(‘cumuli’ as meteorologists call them) north of the
Alaska Peninsula and but very few anywhere along the
Alaska coast. Over Bering Sea and northern coasts the
clouds had ragged edges, shreddy, never sharp in out-
line — none with rounded heads such as form a factor
in the summer sky-scenery of warmer lands. Both as
we went out and on our return, a few cumulus clouds
curled over the peaks on the Peninsula, but the clouds that
adorned most of the mountains were not sharply out-
lined; they sometimes stretched away from the summits
like frayed banners.
286 BREWER
Some of the cloud effects were, however, especially
beautiful. Photographs of clouds are, as a rule, very un-
satisfactory, but many of those taken on this trip show
cloud scenery with a beauty rarely equaled. The lights
and colors on the clouds seen in the long twilights of
those high latitudes, although longer in duration were not
more brilliant than in lower latitudes.
Rose and crimson clouds sometimes lingered in the
northern sky during the whole interval between sunset
and sunrise. They were very brilliant in Bering Strait
during the short bright night of July 11-12.
As to the color of the sky itself, it was never dark blue
north of latitude 55° or 56° — always a lighter blue than
we have on clear days in middle and lower latitudes. It
was deeper blue than the sky along the eastern coast of
North America in the same latitudes, but not so deeply
blue as in the warmer regions we are more familiar with.
The colors of sunsets and sunrises were not so varied as
at home. This applies both to the sun-glows in the clear
sky along the horizon just after the sun’s setting, and to
the red or crimson colors of the clouds later, and there
was little to distinguish them from those of our home
experience, either as to shade or intensity of color. The
disk of the sun, before setting, was never reddened, but
had varying shades from white brightness to golden yel-
low. Although the disk never reddened, the afterglow
in the sky, near the horizon, was often rose-colored, sal-
mon and even orange. Sunrises came so inconveniently
early that few observations were made.
Now and then we had a mirage over the water, when
the air was temporarily still enough and the temperature
right for them to form, but they were neither so striking
nor so frequent as along the coast of Labrador in the same
months. Nevertheless, there were one or two which were
beautiful for a while, and which linger in the memory.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CURTIS
i
COVILLE BREWER
BURROUGHS
Mactawie
EMERSON GILBERT
MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION ON
St. MATTHEW
ISLAND
ATMOSPHERE 287
The rose-colored illumination of the snowfields on
high mountains opposite the setting sun, called ‘ Alpen
Gluehn’ or ‘ Alpine Glow’ in Switzerland and which con-
stitutes one of the beauties of snow-clad mountains, we
had in great perfection on several occasions. I had pre-
viously attempted to make comparisons of the colors of
the ‘Alpine Glow’ as seen in different regions. The
earlier observations are recorded only in memory, but of
later ones careful notes were taken at the time of observa-
tion.
As seen on the snows of the Rocky Mountains and on
the mountains of southern California in winter and under
clear skies, the glows, as I remember them, were more
distinctly rose-red in color and more luminously brilliant
than in any I have seen elsewhere. On the lofty peaks of
the Cascade Range later in the season and when the smoke
of forest fires prevails, they are much less luminous and
the colors much duller, sometimes appearing maroon
or even brown in the smoky air. I have seen very similar
colors on the Bernese Alps, viewed from Interlaken, dur-
ing a very dry time in autumn.
From various points of view we had these glows of
exceeding beauty on the mountains along the coast and
on the islands, and their colors were carefully noted dur-
ing their occurrence, from the time when the first blush
of rose began to appear until all the color was quenched
in the twilight. The year before I had exceptionally good
opportunities of making similar observations in Switzer-
land and to note in the same way the glows on the snow-
fields of the Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa groups, and
thus can the better compare the impressions as to colors
and beauty, between the phenomena as seen in the dust-
less and smokeless air of the Alaska coast, and the effects
in the dustier and smokier air of Switzerland. The color
effects in Alaska were the more beautiful, the colors more
288 BREWER
clear and brilliant, and the tints have a more decided
suggestion of blue or violet in the red. During the time
of greatest intensity of color, the rosy tints pass through
what might be called peach-blow color rather than pure
rose-color. They were also more brilliant and of very
much longer duration. Attimes they seemed almost blaz-
ing with color, as if self luminous. Then, too, when the
shadows of other peaks were projected on such sunlit
snowfields and crept up the slope, gradually quenching
its color, the contrast between the rosy illumination above
and the bluish-gray shadow below was much stronger
than I have seen elsewhere. The shadows themselves
were bluish gray, and the blue tinge was at times very
perceptible. Attractive as these phenomena are wher-
ever found, I have never seen them anywhere else so
fascinatingly beautiful in their contrasts of color, nor so
prolonged in the display.
On July 6th the western sky was cloudless when the
sun set behind very snowy mountains on the Alaska Pen-
insula. The illumination was exactly the reverse from
that which produces the ‘ Alpine Glow.’ Before the sun
touched the horizon the snowfields directly beneath the
disk and stretching along the ridge either way, glowed
with wonderful brightness. They gleamed brighter and
brighter like flame itself as the disk neared the hori-
zon and slowly sank beneath it. The glow was then
quenched with a suddenness that seemed almost start-
ling. The air was probably at that height very dry,
and too pure and moteless to be of itself as luminous
as is common along the horizon beyond which the sun
usually sets. Hence the suddenness with which the
brilliancy ceased when the sun was actually out of sight
and the scanty afterglow in the sky near its place of
setting. It was one of the most striking sunsets I ever
beheld.
SUN AND CLOUDS
PHOTOGRAPHS 8Y CURTIS JOHN ANDREW & SON
VIEW OF THE PACIFIC
ATMOSPHERE 289
There is reported to be usually more fog along the
Alaska coast, and especially later in the season, than we
found during the months of our cruise. But, during that
June and July, the aspect of the sky, the sharpness of the
views and the other phenomena incident to the character
of the air contributed greatly to the pleasure of the trip.
It was a phase of Nature so unlike what we have at home
that it cannot be forgotten,
I68l ‘Il tsnony
WHS ONT8ag “ONYOTIOA sOoTSODOg
03 Zoos
WvitNaW AG OLOHd
BOGOSLOF, OUR NEWEST VOLCANO
BY C. HART MERRIAM
SMALL spot in Bering Sea about thirty miles
north of the island of Umnak and forty miles
H west of the northern corner of Unalaska, has
hy = N been in recent years the seat of more violent
volcanic activity and has undergone greater changes of
form than any other part of North America. In this spot,
early in May, 1796, accompanied by thunder, earthquake,
and steam, a volcanic island was suddenly thrown up from
the depths of the sea; and again, no longer ago than the
summer of 1883, the waters were once more convulsed,
and, shrouded in steam and fog, a companion volcano was
born.
OLD BOGOSLOF.
The birth of the new volcano seems to have escaped
observation, but the terrific disturbances attending the
upheaval of old Bogoslof were witnessed not only by native
Aleuts on the islands of Umnak and Unalaska, but also by
the resident agent of the old Russian-American Company,
one Kriukof, who at the time chanced to be on the north-
ernmost part of Umnak. Kriukof told Kotzebue that
on May 7, 1796, a storm from the northwest cut off the
outlook seaward; that on the 8th, when the weather had
(291 )
292 MERRIAM
cleared, there was seen a few miles away a column of
smoke, beneath which at evening something black ap-
peared. During the night fire arose in this place and at
times became so bright that every object on the island
could be clearly distinguished. An earthquake shook the
island (Umnak), and a terrific roaring came back from the
mountains to the south. The rising island twice hurled
stones as far as Umnak, a distance of thirty miles. Atsun-
rise the earthquake ceased, the flames diminished, and the
newly risen island was seen, shaped like a black pointed
cap. A month later, Kriukof found it considerably higher.
Meanwhile fire had been thrown upcontinuously. After-
wards the island grew both in circumference and height,
the flames diminished, but steam and smoke rose in-
cessantly. After four years the smoke ceased, and after
eight (1804) sea-lion hunters who visited the island found
the water warm and the ground so hot that no one could
walk on it.
While at Unalaska in 1817, Kotzebue was informed by
a trustworthy Russian that for a long time the island had
continued to increase in size and elevation ; that its cir-
cumference was estimated at two and a half miles and its
height at 350 feet, and that for three miles around it the
sea was covered with stones (doubtless pumice, which
floats on water).
Baranof states that Bogoslof was again visited in June,
1814 (Grewingk insists that this is an error for 1804) and
a landing effected at a low place where a large herd of
sea-lions had hauled out on the rocks. It was then found
1In the above account, and in other early descriptions that follow, the language
of the original is in the main preserved. Had the observations been made by
geologists, the words ‘ fire’ and ‘ flame’ would probably not appear, as it is well
understood that the bright glow of a volcano is not fire in the proper sense of the
word, but the incandescence of molten lava which has come up from the interior
of the earth. Real flames are rarely seen in volcanoes; the supposed flames are
usually illuminated clouds above the glowing crater. The so-called smoke clouds
are composed of fine rock dust.
OLD BOGOSLOF 293
that the island abounded in craters from which small
stones were being constantly thrown out, obstructing the
view and building up the flat portion of the island. Find-
ing it impossible to explore on land, the party sailed
around it. A year later, a second expedition found the
island much lower and its appearance wholly changed.
By the Aleuts the island was called Agdshagok, but the
Russians called it Joduna Bogoslova, St. John the Theo-
logian, after St. John’s day of their calendar.
Langsdorf, who visited Bering Sea in 1806, gives an
account of Bogoslof as he received it from the natives at
Unalaska, and then briefly describes its appearance as
seen by him on August 18 of that year. He was told
that in this place “had long stood an insulated rock,
which, the Aleutians say, was always in the times of their
forefathers one of the great resorts of the sea-dogs and
sea-lions, with which these parts abound.
“In the year 1795, the islanders remarked a great ap-
pearance of fog in the neighborhood of this rock, which
did not disperse, although the rest of the atmosphere was
perfectly clear; this gave the greater uneasiness to the
people both of Oonalashka and Umnak, since they con-
sidered the rock as one of their great magazines of food.
After vainly expecting for a long time the removal of the
phenomenon, and afraid, uncommon as such an appear-
ance was, to venture near it; at length, one of the Aleut-
ians, bolder than the rest, resolved to visit his ancient
haunt, and endeavor to catch some sea-lions. He soon
returned in the utmost terror and astonishment, saying
that the sea all about the rock boiled, and that the sup-
posed fog was the smoke or vapor that rose from it.
Nobody would in consequence venture any more near the
place; concluding, that instead of sea-lions and sea-dogs,
it was become the abode of evil spirits. This continued
for a considerable time, till at length, about five years
294 MERRIAM
after, the fog suddenly clearing away, the Aleutians, in-
stead of their rock saw an island, from which rose a high
peak, in form resembling a chimney, with fire and smoke
issuing from it as if it had really been one.”
Continuing, Langsdorf states: “Some inhabitants of
Oonalashka, in the month of April, this year [1806], con-
sequently not a very long time before my arrival, had
visited this island, going in three baidarkas, and gave me
the following account: They were about six hours row-
ing round it, which supposes a circumference of about
thirty versts [20 miles]. They could not ascertain the
height of the peak with any precision, but were of opinion
that if it had been possible to climb directly up to the
highest point, they could not have done it in less than be-
tween five and six hours. The volcano was burning on
the north side, and the lava, which they represented as a
soft matter, ran down the side into the sea. It was im-
possible to land on account of the heat: on the south side
of the island alone, where the shore was not so steep, and
where the great heat of the volcano was not so much felt,
could they effect a landing. They endeavored to ascend
the peak, but found the ascent extremely difficult on ac-
count of the steepness and the number of clefts, and the
sharpness of the stones. When they arrived somewhat
less than half-way up, they judged it more prudent to re-
linquish the undertaking, as the remainder of the way was
much more rugged, and the ground began to grow very
hot; as they descended, they observed a great deal of
smoke and vapor rising from the holes and clefts they had
left behind them. They stopped at a hole, whence issued
a great deal of steam, and suspended in it a piece of the
flesh of a sea-lion; after leaving it there a short time they
drew it out, and found it cooked as if it had been set over
a fire.
“ Becoming extremely thirsty, and not finding any water
OLD BOGOSLOF 295
fit to drink, they were forced to return without any farther
examination. . . . According to the farther testimony of
the people at Oonalashka, the form and appearance of the
peak vary from time to time; sometimes it seems high and
pointed, looking like a vast pillar, sometimes lower and
rounded at the summit; sometimes it sends forth a bright
flame, at other times it only smokes, and the smoke is
much greater at some times than at others. The island
seems constantly to increase in circumference, and the
peak in height.”
Then, speaking of his own visit, Langsdorf says: “On
the 17th of August, in the afternoon, we left Oonalashka,
and the next day passed this new island; it is of a mid-
dling height, and rises quite to a peak. The center point
has on every side the appearance of a pillar, and seems
entirely perpendicular. On the northwest side are four
rounded summits, which rise one above the other like
steps.”
On June 2, 1820, the Imperial sloop ‘Good Intent,’
commanded by Capt. Gleb Semenovich Shishmaref, at-
tempted a landing at Bogoslof but was prevented by heavy
breakers. Dr. Stein, who was on board, mentions see-
ing a herd of sea-lions at the southeastern end of the
island (Cape Sarichef), and states that from the highest
point of the mountain, which he named Krusenstern Vul-
canus, a column of smoke arose, probably from the crater,
but no fire was seen. From a cleft at the foot of the
mountain came a waterfall, a bow-shaped spring. The
island was then described as “a cold rock that had ceased
to grow.” It appeared streaked from top to bottom with
clefts and gray colored lava flows. The circumference
was given as four nautical miles, the height above the sea
as 500 feet.
Grewingk believes it attained its highest elevation in
1814, and Veniaminof states that it ceased to increase in
296 MERRIAM
size about 1823. No accurate measurements were made,
but its altitude in different years was variously estimated
from 350 to 2,500 feet.
Liitke quotes Tebenkof to the effect that in 1832 the
island was not more than two nautical miles in circumfer-
FIG. I. TEBENKOF’S SKETCH OF BOGOSLOF AND SHIP ROCK IN 1832.
