Thomas Carlyle - "History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 1"

Peter Esprit Radisson - "Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson"

James Buchanan - "State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan"

GERTRUDE ATHERTON - "THE VALIANT RUNAWAYS"

Travels in Alaska

J >> John Muir >> Travels in Alaska




On the south side of Icy Strait we ran into a picturesque bay to
visit the main village of the Hoona tribe. Rounding a point on the
north shore of the bay, the charmingly located village came in sight,
with a group of the inhabitants gazing at us as we approached. They
evidently recognized us as strangers or visitors from the shape and
style of our canoe, and perhaps even determining that white men were
aboard, for these Indians have wonderful eyes. While we were yet half
a mile off, we saw a flag unfurled on a tall mast in front of the
chief's house. Toyatte hoisted his United States flag in reply, and
thus arrayed we made for the landing. Here we were met and received
by the chief, Kashoto, who stood close to the water's edge,
barefooted and bareheaded, but wearing so fine a robe and standing so
grave, erect, and serene, his dignity was complete. No white man
could have maintained sound dignity under circumstances so
disadvantageous. After the usual formal salutations, the chief, still
standing as erect and motionless as a tree, said that he was not much
acquainted with our people and feared that his house was too mean for
visitors so distinguished as we were. We hastened of course to assure
him that we were not proud of heart, and would be glad to have the
honor of his hospitality and friendship. With a smile of relief he
then led us into his large fort house to the seat of honor prepared
for us. After we had been allowed to rest unnoticed and unquestioned
for fifteen minutes or so, in accordance with good Indian manners in
case we should be weary or embarrassed, our cook began to prepare
luncheon; and the chief expressed great concern at his not being able
to entertain us in Boston fashion.

Luncheon over, Mr. Young as usual requested him to call his people to
a meeting. Most of them were away at outlying camps gathering winter
stores. Some ten or twelve men, however, about the same number of
women, and a crowd of wondering boys and girls were gathered in, to
whom Mr. Young preached the usual gospel sermon. Toyatte prayed in
Thlinkit, and the other members of the crew joined in the
hymn-singing. At the close of the mission exercises the chief arose
and said that he would now like to hear what the other white chief
had to say. I directed John to reply that I was not a missionary,
that I came only to pay a friendly visit and see the forests and
mountains of their beautiful country. To this he replied, as others
had done in the same circumstances, that he would like to hear me on
the subject of their country and themselves; so I had to get on my
feet and make some sort of a speech, dwelling principally on the
brotherhood of all races of people, assuring them that God loved them
and that some of their white brethren were beginning to know them and
become interested in their welfare; that I seemed this evening to be
among old friends with whom I had long been acquainted, though I had
never been here before; that I would always remember them and the
kind reception they had given us; advised them to heed the
instructions of sincere self-denying mission men who wished only to
do them good and desired nothing but their friendship and welfare in
return. I told them that in some far-off countries, instead of
receiving the missionaries with glad and thankful hearts, the Indians
killed and ate them; but I hoped, and indeed felt sure, that his
people would find a better use for missionaries than putting them,
like salmon, in pots for food. They seemed greatly interested,
looking into each other's faces with emphatic nods and a-ahs and
smiles.

The chief then slowly arose and, after standing silent a minute or
two, told us how glad he was to see us; that he felt as if his heart
had enjoyed a good meal; that we were the first to come humbly to his
little out-of-the-way village to tell his people about God; that they
were all like children groping in darkness, but eager for light; that
they would gladly welcome a missionary and teacher and use them well;
that he could easily believe that whites and Indians were the
children of one Father just as I had told them in my speech; that
they differed little and resembled each other a great deal, calling
attention to the similarity of hands, eyes, legs, etc., making
telling gestures in the most natural style of eloquence and dignified
composure. "Oftentimes," he said, "when I was on the high mountains
in the fall, hunting wild sheep for meat, and for wool to make
blankets, I have been caught in snowstorms and held in camp until
there was nothing to eat, but when I reached my home and got warm,
and had a good meal, then my body felt good. For a long time my heart
has been hungry and cold, but to-night your words have warmed my
heart, and given it a good meal, and now my heart feels good."

