Robert Hichens - "A Spirit in Prison"

Rex Beach - "The Net"

Saint Augustine - "The Confessions of Saint Augustine"

George Moore - "The Untilled Field"

Travels in Alaska

J >> John Muir >> Travels in Alaska




"We have not much to say to you fellows. We always do to Boston men
as we have done to you, give a little of whatever we have, treat
everybody well and never quarrel. This is all we have to say."

Our Kake neighbors set out for Fort Wrangell next morning, and we
pushed gladly on toward Chilcat. We passed an island that had lost
all its trees in a storm, but a hopeful crop of young ones was
springing up to take their places. I found no trace of fire in these
woods. The ground was covered with leaves, branches, and fallen
trunks perhaps a dozen generations deep, slowly decaying, forming a
grand mossy mass of ruins, kept fresh and beautiful. All that is
repulsive about death was here hidden beneath abounding life. Some
rocks along the shore were completely covered with crimson-leafed
huckleberry bushes; one species still in fruit might well be called
the winter huckleberry. In a short walk I found vetches eight feet
high leaning on raspberry bushes, and tall ferns and Smilacina
unifolia with leaves six inches wide growing on yellow-green moss,
producing a beautiful effect.

Our Indians seemed to be enjoying a quick and merry reaction from the
doleful domestic dumps in which the voyage was begun. Old and young
behaved this afternoon like a lot of truant boys on a lark. When we
came to a pond fenced off from the main channel by a moraine dam,
John went ashore to seek a shot at ducks. Creeping up behind the dam,
he killed a mallard fifty or sixty feet from the shore and attempted
to wave it within reach by throwing stones back of it. Charley and
Kadachan went to his help, enjoying the sport, especially enjoying
their own blunders in throwing in front of it and thus driving the
duck farther out. To expedite the business John then tried to throw a
rope across it, but failed after repeated trials, and so did each in
turn, all laughing merrily at their awkward bungling. Next they tied
a stone to the end of the rope to carry it further and with better
aim, but the result was no better. Then majestic old Toyatte tried
his hand at the game. He tied the rope to one of the canoe-poles, and
taking aim threw it, harpoon fashion, beyond the duck, and the
general merriment was redoubled when the pole got loose and floated
out to the middle of the pond. At length John stripped, swam to the
duck, threw it ashore, and brought in the pole in his teeth, his
companions meanwhile making merry at his expense by splashing the
water in front of him and making the dead duck go through the motions
of fighting and biting him in the face as he landed.

The morning after this delightful day was dark and threatening. A
high wind was rushing down the strait dead against us, and just as we
were about ready to start, determined to fight our way by creeping
close inshore, pelting rain began to fly. We concluded therefore to
wait for better weather. The hunters went out for deer and I to see
the forests. The rain brought out the fragrance of the drenched
trees, and the wind made wild melody in their tops, while every brown
bole was embroidered by a network of rain rills. Perhaps the most
delightful part of my ramble was along a stream that flowed through a
leafy arch beneath overleaping trees which met at the top. The water
was almost black in the deep pools and fine clear amber in the
shallows. It was the pure, rich wine of the woods with a pleasant
taste, bringing spicy spruce groves and widespread bog and beaver
meadows to mind. On this amber stream I discovered an interesting
fall. It is only a few feet high, but remarkably fine in the curve of
its brow and blending shades of color, while the mossy, bushy pool
into which it plunges is inky black, but wonderfully brightened by
foam bells larger than common that drift in clusters on the smooth
water around the rim, each of them carrying a picture of the
overlooking trees leaning together at the tips like the teeth of moss
capsules before they rise.

I found most of the trees here fairly loaded with mosses. Some
broadly palmated branches had beds of yellow moss so wide and deep
that when wet they must weigh a hundred pounds or even more. Upon
these moss-beds ferns and grasses and even good-sized seedling trees
grow, making beautiful hanging gardens in which the curious spectacle
is presented of old trees holding hundreds of their own children in
their arms, nourished by rain and dew and the decaying leaves
showered down to them by their parents. The branches upon which these
beds of mossy soil rest become flat and irregular like weathered
roots or the antlers of deer, and at length die; and when the whole
tree has thus been killed it seems to be standing on its head with
roots in the air. A striking example of this sort stood near the camp
and I called the missionary's attention to it.

"Come, Mr. Young," I shouted. "Here's something wonderful, the most
wonderful tree you ever saw; it is standing on its head."