FROM THE SOUTH.
ence and 1,500 feet in altitude. It was pyramidal in form,
its sides covered with sharp crags which threatened to fall
at any moment; the north shore was ragged; the south a
steep wall from which protruded a low tongue of land on
which sea-lions hauled out. eee POUL TOT a
FIG. 21. ROUGH SKETCH OF THE ISLANDS IN 1887, BY WM. C. GREENFIELD.
integration had evidently begun; the new volcano is
steaming from three principal peaks, and from a vent at
the northeast corner (which in later years became the one
of greatest activity); the highest peak is at the northwest
corner.
Three years later (August 2, 1890) the U. S. Fish
Commission steamer ‘ Albatross’ (Capt. Z. L. Tanner)
passed within three-quarters of a mile of the island, but no
landing was made. Captain Tanner states that the day
was unusually clear, Makushin and the highlands of
Umnak being distinctly visible. Ship Rock had fallen and
its original position was marked by debris. New Bogo-
slof was enveloped in smoke and steam so dense that its
outlines could not be accurately determined, but its alti-
JOHN ANDREW & SON
WEST SIDE BOGOSLOF VOLCANO
Ava.11,1891
NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1891 313
tude was not far from 400 feet — that of the highest peak
of Old Bogoslof being 370 feet.. The islands were still
connected, standing on the same platform, and their length
collectively was given as a mile and a quarter (fig. 14).
The following year, 1891, it was my good fortune to
visit Bogoslof. Prof. T. C. Mendenhall and I were on
our way home from the Pribilof Islands, whither we had
been sent as Commissioners to represent the interests of
the United States in the controversy with Great Britain
over the fur-seals. We left the Pribilofs on the evening
of August 10, on board the ‘ Albatross,’ commanded by
Captain Tanner, whom we persuaded to return to Unalaska
by way of the volcano. The night was densely foggy, as
usual in Bering Sea in summer, and the early morning
brought no change. The ship was feeling her way cau-
tiously with no land in sight, when suddenly, about seven
o’clock, the fog lifted and we saw, directly ahead and
hardly a mile away, the bold front of the new volcano.
We felt a thrill of excitement as the precipitous cliffs of
the northern end broke through the fog, followed by a
fierce rush of escaping steam, whose roar, when the engines
stopped, drowned all other noises, not excepting the cries
of the myriads of seabirds which swarmed about the rocks
like bees about a hive. A little farther away and some-
what to the left, Old Bogoslof soon came into view.
The relations of the two are shown in the plate at the be-
ginning of the article, which is from a photograph taken
from the deck of the ‘ Albatross.’
Before anchoring, Captain Tanner took the precaution
to send an officer in a small boat to run a line of sound-
ings between the ship and shore. Good anchorage was
reported, with nothing less thantwenty fathoms. The ship
was started ahead slowly, but immediately grounded on a
1The bearings were recorded as NW by N and SE by S (magnetic).
Tanner in Report U. S. Fish Commission for 1890, pt. XVII, p. 243, 1893.
314 MERRIAM
reef or rock with only nine feet of water under her bow.
The small boat had crossed or gone to one side of the rock
before beginning to sound.’ We backed off without dam-
age to the ship and anchored in the bay on the east side
of the island, when a number of us went ashore in a small
boat, visiting and 50sec tina first the new, and later
the old volcano.
The bar or isthmus connecting the two islands (found
by the ‘Corwin’ in 1884 and 1885, by Greenfield in 1887,
and by the ‘ Albatross’ in 1890) had disappeared, leaving
only a short spit attached to the southern end of the new
volcano. From Old Bogoslof an entirely new and very
i, =a —<——
_ tel ‘ee
FIG. 22. NEW BOGOSLOF FROM THE LONG WEST SPIT OF
OLD BOGOSLOF, AUGUST II, 1891.
long spit had formed on the west side and extended
westerly for about a mile, leaving an open channel about
a quarter of a mile wide between the two islands (as
shown in fig. 22 and also in my chart, fig. 23).
The shape of the island did not in any way suggest a
volcano, there being no cone and no true crater. The
highest point was on the north, where the mountain rose
1This may have been the remains of a small rock shown on Sarychef’s chart
in 1826, and mentioned by Dall in 1873, as ‘‘ half a mile north and east of the
island [Old Bogoslof], which rises only a few feet above the water.”—Dall in
Rept. Supt. U. S. Coast Survey for 1873, pp. 115-116, 1875.
NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1891 315
in a precipitous wall from the sea. This wall continued
for some distance along the west side, forming a line of
high cliffs with a narrow beach below (fig. 24); on the
FIG. 23. SKETCH MAP BY MERRIAM SHOWING SPITS IN 1891.
east the masses of rock broke down irregularly without any
beach; on the south the slope was more gradual and the
island flattened down into a broad beach which stretched
FIG. 24. NORTHWEST CORNER OF NEW BOGOSLOF, AUGUST II, 1891.
out toward Old Bogoslof— with which it was connected the
previous year. On the east side, particularly a little south
of the principal steam vent, the light rocks were broken
316 MERRIAM
and piled in irregular masses and appeared to be under-
going movement; at all events, huge blocks had only re-
cently toppled over and some were covered with a light
deposit of grayish dust which we took to be volcanic ash.
The new volcano was enveloped in steam, which issued
from thousands of\small cracks and crannies and poured
in vast clouds from a few great fissures and crater-like
openings, the principal of which was near the northeast
corner, only a few feet above high water mark. From
FIG. 25. IN THE STEAM, NEW BOGOSLOF, AUGUST II, 1891.
this opening, the shape of which we could not see, it rushed
out with a loud roaring noise. The place is shown on the
right in the photogravure at the beginning of the article.
So great was the quantity of steam that it completely con-
cealed the upper part of the island except when wafted to
or fro by violent gusts of wind. Professor Mendenhall
and I walked from the roaring hole where this steam es-
caped, around the east, south, and west sides of the volcano,
but it was impossible to pass around the towering cliff at
NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1895 317
the north end. The steam was usually impregnated with
fumes of sulphur, and deposits of sulphur, some in very fine
needles, were observed along the margins of the cracks.
Most of the rock was hot and pools of hot water were
found on the beach.
Captain Tanner expressed surprise at the altered ap-
pearance of the volcano since his visit the previous year:
the connecting spit had disappeared, the island had de-
creased in height at least 100 feet, and the pinnacle had
FIG. 26. SUMMIT RIDGE OF NEW BOGOSLOF, AUGUST II, 1891.
LOOKING DOWN FROM HIGHER POINT.
fallen and was lying in huge masses on the steep incline.
Two years later (1893) Captain Tanner reported the
volcano “in active eruption, as usual” — by which he
doubtless meant that it was steaming violently.
In 1895 Bogoslof was visited by Becker and Dall of the
U. S. Geological Survey, and an assistant, C. W. Puring-
ton, took several excellent photographs, some of which
are here reproduced. At this time, according to Becker,
,
318 MERRIAM
“an apparently clean passage, nearly three quarters of a
mile in width, separated the two islands [fig. 27]. The
new island then appeared to be not more than some 300
feet in height. It still steamed vigorously though not
violently.”
FIG. 27. OLD BOGOSLOF FROM NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1895.
FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY PURINGTON.
The photographs taken by Mr. Purington, particularly
figure 28, show that since my visit in 1891 the activity of
the steam vents had greatly diminished, and the top of the
volcano had lowered and flattened down. Becker is in
error in stating that this flat-topped form had been as-
FIG. 28, NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1895 FROM THE SOUTHEAST.
FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY PURINGTON.
sumed in 1891, as may be seen by comparing the plate at
the beginning of this article (and also fig. 26, showing part
of the summit in that year) with Purington’s photograph
of 1895 (fig. 28). One of Purington’s photographs shows
details of the west side (fig. 29) and though not from ex-
NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1897 319
actly the same point of view may be compared with my
photograph of the same side taken four years earlier
(fig. 24).
In 1897 Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, while on his way to
neh
ge oe ae a
FIG. 29. PART OF WEST SIDE OF NEW BOGOSLOF IN 1895.
FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY PURINGTON,.
the Commander Islands, passed close to the north end of
New Bogoslof and took some excellent photographs, two
of which by his kind permission are here reproduced.
They show the boldness and precipitousness of this part
—$—$==- al —
“ Bas =i ———
FIG. 30. NEW BOGOSLOF FROM THE NORTHWEST, JUNE 30, 1897. OLD BOGOS-
LOF IN DISTANCE ON RIGHT. FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY STEJNEGER.
of the island, and also its level top and plateau-like form,
which in view of its recent mountainous character is diffi-
cult to understand. One of these photographs (fig. 30) is
from the northwest, and for position is practically identical
320 . MERRIAM
with Cantwell’s sketch ‘ A’ (fig. 18) with which it should
be compared. The other (fig. 31) is from a point a little
FIG. 31. THE ISLANDS FROM A LITTLE EAST OF NORTH, JUNE 30, 1897.
FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY STEJNEGER.
east of north and should be compared with the photo-
gravure at the beginning of this article.
The Harriman Expedition (1899) made no landing on
New Bogoslof, but, as shown by a photograph taken from
the boat by W. B. Devereux (fig. 32) the summit then
FIG. 32. THE ISLANDS ON JuLy 8, 1899, FROM THE EAST. NEW
BOGOSLOF ON THE RIGHT. FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY DEVEREUX.
presented the flattened form mentioned by Becker in 1895,
and shown in Purington’s and Stejneger’s photographs.
MATERIALS.
Both islands are wholly volcanic and, according to
Becker, “seem to be composed entirely of hornblende-an-
desite, with some included fragments of diorite.” Becker
(in 1895) was the first geologist to visit the islands, but pre-
SHIP ROCK 321
viously specimens of the rocks had been brought back
and reported on by Dr. George P. Merrill.
SHIP OR SAIL ROCK.
The first land recorded in the vicinity of the present
site of Bogoslof was a huge rock seen by Krenitzin and
Levashef in 1768 or 1769— nearly 30 years be-
fore the upheaval of the old volcano. It is shown
on their map of 1780 in the form of a small pro-
file outline surrounded by four or five crosses indicating
outlying rocks (fig. 33).?_ The next record is that of Cap-
tain Cook, who on October 29,
1778, “discovered an elevated
rock like a tower ” near the same
place. He says: “We must
have passed very near it in the
night. We could judge of its
steepness from this circum-
stance, that the sea, which now
run very high, broke nowhere
but against it.”* This rock is
shown but not named on Cook’s
chart. It was afterward called
Ship or Sail Rock, and the
name was attributed to Cook, Fic.34. KRUSENSTERN’s CHART
but I have failed to find it in his ©¥ OCOStO¥ AND SHIP ROCK, PUB-
LISHED IN 1826. (REDUCED AND
narrative. RELETTERED. )
aye
FIG. 33.
lof
1 2 NAUT. MILES 4
1Science, IV, p. 524, Dec. 12, 1884 (brief announcement). Proc. U. S. Na-
tional Museum, VIII, pp. 31-33, April, 1885. Reprinted in ‘ Cruise of the Cor-
win’ for 1884, pp. 45-46, 1889.
£Ship Rock as shown on Krenitzin and Levashef’s map in 1880. Published
by William Coxe in his ‘ Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and
America.’ London, 3d ed., 1787 [1st ed. 1780]. The sketch of the rock was re-
produced (natural size) by Dall in Science, Vol. III, p. 90, Jan. 25, 1884; and
(greatly enlarged) by Davidson, Ibid., III, p. 283, March 7, 1884.
3 Voyages into the South Sea, Vol. VII (Cook’s Third Voyage), p. 527, 1784.
In a footnote Cook states that ‘‘though this rock had no place in the Russian
map produced by Ismyloff, it has a place in the chart of weenie s and Leva-
sheff’s Voyage” above referred to.
322 MERRIAM
Some time after the upheaval of Bogoslof in 1796 a
high rock was observed a short distance to the northward.
Kotzebue states that when in Unalaska in 1817 he was
told by a reliable Russian that a rock supposed to be the
Ship Rock of Cook, stood about 100 fathoms north of
Bogoslof. It appears in Krusenstern’s chart published in
1826 (fig. 34). In 1832 Tebenkof sailed with full can-
vas between it and Bogoslof, and described it as a high
crag rising from the sea about a verst (% mile) north of
the volcano.
In 1873 it was described by Dall “as “a perpendicular
square topped pillar, half a mile north and west of the
north end of the island,” and was shown in several of his
sketches (figs. 2, 3, 10, II).
In 1884, the year following the upheaval of New Bog-
oslof, Ship Rock was described by Lieutenant Cantwell
and Dr. Yeamans as a towerlike rock 87 feet in height, with
a slight inclination toward the north. It stood on the bar
or isthmus which then connected the two islands, but was
much nearer the new than the old volcano, as shown in
Lieutenant Doty’s photographs (fig. 17 and plate facing this
page). The presence of barnacles and water marks twenty
feet above sea level showed that it had been recently ele-
vated; and the form of the summit, as shown in photo-
graphs and sketches made by Lieutenants Cantwell and
Doty, indicates that disintregation had begun (see plate
facing this page).
The next year (1885) it was apparently unchanged
(Healy).
Two years later (1887), according to a sketch by Wm.
C. Greenfield, it was still a prominent pillar, but its top
had become very narrow and the extreme summit had
doubtless crumbled away (fig. 21).
In 1890 it had fallen, and its site was marked by debris
(Tanner). This debris was plainly visible at the time
annoussaHou
NOS "® MguaNY NHOF
Peel ‘I AYW -
NI MOOY dIHS *“LiIdS ONILOSNNOO dO UWHINHO WOUd AOTSODOG MAN
ALOO'"H'D “17 AS HavEDOLONS
* wet
en Pa
=: ‘ i I
THE SHIFTING SPITS 323
of my first visit, in August, 1891, and is shown in my
photograph of the two islands at the beginning of this
article. The date of its downfall was probably 1888 or
1889. Hence its known history covers a period of 120
years.
THE SHIFTING SPITS OR BARS.
The East and Southeast Spits of Old Bogoslof.
Projecting from the east side and southeast end of Old
Bogoslof is a long broad spit which toward the cliffs rises
in low terraces and is obviously of greater age than the
other spits about the islands. While it has undergone
various changes of form and extent, the character and
elevation of its base show that parts of it have been in
existence a number of years. The part at the southeast
end, in continuation of the axis of the island, was the first
to appear. It was observed by Tebenkof in 1806 and de-
scribed as cold and flat, while the body of the volcano
was still hot. In 1820 Doctor Stein mentioned seeing a
herd of sea-lions at the southeast end. In 1832 Tebenkof
described the south side as a steep wall from which pro-
truded a low tongue of land on which sea-lions hauled
out.
