Kitabı oku: «Gulf and Glacier; or, The Percivals in Alaska», sayfa 6

CHAPTER X.
ON THE MUIR GLACIER

“Away up here!”

It was Bessie who was speaking her thoughts aloud, as she leaned upon the rail of the good steamer Queen, and looked dreamily out over the blue water toward the mountains on the mainland.

“’Way up here, in Alaska! Really in Alaska! I can’t realize it!” she went on, turning to Rossiter Selborne, who was seated by her side. “Just think, that shore over there is a part of the pink patch in the map of North America, in the very upper left-hand corner. And I’ve come all the way from Boston, across the whole continent.”

It was indeed hard to realize that they were in those strange, far-away waters. Near the ship, porpoises leaped merrily through the sunlit spray of the waves. Now and then a queer-looking canoe shot by, paddled by dark-faced natives. On shore they could see only the pathless, boundless forest that stretched away for a thousand miles – an unbroken wilderness – towards the North Pole.

It was late on the afternoon in which they sailed from Juneau. Whatever anxieties had been harbored in Mr. Percival’s own mind, he had been at some pains to conceal them from the rest of the party. “The hunters had simply tramped farther than they had expected,” he said, “and found themselves too tired, after their first night in the woods, to reach the ship at the time agreed upon. For his part, he was glad they were not hurrying.”

Although Mrs. Percival was by no means reassured by these remarks, and her husband’s indifferent manner, she did allow herself to be somewhat comforted; and the younger folk easily fell in with his method of accounting for the prolonged absence of the boys. With real pleasure, therefore, all but one settled themselves to a thorough enjoyment of the new scenes constantly opening around them.

On leaving Juneau the steamer passed around the lower end of Douglas Island, and then headed northward once more, toward what is called the “Lynn Canal.”

The sun came out, warm and bright, so that although there was a strong southerly breeze, it was calm and comfortable even on the hurricane deck.

An old Alaskan traveler had come on board at Juneau, taking passage to a cannery in which he was interested, farther north. There was also a family of Thlinket Indians, bound for the same port.

The stranger pointed out various objects of interest, as they passed, including many glaciers which sent their white tongues of ice down to the sea front, dividing the dark forest that clothed both mainland and islands as far as the eye could reach.

“That is the largest glacier hereabouts – the Davidson,” he said, “and the most interesting. It’s something like three miles wide at the foot.”

“Oh! that doesn’t seem possible,” exclaimed a passenger standing near by. “It doesn’t look over a dozen rods wide. Are you sure you are right about that, sir?”

“Do you see that dark strip lying between this end of the glacier and the open sea?”

“Where – O, yes! What is it – moss, or low bushes?”

“Those bushes are tall trees. There is a great terminal moraine two miles from front to rear, pushed out by the Davidson, and a whole forest grows upon it. Here, take this glass, and you can see for yourself.”

The skeptical passenger was obliged to own himself in the wrong, and the great, silent glacier – so motionless, yet forever moving toward the ocean – seemed more mysterious and terrible even than the enormous ice-stream of the Selkirks.

The Queen now made her way past the Chilkoot Inlet, where, said Randolph, who had followed Tom’s example in “reading up” Alaska, Schwatka started to cross the mountains and explore the head-waters of the Yukon.

Pyramid Harbor, at the head of Chilkat Inlet, was now reached, and at this point, the farthest northing of the route, or, to be exact, at latitude 59° 13´, the steamer stopped her wheels, while the obliging stranger and the Thlinkets went ashore in a small boat, which tossed perilously on the choppy waves of the Inlet.

Slowly the steamer swung round, and, having picked up the boat on its return, began its southward course. The wind now swept the decks with stinging force, driving the tourists below or into sheltered corners.

Against the western sky towered the mighty peaks of Fairweather and Crillon, lifting their white summits nearly sixteen thousand feet above the sea.

Until late in the evening the Percivals talked, laughed and sang, while the never-ending day still glowed brightly, and the waves tossed their foam caps in the golden twilight.

Thump! Bump! The girls woke next morning to find the ship trembling from stem to stern. Had the Queen run ashore? No, they were going smoothly enough now. It must have been a dream, that that —

Thump!

That was no dream, any way, for they were wide-awake now. Out of her berth jumped Kittie, and, drawing aside the curtain from their little stateroom window, looked out.

