Thursday and Friday, August the 9th and 10th.—We wandered about the two villages hunting curios, but without much result, though I got a rather neat model of the skin bidarky. We got some excellent clams from the Indians, and a good lot of strawberries which W. and I hulled. We tried to arrange with Ned to take us up in his canoe to Disenchantment Bay, but there was a ‘potlatch’ in prospect, and he declined to make any agreement.
Saturday, the 11th.—Very fine and hot. Our Indians came over by order, and Matthew and Mike were set to cut wood, while the others took the boat to fetch water, an operation which involved some little time as the nearest good water was about a mile away. Having nothing better to do, H. undertook to make a pudding of corn-meal and raisins for supper. While we were all sitting round watching, the fire, as was its wont, began to collapse, and the kettle of water for the coffee took a header into the ashes. ‘Thank goodness,’ said H., ‘it’s not the pudding.’ Even as he spoke another log gave way and the pudding joined the coffee-water. However it was soon re-made, but proved better cold than hot. Just after supper great excitement was caused by an aged crone, who was leaning on the palings, pointing out to sea and saying ‘schooner,’ but, on bringing the telescope to bear, it proved to be only a big iceberg drifting down from Disenchantment Bay.
In the evening Sub-chief George came round to pay us a visit, and said that he and nine other Indians had once seen the back of Mount St. Elias, when after goats, and that it was a gentle snow-slope. They landed at Cape Yaktagi, which he described as being a better beach than Icy Bay. There used once to be a village there, the westernmost point to which the Tlinkits ever reached, but now only three tumble-down houses are left. They went up the right bank of the river Kokhtasch for a day, and then for two days along moraine at the back of Mount Snowshoe and the range north of it, which was green and nearly clear of snow on that side; they then turned east for half a day over ice and saw the mountain as described.
In the afternoon Murphy’s little eleven-ton schooner, the ‘Active,’ came down from Disenchantment Bay, where he, Callsen, and Dalton had been prospecting, and had found coal in a spot where it seemed so likely to pay that some of them went back later from Sitka to winter there, so as to begin working it directly spring began.
Sunday, the 12th.—Very fine, with a light west wind. As we were short of meat Lyons and I took the canoe along the shore towards Ankau Creek, where we found several flocks of small plover, and I shot about thirty. I had only No. 4 shot; with No. 8 or 10 the bag would probably have been doubled. In the afternoon Murphy came over; W. wanted to go down with him, but they were already very full. He managed it at last by exchanging places with Finn, who was to stay and go down with us.
Monday, the 13th.—The ‘Active’ sailed at six, and W. went over about four o’clock. He must have left the shed door open, and some dogs have made their entrance, for H.’s sealskin gloves were found outside, and my model bidarky had vanished altogether; Ned subsequently discovered it unhurt in the bushes outside. These Siwash dogs were a horrid nuisance, and we several times rose in the night to pursue them, but without result, as they always escaped by the holes in the palings before we could stop them up. Once they got into the store-tent by digging under the side, and went off with a bit of bacon and the only piece of cheese in Yakutat.
Tuesday, the 14th.—This afternoon the potlatch began in the second house. These potlatches generally follow a funeral or some great misfortune; thus an Indian at Dry Bay, who possessed three large trading canoes, had one of them wrecked and some men drowned, on which he promptly held a potlatch and gave away the other two canoes and all the rest of his property, with the view of appeasing the anger of the Great Spirit. A potlatch is sometimes, but very rarely, held for the purpose of gaining influence in the tribe in order that the donor may some day succeed to the position of chief. This one we attended was consequent on the exhumation and reburial of the ashes of members of the two families.
Just before proceedings commenced Matthew summoned us, and ushered us in in great pew-opener style. We were rather surprised at finding blankets spread for us in the place of honour facing the door, as we had been told they might perhaps object to our presence, so we were pleased and said they really did know how to do things in Yakutat. About two hundred spectators crowded in, and there was consequently a fairish ‘froust.’ A blanket was then held up over the small oval hole which served as a doorway, and the play began. The ‘Ravens,’ seventeen men, four women, and three boys, wondrously painted and arrayed, came and thundered on the wall outside, after which the old doctor, who wore a curious wooden mask representing a raven’s head, crept under the blanket, and singing and yelling postured slowly down the three or four steps from the door, followed gradually by the rest, howling at the top of their voices. When they were all in they danced, but only for a short time. Some of the head-dresses, made of ermine-skins and abelone shells, were very quaint.
