Back Aa

With Sack and Stock in Alaska

<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV AN ATTACK AND A COUNTERMARCH</h2> Thursday, the 19th.—We spent a comfortable night and indulged next morning in the luxury of a ‘long lie.’ About nine o’clock the men departed, going down stream along the edge of the hills. This was in opposition to our advice, as we felt sure the ice-cliffs would get worse as they approached Lake Castani; but Gums confidently asserted his capability of finding a route, and they thought anything would be better than repeating the toils of the previous day. They would, we reckoned, take two days to go down and three to return, so that, allowing them a day’s rest at the beach, we might hope to see them again on Tuesday. After their departure we reckoned up our stores; there was not much bacon, but plenty of soup, chocolate, etc., and flour enough for at[62] least a fortnight. We then heated water in the big kettle and indulged in the luxury of a good wash, which was perhaps slightly needed, as our scanty ablutions for the last week had been perforce in glacier water, which at a temperature of 32° or so, has not much cleansing power. After lunch (bread and chocolate) we took about twenty and the men about forty pounds each, and set out to make a cache further up the stream; H., in addition to his burden, attempted to carry the coal-oil stove, a most detestable fardel, but dropped it when he had gone about half a mile. For the first three miles our going was fairly easy, along the landward side of the stream, but we then came to a glacier lake, where we surprised a small flock of geese, at which H. and I fired our revolvers unavailingly. We at first attempted the land side of the lake, but were soon defeated, as the cliffs went sheer down into the water, and we had to return, wade the stream, and climb up on to the débris-covered glacier. Half an hour of this sufficed to bring us to the other side of the lake, and we descended again to the river-bed, up which we proceeded for another three miles, wading[63] frequently from side to side so as to make the most of the little bits of beach. Here the hill-side was very steep and with the ice-cliffs of the glacier formed a miniature cañon just beyond which we deposited our burdens on a flat bed of gravel and returned rapidly to camp, wading the river twelve times between the cache and the lake. While we were making the cache, E. went on a little way and found that the river issued from an ice-arch under the glacier, from which we hoped that Libbey’s glacier might be near at hand. We discovered on our homeward route that it was possible to pass along the lake under the glacier, and so to save both time and exertion, though at the risk of a falling stone or two. We decided that evening to move camp as far as the lake before attempting further exploration. Just after supper, Billy, who had wandered off a little way down stream, rushed back shouting, ‘Coonch, coonch!’ and explained by saying, ‘All same dog.’ We ran out with our pistols, but were only in time to see a large wolf vanish into the bushes. Friday, the 20th.—We struck camp at 7.15,[64] and I started first with the men. Before going far I came on the discarded stove, and managed to hoist it along; but for this I received no thanks, as the others wasted a quarter of an hour in vainly searching for it. Dropping our loads at the point where the stream issued from the lake, Billy, Jimmy, and I went back for a fresh lot, and buried a letter for Shorty, directing them to follow us up stream. As E. had a cold, it was thought he had better not do any wading, and he remained in camp to pitch the tent and arrange things generally, while H. and W. went on to explore beyond our cache. After lunch the Indians went back for the last load, while I tried to get round the lake on the land side, but I found the rock so dangerous that I abandoned the attempt. I am no geologist, but it appeared to be a sort of clayey sandstone, very hard below, but with a soft crust on top, which gave way beneath hands, feet, or ice-axe. I then went round the lake on the ice side, and tried to cross what seemed to be a peninsula between the river and the head of the lake; but the ferns and alder-scrub on this proved to be so dense that after going some way without being able to see anything,[65] I gave that up also, and returned to camp at half-past three. H. and W. came in at five o’clock, having got as far as a second lake, whence they were able to see the glacier that descends from St. Elias. Though this was still at some distance, we felt encouraged, and after supper indulged in a little whist. W. and E. played against H. and me; W.’s whist was indeed extraordinary, and he apparently so confused his partner as eventually to make him revoke in the most palpable manner by trumping clubs and then leading them. We never played whist again, but confined ourselves to piquet. Saturday, the 21st.