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Travels in Alaska

J >> John Muir >> Travels in Alaska




I greatly enjoyed my walk up this majestic ice-river, charmed by the
pale-blue, ineffably fine light in the crevasses, moulins, and wells,
and the innumerable azure pools in basins of azure ice, and the
network of surface streams, large and small, gliding, swirling with
wonderful grace of motion in their frictionless channels, calling
forth devout admiration at almost every step and filling the mind
with a sense of Nature's endless beauty and power. Looking ahead
from the middle of the glacier, you see the broad white flood,
though apparently rigid as iron, sweeping in graceful curves between
its high mountain-like walls, small glaciers hanging in the hollows
on either side, and snow in every form above them, and the great
down-plunging granite buttresses and headlands of the walls marvelous
in bold massive sculpture; forests in side canyons to within fifty
feet of the glacier; avalanche pathways overgrown with alder and
willow; innumerable cascades keeping up a solemn harmony of water
sounds blending with those of the glacier moulins and rills; and as
far as the eye can reach, tributary glaciers at short intervals
silently descending from their high, white fountains to swell the
grand central ice-river.

In the angle formed by the main glacier and the lake that gives
rise to the river floods, there is a massive granite dome sparsely
feathered with trees, and just beyond this yosemitic rock is a
mountain, perhaps ten thousand feet high, laden with ice and snow
which seemed pure pearly white in the morning light. Last evening as
seen from camp it was adorned with a cloud streamer, and both the
streamer and the peak were flushed in the alpenglow. A mile or two
above this mountain, on the opposite side of the glacier, there is a
rock like the Yosemite Sentinel; and in general all the wall rocks as
far as I saw them are more or less yosemitic in form and color and
streaked with cascades.

But wonderful as this noble ice-river is in size and depth and in
power displayed, far more wonderful was the vastly greater glacier
three or four thousand feet, or perhaps a mile, in depth, whose size
and general history is inscribed on the sides of the walls and over
the tops of the rocks in characters which have not yet been greatly
dimmed by the weather. Comparing its present size with that when it
was in its prime, is like comparing a small rivulet to the same
stream when it is a roaring torrent.

The return trip to the camp past the shelving cliff and through the
weary devil's-club jungle was made in a few hours. The Indians had
gone off picking berries, but were on the watch for me and hailed me
as I approached. The captain had called for me, and, after waiting
three hours, departed for Wrangell without leaving any food, to make
sure, I suppose, of a quick return of his Indians and canoe. This was
no serious matter, however, for the swift current swept us down to
Buck Station, some thirty-five miles distant, by eight o'clock. Here
I remained to study the "Big Stickeen Glacier," but the Indians set
out for Wrangell soon after supper, though I invited them to stay
till morning.

The weather that morning, August 27, was dark and rainy, and I tried
to persuade myself that I ought to rest a day before setting out on
new ice work. But just across the river the "Big Glacier" was staring
me in the face, pouring its majestic flood through a broad mountain
gateway and expanding in the spacious river valley to a width of
four or five miles, while dim in the gray distance loomed its high
mountain fountains. So grand an invitation displayed in characters so
telling was of course irresistible, and body-care and weather-care
vanished.

Mr. Choquette, the keeper of the station, ferried me across the
river, and I spent the day in getting general views and planning
the work that had been long in mind. I first traced the broad,
complicated terminal moraine to its southern extremity, climbed up
the west side along the lateral moraine three or four miles, making
my way now on the glacier, now on the moraine-covered bank, and now
compelled to climb up through the timber and brush in order to pass
some rocky headland, until I reached a point commanding a good
general view of the lower end of the glacier. Heavy, blotting rain
then began to fall, and I retraced my steps, oftentimes stopping to
admire the blue ice-caves into which glad, rejoicing streams from
the mountain-side were hurrying as if going home, while the glacier
seemed to open wide its crystal gateways to welcome them.

The following morning blotting rain was still falling, but time and
work was too precious to mind it. Kind Mr. Choquette put me across
the river in a canoe, with a lot of biscuits his Indian wife had
baked for me and some dried salmon, a little sugar and tea, a
blanket, and a piece of light sheeting for shelter from rain during
the night, all rolled into one bundle.

"When shall I expect you back?" inquired Choquette, when I bade him
good-bye.