"How in the world," said he in astonishment, "could that tree have
been plucked up by the roots, carried high in the air, and dropped
down head foremost into the ground. It must have been the work of a
tornado."

Toward evening the hunters brought in a deer. They had seen four
others, and at the camp-fire talk said that deer abounded on all the
islands of considerable size and along the shores of the mainland.
But few were to be found in the interior on account of wolves that
ran them down where they could not readily take refuge in the water.
The Indians, they said, hunted them on the islands with trained dogs
which went into the woods and drove them out, while the hunters lay
in wait in canoes at the points where they were likely to take to the
water. Beaver and black bear also abounded on this large island. I
saw but few birds there, only ravens, jays, and wrens. Ducks, gulls,
bald eagles, and jays are the commonest birds hereabouts. A flock of
swans flew past, sounding their startling human-like cry which seemed
yet more striking in this lonely wilderness. The Indians said that
geese, swans, cranes, etc., making their long journeys in regular
order thus called aloud to encourage each other and enable them to
keep stroke and time like men in rowing or marching (a sort of "Row,
brothers, row," or "Hip, hip" of marching soldiers).

October 18 was about half sunshine, half rain and wet snow, but we
paddled on through the midst of the innumerable islands in more than
half comfort, enjoying the changing effects of the weather on the
dripping wilderness. Strolling a little way back into the woods when
we went ashore for luncheon, I found fine specimens of cedar, and
here and there a birch, and small thickets of wild apple. A hemlock,
felled by Indians for bread-bark, was only twenty inches thick at the
butt, a hundred and twenty feet long, and about five hundred and
forty years old at the time it was felled. The first hundred of its
rings measured only four inches, showing that for a century it had
grown in the shade of taller trees and at the age of one hundred
years was yet only a sapling in size. On the mossy trunk of an old
prostrate spruce about a hundred feet in length thousands of
seedlings were growing. I counted seven hundred on a length of eight
feet, so favorable is this climate for the development of tree seeds
and so fully do these trees obey the command to multiply and
replenish the earth. No wonder these islands are densely clothed with
trees. They grow on solid rocks and logs as well as on fertile soil.
The surface is first covered with a plush of mosses in which the
seeds germinate; then the interlacing roots form a sod, fallen leaves
soon cover their feet, and the young trees, closely crowded together,
support each other, and the soil becomes deeper and richer from year
to year.

I greatly enjoyed the Indian's camp-fire talk this evening on their
ancient customs, how they were taught by their parents ere the whites
came among them, their religion, ideas connected with the next world,
the stars, plants, the behavior and language of animals under
different circumstances, manner of getting a living, etc. When our
talk was interrupted by the howling of a wolf on the opposite side of
the strait, Kadachan puzzled the minister with the question, "Have
wolves souls?" The Indians believe that they have, giving as
foundation for their belief that they are wise creatures who know how
to catch seals and salmon by swimming slyly upon them with their
heads hidden in a mouthful of grass, hunt deer in company, and always
bring forth their young at the same and most favorable time of the
year. I inquired how it was that with enemies so wise and powerful
the deer were not all killed. Kadachan replied that wolves knew
better than to kill them all and thus cut off their most important
food-supply. He said they were numerous on all the large islands,
more so than on the mainland, that Indian hunters were afraid of them
and never ventured far into the woods alone, for these large gray and
black wolves attacked man whether they were hungry or not. When
attacked, the Indian hunter, he said, climbed a tree or stood with
his back against a tree or rock as a wolf never attacks face to face.
Wolves, and not bears, Indians regard as masters of the woods, for
they sometimes attack and kill bears, but the wolverine they never
attack, "for," said John, "wolves and wolverines are companions in
sin and equally wicked and cunning."

On one of the small islands we found a stockade, sixty by thirty-five
feet, built, our Indians said, by the Kake tribe during one of their
many warlike quarrels. Toyatte and Kadachan said these forts were
common throughout the canoe waters, showing that in this foodful,
kindly wilderness, as in all the world beside, man may be man's worst
enemy.

We discovered small bits of cultivation here and there, patches of
potatoes and turnips, planted mostly on the cleared sites of deserted
villages. In spring the most industrious families sailed to their
little farms of perhaps a quarter of an acre or less, and ten or
fifteen miles from their villages. After preparing the ground, and
planting it, they visited it again in summer to pull the weeds and
speculate on the size of the crop they were likely to have to eat
with their fat salmon. The Kakes were then busy digging their
potatoes, which they complained were this year injured by early
frosts.

