Wonderland or Alaska and the Inside Passage Part 5

It is not often that one would want to call a tourist's attention to an Indian village, for the average encampment or habitation of the "n.o.ble red man" is not the most attractive sight or study; but, in the T'linkit towns, we have no such hesitation, for, in the curiosities to be seen in their houses and surroundings, they are certainly one of the strangest people on earth. They are the artistic savages of the world. In front of each log house, and often rearing its head much higher than it by two or three fold, are one or two posts, called "totem poles," which are merely logs on end; but, on the seaward face, the savage sculptor has exhausted all the resources of his barbaric imagination in cutting in hideous faces and figures, that, with a hundred or so such terrible "totems" in front of a village, makes one think of some nightmare of his childish days. The houses, too, are carved inside and out. Every utensil they have is sculptured deep with diabolical but well executed designs, and their spoons of mountain sheep and goat horn are marvels of savage work.

All these are for sale to tourists, and every excursion steamer brings numbers of these romantic remembrances of a yet more romantic journey back to civilization.

But the inland pa.s.sage to Alaska is not the only grand and picturesque part of that great territory visited by the excursion steamers; for beyond and as far as Mount St. Elias, they often sail to this the greatest cl.u.s.ter of high mountains on the Western Continent,--Lituya Peak, 10,000 feet high; and Fairweather and Crillon, a third taller; then beyond, Cook and Vancouver cl.u.s.ter near sublime St. Elias, nearly 20,000 feet above the ocean that thunders at its base, and whose jagged top may be seen a hundred and fifty miles to sea. How disappointing are the Colorado peaks of 12,000 and 14,000 feet to one, for the simple reason that they spring from a plain already 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea-level, and seem, as they are, but high hills on a high plateau. How like pygmies they appear to Hood, Tacoma, Shasta, and others not so high above the ocean base line, but whose nearly every foot above sea-level is in mountain slope. How grand, then, must be h.o.a.ry-headed St. Elias, whose waist is the waters of the wide sea, and whose 20,000 feet above sea-level springs from the Pacific Ocean, from whose calm waters we view its majestic height.

But let us commence at the starting point of our journey, and take our readers step by step over the whole route.

For many years the people of our great Northwest country, Oregon, Was.h.i.+ngton and Idaho Territories, have spoken familiarly of "the Sound"

as one of their great geographical features,--in much the same way as the people of Southern Connecticut or Long Island speak of "the Sound,"--referring thereby to Puget Sound, that cuts deep into the northwestern corner of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory. Many have visited it, and sailed on its beautiful waters; beautiful enough in themselves or their own immediate surroundings, but thrice grand and gorgeous in their silver framing of snow-clad peaks and mountain ranges, surrounding them on all sides. The long, narrow, picturesque sound, that looked not unlike a Greenland fjord, or close-walled bay at the mouth of some grand river,--one of those bays so slowly converging that a person can hardly define where it ceases and the river commences,--was considered one of the most beautiful and scenic places of the Northwest; and its people delighted to show it to strangers, with its enhancing surroundings, reaching from the prettily situated capital of the Territory, Olympia, at the head of "the sound," to where the broad Juan de Fuca Strait leads to the great Pacific Sea. Then Alaska was known only as Russian America, when it was spoken of at all, so seldom was it heard, and seemed to be as far away from the United States on that side of the continent, and as little thought of, as Greenland or Iceland is to-day with our people of the Atlantic coast. An occasional Hudson's Bay Company trading boat steamed out of Victoria harbor, and disappeared northward, crawling through a maze of intricate inland channels and Alpine-like waterways to some distant and seemingly half-mythical trading post of that lonesome land; but, as to anything definite as to where she was going, as little was known by the people as if an arctic expedition was leaving the harbor of New York or Boston, and not one hundredth of the _furor_ was made about the departure, if, in fact, any notice was taken of it at all. With the accession of Alaska, through the efforts of Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, the discovery of the Ca.s.siar mines, in British Columbia, but which must be reached through Alaska, and a few other minor incentives, set many people to looking northward; they then found that they could continue their trips on a long inland salt-water river, of which the well-known Puget Sound was but a small part,--hardly the equivalent of Narragansett Bay taken from Long Island Sound, or Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Not that these were the first explorations and discoveries of importance in the inland pa.s.sage and its surrounding woods and waters, by any manner of means. Cook and Clerke, as early as 1776; Dixon, from 1785 to 1788; Langsdorff, in 1803-8; La Perouse, in 1785-88; Lisianski, from 1803 to 1806; Meares, of the Royal navy, from 1788 to 1789; and especially Vancouver, from 1790 to 1795,--had all peeped into this part of the country, and many of the explorations and surveys were of the most extended nature; but, at about the time of which I speak, the knowledge of the inland pa.s.sage to the bulk of the people, even in these parts so near to it, was nearly as musty as the old volumes on the library shelves that gave the most information. In fact, but little knowledge or interest was to be found regarding these parts. Their history of development from that embryonic state where everything told is regarded as bordering on the mythical, to where a line of ocean steamers visits them with crowded pa.s.senger lists, is the usual history of such developments.