In 1873 the spit was observed by Dall, and its length
was estimated as not exceeding one-third the length of
Bogoslof — say 350 feet.
In 1884 it had grown, according to Cantwell, to measure
1800 feet, and was still confined to the end of the island.
On Cantwell’s chart (fig. 16) the axis of Old Bogoslof,
continued through the spit, is too nearly east and west,
while on Stoney’s chart of the same date (fig. 19) it is
too nearly north and south, its true position being inter-
mediate between the two. Both Cantwell and Stony agree,
however, that in 1884 there was no spit on the broad east
(or northeast) side of the island.
324 MERRIAM
In 1887, according to Greenfield’s sketch (fig. 21), the
south or southeast spit remained essentially as in 1884,
and the drawing appears to show also a beach or spit on
the east side.
In 1890, judging from the photographs taken by the U.
S. Fish Commission steamer ‘ Albatross’ (figs. 12 and
14), the southeast spit continued and the east spit had be-
come well established. The photograph from the south-
east (fig. 12) shows the high base of the east spit, but
owing to the presence behind it of the north spit, connect-
ing it with the new volcano, its extent cannot be deter-
mined.
In 1891, as seen from the ‘ Albatross’ when at anchor
just east of the new volcano, the east and south spits ap-
FIG. 35. OLD BOGOSLOF (ON LEFT) AND PART OF NEW BOGOSLOF (ON RIGHT)
AUGUST II, 1891. SHOWS EAST AND WEST SPITS OF OLD BOGOSLOF.
peared as one long, broad beach, rising abruptly in a ter-
race about midway of its length (fig. 35).
In 1895, as shown in Purington’s photograph from New
Bogoslof (fig. 27), which is a nearer view than fig. 35 and
from a point slightly farther west, the conditions remained
the same, and are more clearly shown. Another photo-
graph made the same day (fig. 7) shows that the east spit
began exactly at the base of the north cliff.
THE SHIFTING SPITS 325
In 1899, when visited by the Harriman Expedition, no
change was observed, and the length of the spit was esti-
mated as a quarter of a mile. Mr. G. K. Gilbert’s journal
contains this entry: “we landed on gravel one-fourth of a
mile or more from the cliff of Bogoslof and climbed two
gravel scarps on the way to the cliff” A large pool was
found a little back from the front of the beach (fig. 13).
The fog and lateness of the hour prevented an examina-
tion of the southeast spit.
The Connecting Spit or Isthmus (1884-1890).
When New Bogoslof rose from the sea in 1883, it was
unencumbered by spits or bars and the surrounding waters
b tame _ Sa
FIG. 36. DALL’S SKETCH MAP SHOWING BARS IN 1895.
were free from breakers, indicating deep water all around
(fig. 15).
The following year (1884) a broad, flat spit had pushed
out from the south end and reached all the way to the
base of the great north cliff of Old Bogoslof, completely
326 MERRIAM
connecting the two islands (see charts and photographs by
Cantwell, Doty, and Stoney, figs. 16, 17, 19, 20, and plate
facing p. 308).
This spit or isthmus continued until the winter of 1890-
1891,' when it was washed away, leaving a broad water
passage between,the islands (figs. 22 and 23). The only
vestige remaining in the summer of 1891 was the north-
west end which then formed a flat beach along the south
end of the new volcano (see plate at beginning of article).
The West Spit of Old Bogoslof.
In 1891 an entirely new and very long spit pushed out
from the west side of Old Bogoslof and extended westerly
for about a mile, curving slightly northward at the end
(figs. 23 and 35). Its base was broadly attached to the
west side of the island (fig. 6). The date of its destruc-
tion is unknown, but in 1895, according to Dall’s chart
(fig. 36), it had completely disappeared.
The East Spit of New Bogoslof.
In 1895, according to Dall (fig. 36) a new spit, dry at
ebb tide, had formed on the east side of the new volcano,
whence it extended easterly about a mile, its tip curving
to the north.
In 1899, when visited by the Harriman Expedition, the
conditions about the new volcano could not be clearly
made out, owing to the fog, but from a line of breakers it
was evident that a slightly sunken bar occupied essentially
the position laid down by Dall in 1895, except that it
curved to the southeast instead of the northeast, and
closely approached the old volcano. Dall states that such
spits may be formed or destroyed in a single winter storm.
1Jt was seen by the ‘Corwin’ in 1885 (Healy), was sketched by Greenfield
in 1887, and photographed by the ‘ Albatross’ in 1890 (and mentioned by Cap-
tain Tanner in his report for that year).
PHYSICAL HISTORY OF BOGOSLOF 327
PHYSICAL HISTORY.
The known history of other volcanoes makes it possible,
with moderate and legitimate use of the imagination, to
construct from the records here assembled the physical
history of this locality. Some thousands of years ago
a crack in the earth was opened deep down under Bering
Sea and lavas welled out. Some of them may have
flowed over the bottom as liquids until they congealed;
others were doubtless burst into fragments by the expan-
sion of imprisoned steam. This occurred, not once but
many times, until at last the accumulated rock made a
mountain high enough to show its head above the sea.
Then the forces of the air attacked it and storm waves
beat against it and it was worn and washed away, till there
remained above water only a pyramidal rock with a bit of
beach or spit that had been built up by the waves from
the waste of the original island. It was in this condition
when first seen by white men, the remnant crag being
Ship Rock. In 1796 there was a new eruption, breaking
out a little to one side of the last, so as to form a separate
island, Old Bogoslof; and this in turn was attacked by the
elements and rapidly reduced in area. Yet another erup-
tion, in 1883, took place on the opposite side of Ship Rock,
creating still a third island, New Bogoslof; all three stand-
ing on the submarine mound or mountain that previous
eruptions had built.
Since then all changes, except a slight upheaval, have
been wrought by storm and sea. The islands have been
gnawed about the base until girt by steep cliffs. Ashes
and loose rocks have been washed down to the sea, leav-
ing the firmer masses as towers and peaks; some of these
have afterwards been sapped and have fallen; and the out-
lines have suffered almost kaleidoscopic changes from year
1 This note on the physical history of Bogoslof was prepared at my request by
G. K. Gilbert.—C. H. M. Y
328 MERRIAM
to year. From the abundant debris the sea waves have
built large spits and bars, shifting them from place to place
as each succeeding great storm came from a new direction.
Storms from the northwest built out a spit from the lee
of New Bogoslof till it joined the shore of Old Bogo-
slof, reducing the group to a single island. This spit, or
isthmus, included Ship Rock and prolonged the life of
that remnant by protecting it from the breakers. Thena
storm from the east breached the spit between Ship Rock
and Old Bogoslof and washed the greater part of it away,
but built a great spit on the northwest side of Old Bogoslof;
and this in turn was removed by westerly storms, which
made two other spits, trailing a little south of east from the
surviving islands. In 1895 there was a clear deep pas-
sage between the two, but in 1899 their ends had been con-
nected by a submerged bar, fully half a mile to the east of
the previous bar.
So rapid is the demolition of the islands that their present
appearance tells little or nothing of their original forms;
and their complete destruction is but a question of time.
One might predict that in the next century the name Bog-
oslof would attach only to a reef or a shoal, were it not for
the possibility of new eruptions. The pulse of the volcano
is so slow that we have noted only two beats in more than a
century of observation, but such sluggishness should not be
taken as a symptom of death, or even decline, for volcanic
organisms are characteristically spasmodic in their activity.
Long before the sea has reestablished its perfect sway the
arteries of the mountain may again be opened and a new
and larger island put forth to contest its supremacy.
ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE ON BOGOSLOF.
Plants.
Chamisso, in his account of the Botany of the Kotzebue
Expedition, states that in 1817, according to reports, vege-
BIRDS OF BOGOSLOF 329
tation was beginning to appear on Bogoslof.' If not an
error, this report must have referred to very lowly forms,
for at the time of my first visit (1891) I particularly noted
the absence of vegetation. It is true that I examined only
the cliffs and the new spit on the west, and not the old
spit on the southeast where seeds of plants have had the
longest chance to grow.
When the Harriman Expedition landed on the east spit
July 8, 1899, we were accompanied by one of our bota-
nists, Mr. F. V. Coville, who made it his special business
to search for plants. He found, besides an alga, only a
single specimen of a small
umbellifer and one or two
specimens of an inconspic-
uous beach plant.
Birds.
From early times Old
Bogoslof has been the re-
sort of countless multitudes
of seabirds, mainly murres
or ‘arries,’ and the new
volcano had not yet cooled
when the vast hordes be-
gan to take possession. At
the time of my first visit
(August 11, 1891) they
stood by thousands on pro-
jecting points and ledges,
wherever the rocks were
not too hot, and hundreds of their eggs, in every stage
from fresh to hatching, and young in various conditions of
early growth were observed. Whether or not they relied
on the warmth of the rocks to assist in incubation, and in
FIG. 37- MURRES.
1 Kotzebue, Entdeckungs-Reise, III, p. 166, 1821.
330 MERRIAM
consequence remained away for longer periods than usual,
was not ascertained. Many sought the steam-enshrouded
crags, where, when the vapor clouds were momentarily
blown aside by the wind, we repeatedly saw thousands
serenely standing side by side as if enveloped in ordinary
fog. It seemed remarkable that birds should voluntarily
take up quarters in places where hot steam and fumes of
sulphur were almost suffocating. Some, indeed, appeared
to have met their death from this cause, for we picked up
on the rocks below a number of dead birds that bore no
sign of external injury. Lieutenant Stoney, speaking of
the murres he saw
about the islands the
last of May, 1884,
said that “such as
flew into the cloud
of steam and smoke
of the belching vol-
cano, as many did,
immediately per-
ished.”
But great as were the multitudes of murres on the new
volcano, their numbers were insignificant compared with
those on Old Bogoslof, where every available inch of
standing room was occupied. Each bird stood over its
single egg, and when suddenly frightened, as by the dis-
charge of a gun, started off, carrying its big egg between
its legs, and when a short distance away letting it drop, so
that the report of the gun and the launching into the air of
the birds were followed by a shower of many-colored eggs.
When the Harriman Expedition visited Bogoslof on the
evening of July 8, 1899, flocks of murres on their way to the
islands began to pass the ship while we were still twenty-
five or thirty miles away. They became more and more fre-
quent until in a short time they formed a continuous stream.
FIG. 38. MURRES’ EGGS.
‘A aC ~pinlace a» a?
~
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHICHESTER
JOHN ANDREW & SON
MURRES, OR ARRIES, ON WALRUS ISLAND, PRIBILOF GROUP
BOGOSLOF MURRES 331
The fog was thick all the way—so thick that we could
see only such birds as actually passed over or very
close to the ship—and yet the compass showed that their
course was laid direct for the volcanoes. How they
found their way is a mystery not yet satisfactorily ex-
plained. As we neared the islands their numbers in-
creased until the air was full of them, coming from differ-
ent directions and all moving in straight courses to the
cliffs. When finally the ship hove to, and we set out ina
small boat for shore, the water was dotted with them, and
some allowed us to approach so near that we almost
caught them in our hands. On landing, the sea-lions be-
came at once the objects of absorbing interest, but still we
could not help noticing the great swarms of murres which
continued coming to the cliffs. When one of our col-
lectors fired his gun the multitudes that shot out into the
air and circled round the island formed a dense cloud
which cut off the light and made a roaring noise so loud
that it drowned even the bellowing of the sea-lions. And
yet, after their departure, the cliffs seemed as completely
peopled as before—so inconceivably great were their
numbers. :
In the case of most forms of animal life the increase of
the species is checked by enemies and by the limitations
of the food supply, but in the case of the murres in Ber-
ing Sea, enemies are scarce, and the ocean seems to pro-
vide an inexhaustible store of food, so that the only
apparent check to extravagant multiplication is the limit
of available nesting places. And since the bird’s require-
ments in this direction are easily satisfied —a shelf or point
of rock three or four inches square answering every need
—the numbers already attained are almost beyond belief.
Two kinds of murres are common in Bering Sea, but
the six specimens obtained by me on Bogoslof, August 11,
1891, and also the six secured by Dr. A. K. Fisher on
332 MERRIAM
July 8, 1899, all proved to be the Pallas murre ( Uria lom-
via arra). A few other birds are known from the islands.
Two horned puffins (Fratercula corniculata) and a flock
of kittiwakes were seen by me in 1891; and Cantwell, in
May, 1884, reported puffins in great numbers, and saw also
numbers of harlequin ducks, gulls, and kittiwakes, and
found a dead albatross on the beach.
Sea-lions.
The only mammal known from Bogoslof is the northern
or Steller sea-lion (Zumetopias stelleri ) of which a large
colony has throughout the century regularly resorted to
the low ground on the southeast side of the old volcano.
Langsdorf, who visited Bogoslof in 1806, was told by the
native Aleuts at Unalaska that long before the upheaval
of the volcano (in 1796) there had stood near the same
place an isolated rock which from the time of their fore-
fathers had always been one of the greatest resorts of sea-
dogs and sea-lions.
Kriukof, Agent of the Russian-American Fur Company
at Unalaska, told Kotzebue in 1817 that in 1804 party of
native hunters visited Bogoslof for sea-lions; and Baranof
states that in 1814 (which date Grewingk insists is an
error for 1804) a landing was made at a low place where
a herd of these animals had hauled out on the rocks.
In June, 1820, they were seen by Doctor Stein, in 1832
by Tebenkof, and in 1840 were reported as abundant by
Veniaminof.
The eruption of New Bogoslof in 1883 is said to have
destroyed many sea-lions. Captain Hague, who visited
the islands on October 27 of that year, is quoted as stat-
ing that he saw many of the survivors which had been so ©
badly scalded that the hair had come off.
Cantwell, who explored the island very thoroughly in
May, 1884, states: “ Several herds of sea-lions were found
“66sI “8 Ane
“ONYOTOA sOTSODOg “SNOIT-YHS 4O BamadWwvig
NOS ‘e MaNcNY NHOr ms a “NOSGNH “@ S3INVHO AG ONILNI Ve
~
SEA LIONS 333
on the beaches and on the rocks of the island. They
evinced no fear of our party until fired into, when they
entered the water and followed us from point to point,
evidently viewing our intrusion with the greatest curiosity
and astonishment.” Stoney, who was there a week later,
found hundreds of sea-lions on the east spit and on the
rocks about the base of the old volcano. They were at
SEA LIONS.
the same place when it was visited by the ‘Albatross’ in
August, 1891.