We arrived at Klugh-Quan, one of the Kupreanof Kake villages, just as
a funeral party was breaking up. The body had been burned and gifts
were being distributed--bits of calico, handkerchiefs, blankets,
etc., according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. The death
ceremonies of chiefs and head men, Mr. Young told me, are very weird
and imposing, with wild feasting, dancing, and singing. At this
little place there are some eight totem poles of bold and intricate
design, well executed, but smaller than those of the Stickeens. As
elsewhere throughout the archipelago, the bear, raven, eagle, salmon,
and porpoise are the chief figures. Some of the poles have square
cavities, mortised into the back, which are said to contain the ashes
of members of the family. These recesses are closed by a plug. I
noticed one that was caulked with a rag where the joint was
imperfect.

Strolling about the village, looking at the tangled vegetation,
sketching the totems, etc., I found a lot of human bones scattered on
the surface of the ground or partly covered. In answer to my
inquiries, one of our crew said they probably belonged to Sitka
Indians, slain in war. These Kakes are shrewd, industrious, and
rather good-looking people. It was at their largest village that an
American schooner was seized and all the crew except one man
murdered. A gunboat sent to punish them burned the village. I saw the
anchor of the ill-fated vessel lying near the shore.

Though all the Thlinkit tribes believe in witchcraft, they are less
superstitious in some respects than many of the lower classes of
whites. Chief Yana Taowk seemed to take pleasure in kicking the Sitka
bones that lay in his way, and neither old nor young showed the
slightest trace of superstitious fear of the dead at any time.

It was at the northmost of the Kupreanof Kake villages that Mr. Young
held his first missionary meeting, singing hymns, praying, and
preaching, and trying to learn the number of the inhabitants and
their readiness to receive instruction. Neither here nor in any of
the other villages of the different tribes that we visited was there
anything like a distinct refusal to receive school-teachers or
ministers. On the contrary, with but one or two exceptions, all with
apparent good faith declared their willingness to receive them, and
many seemed heartily delighted at the prospect of gaining light on
subjects so important and so dark to them. All had heard ere this of
the wonderful work of the Reverend Mr. Duncan at Metlakatla, and even
those chiefs who were not at all inclined to anything like piety were
yet anxious to procure schools and churches that their people should
not miss the temporal advantages of knowledge, which with their
natural shrewdness they were not slow to recognize. "We are all
children," they said, "groping in the dark. Give us this light and we
will do as you bid us."

The chief of the first Kupreanof Kake village we came to was a
venerable-looking man, perhaps seventy years old, with massive head
and strongly marked features, a bold Roman nose, deep, tranquil eyes,
shaggy eyebrows, a strong face set in a halo of long gray hair. He
seemed delighted at the prospect of receiving a teacher for his
people. "This is just what I want," he said. "I am ready to bid him
welcome."

"This," said Yana Taowk, chief of the larger north village, "is a
good word you bring us. We will be glad to come out of our darkness
into your light. You Boston men must be favorites of the Great
Father. You know all about God, and ships and guns and the growing of
things to eat. We will sit quiet and listen to the words of any
teacher you send us."

While Mr. Young was preaching, some of the congregation smoked,
talked to each other, and answered the shouts of their companions
outside, greatly to the disgust of Toyatte and Kadachan, who regarded
the Kakes as mannerless barbarians. A little girl, frightened at the
strange exercises, began to cry and was turned out of doors. She
cried in a strange, low, wild tone, quite unlike the screech crying
of the children of civilization.

The following morning we crossed Prince Frederick Sound to the west
coast of Admiralty Island. Our frail shell of a canoe was tossed like
a bubble on the swells coming in from the ocean. Still, I suppose,
the danger was not so great as it seemed. In a good canoe, skillfully
handled, you may safely sail from Victoria to Chilcat, a
thousand-mile voyage frequently made by Indians in their trading
operations before the coming of the whites. Our Indians, however,
dreaded this crossing so late in the season. They spoke of it
repeatedly before we reached it as the one great danger of our voyage.

John said to me just as we left the shore, "You and Mr. Young will be
scared to death on this broad water."

"Never mind us, John," we merrily replied, "perhaps some of you brave
Indian sailors may be the first to show fear."