The inland pa.s.sage to Alaska may be said to practically extend from Tacoma, in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, at the head of Puget Sound, to Chilkat, Alaska, at the head of Lynn Channel, a distance of nearly 1,100 miles, where the tourist taking a sea voyage has high sh.o.r.es in close proximity on either side of him, except a few places here and there, where a short communication with the ocean outside is to be had. But this "inland pa.s.sage," so called, is not the only one leading between the points named. It is, rather, a Broadway in New York City, a Pennsylvania avenue in Was.h.i.+ngton, State street in Chicago,--i. e., the main way; but every few miles a vessel could turn off down another pa.s.sage as readily as a pedestrian or vehicle could down a side street, and, continuing a short way, return to the main thoroughfare again. Probably all the channels and straits and sounds and inlets in this part of Alaska, British Columbia and Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, susceptible of navigation by fair-sized ocean and river steamers, and all of them connecting with each other in a perfect network of waterways, would, if placed end to end, reach from a quarter to a third of the way around the world. Many of them are so illy charted--or not charted at all--that no craft of value would trust herself to follow their courses, while some of the smaller ways, but probably none the less picturesque, have yet to bear the first white man on their bosom. The most picturesque of all the ways through this intricacy of picturesque channels has been selected, carefully surveyed, and experienced pilots conduct the vessels to and from Alaska on its waters. The whole length of the pa.s.sage is heavily timbered with various kinds of pine, fir, hemlock, cedar and spruce.

Here and there avalanches from the mountain tops have swept through the dense timber, like a sickle through so much grain; and, although in a few years the growth is restored, yet the varying shades of green in the old and new growth of trees, running in perpendicular stripes up the steep hillsides, plainly show the ancient and recent devastations.

Prettily situated Indian villages dot the narrow, shelving sh.o.r.es at rare intervals along the pa.s.sage; and, when these nomads of the Northwest are seen, which is not infrequent, the chances are more than likely that it will be in a canoe, where they spend two-thirds of their out-of-door life.

Says the "American Cyclopaedia," speaking of this interesting part of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, the southern part of the inland pa.s.sage: "Was.h.i.+ngton Territory possesses a great mult.i.tude of harbors, perhaps more than any other country of equal extent on the globe. Puget Sound, which has an average width of two miles, never less than one nor more than four, and a depth never less than eight fathoms, runs 100 miles inland in a southward direction from the Straits of Fuca; and Hood's Ca.n.a.l, twelve miles further west, with half the width, runs in the same general direction about 60 miles. These two great estuaries, or arms of tidewater, have depth sufficient for the largest vessels, and numerous bends and corners where the most perfect protection may be found against the winds." Captain Wilkes, in the report of his famous exploring expedition, writes of Puget Sound: "I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these." The Coast Range and Cascade Range of mountains are plainly visible from the sound.

Near the Columbia river the Coast Range is not very high; but west of Hood's Ca.n.a.l it rises, in abrupt, beetling ridges, 7,000 to 9,000 feet high, called the Olympian Mountains, many of the peaks being snow-crowned throughout the year. The Cascade Range fairly bristles with snow-clad peaks from 8,000 to over 14,000 feet in height, and in every direction, almost, may be seen the grandest Alpine scenery in the distance.