—A cloudless morning greeted us, and at 7.30 we four started out with the firm determination of reaching the long-sought glacier. We went up the river to the ice-arch, where we climbed again on to the glacier to turn the second lake. When we had gone a little further, we halted to sketch and photograph our mountain, the upper part of which was showing well over the Chaix Hills. We then plodded on over the disgusting moraine, and at noon reached the point where Libbey’s Glacier runs into the Agassiz. We halted here for lunch, and then[66] started to climb it. Though descending at a considerable angle, it was not much broken, and in fifty minutes more E., W., and I, slanting across it in an easterly direction, reached a green island which so much resembled the Gletscher Alp at Saas Fee that we christened it the Langenfluh. On the other side of this there was a grand ice-fall with great black seracs. H. had stayed behind to take some bearings, and at first we failed to see him anywhere, but soon discovered that he was taking a more direct course up the glacier towards St. Elias. We pushed on, and soon joined him on the plateau above. Here, though a little later the ice would doubtless be bare, we found some snow-patches in the hollows, and had to be a little cautious about crevasses. Fairly on the top at last, we halted before one of the most magnificent views I ever hope to see. The plateau stretched before us, at much the same level for eight or ten miles, right to the foot of the mountain, which here rose in one appalling precipice. Put the Dom as seen from Saas on the top of Monte Rosa as seen from Macugnaga, and you will have some idea of the grandeur of the spectacle[67] that lay before us. To the right rose the double-headed Cook, seamed with a great couloir down its centre, then the rather shapeless mass of Vancouver, and beyond that numbers of unnamed peaks, some of which we thought we recognised as having been noticed at Yakutat. Far away to the east were Fairweather and Crillon, clearly defined on the horizon. The upper part of our mountain was not so steep as the lower, but the whole face was streaming with avalanches, the dull boom of which was plainly audible from time to time, and on the mountain itself no possible route could be discovered. On the south arête rises a very prominent and beautiful peak (subsequently christened Haydon Peak), and beneath this were some rocks on which W. urged that an attempt might be made, but through the big telescope they looked most unpleasant, and he yielded to our united advice that we should return on our tracks, and, circumnavigating the Chaix Hills, which, from their broken nature, it was impossible to cross, see what we could do on the south-west side, where Seton-Karr had failed. After taking observations, which[68] afterwards gave the height we had reached as 1,625 feet above the sea, we reluctantly left at about four o’clock, and tried to improve our return route by keeping down the bed of the stream, instead of on the ice, till nearly at the second lake; but I do not think we gained much, as we were then forced on to the glacier in its most unpleasant part. We stopped at the cache to bring back some stores, and finally reached camp at nine, very weary and footsore from the fearful moraine-walking, which had nearly destroyed one of my two pairs of boots already. Some tomato soup revived us somewhat, and we turned in at half past eleven. Sunday, the 22nd.—The weather was again perfect, and we spent the morning in sketching and similar peaceful occupations, but H. was not going to allow us the luxury of a whole day’s rest, and after lunch we packed down again to Camp D, whence E. and I went on down stream, following the tracks made by our men on Thursday, which were plainly visible in the sandy soil. In forty minutes we reached Lake Castani, which presented an extraordinary scene; the water was very low, and enormous bergs lay stranded far up the hill,[69] even to the very edge of the timber, some of them as much as a hundred feet above the level of the lake. We were here much puzzled by the sudden disappearance of the tracks at the water’s edge. The ice-cliffs were, as we had expected, utterly unscaleable, and we could only suppose that they had gone round, their footprints being invisible on the harder face of the hill. We continued along the shore till we had crossed a small stream running in from the north, and kept on to the west for some distance, when we realised that the lake was in shape something between a broad arrow and a crescent moon, and that our best route in future would be to cut across from horn to horn. Accordingly, we turned inland through the trees, and in fifteen minutes reached a beautifully clear little rivulet, near which were many flat places well suited for a camp. Stepping out briskly, eighty minutes brought us back to camp at six o’clock, where we found the others preparing supper. Monday, the 23rd.—We actually succeeded in getting off at 6.45, no light task, as it generally took a good two hours to make breakfast, including[70] bread-baking, strike the tents, and arrange the packs. We coasted round the lake and dropped our loads, not on the stream where E. and I had been the day before, but by a small pond to the left, where we could see across Castani to the glaciers. The Indians then returned to D for more things, while H., E., and W. started with the hope of finding a way across the hills at our back. I had no belief in the possibility of this, and went on round the lake to try and find out, if possible, what had been the route of our other men. At the westernmost point of the peninsula projecting into the lake, I came on their traces for a few yards, when they again vanished at the water’s edge. Oddly enough, the true solution never once occurred to us. Going leisurely, I reached at 11.15 the north-west extremity of the lake, putting up half-a-dozen geese as I went whose wildness argued considerable knowledge of man. I then meditated a return to