When a boat from the Harriman Expedition carried a
small party to the east spit on the evening of July 8, 1899,
sea-lions were the most conspicuous and imposing objects
seen. They were scattered thickly along the shore and
as we drew near became restless and began to show signs
of alarm. Most of the cows took to water, while the bulls
bellowed and roared and moved down to the beach. Ow-
ing to the surf we were compelled to land at a particular
334 MERRIAM
spot where a number of huge yellow bulls, as big as oxen
and much longer, were congregated. As the boat grated
on the gravel some of them came towards us, bellowing
fearfully and moving ina clumsy ambling lope. While
they would not turn aside to attack a man, woe betide the
unfortunate who falls in their path on their mad rush to the
sea! In dragging the boat up through the breakers to a
safe place on shore we were careful to keep out of the
way of those who had made up their minds to leave by
the way we had come. Those a little farther off stared at
us and roared, swinging their massive heads from side to
side, and as I ran toward them with my camera, most of
them took fright and made off— some into the sea, others
into a pond a few rods back from shore — but a few old
giants, when I was within about 20 feet of them, made a
stand. I did not dispute the ground with them, but waited
till they moved slowly off.
Most of the young, accompanied by more than a hun-
dred cows andas many bulls, took refuge in the pond near
shore. They were now thoroughly frightened and rushed
through the shallow pool in wild confusion, making the
water surge and boil and throwing the spray high in the
air. Finally, as if by concerted action, all of the old sea-
lions made a break for the far side of the pond and stam-
peded for the sea, where another absorbing scene was being
enacted. Dozens of adults, apparently cows and middle
aged males, were sporting like porpoises in the breakers,
moving side by side in schools of six or eight and shooting
completely out of the water. These small squads behaved
like well drilled soldiers, keeping abreast, breaking water
simultaneously, making their flying leap in the air side by
side, and taking the next wave together. This they re-
peated again and again, evidently finding it great sport.
It was a marvelous sight and one to be long remembered.
Indeed our momentary stop at Bogoslof in the fog and
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOGOSLOF 335
rain of that July evening proved one of the most interest-
ing and exciting events of the cruise.
PRINCIPAL PAPERS ON BOGOSLOF.
This is not a complete bibliography but contains merely the
titles of papers consulted in the preparation of the accompanying
article.
Becker, George F. Reconnaissance of the gold fields of southern
Alaska. 18th Annual Report U. S. Geological Survey, 1896-
97, Part III, pp. 15, 21, and 25-28, 1898.
Cantwell, Lieut. [now Capt.], John C., U.S. Revenue Marine. De-
scription of Bogoslov Island and the new volcano in Bering Sea.
In Cruise of the Revenue Marine steamer Corwin in the Arctic
Ocean in 1884, pp. 39-41, pls. 1889.
Cook, Capt. James. Voyages into the South Sea. (3d Voyage), Vol.
VII, p. 527, 1784.
Coxe, William. Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia
and America. London. 3d Ed. 1787 [1st Ed. 1780]. Con-
tains Krenitzin and Levashef’s map with profile of Ship Rock.
Dall, Wm. H. Report of geographical and hydrographical explora-
tions on the coast of Alaska. Report Supt. U. S. Coast Survey
for 1873. Appendix No, 11, pp. 115-116, 119, and 122, 1875.
A New Volcano Island in Alaska. Science, Vol. III, pp. 89—
93, Jan. 25, 1884.
The New Bogosloff Volcano. Science, Vol. IV, pp. 138-139,
August 15, 1884.
Further Notes on Bogosloff Island. Science, Vol. V, pp. 32—
33, Jan. 9, 1885.
Davidson, George. The New Bogosloff Volcano in Bering Sea.
Science, Vol. III, pp. 282-286, March 7, 1884.
Diller, J. S. Lava from the New Volcano on Bogosloff Island. Sci-
ence, Vol. V, pp. 66-67, Jan. 23, 1885.
Grewingk, Constantin. Beitrag zur Kenntniss der orographischen und
geognostischen Beschaffenheit der Nordwest Kiiste Amerikas,
mit den anliegenden Inseln. St. Petersburg. 8°, 1850.
Healy, Capt. M. A., U. S. Revenue Marine. Report of the Cruise
of the Revenue Marine Steamer Corwin in the Arctic Ocean
in the year 1885, p. 15, pls. 1887.
336 MERRIAM
Healy, Report of the Cruise of the Revenue Marine Steamer Corwin
in the Arctic Ocean in 1884, pp. 7, 15, 37-46, pls. 1889.
Hydrographic Office. The New Volcano of the Bering Sea. Science,
IV, pp. 432-434, Nov. 17, 1884. Contains Stoney’s notes and
chart, contributed by the U. S. Hydrographic Office.
Kotzebue, Otto. Entdeckungs-Reise, Vol. II, pp. 106-107, 1821;
Vol. III, p..166, 1821.
Langsdorff,G.H.von. Voyageand Travels. London. Part II, pp.
242-245, 1814.
Liitke, F. Voyage autour du Monde, &c. Nautical Part, with Atlas.
St. Petersburg, p. 302, fig. 18, 1836. Contains Tebenkof’s
sketch of Bogoslof and Ship Rock in 1832. See p. 296.
Merrill, George P. Hornblende Andesites from the New Bogosloff
Volcano. Science, Vol. IV, p. 524, Dec. 12, 1884. [Brief
announcement. |
On Hornblende Andesites from the New Volcano on Bogosloff
Island in Bering Sea. Proceedings U. S. National Museum,
Vol. VIII, pp. 31-33, April 23, 1885.
On Hornblende Andesites from the New Volcano on Bogosloy
Island in Bering Sea. In Capt. M. A. Healy’s ‘ Cruise of the
Revenue Marine Steamer Corwin’ for 1884, pp. 45-46, 1889.
Stoney, Lieut. G. M. See Hydrographic Office.
Tanner, Lieut. Commander, Z. L., U. S. Navy. Report upon the
Investigations of the U. S. Fish Commission Steamer Alba-
tross from July 1, 1889, to June 30, 1891. Report, Commis-
sioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1889 to 1891, Part XVII, pp.
242-243, 1893. ;
Report upon the Investigations of the U. S. Fish Commission
Steamer Albatross for the year ending June 30, 1892, pp. 6-7.
Report, Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for year ending
June 30, 1892, Part XVIII, 1894.
Report upon the Operations of the U. S. Fish Commission
Steamer Albatross for the Year ending June 30, 1894. Report,
Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for year ending June 30,
1894, Part XX, p. 203, 1896.
Yemans, H. W., Ass’t Surgeon U.S. Marine Hospital Service. De-
scriptions of Bogoslov Island and the New Volcano in Bering
Sea. In ‘Cruise of the Revenue Marine Steamer Corwin’ in
the Arctic Ocean in 1884, pp. 41-43, pls. 1889.
ae
Ac
a
Sueig LT uSnequetad’s 4 A Sumutted
THE SALMON INDUSTRY
BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL
Is HE fisheries of Alaska constitute one of its
greatest economic resources, but they have
been little exploited, except so far as the
salmon are concerned. There are half a
dozen species of salmon, not all of equal value.
Spending most of their time in the salt water, the salmon
in summer run up the fresh-water streams as far as they
can, and there deposit their eggs. Many of them die be-
fore they return to the salt water; many others are de-
stroyed by enemies of one sort and another, and it is com-
monly believed by the local fishermen that after a salmon
has deposited its
spawn the question
of its death is one of
a very short time
only.
The world’s out-
put of canned sal-
mon comes chiefly
from our Northwest
coast. In 1897 this
output is said to have been not far from 3,000,000 cases,
with forty eight one-pound cans to the case. Of this,
Alaska produced about 1,000,000 cases.
SALMON WHEEL, COLUMBIA RIVER.
(337)
338 GRINNELL
In most salmon streams the fish appear to be about the
same size and age. All the females are likely to be very
similar in appearance; all the males also resemble each
other. There are, however, exceptions to this rule; that is
to say, some streams are entered by more than one species.
The spawning ground sought by the salmon is usually
sandy or gravelly bottom in a pool or eddy, but sometimes
beds are swept out and spawn is deposited where the bot-
tom is covered with stones, varying in size from a hen’s
SALMON DRYING.
egg to a man’s fist. During the winter the eggs of the
salmon hatch out, and in the spring after the ice passes
out of the lakes the young salmon move down the streams
and can often be seen at the mouths in large numbers.
It isan astonishing sight to witness the ascent of a small
salmon stream by the fish, urged on by the reproductive
desire. They work their way slowly up over riffles, where
there is not nearly enough water to float them, but they
seem to have the power of keeping themselves right side
up, and so long as it does not fall over on its side, a fish six
—
DECREASE OF THE SALMON 339
or eight inches deep can wriggle over shoals where the
water is not an inch deep nearly as fast as a man can run.
On such astream one may catch in his hands great salmon
weighing ten or twelve pounds, or may kick them out on
the bank with his feet. And while the appearance of a
man in the shoal water will at once alarm the fish and
send them darting in all directions, up or down the stream,
or even out on the bank, yet they soon return, and begin
again to work their way slowly up through the shallow
water.
If one inquires of an individual connected with the
salmon industry in Alaska something about their numbers,
he is at once told of the millions found there, and informed
that the supply is inexhaustible. The same language will
be used that was heard in past years with regard to the
abundance of the wild pigeons, or of the buffalo, or of the
fur-seals of Bering Sea. But if the investigator will con-
tinue his inquiry, and ask for the details of today, he will
learn that it now takes far longer to secure a given number
of fish than it used to, and that the fishermen are obliged
to travel much farther from the cannery than formerly to
secure their catch. As the reserve of the new acquaint-
ance wears off and he becomes interested in his subject,
what he says will show very clearly that the supply of
Alaska salmon is diminishing, and diminishing at a rapid
rate.
The salmon in the early summer come up from the
deeper waters toward the mouths of the fresh water
streams, and for some weeks may be seen in the bays,
inlets, and fiords collecting in great numbers, preparatory
to running up the stream. At this time they may be taken
in considerable numbers in such places by trolling with
the hook and line, and afford good sport. At morning
and evening they are seen in numbers leaping out of the
water, sometimes fifteen or twenty following one another,
340 GRINNELL
all leaving and entering the water almost at the same place,
as if chasing one another.
When the fish have at last congregated at the mouths
of the rivers, the work of the canners begins. They
seldom cast their nets unless fish are actually seen, but
when the salmon are visible the seine, from three to five
hundred fathoms long, is swept through the water, and
the captured fish are loaded on to the steam tug, which
then takes them to the cannery.
The fishermen who manage the small boats and sweep
the nets are either Indians or Aleuts. The crews of the
steam tugs are usually white men, while the workmen on
the wharf and in the cannery proper are all Chinamen, ex-
cept for an occasional foreman or skilled mechanic.
After the loaded tug is tied up to the wharf, two or three
men equipped with single-tined forks toss the fish from
the deck to the wharf above, where they are received by
other men similarly equipped, who pass them along to the
gang who clean the fish at a long table. The man at the
end of the table seizes a fish and cuts off its head and
slides it along to the next man, who by two rapid cuts
along the back takes out the backbone and loosens the
entrails. It is then pushed on to the next man, by whom
these loose pieces and whatever blood there may be in the
visceral cavity are scraped away, the tail is cut off and the
fish is thrown into a tank of water. From this it is lifted
and placed with many others in a large tray, which is
wheeled into one end of the cannery building. All these
operations have taken place on the wharf, without the
cannery and over the water, so that usually all the waste
products fall down into the water below, where a part
is devoured by the trout, which are constantly to be seen
swimming about, a part by the gulls and other birds which
congregate in great flocks near at hand, and the remainder
is swept back and forth by the tide, much being carried
AT Lowe INLET, BRITISH COLUMBIA
CANNING SALMON 341
away, but enough left on the beach to give the place a
decided odor of its own.
The tray of cleaned fish is placed at the end of a long
machine, where a carrier belt, divided into compartments
about 18 inches square, by wooden partitions standing at
right angles to it, is constantly ascending at an angle of
about 40° to the top of the machine, which is ten or twelve
feet above the floor. This belt is formed of short boards
linked together. The board cross partitions are not con-
tinuous, but have two or three divisions wide enough to
permit heavy knives to pass down through them. Above
the belt, not far from the top, is a cam in which are set a
number of large knives, and this cam, revolving at the
same rate with the movement of the belt, sends down a
set of knives through each compartment as it moves along.
As the belt moves on, a single fish is placed in each
compartment, is carried upward, is cut by the revolving
knives into one-pound pieces, and when the compartment
reaches the point where the belt turns to pass downward
again, the fragments of the fish are thrown out on a table.
All this machinery works automatically.
From the elevated table where the pieces of the fish lie,
another carrier belt runs down toward another table.
This belt is just wide enough to hold the one-pound frag-
ments of fish, each of which is to fill a can. A man stand-
ing by the upper table keeps placing the pieces of fish
close to each other on the belt, and they are carried down-
ward to a point where there is a great rammer just large
enough to fit into a one-pound can. This rammer works
constantly back and forth across the belt carrying the fish.
Opposite the rammer is a horizontal belt carrying a row
of open empty cans, the mouths of which lie toward the
inclined belt which carries the fish. The tin cans move
at such a rate that the mouth of one is opposite the ram-
mer at each forward motion that it, makes, and at each
342 GRINNELL
forward motion a one-pound fragment of salmon is jammed
into an empty can, the can is carried on, and another
empty can follows it, into which another piece of fish is
thrust. This goes on without interruption, minute after
minute and hour after hour, so long as the supply of fish
holds out.
The belt carrying the filled cans now throws them out
on a wide flat table surrounded by men, one of whom sets
them on end as he receives them from the machine.