Steaming northward through Puget Sound from Tacoma, with Seattle and other towns upon our right, and Port Townsend, the port of entry to the sound, upon our left, we come to Juan de Fuca Strait, which would lead us to the Pacific Ocean were we to follow it out. It is the most southern of all the waterways that connect the great sea with the network of channels inside, and formerly was much used as a part of the route to Alaska or Puget Sound from Portland, Oregon, or San Francisco, California; the steamer putting out to sea for a day if from the former port, and for four or five if from the latter, the pa.s.sengers having all the discomforts of a sea voyage for that time. Where Magellan sailed over the Pacific Ocean it well deserved the name; but along the rough northern coast the amount of stormy weather increases, and a voyage on this part of the Pacific is not always calculated to impress one with the appropriateness of the great ocean's name. The construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad from the Columbia river to Puget Sound has made these sea voyages unnecessary to reach a port on the inland pa.s.sage; and, unless a person's stomach is built on "nautical lines," so that he really enjoys an ocean trip, he can save this discomfort by a cut across lots on a railroad train. In fact, it must be kept in mind, that, while the trip on the inland pa.s.sage is an ocean voyage, equal to one from New York City to Havana and return, it is, as far as sea-sickness is concerned, as if the Hudson river was turned around in the opposite direction, and we sailed on its waters from New York to Havana and return; while the inland pa.s.sage, in its southern part, is as accessible by railroad travel, to the people of the United States and Canada, as any point on the Hudson river. Therefore, broad Juan de Fuca Strait, where the pulsations of the ocean's life outside are even felt to its eastern end, in much diminished waves, however, carries fewer persons than formerly, and especially of that reluctant cla.s.s who look uncomplainingly at the terrors of the sea, from the basis of dire necessity.

Crossing this strait, which has led to so many controversies as to whether the old Greek from whom it is named actually discovered this beautiful body of water, or only made a lucky guess in publis.h.i.+ng to the world a mythical journey of his, we sight and bear down on the beautiful British island of Vancouver, whose metropolis is Victoria, and alongside of whose docks we shall soon be made fast.

Victoria, the city, was built on the site of old Fort Victoria, a Hudson Bay Company trading post of that great British monopoly that held nearly all British America under its control for two hundred years, and, although broken as a monopoly, has yet an influence to a.s.sist or r.e.t.a.r.d the development of the country which is incalculable. The Fraser river gold mine excitement in the '50's did much to build up Victoria, and send it forward into the front rank of Pacific coast cities, a position which she has held with varying fortunes, though now, in common with the whole Northwest, once more on the ascending wave.

Cities, like individuals, have their "hobbies," although seldom so prominently marked; and the munic.i.p.al "hobby" of Victoria is her splendidly constructed roads, leading through the town and far beyond the suburbs, and in which she has no superior on the Pacific coast of North America, and but few in the world. If the steamer remains long enough in the harbor,--and during excursion times in the summer months they always do,--a drive should be taken on the Victoria roads, and especially the one leading to Esquimalt harbor and return, some two or three miles in all. It is but one, however, of the many beautiful drives; but it is only necessary to mention them in a general way for any one who would desire to test them, so readily can all needed information be found on the spot.

In quaint little smoke-stained and dingy-looking stores in out-of-the-way nooks and corners of the streets are to be found the Victorian curiosity shops, crowded with relics of the fast-disappearing Indian tribes that once formed a much denser population in this part of the country than at present. Pretty little mats and baskets are made from the sea-gra.s.s, dyed with the juices from berries and other natural dyes, and sold for the merest trifles. Curiously carved steat.i.te houses, in miniature imitation of the Indian dwellings, and "totem poles" made by the Hydah or Hada Indians, are to be seen for sale. Sometimes they carve plaques with spread-eagles and other fanciful designs upon them; rude but serviceable mats from the inner bark of the cedar tree, and all the known--and unknown--knick-knacks that can come from the barbaric ingenuity of Indian art, and which would require a pamphlet larger than the one in the reader's hands to chronicle half. This is the beginning of such curious wares that will be temptingly displayed before the tourist at every town and stopping place on the route, and from which may be selected such mementoes of the journey as will please the individual fancy.