Toyatte said he had not slept well a single night thinking of it, and
after we rounded Cape Gardner and entered the comparatively smooth
Chatham Strait, they all rejoiced, laughing and chatting like
frolicsome children.

We arrived at the first of the Hootsenoo villages on Admiralty Island
shortly after noon and were welcomed by everybody. Men, women, and
children made haste to the beach to meet us, the children staring as
if they had never before seen a Boston man. The chief, a remarkably
good-looking and intelligent fellow, stepped forward, shook hands
with us Boston fashion, and invited us to his house. Some of the
curious children crowded in after us and stood around the fire
staring like half-frightened wild animals. Two old women drove them
out of the house, making hideous gestures, but taking good care not
to hurt them. The merry throng poured through the round door,
laughing and enjoying the harsh gestures and threats of the women as
all a joke, indicating mild parental government in general. Indeed,
in all my travels I never saw a child, old or young, receive a blow
or even a harsh word. When our cook began to prepare luncheon our
host said through his interpreter that he was sorry we could not eat
Indian food, as he was anxious to entertain us. We thanked him, of
course, and expressed our sense of his kindness. His brother, in the
mean time, brought a dozen turnips, which he peeled and sliced and
served in a clean dish. These we ate raw as dessert, reminding me of
turnip-field feasts when I was a boy in Scotland. Then a box was
brought from some corner and opened. It seemed to be full of tallow
or butter. A sharp stick was thrust into it, and a lump of something
five or six inches long, three or four wide, and an inch thick was
dug up, which proved to be a section of the back fat of a deer,
preserved in fish oil and seasoned with boiled spruce and other spicy
roots. After stripping off the lard-like oil, it was cut into small
pieces and passed round. It seemed white and wholesome, but I was
unable to taste it even for manner's sake. This disgust, however, was
not noticed, as the rest of the company did full justice to the
precious tallow and smacked their lips over it as a great delicacy. A
lot of potatoes about the size of walnuts, boiled and peeled and
added to a potful of salmon, made a savory stew that all seemed to
relish. An old, cross-looking, wrinkled crone presided at the
steaming chowder-pot, and as she peeled the potatoes with her fingers
she, at short intervals, quickly thrust one of the best into the
mouth of a little wild-eyed girl that crouched beside her, a spark of
natural love which charmed her withered face and made all the big
gloomy house shine. In honor of our visit, our host put on a genuine
white shirt. His wife also dressed in her best and put a pair of
dainty trousers on her two-year-old boy, who seemed to be the pet and
favorite of the large family and indeed of the whole village. Toward
evening messengers were sent through the village to call everybody to
a meeting. Mr. Young delivered the usual missionary sermon and I also
was called on to say something. Then the chief arose and made an
eloquent reply, thanking us for our good words and for the hopes we
had inspired of obtaining a teacher for their children. In
particular, he said, he wanted to hear all we could tell him about
God.

This village was an offshoot of a larger one, ten miles to the north,
called Killisnoo. Under the prevailing patriarchal form of government
each tribe is divided into comparatively few families; and because of
quarrels, the chief of this branch moved his people to this little
bay, where the beach offered a good landing for canoes. A stream
which enters it yields abundance of salmon, while in the adjacent
woods and mountains berries, deer, and wild goats abound.

"Here," he said, "we enjoy peace and plenty; all we lack is a church
and a school, particularly a school for the children." His dwelling
so much with benevolent aspect on the children of the tribe showed, I
think, that he truly loved them and had a right intelligent insight
concerning their welfare. We spent the night under his roof, the
first we had ever spent with Indians, and I never felt more at home.
The loving kindness bestowed on the little ones made the house glow.

Next morning, with the hearty good wishes of our Hootsenoo friends,
and encouraged by the gentle weather, we sailed gladly up the coast,
hoping soon to see the Chilcat glaciers in their glory. The rock
hereabouts is mostly a beautiful blue marble, waveworn into a
multitude of small coves and ledges. Fine sections were thus revealed
along the shore, which with their colors, brightened with showers and
late-blooming leaves and flowers, beguiled the weariness of the way.
The shingle in front of these marble cliffs is also mostly marble,
well polished and rounded and mixed with a small percentage of
glacier-borne slate and granite erratics.

