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With Sack and Stock in Alaska

<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III OPENING APPROACHES</h2> Wednesday, the 11th.—H. spent a large part of the day in interviewing the chief, ‘Billy Masterman,’ on the subject of canoes and men. We also engaged two white men who, with several others, had come prospecting up the coast from Juneau in a whale-boat, but had done no good and were anxious to return in the ‘Alpha.’ ‘Ed.’—I never knew his other name—was tall and dark; Finn, commonly called the Doctor, was a smaller, red-haired man. Both seemed rather slight for packing, but had the reputation of being good cooks. As they were repairing the schooner, we pitched the green tent on the beach, and H., W., and I slept in it, E., who had a slight cold, preferring to remain on board. Thursday, the 12th.—We managed to engage[38] two large canoes, one of which was to wait at Icy Bay for us. Its owner agreed to this on the condition that he was to stay with it, and with him a youth who was said to be his son, but who subsequently proved to be his brother. Crews were also secured, and we were to have started at three, but there was some wind and they declined to go. W. and I went off and bathed, and then wandered a little way along the beach after a small variety of plover, of which we had seen a good many the day before, but now they all seemed to have vanished. As we returned, however, we came on a small flock; ‘Dick,’ De Groff’s setter pup, spoilt the shot by chasing them, but I got four, and he made some amends by fetching them out of the sea. This outer shore of Kantag Island is a regular shingle beach exposed to the surf; H. and I went along it the day before for about a mile to De Groff’s and Callsen’s gold claim, where they were washing the black sand, or, as some call it, the ruby sand from the quantity of garnets in it, in an amalgamator, but they were doing little more than would pay their expenses. In the evening the Indians suddenly announced[39] their readiness to start, and at nine o’clock we got off in the two big canoes, and a smaller one which we had purchased for five dollars from one of the miners returning to Sitka on the ‘Alpha.’ We were arranged thus:—In the large canoe we were to keep at Icy Bay were E. and W., with Ed., Lyons, Billy, Jimmy, and three Yakutats; in the other, H. and I, with Shorty, Matthew, Mike, and five Yakutats; and in the small one Finn and two Yakutats. De Groff photographed us from the beach, and we started, the Indians yelling wildly, and the two big canoes racing till we were past the point, when they settled down to a more sedate stroke. Off Cape Phipps, however, the weather looked so threatening in the south-east that we returned ignominiously at half-past ten. We put up our tent on the sand in front of the ranche; everything else was left in the canoes ready for a start, with the sails, etc., stretched over them to protect them from the rain, which came down in torrents. In the middle of the night the tent collapsed at W.’s end, and he had to emerge in the wet and fasten it again, in much peril from the Siwash dogs which we heard growling[40] indignantly as he disturbed their slumbers in the search for something solid to which to attach the rope, while we chuckled inside and congratulated ourselves that we did not sleep next the door. In the morning we found the sand beneath us swarming with maggots bred from the refuse which the Indians used to cast on the beach; the warmth of our bodies had presumably brought them to the surface. Friday, the 13th.—Next day the weather looked better, and after hiring two more Yakutats, who were put in the small canoe while Finn was transferred to ours, we got off again at 11 A.M. We rowed round the point, and some little way up the bay, when we set sail. There was a strong north-east wind, and the small canoe was soon a good way behind. About half-past three we were off Point Manby; things looked rather bad, with dense black clouds to the south-east, so we waited for the others to come up, and held a council of war. Shorty, who was always on the safe side strongly urged our going ashore, pointing out that there was no landing between Point Manby and Icy Bay, a distance of over thirty miles, and that,[41] should it come on to blow from the south-east, it would probably be impossible to land through the surf by the time we reached the latter place; we should be unable to turn back against the wind, and our only chance would be to run right on before it, in which case we should be carried on to Kayak unless we swamped by the way. Unwilling as we were to land at Point Manby, which, if the weather became bad, would involve a detention of unknown length, and would in any case cause much confusion among our stores by our having to land, and then re-embark them, H. and I were inclined to agree with him, but E. and W. so strongly opposed it, pointing out with justice that the similar appearance of the evening before had only resulted in heavy rain, that we gave way and decided to go on, thereby, as I believe, running the biggest risk encountered on the whole expedition. Fortunately the others were right, the wind died down, causing the men to take to their oars, and was succeeded by a deluge of rain, after which the north-east wind came again and our canoe took the small one in tow. [42] All this time