Says a writer in the _Overland Monthly_, the _Century Magazine_ of the Pacific coast: "Victoria, in a rock-bound and land-protected cove, is the most attractive and the largest city on Vancouver's Island. During the days of the Fraser river excitement, Victoria was a much more energetic city than it is to-day. There were exciting times there then, and, because of the great expectations which everybody indulged in, land was bid up to an enormously high figure, and the town's prospects were considered wonderfully brilliant. But the Fraser was a fraud, comparatively, and its mines were quickly exhausted, so that Victoria received a setback, from which it is only just recovering. It is a picturesque town, thoroughly English, staid and conservative, and its location is an enviable one. In the distance rise the blue-hued heights of the Vancouver ranges, and nearer at hand lie the waters of Fuca Straits; beyond which there can be seen the snowy peaks of the Was.h.i.+ngton Territory mountains. Rounding the long point of land which juts out into the sea to form Victoria harbor, the town lay all revealed to us at last. In one direction were red painted shops set upon a high bluff overlooking the bay, and eastward there were green fields and trimly built cottages.

"'Coming ash.o.r.e?' we were asked at length.

"'Not to-day,' the artist said.

"'Then, don't judge Victoria until you see the place,' came the word from the dock.

"We promised, and said that when homeward bound we would make a call."

Returning, the narrator continues, "On the wharf at Victoria stood our friend of a month ago.

"'Coming ash.o.r.e?' he said, when he saw us.

"'Yes.'

"'Good, we can show you a pretty town. Disappointed in Alaska?'

"'No; it's the grandest country for scenery I--' began the artist.

"'Yes, yes, I know,' said our friend, interrupting him. 'Big glaciers, fine sailing, curious sights, no sea-sickness. Same old story; hear it every trip.'

"Victoria is picturesque in every detail," continues the narrator. "The land faces a land-locked bay, and behind the place stretch dense forests, through which roadways extend to the various suburbs. During our stay the frosts of early fall began to color the leaves, and at night the air grew sharp and chill. But still the air was clear, and down in the harbor white-winged yachts still moved over the bluish waters."

Vancouver Island, which forms the outlying barrier to, or seaward side of, the inland pa.s.sage from Juan de Fuca Strait to Queen Charlotte Sound, is one of the largest islands in that vast archipelago which forms the pa.s.sage, and is the largest under British dominion. It was called Quadra Island by the Spaniards, who held it by descent from Mexico (then a Spanish colony) until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Vancouver, of the Royal navy, was sent from England to receive its surrender from the Spanish; it having been ordered by the home government at Madrid,--which he did from the Castilian governor, Quadra. Vancouver called it Quadra and Vancouver's Island; but the Spanish t.i.tle has slowly disappeared under British rule. Vancouver pushed his discoveries from here to Cook's Inlet during his two or three years' cruise on this coast, and many of the names in the inland pa.s.sage and adjacent lands and waters are due to his explorations made nearly a hundred years ago.

Leaving Victoria and its picturesque surroundings behind us, we swing in a huge circle around the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island, until we are pointed northward once more.

Strictly speaking, "the inland pa.s.sage to Alaska, as defined by nautical men, now begins, Puget Sound only belonging to it in a geographical sense, but as similar thereto as 'peas in a pod.'" We shortly after pa.s.s through a congerie of pretty islands, like the Thousand Islands of the St Lawrence on a greatly magnified scale, when we come to the Gulf of Georgia, one of the widest portions of the inland pa.s.sage. The islands we have left to the right (although it may change by the pilot not taking the usual route, so many are they to choose from) are the San Juan Islands, of far more importance than one would believe, looking at the unpopulated sh.o.r.es; at least, they were so in 1856, when the United States and Great Britain came very near coming to national blows about their possession. The matter was finally left to arbitration in the hands of the Emperor of Brazil, and then transferred to the present Emperor of Germany, who awarded them to the United States. The British troops then withdrew, a post of them having been on one end of the large island, with an American post on the other.

As we steam through the Gulf of Georgia we leave the highest point (Point Roberts) of the United States off to our right, in the distance, on the forty-ninth parallel.