They then retired, and, after a pause during which we all went out for some fresh air, the ‘Eagles’ entered in the same way. This time we saw the old chief and doctor both skip into the house at the first warning with somewhat undignified haste, and when we followed, we found them ensconced in the place of honour, and realised that we had been intruders before, though they had been too polite to turn us out. We huddled into a corner, and watched the performance, which was much the same. Gums and Jimmy were in great form, skipping about as if they were birds, and waving their arms wrapped in cloaks. Our George was also most resplendent, having on his head De Groff’s big tin funnel decorated with skins and red feathers. One blanket was then torn up and distributed, and then came a long wait, so H., Finn, and Shorty went back with the missionaries.
E., Lyons, and I stayed, but this time took up a position near the door so as to occasionally get a little fresh air. The women, drawn up in two rows on the dais on either side, swayed and bobbed, chanting at the pitch of their lungs. They all wore the same dark-blue and scarlet cloak, and had red feathers and worsted in their hair, making a decidedly striking picture. Most of them wore sharks’-teeth earrings, to which they attach an enormous importance, the lowest price we heard of being twelve dollars for a pair. After this a lot of blankets and calico were cut up and given away, and we left them hard at it about five o’clock. As the tide had risen in the meantime, Lyons had to wade in a good way after the canoe, which had been secured to the stump of a tree.
Wednesday, the 15th.—After breakfast I went off with Finn and Lyons in the canoe to Ankau Creek, but the tide was running out so strongly that we did not attempt to go up it, but landed, and Lyons and I went up along the shore, while Finn searched for strawberries, of which there were still a few to be found. We followed up the creek for nearly a mile, but, saw nothing in the way of game, and as the rocks were decidedly unpleasant to our moccasined feet we returned to the canoe and crossed to Yakutat, where most of the Indians were still in bed, having kept up the potlatch till five in the morning, and distributed some three thousand yards of calico, according to De Groff. We lunched there, and sailed home about four o’clock. The chief’s garden was being stripped of its produce, turnip, beet, and a few onions, with a view to the approaching feast.
Thursday, the 16th.—Grey and cloudy, with a south-east wind which ought to bring the ‘Alpha’ now. De Groff came over to lunch and took a photograph of us ‘in camp,’ and also of the Swedish Mission. The Indians were potlatching again to-day; one woman gave away twenty-one blankets and a lot of calico. Occasionally great swells, like the chief or the doctor, got a whole blanket. These doctors or medicine-men used to have tremendous power in the tribe, but this has much diminished before the advance of civilisation. Their initiation into their full M.D. degree used to consist in a prolonged solitary fast in the forests, till, overtaken by a sort of frenzy, they rushed back to the village, where such people as desired to show a fine religious fervour would offer their arms for the doctor to take bites out of. Other Indians when dead are cremated, but the doctors are buried in a little wooden hut in some isolated spot, or on a point of rock overlooking the sea; and of late years these huts have been ruthlessly ravaged for curios, since the doctor’s charms and other implements are always buried with him; but if the sacrilegious prowler was caught it would be very awkward for him in a wild place like Yakutat. The common American term for these medicine-men is shaman, apparently a corruption of the Russian shawaan, but the Tlinkits themselves use the word icht. The doctor at Yakutat was a filthy old scoundrel, with hair about six feet long; he had been half-blind for years, having at one time headed an attack against a French storekeeper (named, I believe, Belœil, but the men always spoke of him as Bellew), who had checked the onslaught with a well-aimed dose of sulphuric acid.
During the potlatch sundry relics of the deceased made their appearance, and were wept over with much emotion, genuine tears being produced in abundance. Some of the old men, who had nothing else, gave tobacco, a small pinch being put in the fire each time for the spirits of the departed.
Friday, the 17th.—Dull and grey, and threatening rain. Yesterday and to-day the flies were something fearful, and we had even to walk up and down when feeding, while any liquid, such as soup or tea, was thick with them. As the baking-powder was all but finished, Finn, who was supposed to be rather good at the art, was deputed to make sour-dough bread, but it was not much of a success, resembling plain heavy buns. The leaven was presumably too new, for afterwards it worked admirably.
