Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

ing one gallon each were provided for use while on the march. Subsequent experience proved that this arrangement was satisfactory.

Four seven-by-seven tents, with ridge ropes, and two pyramidal nine-by-nine center-pole tents, with flies, were provided, all made of cotton drilling. The smaller tents were for use in the higher camps, and the larger ones for the base camps. The tents were as light as seemed practicable, and were found to answer well the purpose for which they were intended.

Each man was supplied with one double Hudson Bay blanket, a water-proof coat, a water-proof hat (the most serviceable being the "sou'westers" used by seamen), and an alpenstock.* Each man also carried a sheet made of light duck, seven feet square, to protect his blankets and to be used as a shelter-tent if required. Each member of the party was also required to have heavy boots or shoes, and suitable woolen clothing. Each man was furnished with two pieces of hemp "cod-line," 50 feet in length, to be used in packing blankets and rations. The lines were doubled many times, so as to distribute the weight on the shoulders, and were connected with two leather straps for buckling about the package to be carried. The cod-lines were used instead of ordinary pack-straps, for the reason that they distribute the weight on the shoulder over a broader area, and also because they can be made immediately available for climbing, crossing streams, etc., when required. Several extra lines of the same material were also taken as a reserve, or to be used in roping the party together when necessary. Several of the party carried rifles, for each of which a hundred rounds of fixed ammunition were issued. Two ice-axes for the party were also provided.

A canvas boat was made by the men while en route for the field, but there was no occasion to use it, except as a cover for a cache left at one of the earlier camps. Subsequent experience showed that snow-shoes and one or two sleds would have been serviceable; but these were not taken.

Our instruments were furnished by the United States Geological Survey. The list included one transit, one gradienter, one sextant, two prismatic compasses, one compass clinometer,

* Light rubber cloth was ordered from San Francisco for the purpose of allowing each man a water-proof sheet to place under his blankets, but was not received in time to be used.

12-NAT. GEOG. MAG., VOL. III, 1891.

four pocket thermometers, two psychrometers, one field-glass, two mercurial barometers, three aneroids, steel tape-lines, and two photographic outfits.

FROM SEATTLE TO SITKA.

Preparations having been completed, the expedition sailed from Seattle June 16, on the steamer Queen, belonging to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, in command of Captain James Carroll, and reached Sitka on the morning of June 24. This portion of our voyage was through the justly celebrated "inland passage" of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska, and was in every way delightful. We touched at Victoria and Wrangell, and, after threading the Wrangell narrows, entered Frederick sound, where the first floating ice was seen. The bergs were from a neighboring glacier, which enters the sea at the head of a deep inlet, too far away to be seen from the course followed by the Queen. The route northward led through Stephens passage, and afforded glimpses of glaciers both on the mainland and on Admiralty island. In Taku inlet several hours were spent in examining the glaciers, two of which come down to the sea. One on the western side of the fjord, an ice-stream known as the Norris glacier, descends through a deep valley and expands into a broad ice-foot on approaching the water, though it is not washed by the waves, owing to an accumulation of mud about its extremity. Another ice-stream is the Taku glacier, situated at the head of the inlet. It comes boldly down to the water, and ends in a splendid sea-cliff of azure blue, some 250 feet high. The adjacent waters are covered with icebergs shed by the glacier. Some of the smaller fragments were hoisted on board the Queen for table use. The bold, rocky shores of the inlet are nearly bare of vegetation, and indicate by their polished and striated surfaces that glaciers of far greater magnitude than those now existing formerly flowed through this channel.

After leaving Taku inlet, a day was spent at Juneau; and then the Queen steamed up Lynn canal to Pyramid harbor, near its head. For picturesque beauty, this is probably the finest of the fjords of Alaska. Several glaciers on each side of the inlet come down nearly to the sea, and all the higher mountains are buried beneath perpetual snow. On returning from Lynn canal, the Queen visited Glacier bay, and here passengers were allowed a few hours on shore at the Muir glacier. The day of our visit

[blocks in formation]

was unusually fine, and a splendid view of the great ice-stream with its many tributaries was obtained from a hill-top about a thousand feet high, on its eastern border. The glacier discharges into the head of the bay and forms a magnificent line of icecliffs over two hundred feet high and three miles in extent.

This portion of the coast of Alaska has been described by several writers; yet its bleak shores are still in large part unexplored. To the west of the bay rise the magnificent peaks of the Fairweather range, from which flow many great ice-streams. The largest of the glaciers descending from these mountains into Glacier bay is called the Pacific glacier. Like the Muir glacier, it discharges vast numbers of icebergs into the sea.

The day after leaving Glacier bay we arrived at Sitka, and as soon as practicable called on Lieutenant-Commander O. F. Farenholt, of the U. S. S. Pinta, who had previously received instructions from the Secretary of the Navy to take us to Yakutak bay. We also paid our respects to the Governor and other Alaskan officials, and made a few final preparations for the start westward.