Some forty or fifty miles farther on, and we enter the first typical waters of the inland pa.s.sage,--Discovery Pa.s.sage,--a narrow waterway between high, mountainous banks; a great salt-water, river-like channel, about a mile in breadth, and twenty-three and a half miles long by the British Admiralty charts. A huge yellow bluff, projecting into the sea, greets the eye as the pa.s.sage is approached, and the great, wide channel to the east is the one the tourist has selected as a matter of course for the steamer to pursue; but she agreeably disappoints him, and enters the narrow, picturesque way. This Discovery Pa.s.sage is a Yankee "find,"

having first been entered by a Boston sloop, the "Was.h.i.+ngton," in 1789.

The broad right-hand pa.s.sage could have been taken, as the land to our right is an island (of which the yellow clay bluff is the southern cape), called Valdez Island after an ancient mariner who visited this part of the world in 1792, in the Spanish galleon "Mexicana." At first one is slightly nonplused at the frequency of Spanish names in these quarters; but, as the early history of the country is closely searched, the conclusion is forced on one more and more that these old Castilian navigators have not even got their dues, and, where their names once formed an honorable majority, they have slowly disappeared before the constant revisions of the geographers and hydrographers of another people, who have since acquired possession. We will come to many such changes of nomenclature on our interesting trip.

About two miles from the entrance to Discovery Pa.s.sage we come to the Indian Village of Yaculta, on Valdez Island. It is the first of many we will see before we return to Victoria again, and, like most of them, it is on one of the narrow, level places between the high hills and the deep sea that happens here and there in this Alpine country; or its inhabitants would have to live in the trees on the steep hillsides, or in their canoes on the water. The large river coming in from the Vancouver Island side, some five or six miles from the entrance to the pa.s.sage, is Campbell river, and is navigable for some distance inland by boats and canoes.

About half way through Discovery Pa.s.sage we come to the Seymour Narrows, a contracted channel of the pa.s.sage, about two miles long, and not much over one-fourth the previous width, where the tides rush through with the velocity of the swiftest rivers (said to be nine knots at spring-tides), a current which is so strong that it is generally calculated upon in departing from Victoria so as to reach this point about slack water. In the narrows is a submerged rock, with the pretty-sounding alliterative t.i.tle of Ripple Rock, on which the United States man-of-war "Saranac" was lost in the summer of 1875. Ripple Rock is now so well marked that it is no longer dangerous to navigation.

Northward from the narrows the hills rise in bold gradients, making the change quite noticeable, and more picturesque.

Chatham Point marks the northern entrance to Discovery Pa.s.sage, and here the tourist apparently sees the inland pa.s.sage bearing off slightly to the east from this cape, when, with a sudden swerve to the westward, the s.h.i.+p swings around at full right angles to her original course, and enters a channel which a minute before seemed to be but a bay on the west side of the original water-way. The new channel is Johnstone Strait, and is over twice as long as Discovery Pa.s.sage, that we have just left; or, to be more exact, about fifty-five miles in length. The sh.o.r.es are now getting truly mountainous in character, ridges and peaks on the south side bearing snow throughout the summer on their summits, 4,000 to 5,000 feet high, and the pilot will tell you that the waters on which you are sailing correspond in their dimensions, in many places 100 to 150 fathoms of line failing to reach bottom. The rough and rugged islands which we pa.s.s to our right, about three or four miles beyond Chatham Point, are the Pender Islands. The high mountains to the left and front are the Prince of Wales range. About fifteen to twenty miles after entering Johnstone Strait, a conspicuous valley is seen on Vancouver Island, the only break in the high mountain range on that side. It is the valley of a stream called Salmon river, named from that delicious fish, which here abound, and in the pursuit of which the Indians have shown this stream to be navigable for canoes for a number of miles inland. A conspicuous conical hill, probably a thousand feet high, rises in the valley and marks it to the traveler. Just beyond Salmon river's mouth, some three miles, the strait widens, another joining it from the north. The mountains to our left are now the New Castle range, Mount Palmerston attaining the height of 5,000 feet. At the northern end of Johnstone Strait we have a number of channels to choose from,--Blackfish Sound, Weynton Pa.s.sage, Race Pa.s.sage and Broughton Strait, the longest of all, and only fifteen miles in length, which we take. All these channels simply indicate that there is a cl.u.s.ter of islands where Johnstone Strait swells out into Queen Charlotte Sound, which we enter as Broughton Strait is left behind, and that as we select between different islands we take a different-named channel. These particular islands are the Malcolm Islands, sometimes confined in its application to the largest island. About half way through the Broughton Strait comes in the Nimpkish river from the Vancouver side. Mount Holdsworth is the high, conical peak we see to the south from here. At the mouth of the river is the Indian village of Cheslakee. It is said that an ascent of this river reveals the most picturesque scenery in lakes and falls, a saying to which all the surroundings in the inland pa.s.sage itself, at this point, would give the most ample corroboration. Directly north from the river's mouth is Cormorant Island, which we leave to our right; and the bay in its side is Alert Bay, where exist a salmon cannery, an Indian mission, a wharf at which s.h.i.+ps can land, and other signs of civilization.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENES IN THE INLAND Pa.s.sAGE.