The Indians began their feast about four o’clock. Each man had his own bowl, while by the fire were large dishes full of rice, berries cooked in seal-oil, and what looked like some preparation of fish. After a brief invocation a little of each was put in the fire, and then the bowls were filled and they began. I was over on the island by myself, and H. came across in the smallest canoe to fetch me. Half-way over we met E. in another, who, unaware that his brother had started, was coming over with the same intention, and, instead of being pleased at not having to go any further, seemed to consider himself aggrieved. We often saw Siwash dogs swimming across, the distance being quite a mile. In the morning we purchased through Mike two salmon for ten cents, which sounds cheap, but after all the money was wasted, as a few minutes later Billy and Matthew turned up in a canoe with two dozen they had speared, so we took six of the best.
Saturday, the 18th.—Raining all day, with some very heavy showers, so we stayed in the Mission most of the time. The house consisted of one furnished room, which Hendrickson and Lydell inhabited, one unfurnished one, which they politely put at our disposal, and another large one, at that time unfloored, which was to be the school-room. We said we would sleep in the house as the weather was so bad, but at supper-time it cleared a bit, and H. elected to stay in the green tent. E. and I went in and rolled up in our blankets on the floor, which was distinctly hard. In the other room Hendrickson was reading to Lydell the story of Elisha and the Shunammite woman, rendered apparently into easy English for children. His accent was certainly most peculiar, and E., after listening a bit, remarked, ‘A great many sibilants in that language, aren’t there?’ being under the impression that Hendrickson was sticking to his native Swedish. I roared so that I feared they would come and ask what was the matter, but luckily they didn’t.
Sunday, the 19th.—Rain nearly all night and most of the day. E. and I got up about six o’clock, roused by the men coming back with clams, for which the tide suited. Last evening my watch began to go in a feeble manner and made three hours during the night. In the afternoon E. and I played a curious form of cricket on the beach with a wooden net-float for a ball, an axe-handle for a bat, and two ice-axes for wickets. Having smashed two balls, we had to desist, though not before E. had defeated me with great slaughter.
Monday, the 20th.—Wind still south-east, but no ‘Alpha.’ We were getting thoroughly sick of our enforced imprisonment in this place, where there was literally nothing to do, the village being hopelessly surrounded by bush, and so far from the mountains that no hunting or exploring was possible, for fear the ‘Alpha’ should arrive while we were away. Tremendous rain all the afternoon, which cleared as usual about six o’clock. The wind, however, seemed rather more south-west.
Tuesday, the 21st.—Lovely morning at last, but hardly any wind. My watch still kept going, but only very slowly between the hours of seven and eleven, something evidently clogging the works. Ned’s canoe, the one we had at Icy Bay, was going back to Juneau next day, which offered a means of escape, but he was taking a cargo of seal-oil! Shorty, however, wanted to go, but we preferred to keep him. De Groff came to supper, and we had some whist afterwards, keeping it up till the extraordinarily late hour of half-past ten, when he took his departure by the light of a lovely full moon.
Wednesday, the 22nd.—Perfect weather again. Shorty had sold the rifle he bought from W. to Sub-chief George, and Finn E.’s to Frank, a friend of Ned’s. This breach of the law rather annoyed us, as we naturally thought the men had purchased the rifles to keep, but we saw no good in interfering, now that the deed was done. Our four Indians came over about breakfast-time to take E. salmon-spearing, and reported that Ned had not taken his departure last night, so I said I would go with him and take Finn to look after me. H. then proposed that I should take our Indians, who were eating their heads off to no purpose, and Shorty suggested that we might buy a canoe and all go down together, so we went over to Yakutat to make inquiries. De Groff admitted that all agreement with him was over on the 20th, and seemed to have but little hope of the ‘Alpha’s’ turning up now, but believed that the ‘Leo,’ or even the ‘Pinta,’ would come for us. Canoes were to be bought for a hundred and twenty or a hundred and fifty dollars, but H. was rather unwilling to go in one, so we came back at two o’clock for E.’s opinion, but he had not returned.