"Oh, any time," I replied. "I shall see as much as possible of the
glacier, and I know not how long it will hold me."

"Well, but when will I come to look for you, if anything happens?
Where are you going to try to go? Years ago Russian officers from
Sitka went up the glacier from here and none ever returned. It's a
mighty dangerous glacier, all full of damn deep holes and cracks.
You've no idea what ticklish deceiving traps are scattered over it."

"Yes, I have," I said. "I have seen glaciers before, though none so
big as this one. Do not look for me until I make my appearance on the
river-bank. Never mind me. I am used to caring for myself." And so,
shouldering my bundle, I trudged off through the moraine boulders and
thickets.

My general plan was to trace the terminal moraine to its extreme
north end, pitch my little tent, leave the blanket and most of the
hardtack, and from this main camp go and come as hunger required or
allowed.

After examining a cross-section of the broad moraine, roughened by
concentric masses, marking interruptions in the recession of the
glacier of perhaps several centuries, in which the successive
moraines were formed and shoved together in closer or wider order, I
traced the moraine to its northeastern extremity and ascended the
glacier for several miles along the left margin, then crossed it at
the grand cataract and down the right side to the river, and along
the moraine to the point of beginning.

On the older portions of this moraine I discovered several kettles in
process of formation and was pleased to find that they conformed in
the most striking way with the theory I had already been led to make
from observations on the old kettles which form so curious a feature
of the drift covering Wisconsin and Minnesota and some of the larger
moraines of the residual glaciers in the California Sierra. I found
a pit eight or ten feet deep with raw shifting sides countersunk
abruptly in the rough moraine material, and at the bottom, on sliding
down by the aid of a lithe spruce tree that was being undermined, I
discovered, after digging down a foot or two, that the bottom was
resting on a block of solid blue ice which had been buried in the
moraine perhaps a century or more, judging by the age of the tree
that had grown above it. Probably more than another century will be
required to complete the formation of this kettle by the slow melting
of the buried ice-block. The moraine material of course was falling
in as the ice melted, and the sides maintained an angle as steep as
the material would lie. All sorts of theories have been advanced for
the formation of these kettles, so abundant in the drift over a great
part of the United States, and I was glad to be able to set the
question at rest, at least as far as I was concerned.

The glacier and the mountains about it are on so grand a scale and so
generally inaccessible in the ordinary sense, it seemed to matter but
little what course I pursued. Everything was full of interest, even
the weather, though about as unfavorable as possible for wide views,
and scrambling through the moraine jungle brush kept one as wet as if
all the way was beneath a cascade.

I pushed on, with many a rest and halt to admire the bold and
marvelously sculptured ice-front, looking all the grander and more
striking in the gray mist with all the rest of the glacier shut out,
until I came to a lake about two hundred yards wide and two miles
long with scores of small bergs floating in it, some aground, close
inshore against the moraine, the light playing on their angles and
shimmering in their blue caves in ravishing tones. This proved to be
the largest of the series of narrow lakelets that lie in shallow
troughs between the moraine and the glacier, a miniature Arctic
Ocean, its ice-cliffs played upon by whispering, rippling waveless
and its small berg floes drifting in its currents or with the wind,
or stranded here and there along its rocky moraine shore.

Hundreds of small rills and good-sized streams were falling into the
lake from the glacier, singing in low tones, some of them pouring in
sheer falls over blue cliffs from narrow ice-valleys, some spouting
from pipelike channels in the solid front of the glacier, others
gurgling out of arched openings at the base. All these water-streams
were riding on the parent ice-stream, their voices joined in one
grand anthem telling the wonders of their near and far-off fountains.
The lake itself is resting in a basin of ice, and the forested
moraine, though seemingly cut off from the glacier and probably more
than a century old, is in great part resting on buried ice left
behind as the glacier receded, and melting slowly on account of the
protection afforded by the moraine detritus, which keeps shifting and
falling on the inner face long after it is overgrown with lichens,
mosses, grasses, bushes, and even good-sized trees; these changes
going on with marvelous deliberation until in fullness of time the
whole moraine settles down upon its bedrock foundation.