we were running along the face of the Agassiz, or rather the Malaspina, Glacier, for it is all one field of ice, which here seems quite motionless, its front covered with gravel and boulders, among which appear a few sparse bushes. At last we reached a point which we recognised as Cape Sitkagi from the delta of flat land which commenced just beyond, and Gums, one of the Yakutats who had been with the former expedition, indicated that we were near our destination. Going on some five or six miles further we then prepared to land. From our men’s accounts of surf-landings and from Seton-Karr’s book, we were prepared for a fearful struggle with the waves. Shorty transferred himself to the little canoe, and they went ashore without apparent difficulty; but then she was light and small. Then came our turn, and H. and I went up into the bows with instructions to jump the moment she touched, and, should she get broadside on and capsize, to be careful to jump to sea, so as not to be pounded between the canoe and the beach. After these cheerful directions we were a shade nervous as we contemplated the shore, which we were now[43] rapidly approaching, while the others stood ready to receive us, but as we got closer we came to the conclusion that the breakers were very small, and before we touched our contempt for the Pacific surf in its then condition was complete. We were now quite close; the Indians paused for a favourable moment, and then dashed in their paddles with wild yells. We rode in on the crest of a wave and were swept up the beach as it broke. Instantly the others grasped the canoe, and there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. Every man seized the first thing he could lay hold of, rushed up the beach with it, tossed it down, and ran back for more, till the canoe was empty, when we hauled her up a little way and prepared to receive the others, who were not quite so fortunate, for, as they touched land, another breaker came in over their stern but did no damage. The beach was now strewn with our properties, which were gradually collected and conveyed beyond the reach of the highest tide, where we pitched camp and the canoes were dragged up. It was now nine o’clock, but quite light, and some of the Indians went off after seals which had been seen in the[44] mouth of a small river just to the east of us. A good deal of firing was heard, and according to their own account they shot three, but unfortunately these were all lost in the sea. Saturday, the 14th.—The morning was spent in sorting and arranging the stores. With the object of remaining as long as possible in the vicinity of the mountain, we four agreed to carry our own properties, so that the men might be free to carry more food, and soon came to the conclusion that we must leave our rifles at the beach. W. and E. tried to take one between them, but left it at the first cache. We saw a green humming-bird flashing along the shore, and another had been observed at Yakutat. In the afternoon we all sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood; H. and Ed. went along the beach, which was covered with bear-tracks, for some four miles to the first outlet of the river, re-christened by Lieutenant Schwatka with the euphonious name of Jones, and Ed. returned considerably impressed with the walking powers of our gallant captain. E. and Shorty penetrated with great difficulty for some distance along the banks of the river, which ran[45] into the sea close to camp. I took the shot-gun and started with W. and Lyons along the beach, but I soon separated from them, and went on the shore-side of the lagoons, where I hoped to find duck. In this I was disappointed, but I shot a large sandpiper and a couple of ring-necked plover. On the sandhills of the beach were the largest wild strawberries I ever saw, some fully as big as a shilling, while the supply was utterly inexhaustible. It came on to pour in torrents, and we all returned soaked through, and quite undecided as to our future route. All that night the rain descended in a deluge, and, driven by a fierce east wind, even succeeded in penetrating our excellent green tent which had stood so well on Mount Edgcumbe. Sunday, the 15th.—In the morning the men showed no sign of life, so after a cold breakfast H. and W. sallied forth to see whether it would be possible to ‘pack’ up the river by our camp, while E. and I curled up again in our blankets. About 2 P.M. the rain began to leave off, and the men emerged and made a fire. For lunch we fried some seal-meat, the Indians having been successful[46] in shooting one the day before. H. and W. returned dripping at three o’clock, in time to share our repast, and reported that the bush was too dense to pack through, so we decided to start early next morning and follow the same route as the Schwatka party. In the evening E. announced the presence of two plover by the river close to camp, so I executed a stalk through the sand which brought me within easy shot, but trying to get both at once, I missed with the first barrel and only secured one. I then plucked and cleaned my four birds, and we fried them with bacon for supper. Monday, the 16th.