We began boiling bacon, and started Finn on a big batch of bread. E. came back at four with a fair lot of fish; unable to quite settle, though against the canoe idea on the whole, he and H. went over to Yakutat to decide and to fetch Shorty, while Finn and I went on cooking. They returned at 7.30, having concluded not to go, and the Siwashes refused to come in the canoe unless H. did, saying they had not made an agreement with me but with him. As they were all accustomed to canoes, and Matthew had done the trip twice before, I do not think they were afraid (except perhaps of hard work), but merely that they found themselves in very comfortable quarters at Yakutat, drawing full pay and doing very little for it, and wished to prolong that happy state of things as long as possible. Ned was willing to take any number of passengers to Juneau for ten dollars each, but after much discussion it was at last settled that I should take Lyons, Shorty, and Finn, and try to get Ned to go to Sitka; so I went over about ten o’clock with the two former and routed out Ned, who agreed to take us to Sitka for eighty dollars, half down. As most of the people in the Chief’s house were asleep, we curled up sub Jove frigido on the stoop, and were soon asleep.
Thursday, the 23rd.—Up at sunrise, the blankets dripping with dew. As the morning was perfectly lovely, and the mountains quite clear, I roused De Groff to photograph, and then we went over in the big canoe to fetch Finn and our things, and said good-bye to the other two and to the missionaries. We then returned to the island and cooked our breakfast on De Groff’s stove, who was rather sad at our departure, but brightened up before we went. We managed to purchase a little hard tack and rice in the village, but could not get away till after nine o’clock, as Ned, in his delight at the prospect of such a lucrative voyage, was boozing with a few select friends on ‘hoochinoo,’ a vile decoction they distil from sugar, and was only got away when about half-seas over. At 8.30 H. came across with a letter for his brother Alfred, and went back just before our departure.
We pulled to Ocean Cape, which we reached at eleven o’clock, and then set both sails ‘wing and wing’ as the wind was dead aft though very light. The result of Ned’s potations was that we gybed with some frequency, and, apparently becoming aware of this, he transferred the steering-lines to his young brother Jack, who, with Ned’s wife and another Indian named Frank, made up the crew, and composed himself to sleep. We sailed steadily on all day, keeping five or six miles from the shore, which is here a low sandy beach on which the Pacific surf continually breaks, so that it is always difficult to land, and in bad weather becomes quite impossible, and therefore this was the most dangerous part of our canoe journey. At sunset we were nearly opposite the western end of Dry Bay, and as the wind died we pulled for a bit, but a land breeze from the north then came, and though, as it was on the beam, we were sure to make a lot of leeway, we kept the sails up, and proceeded to arrange ourselves as best we could for sleep. This is not very easy in a canoe even when forty feet long, as the seats and cross-pieces prevent any extension movements of the body, but Ned’s bedding was allotted to me, and nicely filled the space aft of the stroke thwart. This canoe was fitted with four oars and, mirabile dictu, a rudder with yoke-lines, the only one I ever saw on a canoe, all the others being steered by paddles. Wash-boards had also been put on her for this ocean cruise, and we had had to cut holes in these for the oars.
Friday, the 24th.—Splendid weather, almost too hot. At sunrise we had hardly cleared Dry Bay, but were some ten or twelve miles from land. About nine o’clock the west wind came again, but it was very light, and our progress was slow in the extreme. Swarms of little divers kept appearing all round us, and in the afternoon, when all were asleep but Ned and me, two small plover came on board and stayed for some time. At three o’clock the breeze died, and then a puff from the south-east rather alarmed us, and made us pull in for land, then about eight miles off, but it vanished again, and we pulled steadily on till just at sundown we reached the Indians’ regular camping-place, about four miles north of Cape Fairweather.
Though somewhat protected, the landing is through surf, and we had accordingly to unload the cargo, consisting of a few sea-otter skins and rather over a ton of seal-oil in square boxes, and then to pull up the canoe. We soon had a fire going, and cooked some soup and salmon, the former being much appreciated by Finn, who had been more or less sea-sick all day and got terribly chaffed by the Indians. The night was so fine that we did not pitch the tent, but just rolled it round us as we lay on the sand, with the roar of the surf lulling us to sleep.