The outlet of the lake is a large stream, almost a river in size,
one of the main draining streams of the glacier. I attempted to ford
it where it begins to break in rapids in passing over the moraine,
but found it too deep and rough on the bottom. I then tried to
ford at its head, where it is wider and glides smoothly out of the
lake, bracing myself against the current with a pole, but found it
too deep, and when the icy water reached my shoulders I cautiously
struggled back to the moraine. I next followed it down through the
rocky jungle to a place where in breaking across the moraine dam it
was only about thirty-five feet wide. Here I found a spruce tree
which I felled for a bridge; it reached across, about ten feet of the
top holding in the bank brush. But the force of the torrent, acting
on the submerged branches and the slender end of the trunk, bent it
like a bow and made it very unsteady, and after testing it by going
out about a third of the way over, it seemed likely to be carried
away when bent deeper into the current by my weight. Fortunately, I
discovered another larger tree well situated a little farther down,
which I felled, and though a few feet in the middle was submerged,
it seemed perfectly safe.

As it was now getting late, I started back to the lakeside where I
had left my bundle, and in trying to hold a direct course found the
interlaced jungle still more difficult than it was along the bank
of the torrent. For over an hour I had to creep and struggle close
to the rocky ground like a fly in a spider-web without being able
to obtain a single glimpse of any guiding feature of the landscape.
Finding a little willow taller than the surrounding alders, I climbed
it, caught sight of the glacier-front, took a compass bearing, and
sunk again into the dripping, blinding maze of brush, and at length
emerged on the lake-shore seven hours after leaving it, all this
time as wet as though I had been swimming, thus completing a trying
day's work. But everything was deliciously fresh, and I found new
and old plant friends, and lessons on Nature's Alaska moraine
landscape-gardening that made everything bright and light.

It was now near dark, and I made haste to make up my flimsy little
tent. The ground was desperately rocky. I made out, however, to level
down a strip large enough to lie on, and by means of slim alder stems
bent over it and tied together soon had a home. While thus busily
engaged I was startled by a thundering roar across the lake. Running
to the top of the moraine, I discovered that the tremendous noise was
only the outcry of a newborn berg about fifty or sixty feet in
diameter, rocking and wallowing in the waves it had raised as if
enjoying its freedom after its long grinding work as part of the
glacier. After this fine last lesson I managed to make a small
fire out of wet twigs, got a cup of tea, stripped off my dripping
clothing, wrapped myself in a blanket and lay brooding on the gains
of the day and plans for the morrow, glad, rich, and almost
comfortable.

It was raining hard when I awoke, but I made up my mind to disregard
the weather, put on my dripping clothing, glad to know it was
fresh and clean; ate biscuits and a piece of dried salmon without
attempting to make a tea fire; filled a bag with hardtack, slung it
over my shoulder, and with my indispensable ice-axe plunged once more
into the dripping jungle. I found my bridge holding bravely in place
against the swollen torrent, crossed it and beat my way around pools
and logs and through two hours of tangle back to the moraine on the
north side of the outlet,--a wet, weary battle but not without
enjoyment. The smell of the washed ground and vegetation made every
breath a pleasure, and I found Calypso borealis, the first I had seen
on this side of the continent, one of my darlings, worth any amount
of hardship; and I saw one of my Douglas squirrels on the margin of a
grassy pool. The drip of the rain on the various leaves was pleasant
to hear. More especially marked were the flat low-toned bumps and
splashes of large drops from the trees on the broad horizontal leaves
of Echinopanax horridum, like the drumming of thundershower drops
on veratrum and palm leaves, while the mosses were indescribably
beautiful, so fresh, so bright, so cheerily green, and all so low and
calm and silent, however heavy and wild the wind and the rain blowing
and pouring above them. Surely never a particle of dust has touched
leaf or crown of all these blessed mosses; and how bright were the
red rims of the cladonia cups beside them, and the fruit of the dwarf
cornel! And the wet berries, Nature's precious jewelry, how beautiful
they were!--huckleberries with pale bloom and a crystal drop on each;
red and yellow salmon-berries, with clusters of smaller drops; and
the glittering, berry-like raindrops adorning the interlacing arches
of bent grasses and sedges around the edges of the pools, every drop
a mirror with all the landscape in it. A' that and a' that and twice
as muckle's a' that in this glorious Alaska day, recalling, however
different, George Herbert's "Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright."

In the gardens and forests of this wonderful moraine one might spend
a whole joyful life.