We arrived at the upper village about half-past one o'clock. Here we
saw Hootsenoo Indians in a very different light from that which
illumined the lower village. While we were yet half a mile or more
away, we heard sounds I had never before heard--a storm of strange
howls, yells, and screams rising from a base of gasping, bellowing
grunts and groans. Had I been alone, I should have fled as from a
pack of fiends, but our Indians quietly recognized this awful sound,
if such stuff could be called sound, simply as the "whiskey howl" and
pushed quietly on. As we approached the landing, the demoniac howling
so greatly increased I tried to dissuade Mr. Young from attempting to
say a single word in the village, and as for preaching one might as
well try to preach in Tophet. The whole village was afire with bad
whiskey. This was the first time in my life that I learned the
meaning of the phrase "a howling drunk." Even our Indians hesitated
to venture ashore, notwithstanding whiskey storms were far from novel
to them. Mr. Young, however, hoped that in this Indian Sodom at least
one man might be found so righteous as to be in his right mind and
able to give trustworthy information. Therefore I was at length
prevailed on to yield consent to land. Our canoe was drawn up on the
beach and one of the crew left to guard it. Cautiously we strolled up
the hill to the main row of houses, now a chain of alcoholic
volcanoes. The largest house, just opposite the landing, was about
forty feet square, built of immense planks, each hewn from a whole
log, and, as usual, the only opening was a mere hole about two and a
half feet in diameter, closed by a massive hinged plug like the
breach of a cannon. At the dark door-hole a few black faces appeared
and were suddenly withdrawn. Not a single person was to be seen on
the street. At length a couple of old, crouching men, hideously
blackened, ventured out and stared at us, then, calling to their
companions, other black and burning heads appeared, and we began to
fear that like the Alloway Kirk witches the whole legion was about to
sally forth. But, instead, those outside suddenly crawled and tumbled
in again. We were thus allowed to take a general view of the place
and return to our canoe unmolested. But ere we could get away, three
old women came swaggering and grinning down to the beach, and Toyatte
was discovered by a man with whom he had once had a business
misunderstanding, who, burning for revenge, was now jumping and
howling and threatening as only a drunken Indian may, while our
heroic old captain, in severe icy majesty, stood erect and
motionless, uttering never a word. Kadachan, on the contrary, was
well nigh smothered with the drunken caresses of one of his father's
tillicums (friends), who insisted on his going back with him into the
house. But reversing the words of St. Paul in his account of his
shipwreck, it came to pass that we all at length got safe to sea and
by hard rowing managed to reach a fine harbor before dark, fifteen
sweet, serene miles from the howlers.

Our camp this evening was made at the head of a narrow bay bordered
by spruce and hemlock woods. We made our beds beneath a grand old
Sitka spruce five feet in diameter, whose broad, winglike branches
were outspread immediately above our heads. The night picture as I
stood back to see it in the firelight was this one great tree,
relieved against the gloom of the woods back of it, the light on the
low branches revealing the shining needles, the brown, sturdy trunk
grasping an outswelling mossy bank, and a fringe of illuminated
bushes within a few feet of the tree with the firelight on the tips
of the sprays.

Next morning, soon after we left our harbor, we were caught in a
violent gust of wind and dragged over the seething water in a
passionate hurry, though our sail was close-reefed, flying past the
gray headlands in most exhilarating style, until fear of being
capsized made us drop our sail and run into the first little nook we
came to for shelter. Captain Toyatte remarked that in this kind of
wind no Indian would dream of traveling, but since Mr. Young and I
were with him he was willing to go on, because he was sure that the
Lord loved us and would not allow us to perish.

We were now within a day or two of Chilcat. We had only to hold a
direct course up the beautiful Lynn Canal to reach the large Davidson
and other glaciers at its head in the canyons of the Chilcat and
Chilcoot Rivers. But rumors of trouble among the Indians there now
reached us. We found a party taking shelter from the stormy wind in a
little cove, who confirmed the bad news that the Chilcats were
drinking and fighting, that Kadachan's father had been shot, and that
it would be far from safe to venture among them until blood-money had
been paid and the quarrels settled. I decided, therefore, in the mean
time, to turn westward and go in search of the wonderful
"ice-mountains" that Sitka Charley had been telling us about.
Charley, the youngest of my crew, noticing my interest in glaciers,
said that when he was a boy he had gone with his father to hunt seals
in a large bay full of ice, and that though it was long since he had
been there, he thought he could find his way to it. Accordingly, we
pushed eagerly on across Chatham Strait to the north end of Icy
Strait, toward the new and promising ice-field.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.