The most striking characteristic of these people is their serene
dignity in circumstances that to us would be novel and embarrassing.
Even the little children behave with natural dignity, come to the
white men when called, and restrain their wonder at the strange
prayers, hymn-singing, etc. This evening an old woman fell asleep in
the meeting and began to snore; and though both old and young were
shaken with suppressed mirth, they evidently took great pains to
conceal it. It seems wonderful to me that these so-called savages can
make one feel at home in their families. In good breeding,
intelligence, and skill in accomplishing whatever they try to do with
tools they seem to me to rank above most of our uneducated white
laborers. I have never yet seen a child ill-used, even to the extent
of an angry word. Scolding, so common a curse in civilization, is not
known here at all. On the contrary the young are fondly indulged
without being spoiled. Crying is very rarely heard.

In the house of this Hoona chief a pet marmot (Parry's) was a great
favorite with old and young. It was therefore delightfully confiding
and playful and human. Cats were petted, and the confidence with
which these cautious, thoughtful animals met strangers showed that
they were kindly treated.

There were some ten or a dozen houses, all told, in the village. The
count made by the chief for Mr. Young showed some seven hundred and
twenty-five persons in the tribe.



Chapter X

The Discovery of Glacier Bay


From here, on October 24, we set sail for Guide Charley's
ice-mountains. The handle of our heaviest axe was cracked, and as
Charley declared that there was no firewood to be had in the big
ice-mountain bay, we would have to load the canoe with a store for
cooking at an island out in the Strait a few miles from the village.
We were therefore anxious to buy or trade for a good sound axe in
exchange for our broken one. Good axes are rare in rocky Alaska. Soon
or late an unlucky stroke on a stone concealed in moss spoils the
edge. Finally one in almost perfect condition was offered by a young
Hoona for our broken-handled one and a half-dollar to boot; but when
the broken axe and money were given he promptly demanded an
additional twenty-five cents' worth of tobacco. The tobacco was given
him, then he required a half-dollar's worth more of tobacco, which
was also given; but when he still demanded something more, Charley's
patience gave way and we sailed in the same condition as to axes as
when we arrived. This was the only contemptible commercial affair we
encountered among these Alaskan Indians.

We reached the wooded island about one o'clock, made coffee, took on
a store of wood, and set sail direct for the icy country, finding it
very hard indeed to believe the woodless part of Charley's
description of the Icy Bay, so heavily and uniformly are all the
shores forested wherever we had been. In this view we were joined by
John, Kadachan, and Toyatte, none of them on all their lifelong canoe
travels having ever seen a woodless country.

We held a northwesterly course until long after dark, when we reached
a small inlet that sets in near the mouth of Glacier Bay, on the west
side. Here we made a cold camp on a desolate snow-covered beach in
stormy sleet and darkness. At daybreak I looked eagerly in every
direction to learn what kind of place we were in; but gloomy
rain-clouds covered the mountains, and I could see nothing that would
give me a clue, while Vancouver's chart, hitherto a faithful guide,
here failed us altogether. Nevertheless, we made haste to be off; and
fortunately, for just as we were leaving the shore, a faint smoke was
seen across the inlet, toward which Charley, who now seemed lost,
gladly steered. Our sudden appearance so early that gray morning had
evidently alarmed our neighbors, for as soon as we were within
hailing distance an Indian with his face blackened fired a shot over
our heads, and in a blunt, bellowing voice roared, "Who are you?"

Our interpreter shouted, "Friends and the Fort Wrangell missionary."