When I at last reached the end of the great moraine and the front of
the mountain that forms the north side of the glacier basin, I tried
to make my way along its side, but, finding the climbing tedious and
difficult, took to the glacier and fared well, though a good deal of
step-cutting was required on its ragged, crevassed margin. When night
was drawing nigh, I scanned the steep mountainside in search of an
accessible bench, however narrow, where a bed and a fire might be
gathered for a camp. About dark great was my delight to find a little
shelf with a few small mountain hemlocks growing in cleavage joints.
Projecting knobs below it enabled me to build a platform for a
fireplace and a bed, and by industrious creeping from one fissure
to another, cutting bushes and small trees and sliding them down to
within reach of my rock-shelf, I made out to collect wood enough to
last through the night. In an hour or two I had a cheery fire, and
spent the night in turning from side to side, steaming and drying
after being wet two days and a night. Fortunately this night it did
not rain, but it was very cold.

Pushing on next day, I climbed to the top of the glacier by ice-steps
and along its side to the grand cataract two miles wide where the
whole majestic flood of the glacier pours like a mighty surging
river down a steep declivity in its channel. After gazing a long time
on the glorious show, I discovered a place beneath the edge of the
cataract where it flows over a hard, resisting granite rib, into which
I crawled and enjoyed the novel and instructive view of a glacier
pouring over my head, showing not only its grinding, polishing action,
but how it breaks off large angular boulder-masses--a most telling
lesson in earth-sculpture, confirming many I had already learned in
the glacier basins of the High Sierra of California. I then crossed
to the south side, noting the forms of the huge blocks into which
the glacier was broken in passing over the brow of the cataract,
and how they were welded.

The weather was now clear, opening views according to my own heart
far into the high snowy fountains. I saw what seemed the farthest
mountains, perhaps thirty miles from the front, everywhere
winter-bound, but thick forested, however steep, for a distance of
at least fifteen miles from the front, the trees, hemlock and spruce,
clinging to the rock by root-holds among cleavage joints. The
greatest discovery was in methods of denudation displayed beneath
the glacier.

After a few more days of exhilarating study I returned to the
river-bank opposite Choquette's landing. Promptly at sight of the
signal I made, the kind Frenchman came across for me in his canoe. At
his house I enjoyed a rest while writing out notes; then examined the
smaller glacier fronting the one I had been exploring, until a
passing canoe bound for Fort Wrangell took me aboard.



Chapter IX

A Canoe Voyage to Northward


I arrived at Wrangell in a canoe with a party of Cassiar miners in
October while the icy regions to the northward still burned in my
mind. I had met several prospectors who had been as far as Chilcat at
the head of Lynn Canal, who told wonderful stories about the great
glaciers they had seen there. All the high mountains up there, they
said, seemed to be made of ice, and if glaciers "are what you are
after, that's the place for you," and to get there "all you have to
do is to hire a good canoe and Indians who know the way."

But it now seemed too late to set out on so long a voyage. The days
were growing short and winter was drawing nigh when all the land
would be buried in snow. On the other hand, though this wilderness
was new to me, I was familiar with storms and enjoyed them. The main
channels extending along the coast remain open all winter, and, their
shores being well forested, I knew that it would be easy to keep warm
in camp, while abundance of food could be carried. I determined,
therefore, to go ahead as far north as possible, to see and learn
what I could, especially with reference to future work. When I made
known my plans to Mr. Young, he offered to go with me, and, being
acquainted with the Indians, procured a good canoe and crew, and with
a large stock of provisions and blankets, we left Wrangell October
14, eager to welcome weather of every sort, as long as food lasted.

I was anxious to make an early start, but it was half-past two in the
afternoon before I could get my Indians together--Toyatte, a grand
old Stickeen nobleman, who was made captain, not only because he
owned the canoe, but for his skill in woodcraft and seamanship;
Kadachan, the son of a Chilcat chief; John, a Stickeen, who acted as
interpreter; and Sitka Charley. Mr. Young, my companion, was an
adventurous evangelist, and it was the opportunities the trip might
afford to meet the Indians of the different tribes on our route with
reference to future missionary work, that induced him to join us.