Saturday, the 25th.—Ned called us at five o’clock, and, after a hearty breakfast of fried salmon and corn-meal mush, of which latter we cooked a good quantity so as to be able to eat it cold in the canoe during the day, we got off at 7.30 with some difficulty, as the tide was ebbing, and the canoe kept sticking as we piled the stuff into her, and having to be moved down a little further. I did not envy Frank, who had to hold on to the stern of the canoe, which was bow on to the shore, for about half-an-hour, sometimes up to his shoulders in the icy surf, in order to keep her straight, and we were all more or less wet by the time we got off. Our frying-pan, which had long lost its handle, still had the remains of the salmon in it, and, while Shorty was trying to wash it in the sea, it slipped from his fingers and vanished for ever. This was a terrible blow, as all our bread was baked in it.
As we pulled to Cape Fairweather, clearing the point at half-past eight, I was able to do a little more to a sketch of Mount Fairweather, begun the night before. It bears a curious resemblance to Mount St. Elias, not only in its own shape, but also in that of the mountains immediately adjacent, having the same black ridge on the left, rising first into a Hump and then into a Huxley, but without the teeth on the left of the top of the latter, while on the right is a mountain wonderfully like Cook. A possible route from our last night’s camp for the ascent of Mount Fairweather would be through the bush to the glacier behind, along the course of the stream running into the sea close to the camping-place; then up the glacier for two easy days, or even one fair one, according to the state of the ice, and then right up the west arête; but the snow looked bad, and the rocks, though nowhere very steep, seemed ominously smooth.
A fine wind, increasing every moment, now sent us along at a grand pace, the water every now and then surging through the oar-holes, which we stopped as best we could by covering them with paddles. About seven to ten miles north of our camp is a very large glacier (the Grand Plateau?), of which the centre, covered with moraine, comes almost, if not quite, to the sea, while on either side is a stream of pure white ice. St. Elias was visible just over the point to the north of it, but we afterwards kept too close to the land to ever see it again, though it has been observed as far south as the entrance to Salisbury Sound, a distance of two hundred and eighty miles. As we got more to the south we could see that Fairweather’s ‘Hump’ was double-headed, while ‘Huxley’ looked very like the Rothhorn as seen from the Riffel. The west arête of Fairweather now seemed worse, there being a level jagged piece like the ‘Crête du Coq’ on the Matterhorn just before joining the main mass of the mountain. The upper part of the easternmost of the three southern arêtes looked feasible enough, but the bottom was of precipitous dark-brown rock, to all appearance very little broken. This arête would be reached by the glacier which runs into the northern arm of Lituya Bay.
The Indians now shouted out, ‘Schooner, schooner!’ and we were much excited, intending, if it should prove to be the ‘Alpha,’ to get some tinned luxuries and our mails from her, but we soon decided that it was only a canoe. We then lost sight of it for a bit, but came suddenly on it again, when it turned out to be only a floating spruce, to the huge amusement of my crew.
With a real good wind we went flying along finely, and passed the mouth of Lituya Bay at eleven o’clock. The narrow entrance was quite smooth, and we could easily have gone in. We reached the Great Pacific Glacier at 2.30; this has a sea-front of white ice a mile and a half long, but, though great pieces are constantly breaking off, there are no bergs, as the surf pounds them up directly. The wind now began to slacken, and we did not reach Astrolabe Point, near which are some hot springs frequented by the Indians, till half-past six, while at sunset the breeze disappeared altogether. Ned, with whom we, as passengers, never interfered in the management of his vessel, seemed undecided whether to go on all night or not, but the sunset had rather foreboded stormy weather, and he eventually headed for land. We pulled and paddled till ten o’clock, by which time it was quite dark, but the Indians found a little harbour known as Murphy’s Cove in a mysterious manner, and we tumbled out over sharp rocks to a tiny sandbeach, where we made a fire and had some coffee. Ned pitched his tent, Frank and Jack sleeping in the canoe, which was moored, while the rest of us lay about anywhere in the long rough grass. By the fire we found some porcupine quills, and there were other signs of Indians having been there recently.