Those that are completely full are whirled across the table
to a man who with a cloth wipes the grease or moisture
or salmon flesh from about the open end of the can, in
order that when the cover is soldered on, the solder may
take proper hold of the tin. Those not quite full are
thrown to another man, at whose right hand is a pile of
bits of salmon flesh. He fills the can and pushes it along
to the wiper. The latter, as soon as he has finished with
the can, slides it across to another who places a fragment
of tin on the contents in such a position that it will be
under the middle of the cover, which is now put on by
another man, standing near the end of the table. The filled
and covered cans are constantly gathered up and placed in
trays by two men, who carry them across a short passage
and set them down near a man who is attending to the
soldering machine. They are laid side by side on a belt
which runs down to a metal trough just as wide as a can
is high and deeper at one side than at the other, the lower
side being full of molten solder. The trough and solder
are kept hot by a blast beneath them. The cans are
moved forward by means of a heavy chain hanging over
them. The belt carries the cans down to this trough.
The edge of the cover where it meets the can rolls along
for ten or twelve feet through this molten solder, then the
can passes on to another belt, is tipped so that it stands on
its bottom and rides along on the belt to a point where
_
= lag
CANNING SALMON 343
men stand with trays ready to gather up the cans and carry
them over to the testers, whose business it is to determine
whether the cans are absolutely air tight or not. For this
purpose a large number of cans are set in a strap-iron
crate, which is lowered into a tank of water. If bubbles
rise from any can, it evidently is not tight, and is removed
and another one put in its place. In this way five, ten, or
twenty cans may be taken from the crate, which is then
lifted out and carried over to the great boilers, into which
crates full of cans are rolled and where they are cooked
by steam for an hour.
The defective cans are passed over to the solderers and
by them carefully examined; the holes are soldered up by
hand and the cans then go back to the testers.
After the cooking process the cans are gone over again
to see whether any are defective, and then are stacked up
in great piles on the floor. From these piles they are
taken to racks, ranged over tanks of shellac, and when one
of these racks is full, by a simple device its contents are
dipped into the tank beneath, lifted out, and left there to
drain. The shellac soon dries; then the cans are removed
from the rack and again stacked up on the floor, where
the final operation of putting on the labels is performed.
When this has been done they are ready for casing, forty
eight one-pound cans going into a case.
The salmon of Alaska, numerous as they have been and
in some places still are, are being destroyed at so whole-
sale a rate that before long the canning industry must
cease to be profitable, and the capital put into the can-
neries must cease to yield any return.
This destruction of salmon comes about through the
competition between the various canneries. Their greed
is so great that each strives to catch all the fish there are,
and all at one time, in order that its rivals may secure as
few as possible. With their steam tugs, their crews of
344 GRINNELL
white men and Aleuts, and their immense seines they first
sweep the waters near the canneries, and then, when these
have been cleared out, go further and further away, until
at present many canneries, having exhausted the nearby
waters, are obliged to send their tugs 60 or 70 or even 100
miles to find fish for the pack. The fish are caught with
seines, some of which are 300 fathoms long, some 450
fathoms, and I was told of one 750 fathoms long and 18 to
20 feet deep. These seines are run out near the mouths
ALEUTS DRYING SALMON AT UNALASKA.
of the rivers where the fish are schooling preparatory to
their ascent, and of course everything within the compass
of the net is caught. Not only are salmon taken by the
steamer load, but in addition millions of other good fish
are captured, killed, and thrown away. At times also it
happens that far greater numbers of salmon are caught
than can be used before they spoil. A friend told me of
the throwing away of 60,000 salmon at one time near a
cannery in Prince William Sound in the summer of 1900,
SELFISHNESS OF SALMON CANNERS 345
and again of the similar throwing away of 10,000 fish.
At these particular times the salmon run happened to be
very heavy, and more were caught than could be con-
sumed by the cannery. So something like 700,000 pounds
of valuable fish was wasted.
One of the best known salmon districts of Alaska may
be chosen as an example of what this wasteful method
will do for any river. I was told recently by a person
very familiar with the canning industry and with Alaska
that the catch of salmon in the Kadiak and Chignik dis-
tricts — which put up nearly 44 percent of all the Alaska
canned salmon— for 1896 was nearly 360,000 cases; for
1897 it was about 300,000 cases; for 1898, 90,000 cases,
and that up to midsummer in 1899 the fishing had been
practically a failure. And what is going on in the Kadiak
district is going on in other districts. Competition is so
very sharp between the great canning companies, as well
as between the smaller individual concerns which run
canneries, that each manager is eagerly desirous to put up
more fish than his neighbor. All these people recognize
very well that they are destroying the fishing; and that
before very long a time must come when there will be no
more salmon to be canned at a profit. But this very
knowledge makes them more and more eager to capture
the fish and to capture all the fish. This bitter competi-
tion sometimes leads to actual fighting — on the water as
well as in the courts. A year or two since, one company
which was trying to stop another from fishing on ground
which it claimed as_its own, sent out its boats with im-
mense seines, and dropping them about the steam launches
of its rival tried to haul them to the shore. This action
led to long litigation, which resulted in a verdict for the
company attacked.
Thus the canners work in a most wasteful and thought-
lessly selfish way, grasping for everything that is within
346 GRINNELL
their reach and thinking nothing of the future. Their
motto seems to be, “If I do not take all I can get some-
body else will get something.”
Congress has passed laws governing the taking of sal-
mon in Alaska, but they are ineffective and there is
scarcely a pretense of enforcing them. It is true that
each year inspectors are brought up on the revenue cutter
to see that the law is obeyed, and of course these in-
SALMON BARRICADE.
spectors see very clearly that it is violated in every direc-
tion. Where the violations are so flagrant that they force
themselves on the inspectors’ notice the canners are told
that they are doing wrong, and that the violations of the
law must cease. The canners reply to them, “ Yes, we
know you are quite right ; it is wrong. We do not wish
to do as we are doing, but so long as others act in this
way we must continue to do so for our own protection.
Speak to our rivals about this. We will stop if they will.”
VIOLATING THE LAW 347
The rival companies, when spoken to, make the same
reply; so accusations are bandied back and _ forth.
Nothing is done and the bad work goes on.
Nor are the concerns satisfied with capturing the vast
quantities of fish as they are schooling in the salt water
preparatory to running up the streams to their spawning
ground. ‘To do this systematically would be to catch most
of the fish, but it would not catch them all — it would not
make a clean sweep. So, on many of the streams the
companies build dams or barricades, designed to prevent
any fish from ascending. Drawn by instinct to the mouths
of the rivers, the fish crowd to them trying to ascend,
pushing forward, going only in one direction, and never
becoming discouraged so long as life remains. None
ever turn back, and so, in the course of the summer the
whole number which in the natural course of things would
ascend a river finally collect at its mouth. If the nets are
systematically drawn, all these fish are caught; not one
escapes, and the river is absolutely despoiled of breeding
fish for that year. Not one ascends, and so no eggs are
deposited and no fry are hatched the next spring.
Of course this absolute obstruction of the streams is
practicable only on the smaller rivers. But it is carried
on to a greater or less extent all through the Territory
wherever it can be done, and yet “the erection of dams,
barricades, fish wheels, fences or any such fixed or station-
ary obstructions in any part of the rivers or streams of
Alaska . . . is declared to be unlawful,” and is
punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000 or imprison-
ment at hard labor for a term of go days, or by both such
fine and imprisonment, and by a further fine of $250 per~
day for each day that such obstruction is maintained.
There are certain rivers too large to be barricaded, and
up these some fish run, notwithstanding the continual net-
ting at their mouths. Such rivers often head in consider-
348 GRINNELL
able lakes, where the fish spawn. It is the common prac-
tice of many of the canners to fish with nets in these lakes,
and with an utter disregard for consequences to catch the
fish while occupied in depositing their eggs.
As the natives of Alaska, many of them Aleuts, subsist
largely on salmon, the regulations of the Treasury De-
partment permit them to fish for food, and they are not
subject to the general law which provides “for the pro-
tection of the salmon fisheries of Alaska.” Advantage is
taken of this liberty still further to destroy the fish. The
natives catch all the salmon they wish and sell them to
the canners, and this goes on indefinitely wherever the
prohibition against fishing is in any degree regarded. Of
course the natives, ignorant of the law, and, like the
white man, eager for present gain, are glad to catch the
fish and to sell them.
It must be remembered that long before the white man
had come to Alaska, the fisheries on most of the streams
resorted to by the salmon already had owners. For hun-
dreds of years the Indians and the Aleuts had held these
fisheries, not in the general way in which an Indian tribe
claimed to possess a certain territory, but with an actual
ownership which was acknowledged by all and was never
encroached on. Their rights to the fisheries were as real
as to the arms that they bore or the boats in which they
traveled. For centuries certain families or certain clans
had held proprietary rights in particular streams, and they
alone could take fish from them. No Indian would fish
in a stream not his own. He respected the rights of
others, just as he expected others to respect his own.
These ancient rights have now been taken from the na-
tives by force, but they are still anxious to get what they
can from the fishing.
On some streams it is easier to take the fish in traps
than it is to stop them by means of barricades, and then
ho
Ce a enon
So! aii ae r
fet ft Ly AW ALSALeAl ehh dette eee ae
“ /
JOHN ANDREW & SON
PHOTOGRAPH BY U.S. FISH COMMISSION
SALMON DRYING AT CHERNOFSKI VILLAGE, ALBUTIAN ISLANDS
SALMON ON AFOGNAK ISLAND 349
net them from the water below the barrier. Insuch places
traps are built with wings and low dams up which the fish
can pass into a pool or lake, which at its head is dammed
by an impassable barrier. When the pool is full, or nearly
so, it is swept clean by the net and left empty to be filled
again. Thus all the breeding fish of a season may be and
often are caught.
I was told that one of the great corporations established
in Alaska had received permission to establish a fish
CAMP OF NATIVE SALMON FISHERMEN, KADIAK ISLAND.
hatchery, and that the employees of this company during
the day catch fish ostensibly to strip for the hatchery and
at night take them back to the cannery and can them.
It is well remembered that the island of Afognak, lying
just east of Kadiak Island, and in one of the richest sal-
mon regions of Alaska, was set aside some years since by
Presidential proclamation as a forest reserve. Formerly
there was a cannery on this island, but it has been dis-
350 GRINNELL
continued and the machinery moved away. This, how-
ever, does not make much difference in the destruction of
the salmon. The streams of Afognak Island are con-
stantly fished by means of nets and barricades, and this
reservation, like some of those within the limits of the
United States, is a prey to whoever may be the first to
despoil it.
Within a few years there has sprung up in Alaska a
new and particularly wasteful method of using salmon.
This is the salting of the bellies. It is perhaps not gen-
erally known that the most delicate part of the salmon is
the belly. In old times certain tribes of Indians — where
the fish were sufficiently abundant — habitually cut out
and dried for their winter food the bellies alone, throwing
away the remainder of the fish. In various parts of Alaska
the same practice is carried on to-day. Only the bellies
of prime salmon are preserved, salted, and packed in bar-
rels for shipment, the whole fish, except the belly, being
thrown away. In other words only from ro percent to
20 percent in weight of each fish is used, the remainder
being wasted.
Very little capital is required to establish a saltery. All
that is needed is a rough shelter from the weather, salt,
barrels, and labor. On the other hand to establish a can-
nery requires some money, for the buildings must be of a
permanent character, and more or less elaborate machinery
is required. A saltery may be established almost any-
where, and may readily be moved from one place to an-
other. The salted bellies are recognized in the market
as choice food and bring good prices. Thus almost any-
one may establish a saltery and the business offers espe-
cial attractions to men of small means.
Salting is practiced at various points in Alaska, one of
the best known salteries being situated near Tyonek on
Cook Inlet. At this particular place king salmon — known
OE
way
THE LAW IN THE CASE 351
in British Columbia and the United States as ‘ chinook’
salmon—are used. These are the largest and choicest
of the Pacific coast salmon, but they are destroyed as un-
thinkingly as any of the others. At other salteries the
varieties known as humpback and cohoe also furnish
bellies for salting.
This practice may fairly be compared with the old time
method of killing buffalo for their tongues alone, and the
more recent one of killing elk and deer for their hides or
heads or hams. It should be stopped; but even if for-
bidden by law there is no hope that in the present condi-
tion of governmental affairs in Alaska the law would be
other than a dead letter. When—if ever— matters in
Alaska shall have become so settled that the taking of
salmon shall be under governmental supervision the salt-
ing of salmon bellies, like many other abuses existing
there, will be put an end to.
By the law passed June g, 1896, now in force, entitled
* An act to amend an act entitled ‘An act to provide for
the protection of salmon fisheries of Alaska,’ ” it is specifi-
cally provided:
1. Thatstreams shall not be dammed or barricaded nor
traps used on them to prevent or impede the ascent of the
salmon to their spawning grounds, and that the Secretary
of the Treasury shall establish and enforce such regula-
tions as may be necessary to insure compliance with the
provisions of the law relating to salmon fisheries of Alaska.
2. That salmon shall not be taken except with rod or
spear above the tide water of any stream less than 500
feet in width except for purposes of propagation; that nets
and traps may not be laid or set for a distance of more
than one-third the width of such rivers nor within 100
yards of any other net or seine in said rivers; that no fish
may be killed, except in Cook Inlet and Prince William
Sound, between midnight on Friday and 6 o’clock in the
352 GRINNELL
morning of the Sunday following; that no salmon may be
caught in any manner or by any appliance, except by rod
or spear, in any stream less than 300 feet wide between 6
o’clock in the evening and 6 o’clock in the morning on
each day of the week.
3. That the Secretary of the Treasury may set aside
certain streams in which no fishing may be permitted, and
that he may establish close seasons to limit the duration
of the fishing season, or may prohibit the fishing entirely
for one year or more.
4. The appointment is authorized of three inspectors of
fisheries and their salaries are named.
5. Penalties for violation of the provisions of this act are
announced.
As has been said, the law in force is entirely inadequate,
but it is easier to see where it fails to protect than it is to
suggest amendments which shall make it efficient. Per-
sons in Alaska interested in canneries have expressed the
opinion that a tax should be laid on the output of each
cannery, and that this tax should be used to support hatch-
eries by which the supply of salmon in the streams might
constantly be renewed. It is obvious that Congress, which
enacts the laws, can know but little, or nothing, about the
actual necessities of the case. The present law, which
provides for the appointment of three inspectors to look
after a territory one-fifth as large as the whole United
States, where there are no means of transportation and
where every stream that is six inches deep is a salmon
stream, is entirely inadequate, and in fact authorizes the
throwing away of the small amount of money that is paid
to each of these men. Many of the provisions of the
present law are excellent so far as they go, and the chief
weakness lies in the fact that no means are provided for
enforcing the statute.