camp, but my plans were suddenly changed by coming on tracks in the herbage which I believed to be those of the men. I followed them, first over a space where the wind had overthrown all the trees in every direction,[71] raising a natural abattis that presented most formidable obstacles, and then through some dense alder-scrub to the edge of the Guyot Glacier. I supposed they must have gone back by this, and, as there was no objectionable river cutting me off, I thought I might as well go on to the glacier for a bit and ascertain its nature. A belt of moraine separated me from the white ice, and this moraine was different to that on the Agassiz. The glacier was much more even and the stones fewer, but in the hollows between the mounds lay pools of horrible red mud often knee-deep, which made the way anything but a primrose path, for the mud was often crusted enough to bear biggish stones, and so deluded the unwary traveller on to it. At length I got beyond this, making a slight sketch en route, and, going up parallel with the hills, found myself on white ice, but involved in a system of rather formidable crevasses, in one of which I nearly came to grief. It was at a point where two large crevasses ran together; I was between them, and as I reached the apex of the triangle, from which I intended to jump, the ice gave way beneath me, and I descended abruptly a[72] distance of some seven or eight feet, but the block wedged beneath me, saving me from a violent squeeze, if not worse. Though somewhat jarred, I had not let go of my axe, and chipping a step or two, was soon out of my prison. A few minutes more brought me to level ice with very few stones on it, and as I was able to walk very fast on this, I had at two o’clock nearly reached the west end of the Chaix Hills, which here had subsided into green knolls, though a mile or so further back a large lake, which with its ramifications and the gorges from them evidently extended far inland, must have hopelessly cut off the others had they tried to cross the hills direct. I was congratulating myself on my superior astuteness, when, to my utter amazement, I heard shots, and discovered the others pursuing ptarmigan on the hills with their revolvers. By the time I reached them they had exhausted their few cartridges, and I found W. anxiously watching over the old hen, who obligingly waited till I arrived, but unfortunately I also missed, and we had no ptarmigan for supper that night. The others had failed almost at once in their attempt[73] to cross the hills and so had descended to the glacier, and it was their track I had followed through the bush. E. was very full of a small trout which they had discovered in one of the pools of a tiny rill on the hills, and it was certainly a complete marvel what that fish could do with himself in winter, when one would think everything would be frozen solid. E. went back next day, captured him and bottled him in alcohol. On the hills we all scattered; I went across to the other side and had a grand view of St. Elias across the curve of the Tyndall Glacier, but coming back to the Guyot a good deal lower down than where I had left it, I found I had missed the others. Being rather tired, I was disinclined to go back, so kept on homewards, and an hour’s moraine, and then fifty minutes across the neck of the peninsula, on which were one or two pools full of yellow water-lilies, brought me into camp at six o’clock pretty well beat, but I got two loaves made and some apples cooked by the time they arrived an hour later. We then had to pitch our tent, and it was, as usual, hard to find a flat place, but we managed it at last, though the flies[74] and mosquitoes here threatened to be worse than ever. Tuesday, the 24th.—E. and W. went off about nine to cut a trail through the worst part of the bush by the Guyot Glacier, and the Indians to E for the last load of stores. H. and I stayed at home mending our boots and raiment, much plagued by the flies, of which there were many kinds, varying from a large house-fly to a microscopic grey beast, but all equally anxious to feed off us. About eleven I went towards the lake and succeeded in setting fire to a couple of dead trees, to serve as a signal to the men whom we were expecting from the beach. After this we lunched early off a few beans, and then H. set off with Billy and Jimmy to make a cache at the place where we left the bush for the Guyot Glacier. Directly afterwards E. and W. came back, and at the same moment we heard shouts across the lake. The men had returned. E. shouted to them to go round by the Guyot, and I rushed off and caught up H., who, after the cache had been made, set off to meet them, while the Indians and I returned slowly as it was very hot. [75] As the rest of us were having supper, a little after six, we suddenly saw a figure come in sight round the eastern corner of Castani. It was the energetic Gums, followed at intervals by the rest of our men, who had failed to understand our cries and had gone on by the Agassiz Glacier to our old camp at D. Gums, who had sworn he would never go that way again, kept his word in the letter if not in the spirit by cutting steps down the cliffs some three hundred yards short of the slope opposite camp, down which the others came as they had done before. The mystery of their footprints was then explained. When they reached the lake its bed was quite dry, and they went right across it to the western side, where they were able to get on