Sunday, the 26th.—I woke the others at five; the sky was grey and threatening, and the wind seemed to be from the east. All our stores were in a big rubber sack, the mouth of which had not been tied up, and Jack, in getting it from the canoe, managed to drop into the sea the bags which contained the rice and oatmeal. We promptly made porridge with the wet portion of the latter, and put the rice near the fire to dry; it swelled rather, but there was not much of it, and it all got eaten before it went wrong. Ned’s big water-breaker had apparently once contained seal-oil, and the taste consequently imparted to the water was most loathsome, so that we were always careful to empty it out and fill it afresh before starting. For this purpose I went to a little stream only a yard or two wide, which ran into the corner of the harbour, and found it perfectly choked with salmon; in the first pool, which was about as big as a large hip-bath, were between twenty and thirty, varying from ten to twenty-five pounds in weight. In the stream and on the edges were so many dead and dying ones, that the water did not look tempting, but it was the best that could be had.
We got off at 7.30, passing out by the canoe entrance, where we had tried to come in the night before, but had found the tide too low. We only just cleared the bar now by those of the men who had gum-boots on getting into the water and shoving. We pulled out through small islets of rock, but as we got to sea a strong squally east wind came on, and we had to take shelter at the Indians’ usual landing-place at Cape Spencer itself, after going about five miles. The cape is rather like a four-or five-pronged fork, long promontories of rock running out, with very narrow bays between. We tried the most sheltered of these, but found too little water at the entrance, and had to go on to the next, which was a good deal more exposed.
We got ashore at half-past nine, and as it was beginning to rain, we pitched our tent on the shingle, after which I went with Ned to the river, which was about a quarter of a mile off and ran into the bay that we had first tried to enter. It was a nice clear stream from ten to twenty yards wide, and full of salmon which fled before us, raising a great wave in the water. He speared ten in about twenty minutes, but they were all dogs but two. A great argument is at present raging in America as to whether these dogs, which have white flesh, are spent salmon or not; personally, I do not think they are, as at the mouth of this river there was a considerable fall at low water, and I saw there the doggiest of dogs waiting for the tide to come up so that they might ascend the river. When I returned Shorty and Lyons were asleep, but Finn cooked me some lunch. He told me that the Tlinkits make hoolachan oil by stacking the fish in a canoe till they are rotten, they then add a little water to keep the canoe from burning, and pile heated rocks on the mass, drawing off the oil through a plug-hole at the bottom.
In the afternoon it rained off and on, and the wind rather went down, but it would have been very bad in Cross Sound, and, though I think we might have got over, it would have been very risky to try, as we might so easily have been blown out to sea. We now made the discovery that our bacon had gone rancid and was quite uneatable, though the grease could be used for cooking. Though nothing would induce the white men to touch it, I had found that boiled salmon-roe, if well cleaned, was most excellent, so I prepared a piece and laid it on a stone, but, when I turned round a few minutes later, I saw a great raven flying off with it. I got some more later, as Finn and the Indians went to the river and speared and shot a lot of fish, only bringing back the good ones. They speared a salmon-trout of five or six pounds, but they threw each fish on the bank as they got it, to be picked up on the way down, and somehow missed this one, so I never saw it. About four o’clock the sun came out; we seemed to be on the edge of the bad weather, as to the north and west it was fine and clear, but thick and grey to the south, towards which quarter our cove faced. In the evening it turned grey again and began to rain, so, after a supper of rice soup and boiled fish, we turned in early.
Monday, the 27th.—There was a lot of rain in the night, and more wind, so that the Indians had to unload and pull up the canoe, in which Ned was sleeping. In the morning there was plenty of blue sky to the north, but the same strong east wind kept us prisoners. At breakfast our scanty store of sugar came to an end. This didn’t affect me much, but the men were grieved at having to eat their porridge plain. The Siwashes now discovered frogs in the vegetation where they had pitched their tent. They are very superstitious about these reptiles, whose image often appears on their totem-poles, and accordingly moved their tent down to ours, though at the same time they seemed to consider it rather a good joke. I borrowed Finn’s gum-boots and went up the river with the spear, which had no barb, so that it was not very easy to secure the fish when struck. The Indians used to flip them out on to the bank, but my wrists were not strong enough for that with a thick twelve-foot pole, and I had to hold my captive down till I could shorten the spear, so sundry escaped, but I got eight or ten, following the river up for about a mile to where it got wider and shallower, and some Indians had at one time constructed a barrier and trap, now very dilapidated, with twigs and branches.