—Fine at last and some sunshine! We had a grand view of St. Elias through the clouds, which gradually cleared off, and we were able at our leisure to survey the monarch, who looked most formidable, but we hoped he would improve on acquaintance. Though we were up at five, there was so much to be done that it was not till eight that the procession began its march along the sandhills. As it was the first day, the men were not used to their burdens of from sixty to eighty pounds, and could[47] only go about two miles an hour, in addition to which they stopped to rest every three or four hundred yards. As some of the Indians seemed to be overburdened, I went back to H., who had not yet started, and we hired for the day three of the other Yakutats. At the site of Schwatka’s shore camp we picked up a short .44 cartridge and a piece of sheet-lead. While resting there I suddenly perceived a bear cantering along the other side of the lagoon about five hundred yards off. Shorty, who was carrying his rifle, which was also left at the first cache, was anxious to go in pursuit, but H. declined to allow this, as being a waste of valuable time. Progressing very slowly, and halting continually to attack the strawberries, we at length reached the first river at half-past eleven. Seton-Karr recommends the ascent of this, but it looked very unpromising and we kept on. Most of the men stripped more or less to cross this stream, which was well over our knees and horribly cold, but as we knew there would be lots more wading, none of us four took the trouble of taking off boots or stockings. In an hour more, across a flat grassy plain with scattered fir-trees[48] we reached a creek of the main river and halted for lunch, after which the fun began. The streams were not deep, being seldom above our knees, but their beds, and generally the spaces in between, were of that terrible glacier mud, as glutinous as quicksands, and through this we toiled, every now and then skirting the edge of the forest, where a scanty vegetation of sedge and marestails gave a little sounder going, and resting whenever a fallen log or two offered something substantial to sit on. Presently it began to rain heavily; Gums pointed out a spot where he declared Schwatka halted the first day, but this disagreed with Seton-Karr’s account, and as it was yet early we pushed on in hope of at least finding a dry camping-place. In this, although the moraine of the Agassiz Glacier was now looming near at hand, we were doomed to be disappointed; and after two unusually deep and rapid crossings, in one of which Lyons lost his footing and emerged in a pitiable plight, though with nothing gone except his temper, we sought the shelter of the woods, thoroughly numbed by this ceaseless wading in ice-water. Such a thing as a flat place was not[49] to be found above the level of the mud, but by careful search we discovered a spot where the logs and stones were more or less disguised by the dense layer of moss, and pitched the tents. With the aid of a couple of roaring fires and some excellent pea-soup we restored some warmth to our shivering limbs, but, as it was still pouring, dryness was not to be hoped for, and decidedly weary with the first day’s march, we sought our blankets. E. and I then discovered the deceitfulness of the moss; H. and W. were fairly well off, but at our end of the tent an enormous boulder projected. With the aid of knapsacks I enlarged the mountain, so that I was able to doze more or less on its summit, while E. curled himself in a ball in the valley at my feet. The mosquitoes attacked us in myriads, but E. and W. were soon asleep; H. and I were not so fortunate, and I never became enough accustomed to the absence of darkness to sleep well. In the middle of the night, just as I was dropping off, I was suddenly aroused by something tickling my neck, and putting up my hand grasped an enormous beetle. Flinging it from me, I promptly massacred it, and[50] discovered H. eyeing my movements with mild astonishment. I explained, and we composed ourselves to rest again, if not to sleep. Tuesday, the 17th.—Next morning we got off at half-past seven and continued up the river, but with less wading as we were now next the Agassiz moraine. At one point, which must have been very near the site of Schwatka’s first camp, we halted for about an hour while W. and H. made an attempt to get up the face of the moraine. In this they succeeded, but only to find the scrub on the glacier itself so dense that it would have been impossible for the packers to penetrate it, and we pushed on up the bed of the river. Gums soon announced that there would be no more wading, to the delight of the men, who put on their boots; but their joy was turned to wrath when, on rounding the next corner, we had to plunge in again. Of course these streams are always changing their bed, and we found very great variations in their rise and fall apart from their natural increase by day and decrease by night. This was probably to be accounted for by the periodical closing and bursting of the many glacier[51] lakes. At last the river began to contract, and its bed was now only about a mile wide. On the other side was the bare ice of the Guyot Glacier, while we were now driven by the depth of one of the main streams on to the moraine of the Agassiz Glacier, where we halted from half-past eleven till two, while we had lunch, made a cache, and dismissed our three extra Yakutats, one of whom was the boy who was to stay at Icy Bay as company for the canoe-owner. We were now reduced to our proper quota of fourteen, and our retainers deserve a somewhat more