to the ice, and, the Guyot Glacier proving much easier than the Agassiz, they reached B without difficulty the first day. The next day they reached the shore, going down by the river recommended by Seton-Karr, which we had advised them to try. They took a day’s rest, returned in one day to B, and made their camp next night at the spot where the river issued from the ice. Leaving this at 4.30 A.M., they had nearly[76] got to Castani by nine o’clock, when Gums, who was on ahead, reported that the lake was too high to cross, and they turned towards the old route on the Agassiz, finding very bad going. While thus engaged they saw the smoke from the fire I had lit, and Gums then said he could get round by the Guyot, but as he had previously denied the existence of such a way the men declined to try it, and, after hailing us without understanding what we said in reply, went on to D and so round. They were all in good health, but George, the only one who had no boots, was very footsore. H. came in about half-an-hour later, somewhat annoyed by his wild-goose-chase, splashed with glacier-mud, and hoarse with shouting after the lost caravan; but he was too hungry to waste time in grumbling, and after supper we turned in early. At this camp, in consequence of E.’s snoring, which had become perfectly maddening, packed like sardines as we were, I turned round and slept with my head where my feet used to be. W. occasionally did a little snoring in a mild way, but was nothing to E., who not only snored his breath in, but blew it out again with a[77] puff like a locomotive. Sleeping with his head under the blankets because of mosquitoes, increased the evil, and it was no good my poking or kicking him, for he always went to sleep again long before I did. Wednesday, the 25th.—After the fatigues of the previous day the men slept late. Gums went to fetch some of the Indians’ blankets, &c., left at D. At nine o’clock E. and nearly all the men got under way, followed shortly by H. and W., while an hour later I brought on Mike, George, and Gums, who went very slowly and did not reach the edge of the glacier till twelve. Here I had a row with Gums, who had apparently got out of bed wrong leg foremost, and maintained that his load was too heavy, threatening, in order to lighten it, to throw away the frying-pans and kettles. As he had been ahead of us most of the time, so that I had had to call him back more than once, and was, besides, much the strongest of the three Indians with me, this was absurd, and I nearly lost my temper with him, a fatal thing when dealing with the natives; but, curbing my righteous indignation, I merely remarked, ‘Halo kettle, halo muck-a-muck,’[78] i.e., ‘No kettles, no supper,’ and, leaving him to digest that information and a ship’s biscuit to soften it down, I went on after the others, who were vanishing over the glacier. For this my conscience rather reproached me afterwards, for, without amounting to an ice-fall, there were some rather ugly crevasses a little way on, in which laden men might conceivably have come to grief, but they turned up all right. I had caught up most of those ahead, and had relieved W. of the camera which he was carrying, when we heard shouts from E. and Shorty at the edge of the glacier. With the exception of H., who was on ahead up the glacier and took no part in the struggle that ensued, we hurried on and found that, as they got on to the hill-side, they had espied a small flock of geese on a pool between the glacier and the land. Shorty fired his pistol at them, on which, instead of flying away, they swam into a cave under the ice, and he ran down and blockaded them while E. shouted for us. We went down to the water, and with some difficulty reached the mouth of the cave on pieces of ice that were more or less afloat. To get there we had to pass under a[79] slender ice-arch that seemed to be on the point of falling, but once on the ice-blocks we were quite safe. Accordingly Shorty, W., and I commenced firing, whilst the others guarded the exit as best they could, and a wild scene ensued. E. in his excitement slipped into the water, where he grabbed no less than three geese, but was only able to secure one, with which he retired to shore terribly numbed. Meanwhile a good many had got out of the cave, but, to our delight, they could not fly, the old ones being in moult at the time and the young ones being still flappers, so that, after much stone-throwing, firing, and occasional use of ice-axes, we found ourselves in possession of ten geese. Two, I believe, escaped under the ice, one badly wounded. We then pushed on after H., bearing our spoils with us, and camped about four o’clock in a most lovely spot at the west end of the Chaix Hills. Just at our back was a little lake about two hundred yards long, in which we used to bathe, and in front of us rose our mountain, partly concealed by a group of fir-trees to our right, the last timber that we met with, though I saw three dead[80] trunks on the other side of the Tyndall Glacier. We made a tremendous supper off stewed goose and apple-sauce, and afterwards decided to cross the glacier next morning to the site of Schwatka’s last camp, where, though there was no timber, we could see that there was plenty of scrub, probably alder, like that surrounding us. There was a most lovely sunset, but directly afterwards it got very cold, and we rapidly sought our blankets. <hr /> [81] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.