It is obvious that the expense of enforcing the law pro-
a
ry
ASPECTS OF THE FISHERY 353
tecting salmon in Alaska should be borne by those who
are engaged in the business of catching and selling these
salmon. The canners should be taxed presumably on the
output of their factories, and the revenue received from
this source should be used from year to year for the pur-
pose of restocking the streams and protecting them. It
might be practicable also to lease certain streams to cer-
SALMON DRYING BY ALEUTS.
tain companies on reasonable terms, not permitting them
to fish except on the streams that they have leased.
What has already been written concerns the summer
of 1898 and previous seasons. Since then, there appears
to have been no material change in the conditions, except
that the summer of 1900 was marked by an unusually
good run of salmon in certain rivers, and that certain
catches were large.
The report of the Special Agent of the treasury for 1900,
which become accessible while these pages were passing
through the press (April 1901), shows that violations of the
law by the methods already described continue, and while
354 GRINNELL
this agent takes a most cheerful view of the prospects of the
fisheries and declares that many new canneries are being
established — a condition which is likely always to follow
a year in which there has been a good run— yet an inspec-
tion of his report indicates steady and continuous diminu-
tion in the numbers of the fish taken, and strongly empha-
sizes the importance of measures to increase the supply
and protect the breeding fish. In describing the process
of salmon taking and canning he says: “It is reported
that with the help of steam power and the use of the lar-
gest size of seine as many as 75,000 salmon have been
taken ata single haul. But that never happens nowadays,
when a catch of 5,000 is accounted extremely good and
very often a few hundred only are secured.” These few
words tell the whole story.
Some slightly increased interest appears to be felt in
the direction of artificial propagation. The report im-
plies that four practical hatcheries are in operation in
Alaska, and says that their output of salmon fry will not
exceed 14,000,000 — a number about equal to two-thirds of
the annual catch. As only about one percent of these fry
are supposed to mature, it is obvious that as yet the efforts
to supply the annual loss caused by commercial fishing are
entirely insignificant.
Notwithstanding the wholesale destruction which is
thus going on, the salmon of Alaska are not in danger of
actual extermination. Long before anything of this kind
had taken place the canneries and indeed commercial
fishing of every description would have been abandoned
as unprofitable, and the streams— even those that had
been most ruthlessly fished— would slowly reestablish
themselves. But the selfish and shortsighted policy of
taking everything in sight cannot fail to render unprofit-
able in a very short time the whole Alaska canning in-
dustry, and to make it necessary to abandon the costly
—
Mos =
VALUE OF THE FISHERY 355
plants that have been established at so many points.
Even if the government is too indifferent to interfere to
regulate the fishing, it would seem that as a mere matter
of business policy the corporations and individuals inter-
ested in the industry would get together and devise plans
for their own protection; but small jealousies and the fear
of being overreached by competitors have hitherto pre-
vented this.
The question of the protection of these fisheries is not
one of sentiment in any degree. It is a question as to
whether the material resources of Alaska are worth pro-
tecting. Beginning twenty years ago in a very small way
Alaska has produced up to this time about 7,500,000 cases
of salmon in addition to large quantities that have been
salted —in 1897 15,500 barrels. The output of the sal-
mon canneries according to the official report of the U.S.
Treasury Department was in 1899 valued at $3,850,346;
in 1900 $6,219,887. Certainly such a resource is worth
saving and making perpetual.
FOX FARMING IN ALASKA
BY M. L. WASHBURN
OR many years the world’s supply of fine furs
has: been steadily decreasing. The beautiful
sea otter, from the greed of the white hunter
with his far-reaching firearms and his still
more deadly net, set in the rocky passes
through which the otter swims from one feeding ground
to another, is practically extinct. The vast herds of fur-
seals, by reason of the destructive effects of killing at sea,
have so decreased that only small remnants now frequent
the rookeries of the Commander and Pribilof Islands. On
land the onward march of civilization just as surely pro-
claims the early commercial extinction of the silver fox,
the blue fox, the American sable, and many less valuable
fur-bearing animals. Even today so scarce have these
animals become that we find comparatively few of their
pelts offered in the markets of the world. Their place is
largely taken by inferior skins, colored to imitate the fash-
ionable furs of the season, but which change their tint
with use until they finally return to the original hue of the
creature from which they were taken — in most instances
the humble rabbit.
Something like fifteen years ago a few men in western
Alaska, realizing that fur-bearing animals were doomed,
(357)
358 WASHBURN
decided to try the experiment of propagating some of the
more valuable kinds. Having resided onthe Seal or
Pribilof Islands and observed that the blue fox became
somewhat tame, they resolved to try its domestication by
placing a small number on protected islands and caring
for them as the stockman cares for his herd of cattle or
sheep. About twenty foxes were taken from St. Paul Is-
land of the Pribilof group, and placed on North Semidi,
one of the hundreds of unoccupied islands of Alaska, and
thus the experiment began. The industry being new
nothing was known of the habits of the animal, the care
necessary for its
successful propa-
gation, or the kind
of food which was
likely to prove
commercially
practicable —for
it must be nutri-
tious, inexpensive,
and palatable.
From North
_ Semidi, the origi-
“> nal ‘fox ranch,’ if
one may employ
such a term, foxes
were taken to other islands along the Alaska coast and the
experiments continued. The results though sometimes
discouraging and not always financially successful, have
shown on the whole that the animal could be raised and
its valuable pelt obtained with as much regularity as in the
case of the humbler domestic animals. About thirty
BLUE FOXES ON FOX FARM.
islands are now stocked with blue foxes—all the out- —
growth of the small stock of twenty foxes taken from
St. Paul Island fifteen years ago.
FOX FARMING 359
Long Island, a few miles east of Kadiak, is perhaps the
ideal blue fox ranch and may serve as a type for all. Itis
a small island covered with grassy fields and stretches of
spruce forest. Here, near the beach and nestling down
in the edge of the woods, surrounded by trees, flowers,
and luxuriant grasses, is the keeper’s house and other
buildings necessary for storing the winter’s stock of food
and handling the foxes during the trapping season. This
station has been in operation for about five years and has
now from 800 to 1,000 foxes. They are taken care of by
a head keeper and two assistants. The food consists of
fish and corn meal cooked together and fed to the foxes
once a day throughout the year. They soon come to
know the feeding time and, gathering round an hour be-
fore the food is ready, patiently wait for their daily allow-
ance (6 or 8 ounces of meal and fish). They then scatter
about the island until the time for the next day’s dinner.
Fish of any kind is used, either put up dry or preserved
in seal oil or whale oil, the latter being especially attrac-
tive to Sir Reynard.
The foxes soon learn to recognize their keepers and
show little fear of them, but, as a rule, are shy of stran-
gers. The young are born early in May and attain their
growth in about nine months. Only one litter is born each
year, generally numbering from 5 to 8, though as many as
11 have been raised by one mother; this however is unusual
and the estimates of increase for killing purposes are based
on the probability that an average of 4 will reach maturity.
During the breeding season special care is taken to scatter
the food over the island as the mother does not like to
leave her young for any length of time, but after they
begin to run about she soon teaches them to follow her to
the general feeding grounds.
The killing season is from about November 2oth to
January roth, the fur being then in its finest state. The
360 WASHBURN
foxes are taken in box traps and the best of each sex are
saved for breeders, care being taken to mark them by clip-
ping the hair on the end of the tail as they are released
from the traps. \ Daily records are kept of the number of
males and females released and the number of males and
females killed—the reasons for killing the latter being
carefully stated.
The Semidi Propagating Company, besides stocking
from North Semidi, Long Island, and Chirikof for itself,
has sold enough live foxes to stock the islands of Pearl,
Little Naked, Goose, Green, Demidof, Deranof, and
SANK UWL
WN i : Ad
FOX FARM, LONG ISLAND, NEAR KADIAK.
Ugak, from which in turn several other islands in eastern
Alaska have been supplied, while in western Alaska four
of the Shumagin islands have been stocked from Attu,
where the blue fox in the wild state is still found in limited
numbers.’
All of the islands kept by the Semidi Propagating Com-
pany, and many of the others in Alaska devoted to the
1 In 1898 a few pairs of foxes from Long Island were sent to Foxcroft, Maine,
and placed in wire-fenced yards. The animals were all pups of that season but I
am informed that several foxes were raised in 1899.
FOXES ON THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS 361
breeding of foxes, are leased from the United States for
this purpose and much interest is being taken by Govern-
ment officials in the results of the experiments. The
natives of Alaska also are beginning to realize the possi-
bility of preserving at least a few of the fur-bearing animals
and now four of the islands devoted to blue foxes are
owned wholly or in part by natives who have become
interested in the industry through the reports of their
friends and relatives employed in caring for the animals
on other islands. The natives by nature and experience
make first-class keepers and through these positions obtain
a good living for themselves, while rendering excellent
service to their employers.
In addition to the localities referred to above, fox raising
may be said to be in operation on at least one of the Pri-
bilof Islands, which furnished the original parent stock.
For many years the natives of these two islands, St. Paul
and St. George, which compose the group, trapped the foxes
during the winter season irrespective of sex, and sold the
skins so obtained for a nominal price to the company
holding the sealing lease. In recent years, however, the
work has been carried on in a more systematic manner
and yields much larger returns. At the present time the
corporation leasing the islands, The North American Com-
mercial Company, also leases the right from the United
States to purchase all blue fox skins obtained, at the rate
of $5.00 per skin, which income is devoted as a community
fund to the support of the natives and is disbursed to them
under the direction of the Treasury Department. This
became necessary by reason of the great decrease in the
seal herd with its resulting diminution of revenue to the
natives. The amount so contributed is somewhere be-
tween $3,000 and $4,000 per annum. The Company,
under the lease, takes entire charge of the fox business
just as it does of the taking of sealskins.
362 WASHBURN
The business is carried on only on St. George Island, and
as now conducted is the result of several years of experi-
menting by the Company. A suitable house has been
erected on St. George for storing food and skinning the
foxes. Adjacent to this is a large square enclosed with
wire netting, where the foxes are fed and the selection of
males for killing is made. Only a few females are killed,
the Company proceeding on the basis of the belief that
the foxes are polygamous. It has been found, here, as
elsewhere, however, that this view is not fully sustained
ae Zw
S a
eX
LZ eens
Zs
156, 341-347, 354-355
Canoe birch 239
Canoes, different types 140, 141-143,
162-164
Cantwell, Lieut., work on Bogoslof
306-310, 322, 323, 332-333, 335
Cape Fox Indian village 116-117
Cape Nome 105, 276
population 273
Cape Uganuk 244
Captain Roys 199
es
INDEX
Captains Bay 189
Caribou 174
Carices 253
Carrol Glacier 128
Cascade Range glaciers 119-120
Cassiope 83
Cedar, Alaska yellow 247
red or coast 247, 272
Chamecyparis nootkatensis 247
Chernofski 169
Chickadee, long-tailed 224, 225
rufous-backed 28, 51, 118, 219
Chilkat 260
blankets 158
Chirikof 187
‘ Choochkies ’ 98, 182
Chukchi peninsula 186
natives 98, 174, 186-187
Church bells 222
Greek at Kadiak 82
at Unalaska 91
Metlakahtla 152, 155
Clarence Straits 26
Clarkia 14
Claytonia 105, 111, 112
Clearwater River 14
Climate of Alaska 267-272
of Bering Sea 270-271
of Interior of Alaska 271-272
of Pacific Coast 267-269
Clouds 279, 280, 285-286
Coal 275
Coast forest 244-253, 272-273
Coe, Wesley R. xxxiii
Cole, Leon J. xxxv 3
College Fiord, Prince William Sound
birds 219, 220
glaciers 69-70, 126-127
Columbia Fiord 262
Glacier 67, 76, 126, 134
River 14, 15, 192
Columbine 61
Colville River (forest) 242
Convention between Great Britain and
Russia 198
Russia and United States 196
Cook Inlet 76-77, 115, 133
trees, 237, 244, 248, 256
Cook, Capt. James 190, 321, 335
373
Copper 68, 275
Copper River 122, 195
forests 244
mineral resources 65, 266, 275
Cormorants 109, 212
red-faced 233
violet-green 212
‘Corwin,’ Revenue Steamer 306, 310,
311, 312, 335-336
Cotton grass 221
Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa and
P. dalsamifera) 237, 239; 249, 251
Coville, F. V. xxxiii, 18, 63, 329
Cow parsnip 60
Cowslip 231
Coyotes 9
Crevasses 43
Crillon Glacier 122
Cross Sound 135, 260
Crows, Northwest 206, 221
Curtis, E. S. xxxv
Dall, W. H. xxxiv, 18, 62, 167
article on Discovery and Explora-
tion 185-204
ascends Yukon 201-202
Bogoslof notes and sketches 297—
301, 322-323, 326, 335
poem on Innuit People 367-370
Davidson, George 303-305, 335
Davidson Glacier 30, 121
Dawson, G. M. 237
Dead glaciers 259
‘ Dead Horse’ trail 33
Dead houses 152
Dease and Simpson survey 199
Deer 21-22, 23, 51, 140
Dellenbaugh, F. S. xxxiv, xxxvii, 19
Devereux, W. B. xxxiv, 18, 62, 320
Devil’s club 23, 225
Devil’s Thumb 28
Diamedes Islands 103, 186, 187, 188
Diorite 320
Directory at Irkutsk 193-194
Discovery and exploration 185-204
Disenchantment Bay 123, 126, 131, 261
Distribution of trees, 236, 253
Diving birds 212, 227
Dixon Entrance 190
374
Dodecatheon 69, 221, 253
‘Dora,’ schooner 303
Doran, Capt. Peter xxii, xxxv, xxxvi,
62, 71-72
Doty, Lieut., photographs of Bogoslof
298, 307, 309, 322
Douglas City 255, 273
Douglas fir 246, 272
Douglas Island 29
Driftwood on Hall and St. Matthew
Islands 113
Drosera 253
Dryas, white-cupped 231
Duck, Harlequin 212, 229, 233, 332
Old Squaw 234
Eider 102
Duncan, William 24-26, 152, 153-155
Dust, cause of color in sky 279, 285
Dutch Harbor 90-91, 114
Dwarf willows 131
Eagle Glacier 121
Eagles 20, 21, 29, 207, 226
Earthquake 89, 291, 292, 310
East Cape 186
Echinopanax horridum 249, 250
Edgecumbe Volcano 50, 190
Eggs, shower of 330
Egg hunters, 300-301
Eider 102, 234
Spectacled 230
‘Elder, George W’., our steamer, offi-
cers XxXxv
provisioning and equipment
17-18
first ship in Harriman Fiord
71-73
Russell Fiord 261
Elk Mountains 3
Elliot, D. G. xxi, xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 72
Emerson, B. K. xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 63,99
Emmons, Lieut. Geo. T. 159
Endicott Mountains 242
Epilobium 131, 216, 220, 250
Equisetum 250, 253
Eskimo 99-104, 108, 171-183
article by Grinnell 167-183
babies 104, 179
burial ground 176-177
INDEX
Eskimo camp, Port Clarence 102-104,
178-183
children, 101-102, 176, 182
clothing, 176, 182
dismal outlook 183
dogs 101, 177, 179, 180
first seen 68, 167
houses 101, 171, 175
Innuit (song) 367-370
Kadiak 189
Kayak 68, 179, 180
King Island 177-178
labrets 177, 178, 182
Plover Bay village 99-102
Prince William Sound 67, 167 |
St. Lawrence Island (starvation)
108
skin boats or umiaks 100, 103, 178-
179
tattooing, 175-176
Eskimoan stock, 167, 195
Etolin Island 27
Expedition, Bering 187-188
Harriman, members xxxiii-xxxv
Exploration, history 185-204
Farming, doubtful 271, 276
fox, article by Washburn 357-
365 .