elaborate description than they have hitherto had. Of our four whites, our right-hand man was Arthur McConnahay, nicknamed Shorty, apparently on the lucus a non lucendo principle, being some six feet four inches in height. Very handsome, with fair hair and blue eyes, he was the ideal Anglo-Saxon in appearance, and, being extremely good-natured, he was a great favourite with our Indians, with whom he would readily share his last bit of tobacco; but he was an inveterate grumbler, and often roused H.’s wrath by his ceaseless growls against the hardships of the way. Though the son[52] of an Indiana farmer, he had been on the Pacific coast for some years, and, being captured in one of the sealers seized in the Behring’s Sea, had been stranded at Sitka without means to get away. In May he had been up to Yakutat and back in a canoe, searching for a lost sloop, the ‘Leola,’ and the knowledge he thus obtained of the coast proved subsequently most useful to me. He had, however, once been shipwrecked near Valparaiso, when he had a narrow escape of his life, being washed up insensible, and always had a great distrust of bad weather at sea. Harry Lyons, his great friend, though not so tall, was a man of immense strength, with light hair and grey eyes. He hailed from Iowa, and had been for some time a fisherman on the Columbia river, where he seemed to have had some rather exciting experiences, and to have made things exciting for other people too; for, when one of the steamers was running through his salmon-nets, he put a bullet into the bridge within a foot of the captain. He once got in one haul seven hundred and fourteen salmon, each over twenty pounds, and also captured the biggest salmon ever taken in the[53] river, weighing over seventy-four pounds. Having lost boat and nets in a storm he had gone in for sealing, and when we engaged him had just come in on the ‘Alpha.’ A good packer, and a first-rate man in a boat, he was terribly lazy in camp, not wilfully, but it didn’t seem to occur to him to do things. Ed. and Finn were both Eastern men, the former coming from Maine, and the latter from Erie. Neither was conspicuous for ardour in packing, and it would have been pretty safe to bet on their loads being lighter than other people’s. But in camp they were very useful, especially as bakers. Ed. generally undertook this task, and it was not till we were back in Yakutat, and the baking-powder began to run short, that we discovered Finn’s talent for ‘sour-dough’ bread. He was a man of considerable education and of a scientific turn of mind, with some knowledge of chemistry and botany. With Ed. and three or four others, he had come prospecting up the coast from Juneau, stopping every few miles. They had been up in Disenchantment Bay, a long fiord running inland from the head of Yakutat Bay, and were going on[54] to Nuchuk, but a few miles west of Point Manby they were imprisoned on the beach by a storm from the south-east. Trying to get off too soon, they were swamped, and barely escaped with their lives. Luckily for them their boat was not injured, and when they got off a day or two later, they returned to Yakutat, as they had lost most of their stores, and there we found them. Of our Indians, Matthew, our so-called interpreter, was not popular with us. He had been a mission boy, and accordingly thought a good deal of himself, and was inclined to be insolent. Mike, a short burly fellow, with a most ruffianly cast of countenance, was in reality very good-natured, and, like all the Indians, a magnificent packer; but he was very slow and somewhat dense. Billy, who had been specially recommended to us by Milmore, steward to Captain Newell of the ‘Pinta,’ was my favourite among them. Taller than usual, and not at all deformed in the legs, he had almost a European cast of countenance. Jimmy was just the contrary, being very small and ugly, with much-distorted lower limbs. Both he and Billy were extremely strong, and on the[55] occasion of my return from Camp I to Camp J their loads came very near a hundred pounds. Of the two Yakutats who accompanied us, ‘Gums’ was quite a character. He had been so christened by Schwatka, from his peculiar smile, which revealed not only his teeth, but the whole of the interior of his mouth. He was the incarnation of undisciplined devilry. Full of pluck, he would rather wade a glacier stream twice over than go a hundred yards round, as we often found to our cost when he was professing to guide us up the river. If we declined to follow the route he selected, or if he thought his burden too great, he would get very sulky, not to say wrathful; but, like a child, he was easily appeased. Of the other one, George (not to be confounded with the second chief of Yakutat), I recall but little, except that on our return he set the fashion of wearing knickerbockers in the village by rolling his trousers up to his knees, after the manner of the Swiss guides. The extreme brilliancy of his striped stockings impressed this fact on my memory. After leaving the cache we went on up stream[56] for about a mile, sometimes on little strips of beach, but oftener driven by the river on to the face of the moraine, which was covered with dense alder scrub, offering terrible difficulty to the laden packers, as the boughs, pressed down by the winter’s snow, mostly sloped down-hill, while the foothold on the slope itself was of a most precarious