From Schwatka's "Along Alaska's Great River," Ca.s.sell & Co. New York.

Publisher]

Queen Charlotte Sound is one of the few openings to the Pacific Ocean.

It is about fifty miles long, and, in some places, nearly half as wide, and looks like getting out to sea after having pa.s.sed through the narrow channels just left behind. It was entered and named by Wedgeborough in the summer of 1786; so those visitors of 1886 to its grand waters may celebrate its centennial, and drink a toast to Queen Charlotte, the queen of King George III., and queen for fifty-seven years. About nine or ten miles on its waters, and to our left, is Fort Rupert, a Hudson Bay Company's trading post, with a large Indian village cl.u.s.tered around it. Here fruits and vegetables are grown for the local demand. About half way through Queen Charlotte Sound, and we pa.s.s through a narrow channel, twenty-two miles long, named Goletas Channel. Emerging from it, we leave Cape Commerell on our left side, and bid good-bye to Vancouver Island, for this is its northernmost cape. Near the exit from Goletas Channel, but by another pa.s.sage, now seldom used, is where the United States man-of-war "Suwanee" was wrecked, on a submerged rock, in July, 1869, when the inland pa.s.sage was not so well known by pilots as it is now. We can now look out to sea toward the Pacific Ocean; but a short journey plunges us into one of the many pa.s.sages ahead of us, the smallest, or one nearest the mainland, being taken, called Fitzhugh Sound. It was named in 1786 by Captain Hanna, is about forty miles long, and with a width of about three miles. The first island to our left on entering is Calvert Island. About ten miles from its southern cape is an indentation in the island, called Safety Cove or Port Safety, probably a mile deep. It was while delayed in this picturesque little harbor, in 1885, that Mr. Charles Hallock, the well-known author on piscatorial pursuits, penned the following lines, descriptive of the inland pa.s.sage, which we find in the _American Angler_ of September, 1885:

"The mainland is flanked throughout nearly its entire extent by a belt of islands, of which the majority are sea-girt mountains. Of course, throughout this extended coast-line there are many islands of many different phases,--some of them mere rocks, to which the kelps cling for dear life, like stranded sailors in a storm; while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with fir; and others, still, precipitous cliffs standing breast deep in the waves. Most aptly has this wave-washed region been termed an archipelago of mountains and land-locked seas.

Steaming through the labyrinths of straits and channels which seem to have no outlets; straining the neck to scan the tops of snow-capped peaks which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor; watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and herds of sea-lions, which seem as if penned up in an aquarium, so completely are they enclosed by the shadowy hills,--one seems, indeed, in a new creation, and watches the strange forms around him with an intensity of interest which almost amounts to awe.

"In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no sand beaches or gravelly sh.o.r.es. All the margins of mainland and islands drop down plump into inky fathoms of water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. * * * * * When the tide sets in, great rafts of algae, with stems fifty feet long, career along the surface; millions of jelly-fish and anemones crowded as closely as the stars in the firmament; great air-bulbs, with streamers floating like the long hair of female corpses; schools of porpoises and fin-back whale rolling and plunging headlong through the boiling foam; all sorts of marine and Mediterranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible army. Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the ledges, where they squat content or run about feeding.