Then men, women, and children swarmed out of the hut, and awaited our
approach on the beach. One of the hunters having brought his gun with
him, Kadachan sternly rebuked him, asking with superb indignation
whether he was not ashamed to meet a missionary with a gun in his
hands. Friendly relations, however, were speedily established, and as
a cold rain was falling, they invited us to enter their hut. It
seemed very small and was jammed full of oily boxes and bundles;
nevertheless, twenty-one persons managed to find shelter in it about
a smoky fire. Our hosts proved to be Hoona seal-hunters laying in
their winter stores of meat and skins. The packed hut was passably
well ventilated, but its heavy, meaty smells were not the same to our
noses as those we were accustomed to in the sprucy nooks of the
evergreen woods. The circle of black eyes peering at us through a fog
of reek and smoke made a novel picture. We were glad, however, to get
within reach of information, and of course asked many questions
concerning the ice-mountains and the strange bay, to most of which
our inquisitive Hoona friends replied with counter-questions as to
our object in coming to such a place, especially so late in the year.
They had heard of Mr. Young and his work at Fort Wrangell, but could
not understand what a missionary could be doing in such a place as
this. Was he going to preach to the seals and gulls, they asked, or
to the ice-mountains? And could they take his word? Then John
explained that only the friend of the missionary was seeking ice
mountains, that Mr. Young had already preached many good words in the
villages we had visited, their own among the others, that our hearts
were good and every Indian was our friend. Then we gave them a little
rice, sugar, tea, and tobacco, after which they began to gain
confidence and to speak freely. They told us that the big bay was
called by them Sit-a-da-kay, or Ice Bay; that there were many large
ice-mountains in it, but no gold-mines; and that the ice-mountain
they knew best was at the head of the bay, where most of the seals
were found.

Notwithstanding the rain, I was anxious to push on and grope our way
beneath the clouds as best we could, in case worse weather should
come; but Charley was ill at ease, and wanted one of the seal-hunters
to go with us, for the place was much changed. I promised to pay well
for a guide, and in order to lighten the canoe proposed to leave most
of our heavy stores in the hut until our return. After a long
consultation one of them consented to go. His wife got ready his
blanket and a piece of cedar matting for his bed, and some
provisions--mostly dried salmon, and seal sausage made of strips of
lean meat plaited around a core of fat. She followed us to the beach,
and just as we were pushing off said with a pretty smile, "It is my
husband that you are taking away. See that you bring him back."

We got under way about 10 A.M. The wind was in our favor, but a cold
rain pelted us, and we could see but little of the dreary, treeless
wilderness which we had now fairly entered. The bitter blast,
however, gave us good speed; our bedraggled canoe rose and fell on
the waves as solemnly as a big ship. Our course was northwestward, up
the southwest side of the bay, near the shore of what seemed to be
the mainland, smooth marble islands being on our right. About noon we
discovered the first of the great glaciers, the one I afterward named
for James Geikie, the noted Scotch geologist. Its lofty blue cliffs,
looming through the draggled skirts of the clouds, gave a tremendous
impression of savage power, while the roar of the newborn icebergs
thickened and emphasized the general roar of the storm. An hour and a
half beyond the Geikie Glacier we ran into a slight harbor where the
shore is low, dragged the canoe beyond the reach of drifting
icebergs, and, much against my desire to push ahead, encamped, the
guide insisting that the big ice-mountain at the head of the bay
could not be reached before dark, that the landing there was
dangerous even in daylight, and that this was the only safe harbor on
the way to it. While camp was being made. I strolled along the shore
to examine the rocks and the fossil timber that abounds here. All the
rocks are freshly glaciated, even below the sea-level, nor have the
waves as yet worn off the surface polish, much less the heavy
scratches and grooves and lines of glacial contour.

The next day being Sunday, the minister wished to stay in camp; and
so, on account of the weather, did the Indians. I therefore set out
on an excursion, and spent the day alone on the mountain-slopes above
the camp, and northward, to see what I might learn. Pushing on
through rain and mud and sludgy snow, crossing many brown,
boulder-choked torrents, wading, jumping, and wallowing in snow up to
my shoulders was mountaineering of the most trying kind. After
crouching cramped and benumbed in the canoe, poulticed in wet or damp
clothing night and day, my limbs had been asleep. This day they were
awakened and in the hour of trial proved that they had not lost the
cunning learned on many a mountain peak of the High Sierra. I reached
a height of fifteen hundred feet, on the ridge that bounds the second
of the great glaciers. All the landscape was smothered in clouds and
I began to fear that as far as wide views were concerned I had
climbed in vain. But at length the clouds lifted a little, and
beneath their gray fringes I saw the berg-filled expanse of the bay,
and the feet of the mountains that stand about it, and the imposing
fronts of five huge glaciers, the nearest being immediately beneath
me. This was my first general view of Glacier Bay, a solitude of ice
and snow and newborn rocks, dim, dreary, mysterious. I held the
ground I had so dearly won for an hour or two, sheltering myself from
the blast as best I could, while with benumbed fingers I sketched
what I could see of the landscape, and wrote a few lines in my
notebook. Then, breasting the snow again, crossing the shifting
avalanche slopes and torrents, I reached camp about dark, wet and
weary and glad.