character. Eventually we left the river and steered to the east, hoping to get through to bare ice, but the bush seemed to grow thicker and the ubiquitous devil’s clubs more numerous at every step. At last, as we were resting, thoroughly sick of creeping and crawling through the tangle, W. valiantly climbed a somewhat stouter alder than usual, and from that eminence, which threatened momentarily to collapse with him, announced, to our intense delight, that he could see bare rocks only a few hundred yards ahead. Summoning up our last energies, we soon pushed through, and as it was now half-past four, E. and I, who were ahead, began to search at once for a convenient spot for camp. Although on a glacier, water was the great desideratum, for the ice was here completely covered with rocks and[57] gravel, but I was fortunate enough to discover a tiny stream by its sound in a convenient hollow, and set to work, with E.’s assistance, to level a place for the tent, while H. and W. pushed on a little way to get some idea of our route for the next day. It had been discovered that our bacon was fading away too rapidly, so we confined ourselves to soup and bread for supper, after which the sun came out and held out hopes of improvement in the weather. My watch now caused me some annoyance by stopping twice, and though it went spasmodically for about a week, it then gave out altogether. Wednesday, the 18th.—Our luxurious couch of alder-boughs did not manage to keep the cold out, so that we did not sleep very well, and obeyed with alacrity H.’s réveille at five o’clock. It was a glorious morning and we were off by seven, in a northerly direction at first, but the going was so bad that we went back westwards to the depression where the two glaciers joined. This Agassiz Glacier, on which it was our miserable fate to meander so much, to the great detriment of our boots and our tempers, was covered with the worst[58] kind of moraine I have ever encountered, not excepting the streets of the city of San Francisco. At first sight it appeared to consist of mounds of stones, but appearances were, as usual, deceitful; for these mounds were in reality of ice, produced by the effect of weathering, and covered with a skin of rocks and dirt, which was thick on the north, but thin and often altogether absent on the south side. Plenty of mud lay in the hollows between, varied by an occasional ‘moulin,’ and we were rarely able to travel twenty yards in a straight line. In the depression it was at first a little better, but soon after our lunch of bread and smoked salmon it got much worse, so that frequently E. and I, who were in front, had to cut a few steps, and in one of these places Gums came a most splendid cropper. At length we left this and steered east again, being much cheered by reaching a comparatively flat region, and soon afterwards clear ice. We had had a grand view of our mountain all day, but it was still too far off for us to make out any possible route. On the white ice we progressed much more rapidly, though it was anything but level,[59] being weathered into hummocks three or four feet high. There were not many crevasses, and those only a few inches in width. By four o’clock we were not more than two miles from the Chaix Hills, which we could see were well wooded on their lower slopes, but we were steering for a break in them some seven or eight miles off, where we hoped might lie the glacier reported by Professor Libbey as coming direct from St. Elias. But the men were thoroughly exhausted, and it was evidently impossible to get there that night, so we held a council. H., wisely as it afterwards proved, was in favour of sleeping where we were on the glacier, and continuing our route next day; but the rest of us opposed this frigid course with such warmth, that he reluctantly gave way, and we accordingly turned north-west to gain the hills, and soon got into difficulties again among the stony mounds; while, when H. and I at last reached the edge of the glacier, we found ice-cliffs, varying in height from fifty to a hundred feet, utterly cutting us off from the land. However, I thought I saw a possible place half-a-mile or so further up, and going on with great difficulty, I discovered a spot[60] where the cliffs gave way to a steep slope covered with débris, down which we wound our weary way, and then waded the inevitable river which always sent us wet to bed. On the other side we found a charming camping-place on a sort of raised beach, marking, presumably, the height of the river in some former flood, but now covered with flowers, among which I recognised a large blue lupin, mimulus, two kinds of spiræa, and three of willow-herb. Mosquitoes were also abundant. After supper we held a consultation and decided to keep Billy and Jimmy with us while the rest of the men were to return to the beach for another load, and in the meantime we would coast along the east side of the Chaix Hills. <hr /> <div class="figcenter"> click map for larger version (if your device supports this) <ANTIMG src="images/map2-thumb.jpg" width-obs="130" height-obs="200" alt="" /> The Southern Slopes of Mount St. Elias. From observations by the author, worked out by H. Broke, Lieut. R.E. Longmans, Green & Co., London & New York. F.S. Weller. </div> <hr /> [61] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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