What a sight it was! The ship was moving cautiously, at half-speed, up a narrow bay – Glacier Bay, they afterwards heard it called – surrounded by bare and desolate mountains, along whose upper slopes lay dreary banks of never-melting snow, and whose splintered summits were hidden in dull gray clouds. Across the bay, at its upper end, miles away, stretched an odd-looking line of white cliffs. They could not yet make out what gave them that strange, marble-like look. The surface of the water was all dotted over with floating ice, of every size and shape imaginable. Just in front of Kittie’s window (which overlooked the bridge), the Captain, in thick coat and fur cap, was pacing to and fro. Even while she looked, the ship’s bow struck against a good sized iceberg. Again the steamer shuddered, and the girls knew now what it was that had waked them.

“Sta-a-arboard a little!” called Captain Carroll sharply, as another great berg loomed up, just ahead.

“Starboard, sir,” repeated the quartermaster and the second officer.

“Stead-a-a-ay!”

“Steady, sir!”

“Port a bit!”

And so it went on, as the Queen dodged now this way, now that, under the direction of the best pilot and captain on the dangerous Alaskan coast.

It did not take long, you may be sure, for the girls to finish their toilet and rush out on deck to see the fun. One by one the passengers joined them, wrapped in all sorts of heavy ulsters and coats. The air was like that of mid-winter, and the wind blew sharply.

The Queen steamed up as near as the captain dared, and there, about an eighth of a mile distant from the head of the bay, she waited.

Now, indeed, was discovered the true nature of that line of marble cliffs. They were of solid ice, rising to the awful height of three hundred feet above the fretted sea, and stretching across the bay in a mighty wall.

As the passengers gathered, shivering, on the forward deck, and gazed at this wonderful ice-river – the great Muir Glacier of Alaska – some one gave a sudden cry, and pointed to an ice pinnacle just abreast the ship. With a majestic movement the huge mass of glittering ice, larger than a church building, loosened itself from the cliff, and with a crash like thunder, plunged into the sea. A few moments later and the staunch ocean steamer rocked like a little boat on the waves made by the falling berg.

Again and again the ice came tumbling down. Sometimes immense pieces which had broken off from the bottom of the glacier, seven hundred feet below the surface, rose slowly and unexpectedly from the depths, throwing the water high in air. These bottom fragments were not white, but as blue as indigo. From their gleaming sides the water poured in roaring cataracts.

“What are those sailors up to?” sung out Randolph suddenly, pointing to a boat’s crew that was leaving the side of the ship.

“Going to fill the refrigerator, sir,” replied a steward, who caught the question as he passed.

Randolph thought he was joking; but sure enough, the men in the boat grappled a huge floating cake of ice, towed it to the gangway, and made it fast to a tackle and fall, which picked it up and swayed it over on the deck – a fine young berg of beautiful clear ice weighing something over two tons. Quickly it was stowed below, and other pieces followed. Although it was floating in salt water, the ice coming from the glacier was perfectly fresh. In this way about forty tons were taken on board and stored.

After breakfast all who wished to do so went ashore in the steamer’s boats, landing on a gravelly beach about a mile from the foot of the glacier. Bessie was obliged to remain on board with her mother, the rest joining the shore-going party.

Leaving the beach they walked up over slippery rocks, gravel and protruding bits of black ice, until, before they knew it, they were on the glacier itself. Its surface was roughened and stained, and every now and then they came to a wide crack or “crevasse” in the ice, with sloping, treacherous sides, its shadowy depths reaching no one knew how far below. To fall into one would have been almost certain death.

“I wonder how thick this glacier is?” asked some one, peering down into one of these terrible crevasses.

“About a thousand feet,” was the answer. “The front of the glacier is over three hundred feet high, above the sea; that gives about seven hundred beneath the surface.”

“Do you know how long it is, from the source to the front?”

“Upwards of forty miles, I believe. And a mile wide at the mouth.”

They could look up into the far-away, misty mountain valleys, and still the ice stretched beyond the utmost bound of sight.

As the party retraced their steps, the gentleman who had volunteered the information regarding height and distance, narrated the interesting story of the discovery of the glacier by Professor John Muir. He told them how the intrepid Scotchman, on reaching Cross Sound, had hired an ancient native guide and two or three Indians to paddle his canoe up Glacier Bay. As the mountain slopes surrounding the glacier were known to be bare of fuel, the voyagers filled their canoe with dry cedar and pine boughs, that they might have camp-fires to keep them alive in that almost Arctic atmosphere, and to cook their food.

When the Percivals reached the head of the moraine, they were so fortunate as to find the professor himself standing there, talking with friends. He was spending the summer, it seemed, in a rude hut not far below, and in company with some hardy young college students, pursuing new investigations in this marvelous land of ice and granite.