Fairweather ground 190
Range 48, 115, 135, 235, 244
altitude 48, 52, 260.
glaciers 52-53, 129-130
Fernow, B. E. xxxiv, xxxvi, xxxvii, 18
article on Alaska Forests 235-256
Ferns 83, 218
Finch, Aleutian rosy 113, 226, 227, 232
house 12
Lincoln 209
rosy (Hepburn) 47, 210, 215
Fiords 19-21, 122, 123, 258, 262
Fir, red or Douglas 246, 272
Firs, 246
Fish as a resource 274
drying 114
Fisher, Dr. A. K. xxxiv, 18, 331
Fisheries, Salmon 337-355
Fish hooks, primitive 139
Fleur-de-lis 83, 222, 253
Np nanan
INDEX
Flora, meeting of Atlantic and Pacific
237
Flycatcher, Arkansas 12
Fog 269-271, 289
in Bering Sea 98, 107, 108, 112, 270-
271
Forests, article by Fernow 235-256
article by Gannett 272-273
buried 44, 45, 130, 251
coast 23, 244-253
composition 246-247
destroyed by glaciers 52-53, 130,
251-252
economic value 243, 253-256
meeting of Atlantic and Pacific
236-237
of interior 239-243
Forest fires 118, 256, 284
Forgetmenots 83, 102, 222
Fort Kolmakoff established 198
Macpherson 199
Selkirk 202
Wrangell, 27, 28, 247, 255
Yukon, 199, 202
Fox, Arctic 232
blue 113, 274
breeding 359-361, 362
food 114, 115, 359, 362, 364
farming 68, 114, 357-365
‘Fox ranch,’ original 358, 359
Fox sparrow, Townsend 47
Franklin 198
search expeditions 199-200
Franklin’s Return Reef 198
Frederick Sound 28
Fritellarias 222
Fuertes, L. A. xxxv, xxxvii, 63
Fulmar, Pacific 114, 229, 233, 234
Fur-bearing animals 188, 274, 357
Fur-seals 96-97, 274
Fur trade 189, 190, 191
Gannett, Henry xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 73, 76
article on Geography of Alaska
257-277
climate 267-272
forests 272-273
population 273-274
resources 274-277
375
Geikie Glacier 128
Geography of Alaska, article by Gan-
nett 257-277
Geranium, wild 83
Geum calthifiorum 253
Geum, golden 221
Gifford, R. Swain xxxiv, xxxvii, 115
Gilbert, G. K., xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 40, 62
physical history of Bogoslof 327-
328
Glaciation 128-129, 134-135, 258-259
Glacier, Amherst 69-70
Auk 121
Baird 121
Barry 71-73, 74; 126
Brady 130
Bryn Mawr 69, 127
Carrol 128
Columbia 67, 76, 126, 134
Davidson, 30, 121
Eagle 121
Geikie 128
Grand Pacific 128
Grand Plateau 122
Harvard 69, 126
Harriman 73, 126, 263
Hubbard 55~56, 126, 131, 261
Hugh Miller 127-128
La Perouse 52-53, 122, 129-130
LeConte 122, 124
Lucia 252
Malaspina 63, 121, 122, 131, 135,261
Miles 122
Morse 45-46
Muir 35-47, 126, 128, 259
Nunatak 59, 131
Patterson 28, 121
Radcliffe 69, 127
Rendu 128
Serpentine 72, 126
Smith 69, 127
Surprise 126
Taku 125
Turner 55-56, 60, 123, 131
Vassar 69, 127
Wellesley 69, 127
Yakutat 122
Yale 69, 126 -
Glaciers, article by Muir 119-135
376 INDEX
Glacier moraines 37, 42, 44, 45, 46, 53,
63, 121
Glacier Bay 35-48, 123, 125, 127-129
Island, 247
milk, 63
Glaciers, ancient 128-129, 133, 134-135,
258-259
Glaciers of Glacier Bay 35-48, 123, 125,
127-129
of Holkam or Sum Dum Bay 123,
124-125
of Lynn Canal, 30, 121
of Pacific coast 119-135, 259-262
of Port Wells 69-70, 71-74, 126-
127, 132-133, 263
of Prince Willam Sound, 67, 69-74,
123, 126-127, 262-263
of Taku Inlet 125
of Yakutat Bay 56-58, 126, 131
recession of 127-128
Glenn, Capt. 262
Golden plover 106, 230
Gold 275-276 :
seekers 34, 65-66, 114
Golofnin Bay 242
Graham Reach 22
Grand Pacific glacier 126
Plateau glacier 122
Grantly Harbor 200
Great Britain and Russia, convention
198
Greenfield, W. C. 298, 322, 324
Greek Catholic faith 193
Green River, Wyoming 5
Grenvill Channel 118
Grewingk, Constantin 292, 295, 332,
335
Grewingk Volcano 303-320
Grosbeak, Kadiak pine 61, 83, 218, 224
Grouse, Canada 221
Grinnell, George B., xxxiv, xxxvi,
Xxxvii, 19
the Coastwise Indians 137-165
the Eskimo we saw 167-183
the Salmon Industry 337-355
Gull, glaucus-winged 212
kittiwake 227, 229-230, 332
Point Barrow 233
Sabine 234
Gull, short-billed 220
Gulls, 71, 109, 131, 332
Gustavus Peninsula (= Point Gus-
tavus) 40-41
Henke Island 60
Hague, Capt. 303, 305
Haida canoes 141
Hair seal fishing 60, 158, 159, 160-165
Hall Island, Bering Sea 109-111, 230-
233, 265
Hall, Lieut. 306, 309
‘ Hanging valleys’ 258-259
‘Harems’ of fur-seals 96
Harlequin duck 212, 229, 233, 332
Harriman, E. H. xxv, —, 62
kills Kadiak bear 85
Preface by xxi-xxiii
Harriman Expedition, Committees,
xxxvi-xxxvii '
history xxi-xxxi
members xxxiii-xxxv
Harriman family xxxiii
Harriman Fiord 71-73, 76, 132-133, 263
Glacier 73, 126, 263
Harvard Glacier 69, 126
Hawkins Island 247
Haze 279, 283, 284
Healy, Capt. M. A. 306-309, 311, 322,
335-336
Heather 65, 221
Hemlock, Alpine ( 7suga mertensiana)
132-133, 221, 247, 252-253
Coast (Tsuga heterophylla) 218,
247-249, 250
Highhole, western 19
History of Alaska 185-204
Holkam Bay 123, 124-125
Homer 76
Hornblende-andesite 320
Horned puffins 233
Horses 17-18, 33
Hot Springs, Sitka 50, 252
Howling valley 38-40
Howison, Lieut. J. W. 309
Hoxhog 152
Hubbard Glacier 55-56, 126, 131, 261
Hudson Bay Co. 192, 198, 199
Hugh Miller Glacier 127-128
INDEX
Hummingbird, Rufous 118, 207-208
Humphrey, Omar J. xxiii, xxxv
Hutli 124
Huts, Eskimo 99, 171-174
Seal-hunters, Glacier Bay (cuts)
163-164
Seal-hunters, Yakutat 60,
159
Hyperborean Snowbird 111, 113
158-
Ice. See Glacier
Icebergs 37, 38, 123, 124, 125, 131
Ice palisade 35-36, 67
plateau, vast 121-122
Iciest region 120
Ice Cape 122, 135
Tliamna Lake 237
Volcano 76, 256
Tliuliuk 91
Indian Point 102, 177
Indian River, Sitka 50, 51
Indians, article by Grinnell 137-165
baskets 143
canoes 140-143
carvings 142, 143-144, 147-150,
156-159
deserted village 116-117, 145-148
fishing 138-139, 348
food 138-139
graves 150-152
hunting 137-138, 140
Hunya (cuts) 163-164
huts 60, 158-159, 163-164
linguistic families 138
masks 149-150
Metlakahtla 24-26, 152-156
oil boxes 159-160
potlatch 144-145
Seal hunting 60, 158-165
Sitka 50, 156-158
totem poles 116-117, 146-148, 150
Yakutat 158-165
villages 116-117, 145-146, 152, 158-
165
Innuit People (poem) 367-370
Insects 106
International Boundary 33, 271
Inverarity, D. G. xxxv
Iris 83, 222, 253
377
Irrigation 12, 13
Isanotski Volcano 90
Jacobs ladder 83
Jeger, Parasitic 218
Pomarine 218
Jegers 61, 218, 219
Jay, Steller 28, 118, 208, 219
Junco, Oregon 28, 40
Juneau 29, 115, 156, 207
Kachemak Bay 76, 137
Kadiak bear 79, 85, 87
birds 80, 83, 221-225
climate 81, 267-268
forests 80, 85, 114, 237, 244, 255-
256, 272
history 189, 193, 196
Island 77-87, 114-115, 263 (area) >
original inhabitants 167, 168, 189
pine grosbeak 218-224
salmon 79, 345
verdure 79, 83, 114, 133
village 79-82
Kamchatka 187, 188
Kamchatkan traditions 188
Kayak 68, 179, 180
Kearney, T. H. xxxiv
Keeler, Charles xxxiv, 63
article on Alaska birds 205-234
poem xxxix
Kenai Peninsula 263
Kennicott, Robert 200-201
Kincaid, Trevor xxxiv
King Island, 103, 177
King Id. Eskimo 177-178
Kingfisher, Belted 209
Kinglet, Golden-crowned 51, 118, 225
Ruby-crowned 217
Kittiwakes 227, 229-230, 332
Klondike 33, 34, 185, 210, 267
Koluschan stock, Indians 138, 143
Kondakoff, Stepan 85
Knik River 237
Kotzebue Sound 200, 266
Kotzebue, Otto 196, 291, 292, 336
Kowak River 242, 266
Koyukun Indians 200
Koyukuk River 266, 273, 275
378 INDEX
Kukak Bay 78, 86-87, 244
Kuskokwim Bay 236
River 198, 266, 275
Kwakiutl Indians 152
Labrets 177, 178, 182
Lady’s slipper 83, 222
Lake Bennett 34
Clark 237
Lindeman 243
Langsdorf 293-295, 332, 336
Lapland Longspur 91, 97, 111, 226, 230
poem 91-93
La Perouse 190-191
La Perouse Glacier 52-53, 122, 129-130,
252
Laramie plains, Wyoming 4
Lark-bunting 3
Larks, Shore 7
Latourelle Falls, Oregon 15
Law to protect salmon 346-347, 351-
353
Lebarge, Michael 201
LeConte Glacier 122, 124
Lectures on ship 62-63
Leucosticte, Aleutian 113, 226, 227
Hepburn 210, 215
Lincoln Finch 209
Linguistic families 138
Linnet, red poll 219
Listera 250
Lituya Bay 123, 190
Long Island, fox farm 114, 115, 244,
357-360, 364
spruce grove 244-245
Longspur, Alaska Lapland 91, 110,
226, 230, 232
Loon, Black-throated 212
Lowe Inlet 23-24, 246
Lucia Glacier 252
Lumber 254, 255
Lupines 13, 61, 227
Lutke, F. 198, 296, 336
Lycopodium 250
Lynn Canal 30, 121
Mackenzie River 198, 199, 242
Magpies in Idaho 13
on Kadiak Id. 114, 225
Malaspina Glacier 63, 121, 122, 131,
135, 261
Malaspina, Spanish navigator 261-262
Massacre at Sitka 195
Meadowlarks 3,9
Menyanthes trifoliata & cristagalli 253
Menztesia 249
Merriam, C. Hart, xxi, xxxiv, xxxvi,
18, 122, 210, 219, 221
article Bogoslof Volcano 291-336
Introduction, xxv-xxxi
Merrill, George P. 321, 336
Metlakahtla Indians 24-26, 152-156
Middleton Island 64
Milbank Sound 22
Miles Glacier 122
Mineral resources 243, 275-276
Miners 65
Mines 243, 275-276
Treadwell 29, 30, 275
Mirage 87, 286
Mohler, A. L. xxi
Moon, brightness and paleness 283-284
Moraines. See glaciers
Morris, Dr. L. R. xxi, xxxv, xxxvi, xxxvii
Morse Glacier 45-46
Mosquitoes 69, 87, 106
Moss campion 47
Mount Fairweather 48
McKinley 266
Palmerston 21
Rainier, glaciers 120
St. Elias 54, 115, 235, 263
San Jacinto 190
Shasta, glaciers 119
Whipple 27
Wrangell 266
Wright 46-47
Muir cabin 35
Glacier 35-47, 126, 128, 259
Muir, John xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 36, 38, 40,
63, 73
article on Glaciers 119-135
Muller, Gerhard Friedrick 186
Multnomah Falls, Oregon 15-17
Murre, California 212, 228
Pallas 228-229, 232, 329-332
Murres at Bogoslof Volcano 329-332
behavior in fog 331
a
D |
INDEX
Murres’ eggs 330
myriads 94-95, I09-I10, 231, 329-
332
Murrelet, Marbled 71, 212
Narrative of Expedition 1-118
Natives, article by Grinnell 137-183
See also Aleuts, Eskimo and Indians
Nelson, G. F. xxxv, xxxvii, 63
New Archangel 196
Bogoslof or Grewingk 303-320
Metlakahtla. See Metlakahtla
Noatak River 242, 266, 275
Nome, Cape 105, 273, 276
Nootka taken I91
North American Commercial Co. 85,
361
Northeast passage 192
North Semidi, original ‘fox ranch’ 358
Northwest passage 261
Nulato 199, 200, 201
Nunatak Glacier 59, 131
Nushagak, fortified post 196
Old Bogoslof 291-302
Oneonta Gorge, Oregon 15
Orca, Salmon cannery 65, 74-75, 344
Orchid 222
Oregon Robin or Varied Thrush 40,
51, 83-85, 223
poem 84
Ouzel, Water 51
Owl, Snowy III, 232
Oyster-catchers 21, 71, 220
Palache, Charles xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 40,
219
Pallas Murre 230, 232
Paddles (canoe) 140-141, 247
Parkas 176, 182
Passage Canal 262
Patterson Glacier 28, 121
Pavlof volcanoes 88
Pedicularis 106, 231
People with tusks 182-183
Phalaropes 20
Phyllodoce glanduliflora 253
Picea canadensis 239 .