When I returned I found that Ned’s wife had washed the blacking off her face with surprising results. I had sat at her feet for three days in the canoe under the impression that she was a hideous creature of about thirty, but now she appeared to be about seventeen, and really quite good-looking, being as fair as most Italians. Ned was himself a smart-looking fellow, and they made a handsome pair, though, like nearly all these coast Indians, their legs were deformed from the continual canoe life. All the women of these parts, and a good many of the men, black their faces in summer, partly to preserve the complexion, and partly to keep off mosquitoes. They used to employ a mixture of soot and seal-oil, but now that the advance of civilisation has introduced them to blacking, they much prefer that. My watch now took to going all right again, the fine glacier mud apparently dropping out as it dried.
At noon it began to rain steadily and kept on till five, when it kindly left off for a little, so we turned out and had supper. In spite of the rain, Finn had managed to bake some sour-dough bread in our tin plates, and he persuaded it to rise by covering it with our warm blankets. Though a good deal burnt in baking, it was quite excellent, and I particularly appreciated it as being the only crusty bread we ever had, but the men didn’t care for it. A crusty loaf is always an abomination to an American, and our preference for the outside always surprised our men. It soon began to rain again, so we turned in at seven, and lay in bed talking. Lyons had been in France and Germany as a child, but did not remember much about his journey.
Tuesday, the 28th.—In the middle of the night we heard the Indians making a great noise and roaring with laughter, and, on one of the men going out to inquire, we found that the little lake behind had been so swollen by the continued rain, that a stream had burst up through the shingle in the middle of their tent and swamped them out. Like the episode of the frogs, they seemed to consider it an excellent joke, though I should have been exceedingly annoyed had I had to move tent and blankets under pouring rain in the dark. But the coast Indian is a cheerful personage, and quite unlike his statelier cousin of the plains. The question of his relationship to Japan I leave to wiser heads than mine.
It rained nearly all night, and the wind was much stronger. We lay in bed till 8.30, when Shorty made us some corn-meal cakes, as the oatmeal was finished. It went on raining hard, and we lay in the tent, the wet coming through freely on to our blankets, till half-past three, when it began to clear and the sun came partly out. It soon went in again, but the wind had gone round to the south-west, so we had hope for the morrow.
Wednesday, the 29th.—None of us except Finn were able to sleep much, owing partly to so much lying in the tent, and partly to the influx of insect life which had appeared on the cessation of the rain. Small black spiders which bit like anything, swarms of mosquitoes, and the biggest sand-fleas I ever saw,—they kept up such a pop-popping all night by jumping against the tent, that we thought it was raining when it was really quite fine.
We were up at five and off by 6.30, when we pulled east for an hour round the point into Cross Sound. Here we found a dense fog and an icy-cold north-east wind coming off the glacier in Taylor’s Bay, so we set sail and ran across the Sound in an hour and twenty minutes to Lisianski Channel, between Tchitchagoff and Jacobi Islands. This channel is extremely narrow, and we sailed down it with a light breeze for three hours, seeing quantities of white-headed eagles on the trees. We then reached the corner where the strait turns sharp to the west, and landed for about an hour. We found here a skull on the beach, about which Shorty and Finn had an argument which culminated in the former betting twenty dollars to Finn’s watch on its being a deer’s head; but he lost, for Ned, whom they appointed umpire, pronounced it to be that of a seal.
We went on again at one o’clock, pulling and paddling steadily against the tide, and had almost reached the open sea at 4.30, when the tide turned and a good north-west wind sprang up. We found a heavyish sea outside still running up from the south-east, but the wind drove us through it at a great pace, and we passed Cape Edwardes at about sunset. We then got in among the fringe of small islands, and landed at nine o’clock some six miles further on in a little harbour which took some finding in the dark. We landed over some rather broken rocks, and Lyons was much taken aback at finding himself at the edge of what seemed in the blackness of the night to be a bottomless chasm, though in the morning it proved to be only about four feet deep. We lit a fire and prepared some pea-soup, after consuming which we curled up on the moss under the trees, the men rolling up in the tent, while I had blankets enough to take a nook apart. The night was lovely and the starlight most brilliant.