Leaving Professor Muir, after an introduction and a pleasant word or two from the famous explorer, Randolph and the rest descended to the beach, not by the long muddy path by which they had come, but by striking downward through a deep gulley, which brought them scrambling, sliding and laughing to the sand below.

On this narrow strip of seashore, where were lying great blocks of ice stranded by the ebb tide, they walked a mile or more beneath frowning ice-cliffs, to the very foot of the glacier, and indeed under it, for there was a sort of cave formed by the huge pinnacles of clear blue ice, and into this dismal opening the young people penetrated for a few yards, when a crackling sound in the gleaming walls made them rush for the open air again in mad haste. They were just in time to escape an ugly fragment of ice, weighing at least threescore pounds, which had become detached from the ceiling.

After this experience they were glad to walk back to the ship, which was now whistling a recall to its absent children. On the way Kittie stopped to trace, with the tip of her parasol, her name on the smooth sand. She began another, but after printing a large F, rubbed it out, and with a little addition of color to her cheeks, joined the rest, who were now tiptoeing across a narrow plank to the boat.

Steam was up, and the Queen began at once to work southward.

For fifteen miles she wriggled her way out of the icebergs as cautiously as she had wriggled in. Then the broad Pacific came in view, and as the bell in the engine room rang, “Ahead, full speed!” and the ship emerged from the narrow channels and gloomy, landlocked inlets of the North, the great billows softly rocked in their arms the Queen and its passengers, while they sang merrily,

 
“Out on an ocean all boundless we ride,
We’re homeward bound, homeward bound!”
 

“What shall we see next?” was the question on every tongue that night; and “Sitka! Sitka!” was the answer.

It was a comfort to get out into the open ocean again. They had sailed so long through narrow passages and between dark, lofty sweeps of mountains, frowning with cliffs of bare rock, or shadowy with silent ranks of pine and fir, that, like the Delectable Mountains in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the hills seemed about to fall on them and bury the good Queen out of sight under avalanches and icebergs.

All that night the waves of the Pacific rocked them gently, as the ship made its steady way southward. What a volume it would make, if we could have the dreams of this party of a hundred souls on board the Queen for that one night printed – and illustrated!

At six o’clock next morning Randolph went on deck. The steamer was motionless, anchored about half a mile from shore. She was in a bay, which was thickly sprinkled with pretty, wooded islands, as far out as the eye could reach. Fourteen miles away westward, rose the peak of Mount Edgecumbe, its slopes reddened with ancient streams of lava. It was of that exact cone-shape, with its top cut squarely off or “truncated,” that marks a volcanic formation; and indeed, Edgecumbe was smoking away furiously only a generation or two ago.

The shore line was rugged, like all the southern Alaskan coast, with a narrow strip of level land running along the margin of the sea. Following this line the eye presently rested upon a collection of houses – quite a town, it seemed, just ahead. One large, square building was a hundred feet or more above the rest. A sharply-pointed church steeple rose from among the lower roofs of the other buildings. Then Randolph knew it was Sitka, the capital of Alaska.

He had hardly recognized the place when he heard his name called from the water.

Rushing to the side of the vessel, he spied a boat coming swiftly toward the Queen, rowed with a sharp man-of-war stroke by four sailors in neat suits of blue.

In the stern sheets sat – could it be? – yes, Mr. Percival, Tom and Fred, all three waving their caps and shouting wildly.

In another moment the boat was alongside, the gangway steps were let down, and Fred sprang on board. Mr. Percival came more slowly, assisting Tom, who was observed to limp. The sailors passed up several pieces of baggage, the officer in charge touched his cap, and away went the boat toward Sitka. As she receded, Randolph could read on the stern the single word in gilt letters, Pinta.

What wild handshakings and congratulations and volleys of questions followed on the deck of the Queen, you can well guess.

But we must let Tom explain for himself his adventures, his return to civilization, and his unexpected appearance in Sitka harbor that morning.

CHAPTER XI.
FAIR SITKA

“It was pretty dark and lonesome up there, I can tell you,” said Tom, having described his long tramp and the death of the bear. “The wind rose at about nine o’clock, and cut like knives. Solomon had built the camp so as to face away from the wind, and after supper Fred and I were glad to curl up in our blankets on the fir boughs. Solomon threw half a dozen of his big logs on the fire, and then sat down on our front doorstep to have a smoke.