sttchensis. See Sitka spruce
379
Pigeon guillemots 212, 230, 231
Pine, gray 240
Pinus contorta (or murrayana) 237, 240,
246, 249, 250
Pipit, or titlark 47, 59, 93, 210, 211, 214
Plains 3, 4
sagebrush 7-9
Plover Bay, Siberia 99, ror, 171-178,
183, 230
Plover, Golden 106, 230
Point Barrow 198, 199
Gustavus 40-41, 249-250
Polar bears 108, 113
Polemoniums 222, 227, 231
Popof, Peter Iliunsen 186
Island 87, 225
Poppy, yellow Arctic 98, 102, 227, 231
Population 273-274
Populus balsamifera 237, 239, 249
trichocarpa 237, 249, 251
Porcupine River 199, 241, 266
Port Clarence 102-106, 178-183
Valdez 262
Wells 69-74, 127, 262
Potlatches 144-145
Pribilof Islands, arrival 96
birds 97-98, 227
fog 271
foxes 361
fur-seals 96-97
Primrose, purple 105, 230
Prince Frederick Sound 121
Prince of Wales Island 27, 247
Prince William Sound 63-76, 132-133,
262-263
birds 219-221
forests 132, 244, 248, 253
fox farm 68
glaciers 67, 69-74, 123, 126-127
salmon cannery 65, 74-75, 344
Princess Royal Island 246
Promishleniki 187, 188
Propeller mended 74
Pseudotsuga taxtfolia 246, 272
Ptarmigan 47, 71
coloration 215, 219
White-tailed 215-216
Willow 215, 219
Puffins 109, 227-228, 231
380
Puffins, horned 227, 228, 233, 332
Tufted 212, 227, 228
Puget Sound trees 246, 248, 254, 272 ©
Pullen, Robert, boat journey 199
Purington, C. W., photographs of
Bogoslof 317, 318, 324
Pyrola 250
Pyrus rivularis 249
Quartz, gold-bearing 29
mines 275-276
Queen Charlotte Sound 22
Radcliffe Glacier 69, 127
Rainfall 242, 268-270
Rampart House 241
Ravens in southeastern Alaska 24, 26,
51, 206-207
at Kadiak 85, 223
at Unalaska 226
Red Fir or Douglas Spruce (Pseudo-
tsuga taxtfolia) 246
Redoubt Volcano 76
Redpoll 223, 226
Rendu Glacier 128
Revenue-Marine 204, 307
Rhododendron, dwarf 83
Ribes 249, 250
Ridgway, Robert xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 40,
93, 216-218
Ringgold and Rodgers exploring ex-
pedition 200
Ritter, W. E. xxxiv, xxxvi, 18, 63
Rivers, underground 12
Robin, Oregon or Varied 40, 51, 83-85,
223
Western 40, 219
Roses in bloom 114
Rubus 249
Russell Fiord 56, 58, 59, 60, 261
Russia and Great Britain, convention
198
United States, convention 196
cession 257
transfer of Alaska to United States
203
Russian-American Company 185-195,
198, 203, 291
boundaries established 198
INDEX
Russian expeditions 192, 194-195
maps 201
missionaries 192
settlements in 1820 196
Sabine Gull 234
Sagebrush 4, 7-9, 13
St. Elias Alps or Range 54, 63, 115
121, 126, 132, 244, 260, 261
St. Elias, Mount 54, 115, 235
St. George Island 264, 361
blue fox 361-362
St. Lawrence Island 107-108, 186
St. Matthew Island 99, 108-113, 264-
265
birds 113, 234
new fox I13
St. Michael 201, 270
St. Paul Island 96-98, 264
birds 97-98, 227, 264
foxes 358
fur-seals 96-97
Salix alaxensis and sitchensis 249
Salmon, article by Grinnell 337-355
on Afognak Island 349-350
barricades 139, 347-348
bellies, salting 350-351
berries 115, 116, 118, 218
canneries 23, 65, 74-75, 79, 156;
349-355
decrease from over-fishing 339,
343-344
fishing by natives 138-139, 348
industry 337-355
hatcheries 349, 354
laws 346, 351-352
method of canning 74-75, 340-343
output and value 355
salteries 350-351
seining 340, 344
source of world’s supply 337
spawning ground 338, 348
traps 348-349
trolling 339
Sambucus pubens 249, 250
Sandpiper, Pribilof 234
Sand Point 87, 225
Saunders, DeAlton xxxiv, 18
Savanna Sparrow 106
INDEX
Sawmills 255
Saxifrage 83, 102, 106
Scoters, White-winged 216-217
Scouring rushes, green 218
Seabirds 98, 109-111, 114, 212, 227-231,
232-233, 234
Sea Cow 188
Seal (fur) 96-97, 274
(hair), blubber 60, 159-162
hunting 60, 161-165
hunter’s village, Glacier Bay (cuts)
163, 164
Yakutat Bay 158-165
oil 60, 159-161
spear 162-163
Sealions (Zumetopias steller?) 94-95,
332, 334
Sealskin boots or mukluks 176
Sealskins (hair) 159, 161, 174
Seal Islands. See Pribilof Ids.
Sea Otter 81, 274
Seattle 118
Semides 87
Semidi Propagating Co. 360
Serpentine Glacier 72, 126
Seymour Narrows 20
Shadow, earth’s 281-282
Shearwater, slender-billed 229
Sheldon Jackson Museum 156
Shelikof Strait 263
Shell heaps 169
Ship on rocks 98, 313-314
Ship or Sail Rock 297, 321-323
Shishaldin Volcano 90
Shoemaker, Capt. C. F. 307
Shoshone Falls 7-12
Shumagin Islands 87-88, 114, 167, 225,
275, 360
Siberia, our visit 99-102, 171-178
Siberian Eskimo 99-101, 171-178
reindeer 174
yellow wagtail 230
Sibiriaks 188, 189
Sierra and Coast ranges 246, 252
Sierra Nevada glaciers 119
Stlene 112
Siskin, Pine 118
Sitka 48-52
Bear 140
381
Sitka Indians 156-158
population 273
temperature and rainfall 267-269
Sitka or tideland spruce (Picea sitchen-
sis) at Glacier Bay 249-251
at Kadiak 77, 80, 83, 244-246, 248,
255-256
at Prince William Sound 133, 221,
248, 255
at Sitka 51-52, 248, 255
at Unalaska (introduced) 245-246
at Yakutat Bay 218
growing close to glaciers 252
rate of growth 250, 255-256
Sitko 156-157
Skagway 30, 31, 210, 211
population 273
Skin boats 103
Sky, aspects 279
color 286
Smith Glacier 69, 127
Snake River, Idaho 7-13, 14
Snow-bunting or snowflake, common
93, 230
Snowflake, Hyperborean 113, 230-232
Sorbus sambucifolia 249
Song of the Innuit 367-369
Spanish claim 191
vessels 190
Sparrow, Aleutian Song 225
Golden-crowned 33, 47, 83, 210-
2II, 214, 222, 223, 225
Sage 9
Savanna 40, 221, 222
Song 26, 40, 80, 209, 217, 222,
226
Townsend 209, 214, 217, 219, 226
White-crowned 19
Sphagnum bog 23
Spring beauty 105
Spruce, Sitka or tideland (Picea sit-
chensis). See Sitka spruce
White (Picea canadensis) 239, 240,
241, 242, 243
Stanley-Brown, J. xxiii, xxxv
Starks, E. C. xxxv
Steller Jay 28, 118, 208, 219
Manatee or Sea Cow 188
Stejneger, Leonhard 319, 320
382 INDEX
Stikine River 260
discovered 195
Stoney, Lieut. G. M. on Bogoslof Vol-
Cano 310-311, 323, 330, 333, 336
Strawberries 115, 218
Streptopus 250
Surprise Glacier 126
Sushitna River 266, 275
Swallow, barn, 59, 225
cliff 15
violet-backed 10
white-breasted 209
Swans 108
Swift, white-throated 10
Taku Harbor 210
Indian dead houses 152
Inlet and glacier 123, 125, 260
Pass 248
Tanana River 241, 266
Tattler, Wandering 71
Tattooing 175-176
Tchukchis, 98, 182, 186
Tebenkoff 198, 296, 297, 322, 323, 332
Temperature of Bering Sea 270
of coast 267-268
of interior 242, 271-272
Tern, Arctic, 61, 218, 220
Thrush, Dwarf Hermit 47, 58, 69, 83,
224
at Kadiak 223
at Shumagin Islands 225-226
song 31, 209, 214, 217, 221,
223, 224
Gray-cheeked 107, 223, 224
at Kadiak 223, 224
Olive-backed 19, 26
Russet-backed 28, 40, 51, 210
Varied (or Oregon robin) 40, 51,
83-85, 223
song 40, 223
Thuja plicata 247, 272
Thunder Bay 124
Tideland spruce. See Sitka spruce
Timberline 240, 247, 252, 253
altitude 241, 242, 253, 272
variation 248
tree at White Pass 240, 246
in Sierra and Cascade Range 252
Timmerman, L. F. xxxv
Titlark 47, 59, 93, 210, 211, 214
Tlinkit 195
camps 152
massacre at Sitka 195
Toad 115
Todd, Capt. C. C. 310
Tongass Narrows 116
Topeks 99, 171
Totem poles 116-117, 146-148, 150
Townsend bunting 107
Sparrow 209; 214, 217, 219, 224
Traders 188
Trading privileges 192
posts, fortified 196
Treadwell mine 29-30, 275
Treeless country 77, 87, 236, 244
Trees in proximity to glaciers 52-53,
130, 251-252
diameters 240, 241, 252
Trelease, Prof. Wm. xxxiv, xxxvi, 18
Trout stream 23, 82
Trudeau, Dr. E. L. xxxv
Tundras 68-69, 105-107, 234, 265, 267
Tuolumne River, Calif. 119
Turner Glacier 55-56, 60, 123, 131
Turtle doves 7
Tyonek saltery 350
Uyak Bay 78-79
Ugak Island fox farm 360
Umiaks 178-181
Umnak Island 291, 292, 312
Unalaska 90-94, 168, 196
spruces introduced 245
temperature and rainfall 268
Unimak Island go
Upper Yukon 34
Utah, Bad Lands 5, 6
Vaccinium 249, 250
Varied Thrush—see Oregon Robin
Vancouver, George 130, I90, IgI-I92,
262
Island 19, 20, 22
Vassar Glacier 69, 127
Verdure 79, 82, 83, 114, 133
Veniaminof 196-198, 295, 332
Viburnum paucifiorum 249, 250
Victoria 19, 129
_—
INDEX
Violets 61, 222
Virgin Bay 68, 69, 74
Volcanic peaks—
Edgecumbe 50, 190
lliamna 76
Isanotski 90
Pavlof 88
Redoubt 76
Shishaldin 90
Volcanic shower 305-306
Volcano, newest (Bogoslof) 291-336
Volcanoes, chain 133-134, 264
Wagtail, Siberian yellow 230
Walrus Island 99
hides Ior
Warbler, lutescent 28, 40, 217
pileolated 206, 217, 222, 223
summer or yellow 19, 61, 213, 217,
222, 224, 225
War canoes 141 ‘
Washburn, M. L., xxiii, xxxv
article on fox farming 357-365
Water Ouzel 51
Water-taking 104
‘Weary Willie’ 211
Weather in June 77
record 268
Wellesley Glacier 69, 127
Whale fishing 199
Whalers 104, 108, 178, 179, 199
Western Union Telegraph Co. 201,
203
383
Whaling fleet 103, 199
White cedar 141
White Pass, birds 33, 210, 211
Custom House 33
excursion 31-34
railroad terminus 33, 34
White River 266
Wingham Island 187
Willows 61, 225, 239, 249, 250, 252
Wind flowers 222
Winter Wren 24
Wood Island 224, 245
Woodpecker, Harris 206
Red-throated 28
Wrangell 148, 208, 209, 210, 260
population 273
Wrangell Land 199
Narrows 28
Wren, Winter 85, 218, 224
Wyoming plains 4
Yakutat Bay 52-61, 247, 260-261
birds 61, 216-219
glaciers 59, 122, 131
sealing village 60, 158-165
strawberries 115, 218
Yale Glacier 69, 126
Yellow poppy 98, 102, 227, 231
Yemans, Dr. H. W. 307, 322, 336
Yosemite Valley 125
Yukon and White Pass Railroad 31
Yukon River 198-199, 201, 235, 258,
266-267
or oe pe)
ek ing
ae
ee oats _ ;
. wy * echis weed
5 vf 7
a=
. | Harriman Alaska Expedition
| 2S Harriman Alaska series
z
RS
qi
£
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
| CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
i
Ail
NAN
| | i
wil
WYNN
IN
WT
| HHI \\ |