When at last all were aboard and we were about to cast loose from the
wharf, Kadachan's mother, a woman of great natural dignity and force
of character, came down the steps alongside the canoe oppressed with
anxious fears for the safety of her son. Standing silent for a few
moments, she held the missionary with her dark, bodeful eyes, and
with great solemnity of speech and gesture accused him of using undue
influence in gaining her son's consent to go on a dangerous voyage
among unfriendly tribes; and like an ancient sibyl foretold a long
train of bad luck from storms and enemies, and finished by saying,
"If my son comes not back, on you will be his blood, and you shall
pay. I say it."

Mr. Young tried in vain to calm her fears, promising Heaven's care as
well as his own for her precious son, assuring her that he would
faithfully share every danger that he encountered, and if need be die
in his defense.

"We shall see whether or not you die," she said, and turned away.

Toyatte also encountered domestic difficulties. When he stepped into
the canoe I noticed a cloud of anxiety on his grand old face, as if
his doom now drawing near was already beginning to overshadow him.
When he took leave of his wife, she refused to shake hands with him,
wept bitterly, and said that his enemies, the Chilcat chiefs, would
be sure to kill him in case he reached their village. But it was not
on this trip that the old hero was to meet his fate, and when we were
fairly free in the wilderness and a gentle breeze pressed us joyfully
over the shining waters these gloomy forebodings vanished.

We first pursued a westerly course, through Sumner Strait, between
Kupreanof and Prince of Wales Islands, then, turning northward,
sailed up the Kiku Strait through the midst of innumerable
picturesque islets, across Prince Frederick's Sound, up Chatham
Strait, thence northwestward through Icy Strait and around the then
uncharted Glacier Bay. Thence returning through Icy Strait, we sailed
up the beautiful Lynn Canal to the Davidson Glacier and the lower
village of the Chilcat tribe and returned to Wrangell along the coast
of the mainland, visiting the icy Sum Dum Bay and the Wrangell
Glacier on our route. Thus we made a journey more than eight hundred
miles long, and though hardships and perhaps dangers were
encountered, the great wonderland made compensation beyond our most
extravagant hopes. Neither rain nor snow stopped us, but when the
wind was too wild, Kadachan and the old captain stayed on guard in
the camp and John and Charley went into the woods deer-hunting, while
I examined the adjacent rocks and woods. Most of our camp-grounds
were in sheltered nooks where good firewood was abundant, and where
the precious canoe could be safely drawn up beyond reach of the
waves. After supper we sat long around the fire, listening to the
Indian's stories about the wild animals, their hunting-adventures,
wars, traditions, religion, and customs. Every Indian party we met we
interviewed, and visited every village we came to.

Our first camp was made at a place called the Island of the Standing
Stone, on the shore of a shallow bay. The weather was fine. The
mountains of the mainland were unclouded, excepting one, which had a
horizontal ruff of dull slate color, but its icy summit covered with
fresh snow towered above the cloud, flushed like its neighbors in the
alpenglow. All the large islands in sight were densely forested,
while many small rock islets in front of our camp were treeless or
nearly so. Some of them were distinctly glaciated even belong the
tide-line, the effects of wave washing and general weathering being
scarce appreciable as yet. Some of the larger islets had a few trees,
others only grass. One looked in the distance like a two-masted ship
flying before the wind under press of sail.

Next morning the mountains were arrayed in fresh snow that had fallen
during the night down to within a hundred feet of the sea-level. We
made a grand fire, and after an early breakfast pushed merrily on all
day along beautiful forested shores embroidered with autumn-colored
bushes. I noticed some pitchy trees that had been deeply hacked for
kindling-wood and torches, precious conveniences to belated voyagers
on stormy nights. Before sundown we camped in a beautiful nook of
Deer Bay, shut in from every wind by gray-bearded trees and fringed
with rose bushes, rubus, potentilla, asters, etc. Some of the lichen
tresses depending from the branches were six feet in length.

A dozen rods or so from our camp we discovered a family of Kake
Indians snugly sheltered in a portable bark hut, a stout middle-aged
man with his wife, son, and daughter, and his son's wife. After our
tent was set and fire made, the head of the family paid us a visit
and presented us with a fine salmon, a pair of mallard ducks, and a
mess of potatoes. We paid a return visit with gifts of rice and
tobacco, etc. Mr. Young spoke briefly on mission affairs and inquired
whether their tribe would be likely to welcome a teacher or
missionary. But they seemed unwilling to offer an opinion on so
important a subject. The following words from the head of the family
was the only reply:--

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