“I wish you could have heard some of his stories, Randolph! Some years ago, before there was any Canadian Pacific, or even a Northern Pacific railroad, he guided a party across the Chilkoot Pass and down the Yukon. They were on a hunt for a ‘mountain of cinnabar,’ a ‘Red Mountain,’ which an Indian had told about, somewhere in the interior. There were women in the party, and how they ever got through the woods, I don’t see.

“Well, they struck off from the Yukon, after having a brush with the Indians, followed a native map, had to winter in the woods, almost starved to death, and at last found the ‘Red Mountain’ was Mount Wrangell – a volcano, you know, twenty thousand feet high.”

“Did they find their cinnabar?” asked Randolph.

“Only a small quantity. But there was enough outcrop of copper and gold to pay them for the trip. They rafted down the Copper River, after leaving Solomon to locate, and a year or two later sold out at a big profit to some San Francisco capitalists. So far as Solomon knows, the mines have never been worked yet, they are so far inland.”

“Now tell us about your getting home,” broke in Kittie. “We’re more interested in that than in your ‘Red Mountain.’ Did you sleep any, poor boys?”

“Not very much,” laughed Fred. “The mosquitoes settled down to business pretty soon after midnight, and made things lively. Baranov had some pieces of netting, and we put them over our heads, but they didn’t seem to do much good.”

“They say the Alaskan mosquitoes are so intelligent,” remarked Rossiter, “that two of them will hold the wings of a third close to his body, and push him through the meshes of a net. That accounts for their neighborliness in your camp. Go on with the story.”

“My leg hurt so that I couldn’t sleep much,” said Tom, taking up the narrative again. “Whenever I did dose for a few minutes, I would wake up with a start and see Solomon putting on another log. I don’t believe he slept a wink all night.

“Toward morning Fred and I both got a good nap of nearly an hour. When I opened my eyes, I looked for Solomon, but he wasn’t in sight” —

“Then of course he must wake me,” interrupted Fred, “and I had to get up and put wood on the fire, lest that His Royal Highness should feel cold. I had just got a good blaze going when Baranov hove in sight, with a big bear steak in one hand and a string of trout in the other.

“‘Where in the world did you get those fish?’ Tom sung out.

“‘Oh! back here a piece, in a leetle pool I knew about,’ says Solomon. ‘I ’lowed we’ll have a dish o’ fried traouts fer breakfast, ef the brook hedn’t dried up.’”

There was a shout at Fred’s imitation of Baranov’s tone.

“The trout were delicious,” said Tom, when he could make himself heard; “and the flavor of the bear meat was all right, but ’twas tough as leather. After breakfast Solomon skinned the bear in good shape” —

“Where is the skin now?” put in Bess. “I didn’t see it in your bundles.”

“It’s at Juneau,” said Mr. Percival. “Solomon said he’d have it nicely dressed, and as soon as it was cured and prepared for mounting, he would ship it to our Boston address. Tom wanted it for a rug with the head on, and Fred generously yielded all claim to it.”

Kittie smiled such warm approval at his generosity that the young student blushed, and gave Tom a dig to go ahead with his account of their adventures.

“I was so stiff and lame that I could just hobble when we first started, right away after dinner. I knew father and all of you would be worried, but it couldn’t be helped. We managed to get down about three quarters of the way, before it was time to stop for the night. Of course it was ever so much easier going down than up, but it hurt some, you can believe! Solomon helped me over the bad places, and Fred took a double load.

“We camped right beside the brook we had followed up the day before, and started on again before sunrise next morning. Just as we reached the clearing above Juneau, we met a dozen men, with father at their head, starting up the mountain after us.”

“What I want to know,” broke in Randolph, “is how you ever got to Sitka as soon as we did?”

“Why, father made inquiries for a doctor, and was told the best one in Juneau was the surgeon of the Pinta. She’s a Government steamer, you know, stationed on this coast to look after our sealing and fishery interests and the like. Dr. Parks was awfully kind, and a splendid doctor, I guess, by the way he treated my bear scratch. He put some kind of a liniment on, then bound it all up in good shape, and wouldn’t take a fee, either – not a cent. When he heard our story, he told father the Pinta was going to run over to Sitka that very day, starting before noon. If we liked, he believed the captain would take us on board, and we could meet you there instead of waiting for you at Juneau, and leaving you to worry all that extra time.

“We said good-by to Baranov – I don’t know how much father insisted on paying him – went on board the little Pinta, arrived safe and sound at Sitka, and here we are!”