"Here and there along the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the melting snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy waterfalls from heights that are higher than the Yosemite. From the canons which divide the foot-hills, cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I could catch them with my hands as long as my strength endured, so helpless and infatuated are these creatures of predestination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson spots as large as a pea; and the rainbow trout, with his iridescent lateral stripe; and his cousin germain, the 'cut-throat trout,' slashed with carmine under the gills. And there is another trout, most familiar to the eye in Eastern waters, and doubly welcome to the sight in this far-off region--the _Salvelinus Canadensis_, or 'sea-trout,' which I have recognized these many years as a separate species. * * * Here he is in his garniture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up-stream neighbors of New England and the Provinces. * *

"The seas are full of strange species. Here the family _Percidae_ is regnant and supreme among the food fishes. The number of species and varieties is remarkable. Here are the _Embiotocidae_, or _viviparous_ perch, which bring forth their young in litters, like cats or dogs, to the number of eight to forty at a time. There are no less than seventeen known varieties of them. Here, also, are at least fifteen varieties of _Scorpaenidae_, all fine table fish, which are locally known as rock-cod, groupers and snappers, but having no close relations at all to the family of _Gadidae_. I send herewith the differential characteristics of four of them taken near our present berth, in lat.i.tude 51 degrees 30 minutes. The scarlet snapper seems very closely allied to the _Lutja.n.u.s Blackfordi_ of Eastern Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, from which he could scarcely be distinguished in appearance. The others are all fish of brilliant colors. No. 2 can scarcely be distinguished from the fresh-water ba.s.s of the lakes lying west of the Mississippi,--the _Micropterus_,--either in form, fin system or color. At Sitka I found a fish of exactly the same shape, but black as a sea-ba.s.s of the Atlantic (_Centropristis atrarius_). No. 4 belongs, I believe, to the family of _Chiridae_, and is locally known as a sea-trout. * * * These fish take salmon roe, clams, sand-worms, crabs, meat and cut-fish bait. The black ba.s.s of Sitka is taken alongsh.o.r.e with a trolling spoon. * * * The other fish were taken chiefly in thirty fathoms of water on the young flood tide.

"Besides these fish, we have taken halibut, two kinds of flounder, skates, dogfish of several kinds and strange shapes, sharks, sculpins, etc.; some of the sculpins were beautifully marked in blue, red and brown. * * I have had several of the species painted in oil, and will forward them to the Smithsonian, with descriptions."

But let us leave this piscatorial paradise, as painted by one who is an artist in his line, and wend our way through the forty miles of Fitzhugh Sound. Then comes Lama Pa.s.sage, contracted, winding and picturesque, about fourteen or fifteen miles long. About half way through we pa.s.s very near the Indian village of Bella-Bella, and which is also a Hudson Bay Company trading post. The Bella-Bellas were once a large tribe living in these parts; but the little village, of about twenty Indian houses, that the tourist pa.s.ses on his left, represents the greater portion of the tribe at present, and gives one a practical and forcible ill.u.s.tration of the disappearance of "the n.o.ble red man." A mission residence and a church, with the cattle on the cleared hills, give the place quite a civilized aspect. After Lama Pa.s.sage comes Seaforth Channel, just as winding and pretty; the swingings to the right and left, in places where the pa.s.sage is apparently right ahead, increase your respect for the pilot, and you wonder, in all these intricacies, like Goldsmith's village schoolmaster, "how one small head could carry all he knew." At Milbank Sound we look out to sea for a brief half-hour, and then plunge into Finlayson Channel, a typical waterway of the inland pa.s.sage, like a great river. The sides are very high mountains, densely timbered nearly to the top, where snow exists the year round, forming a base of supplies for the beautiful waterfalls that dash down the precipitous heights, like silvery columns, on a deep green background.

It is said that all the little streams of this region swarm with salmon, giving the Indians a most bountiful supply. Then comes Graham Reach, about twenty miles long; then Fraser Reach, of ten miles; and McKay Reach, of seven,--that could all have been given a single name, and much trouble have been saved. A little, irregular sheet of water, called Wright Sound, and Grenville Channel, "as straight as an arrow," gives us nearly fifty miles of rectilinear sailing.