FROM SITKA TO YAKUTAT BAY.

All of our effects having been transferred to the Pinta, we put to sea early on the morning of June 25.

Honorable Lyman E. Knapp, Governor of Alaska, taking advantage of the sailing of the Pinta, accompanied us on the voyage. Mr. Henry Boursin, census enumerator, also joined us for the purpose of obtaining information concerning the Indians at Yakutak.

The morning we left Sitka was misty, with occasional showers; but even these unfavorable conditions could not obscure the beauty of the wild, densely wooded shore along which we steamed. The weather throughout the voyage was thick and foggy and the sea rough. We anchored in De Monti bay, the first indentation on the eastern shore of Yakutat bay, late the following afternoon, without having obtained so much as a glimpse of the magnificent scenery of the rugged Fairweather range.

At Yakutat we found two small Indian villages, one on Khantaak island and the other on the mainland to the eastward (both shown on plate 8). The village on Khantaak island is the older of the two, and consists of six houses built along the water's edge. The houses are made of planks, each hewn from a single

log, after the manner of the Thlinkets generally. They are rectangular, and have openings in the roofs, with wind guards, for the escape of smoke. The fires, around which the families gather, are built in the centers of the spaces below. The houses are entered by means of oval openings, elevated two feet above the ground on platforms along their fronts. In the interior of each there is a rectangular space about twenty feet square surrounded by raised platforms, the outer portions of which are shut off by partitions and divided into smaller chambers.

The canoes used at Yakutat are each hewn from a single spruce log, and are good examples of the boats in use throughout southern Alaska. They are of all sizes, from a small craft scarcely large enough to hold a single Indian to graceful boats forty or fifty feet in length and capable of carrying a ton of merchandise with a dozen or more men. They have high, overreaching stems and sterns, which give them a picturesque, gondola-like appearance.

The village on the mainland is less picturesque, if such a term may be allowed, than the group of houses already described, but it is of the same type. Near at hand, along the shore to the southward, there are two log houses, one of which is used at present as a mission by Reverend Carl J. Hendriksen and his assistant, the other being occupied as a trading post by Sitka merchants.

The Yakutat Indians are the most westerly branch of the great Thlinket family which inhabits all of southeastern Alaska and a portion of British Columbia. In intelligence they are above the average of Indians generally, and are of a much higher type than the native inhabitants of the older portion of the United States. They are quick to learn the ways of the white man, and are especially shrewd in bargaining. They are canoe Indians par excellence, and pass a large part of their lives on the water in quest of salmon, seals, and sea-otter. During the summer of our visit, about thirty sea-otter were taken. They are usually shot in the primitive manner with copper-pointed arrows, although repeating rifles of the most improved patterns are owned by the natives, in spite of existing laws against selling breech-loading arms to Indians. The fur of the sea-otter is acknowledged to be the most beautiful, and is the most highly prized of all pelts. Those taken at Yakutat during our visit were sold at an average price of about seventy-five dollars. This,

[blocks in formation]

together with the sale of less valuable skins and the money received for baskets, etc., made by the women for the tourist trade in Sitka, brought a considerable revenue to the village. Improvident, like nearly all Indians, the Yakutat villagers soon spend at the trading post the money earned in this way.

The Yakutats belong without question to the Thlinket stock; but visits from tribes farther westward, who travel in skin boats, are known to have been made, and it seems probable that some mixture of Thlinket and Innuit blood may occur in the natives at Yakutat. But if such admixture has occurred, the Innuit element is so small that it escapes the notice of one not skilled in ethnology.

We found Mr. Hendriksen most kind and obliging, and are indebted to him for many favors and great assistance. Arrangements were made with him for reading a base-barometer three times a day during July and August. He also assisted us by acting as an interpreter, and in hiring Indians and canoes.

The weather continued thick and stormy after reaching Yakutat bay, and Captain Farenholt did not think it advisable to take his vessel up the main inlet, where many dangers were reported to exist. A canoe having been purchased from the trader and others hired from the Indians, a start was made from the head of Yakutat bay early on the morning of June 28, in company with two of the Pinta's boats loaded with supplies, under the command of Ensign C. W. Jungen.

CANOE TRIP UP YAKUTAt Bay.

Bidding good-bye to our friends on the Pinta, to whom we were indebted for many favors, we started for our trip up the bay in a pouring rain-storm. Our way at first led through the narrow, placid water-ways dividing the islands on the eastern side of the bay. The islands and the shores of the mainland are densely wooded, and appeared picturesque and inviting even through the veil of mist and rain that shrouded them. The forests consist principally of spruce trees, so dense and having such a tangle of underbrush that it is only with the greatest difficulty that one can force a way through them; while the ground beneath the forest, and even the trunks and branches of the living trees, are covered and festooned with luxuriant growths of mosses and lichens. Our trip along these wooded shores, but half revealed

« PreviousContinue »