Thursday, the 30th.—A beautiful morning. I woke the rest at five, and after some coffee and corn-meal mush we got off at 6.30 and rowed to the end of the islands, by which time it was half-past nine, and the west wind came again according to custom. About this period I recognised the conical top of Mount Edgcumbe, and pointed it out to Finn, who had not been in these parts before. We reached the entrance of Salisbury Sound at noon, and ate our one precious tin of corned beef, which we had saved so carefully. We flew down the Sound at a great pace through crowds of porpoises, at which the men tried several futile shots. At one o’clock we rounded the corner opposite Peril Straits, and saw a vessel coming towards us, which we at first expected would be the ‘Idaho,’ which, on account of the crowd of tourists, had been doing some supplementary trips to those of the ‘Ancon’ and ‘Elder,’ but as she got nearer we recognised the ‘Pinta.’ Since we were going about nine knots we did not want to waste any of our wind, and merely ran past, exchanging salutes.
About three o’clock the wind began to die away, and at four, just after we had passed St. John the Baptist’s Bay, we had to take to the oars, and, pulling on steadily at a good pace, came in sight of Sitka at about seven, when I sent my previously untouched whisky-flask round, and half an hour later we were ordering a sumptuous supper of clam-soup, halibut, and venison, while half the population were crowding round to hear our tale. I was just in time to secure the ‘Leo,’ a steam schooner of about fifty tons, which would otherwise have sailed at midnight for Port Townsend, and for four hundred dollars her owner consented to go up to Yakutat and fetch the others.
H. said they were wild with delight when they saw her round the point three days later, but after all, I had the best of it, for they encountered a fearful south-east gale, and, after springing a bad leak, had to run back to Yakutat, where they beached and repaired her, and did not reach Sitka till the 17th of September.
Our expedition was a failure, chiefly from the want of trained men to convey camping material to a great height, and the next party would do well to take a couple of Swiss porters. We were wonderfully favoured by the weather, and were most fortunate in that, out of the party of fourteen who went inland, the only casualty was Shorty’s strain, and that did not occur till we had commenced the return journey.
But, should any one think of organising an expedition for climbing in the St. Elias Alps, I would strongly advise him to turn his attention to Mounts Fairweather and Crillon. For these Lituya Bay offers a first-rate starting point, since there is in its recesses ample anchorage even for men-of-war, while the peaks are probably not more than fifteen miles away, and sundry expeditions of great merit might be made.
The height of Mount St. Elias suffered a rude onslaught at the hands of a party of American surveyors in 1890, but I feel tolerably sure in my own mind that the old height of nineteen thousand feet is the more correct one, for the following reasons. Firstly, the figures establishing the highest point reached as 11,375 feet were carefully worked out; previous observations had given the height of the crater’s rim as 7,500 feet; and the times taken by the other three, a very fast party, correspond very fairly, so that we may assume this height to be fairly exact. At this point they were above the col, but not as high as Haydon Peak, and therefore probably about a thousand feet above the col. Now, from Yakutat it is clear at once that this col is barely half-way up the mountain. Secondly, as I went down the coast in the canoe the weather was absolutely perfect, and Mount St. Elias clearly in view till the third morning, when we lost it by getting behind Cape Fairweather. I can clearly recollect how, as we were pulling in to the landing-place north of Cape Fairweather on the second evening, the peak stood up clear and sharp against the sunset sky, with at least a third of its bulk above the horizon. The mountain had never been out of sight, and the sun was not shining on the snows, so I do not think any assistance was gained from refraction. As Cape Fairweather is distant 150 miles from Mount St. Elias, this would again make the peak about 20,000 feet high. Milmore, the steward of the ‘Pinta,’ who knew the appearance of the mountain well, assured me that, on their voyage down from Yakutat in 1886, it was in sight as far south as Salisbury Sound; but I cannot help thinking some mistake was made between it and perhaps Crillon. However, other people assured me they had seen it when off Cross Sound.
With reference to the supposed volcanic origin of the mountain, I think the main mass is certainly not volcanic; but I brought home from the moraine of the Tyndall Glacier two or three pieces of red amygdaloid lava, which I believe came from the Red Hills just south of the ‘crater,’ so that, possibly, this crater may be due, after all, to volcanic forces.
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