As soon as Tom had finished his story, he was showered with questions, and it was an hour longer before the party, having taken breakfast, assembled on deck to witness the approach to the wharf. Another boat from the south, much smaller and dirtier, headed for her moorings at the same time.

The Queen, like a true King’s Daughter, permitted the other to pass her and make fast to the wharf. In stately wise, Her Majesty then moved quietly up beside her companion, and the Percivals landed over the latter’s decks.

I will not try to describe Sitka for you; in the first place, because other people have written and printed a great deal about it, which you can find for yourselves in the books on Alaska on the third shelf of the fourth alcove of your Public Library; and secondly, because Rossiter Selborne gave his mother so concise an account of his impressions of the place, that I shall put a part of his letter into this chapter, as I did at Banff.

After describing the buildings about the wharf, he told how he and one or two others walked directly up the main street to the famous church of Sitka; continuing as follows:

“The little church, long ago built by the Russians (from whom, you know, the United States bought Alaska for about seven million dollars in 1867), was a quaint building, with a solemn guardian, who demanded a small fee before he permitted us to enter. There was an altar arranged after the requirements and ceremonies of the Eastern Catholic church; some fine priestly robes, and a really beautiful painting of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Services are still held in the church every Sunday.

“Coming out of the church we walked along the narrow streets, looking at the houses built of squared logs by the Russians many years ago. The building on the hill was of logs like the rest, and proved to be the castle of stern old Governor Baranov. I found pieces of bear’s fur still sticking to the walls, where the great hides had once been nailed up, to keep out the bitter cold of winter.

“Such funny times we had buying trinkets of the Indians, squatting in a long row on the broad sidewalk! All the English the Indian squaws seemed to know was, ‘One tollar!’ ‘Two tollar!’

“I must not forget to tell you about the Mission School. You walk to it along the curving, sandy beach, near which the school buildings stand, about half a mile from the wharf. Such fine, intelligent faces the boys and girls have, compared with the natives outside! It is beautiful to see the human, the divine, driving the animal look out of the dark faces, the eyes kindling with light, the whole, God-given soul waking up before your very eyes. The old fairy story of the fair princess, Sleeping Beauty, brought to life by the kiss of a prince, is pretty; but it will hardly move one, after seeing the wonderful awakening of a poor, Sitkan woman-child, at the touch of loving hands – at the sound of her Father’s voice, speaking through the noble men and women who are doing his work in these desolate Northern lands.

“A little paper, the ‘Northern Star,’ is printed at the school, and gives all the latest items of news concerning it. It costs fifty cents a year, and the gentle lady who conducted us through the buildings was so pleased when two or three of us subscribed. Of course the paper comes irregularly in the winter, when the sea-passages are dangerous with fogs and icebergs; but you are sure to get all your numbers sooner or later.

“I wish you could have seen Mr. Percival sitting in the Mission Parlor, holding a dot of a Thlinket child on each knee! One of them was named Marion, and the other had a long, funny Indian name that I forgot the beginning of, before she’d got to the end of it.

“The scholars had a prayer meeting at the close of day, and sang our dear, familiar hymns with strange words to them. Here is one verse of ‘I am so glad that Jesus loves me,’ in the Thlinket tongue:

 
“‘Hä ish dickeewoo ŭhtoowoo yŭkeh
Hä een ukkonniknooch dookoosăhŭnne,
Thlēkoodze ut dookookwoo kädā häteen:
Uh yŭkeh klŭh hutsehunne Jesus.
 
 
Cho.     Uhtoowoo yŭkeh Jesus hŭtsehŭ,
Jesus hutsehun, Jesus hutsehun;
Uhtoowoo yŭkeh Jesus hutsehun;
Jesus kluh hutsehun.’
 

“It seems as if Our Father must smile tenderly when he hears such uncouth sounds. Yet he understands them all, and answers each shyly murmured Sitka prayer, just as he does the ‘Now I lay me,’ lisped by New England baby lips.

“The long, beautiful Northern day drew to a close. We left the bustling town, and walking past the Mission School, kept on around the shore of the bay. Now the path wound in and out of the forest; now it emerged upon the beach, where the ripples softly patted the sand and laughed and played together. Before long we reached the banks of Indian River, and crossed it by a rustic foot-bridge. The air was fragrant with odors of balsam fir and all the cool, delicious scents of the forest. We turned back toward the ship. Although it was near the hour of ten, the western sky was all golden with sunset. Against it rose the delicate spire of the Russian church, and the sturdy bulk of the castle. Out across the bay the gulls and ravens wavered their slow way among the islands.”