We are now getting far enough north to make the sight of snow a familiar one, and the dense timber is striped with perpendicular windrows, where large avalanches have cut their way through them in the winter, when the snow falls heavily in these parts. Chatham Sound is the last channel we essay in British domain, and a royal old sheet of water it is, with a width of nearly ten miles, and about three or four times as long. After about three hours on its bosom a great channel is opened east and west before us, on which the swells from the broad Pacific enter. This is Dixon Entrance, and the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska beyond, whose blue mountains we see in the distance. The islands still continue; and the number, in this part of Alaska alone, has been estimated at eleven hundred, and this, too, excludes the rocks and islets. Clarence Strait is the main channel as soon as Alaskan waters are entered; but there are others on both sides of it which may be taken. It is a little over a hundred miles long, and somewhat variable in its width. It was named by Vancouver, nearly a hundred years ago, after the Duke of Clarence. From Clarence Strait we enter Stickeen Strait; for most of the steamers call at Wrangell, and this bends us off of our course.

Wrangell is a tumble-down, dilapidated-looking town, in a most beautifully picturesque situation, and the first impression is to make one ashamed of the displays of the human race compared with those of nature. It is the port to the Ca.s.siar mines; or, better speaking, it was, for they have seen their palmiest days, a fact which is quite evident on looking at their dependency, the town of Wrangell. The Ca.s.siar mines are in British Columbia, and to reach them the Stickeen river, emptying near Wrangell, must be ascended, itself a most picturesque stream, and one well worth visiting if the tourist can catch one of the little boats that yet occasionally depart from Wrangell to ascend the rus.h.i.+ng, impetuous river. Says one writer of it, in the Philadelphia _Dispatch_: "The Stickeen is navigable for small steamers to Glenora, one hundred and fifty miles, flowing first in a general westerly direction, through gra.s.sy, undulating plains, darkened here and there with patches of evergreens; then, curving southward, and receiving numerous tributaries from the north, it enters the Coast Range, and sweeps across it to the sea through a Yosemite valley more than a hundred miles long, and one to three miles wide at the bottom, and from five thousand to eight thousand feet deep, marvelously beautiful and inspiring from end to end. To the appreciative tourist, sailing up the river through the midst of it all, the canon, for a distance of one hundred and ten miles, is a gallery of sublime pictures,--an unbroken series of majestic mountains, glaciers, falls, cascades, forests, groves, flowery garden spots, gra.s.sy meadows in endless variety of form and composition,--furniture enough for a dozen Yosemites! while, back of the walls, and thousands of feet above them, innumerable peaks and spires and domes of ice and snow tower grandly into the sky. About fifteen miles above the mouth of the river you come to the first of the great glaciers, pouring down through the forest in a shattered ice-cascade nearly to the level of the river. Twelve miles above this point a n.o.ble view is opened along the Skoot river canon--a group of glacier-laden Alps, from ten thousand to twelve thousand feet high.

Thirty-five miles above the mouth of the river the most striking object of all comes in sight; this is the lower expansion of the great glacier, measuring about six miles around the 'snout,' pushed boldly forward into the middle of the valley among the trees, while its sources are mostly hidden. It takes its rise in the heart of the range, some thirty or forty miles away. Compared with this, the Swiss _mer de glace_ is a small thing. It is called the 'Ice Mountain.' The front of the snout is three hundred feet high, but rises rapidly back for a few miles to a height of about one thousand feet. Seen through gaps in the trees growing on one of its terminal moraines, as one sails slowly along against the current, the marvelous beauty of the chasms and cl.u.s.tered pinnacles shows to fine advantage in the suns.h.i.+ne."

Wrangell's log-cabin backwoods stores are good places to search for Indian relics, the Stickeen Indians living in the vicinity being the most prolific in the manufacture of these savage curios. Leaving Wrangell, a westward-trending strait (Sumner Strait, after Senator Sumner) of forty or fifty miles carries us directly out to the Pacific Ocean; but an hour's run finds us turning into another pa.s.sage,--Chatham Strait,--one of the largest of the almost innumerable channels of the inland pa.s.sage, and which points squarely to the north. It is nearly one hundred and fifty miles long, and about five or six miles wide. It was named by Vancouver, about the end of last century, after the then Earl of Chatham, and is a most n.o.ble sheet of water.