While I was getting some coffee and hardtack, Mr. Young told me that
the Indians were discouraged, and had been talking about turning
back, fearing that I would be lost, the canoe broken, or in some
other mysterious way the expedition would come to grief if I
persisted in going farther. They had been asking him what possible
motive I could have in climbing mountains when storms were blowing;
and when he replied that I was only seeking knowledge, Toyatte said,
"Muir must be a witch to seek knowledge in such a place as this and
in such miserable weather."

After supper, crouching about a dull fire of fossil wood, they became
still more doleful, and talked in tones that accorded well with the
wind and waters and growling torrents about us, telling sad old
stories of crushed canoes, drowned Indians, and hunters frozen in
snowstorms. Even brave old Toyatte, dreading the treeless, forlorn
appearance of the region, said that his heart was not strong, and
that he feared his canoe, on the safety of which our lives depended,
might be entering a skookum-house (jail) of ice, from which there
might be no escape; while the Hoona guide said bluntly that if I was
so fond of danger, and meant to go close up to the noses of the
ice-mountains, he would not consent to go any farther; for we should
all be lost, as many of his tribe had been, by the sudden rising of
bergs from the bottom. They seemed to be losing heart with every howl
of the wind, and, fearing that they might fail me now that I was in
the midst of so grand a congregation of glaciers, I made haste to
reassure them, telling them that for ten years I had wandered alone
among mountains and storms, and good luck always followed me; that
with me, therefore, they need fear nothing. The storm would soon
cease and the sun would shine to show us the way we should go, for
God cares for us and guides us as long as we are trustful and brave,
therefore all childish fear must be put away. This little speech did
good. Kadachan, with some show of enthusiasm, said he liked to
travel with good-luck people; and dignified old Toyatte declared that
now his heart was strong again, and he would venture on with me as
far as I liked for my "wawa" was "delait" (my talk was very good).
The old warrior even became a little sentimental, and said that even
if the canoe was broken he would not greatly care, because on the way
to the other world he would have good companions.

Next morning it was still raining and snowing, but the south wind
swept us bravely forward and swept the bergs from our course. In
about an hour we reached the second of the big glaciers, which I
afterwards named for Hugh Miller. We rowed up its fiord and landed to
make a slight examination of its grand frontal wall. The
berg-producing portion we found to be about a mile and a half wide,
and broken into an imposing array of jagged spires and pyramids, and
flat-topped towers and battlements, of many shades of blue, from
pale, shimmering, limpid tones in the crevasses and hollows, to the
most startling, chilling, almost shrieking vitriol blue on the plain
mural spaces from which bergs had just been discharged. Back from the
front for a few miles the glacier rises in a series of wide steps, as
if this portion of the glacier had sunk in successive sections as it
reached deep water, and the sea had found its way beneath it. Beyond
this it extends indefinitely in a gently rising prairie-like expanse,
and branches along the slopes and canyons of the Fairweather Range.

From here a run of two hours brought us to the head of the bay, and
to the mouth of the northwest fiord, at the head of which lie the
Hoona sealing-grounds, and the great glacier now called the Pacific,
and another called the Hoona. The fiord is about five miles long, and
two miles wide at the mouth. Here our Hoona guide had a store of dry
wood, which we took aboard. Then, setting sail, we were driven wildly
up the fiord, as if the storm-wind were saying, "Go, then, if you
will, into my icy chamber; but you shall stay in until I am ready to
let you out." All this time sleety rain was falling on the bay, and
snow on the mountains; but soon after we landed the sky began to
open. The camp was made on a rocky bench near the front of the
Pacific Glacier, and the canoe was carried beyond the reach of the
bergs and berg-waves. The bergs were now crowded in a dense pack
against the discharging front, as if the storm-wind had determined to
make the glacier take back her crystal offspring and keep them at
home.

While camp affairs were being attended to, I set out to climb a
mountain for comprehensive views; and before I had reached a height
of a thousand feet the rain ceased, and the clouds began to rise from
the lower altitudes, slowly lifting their white skirts, and lingering
in majestic, wing-shaped masses about the mountains that rise out of
the broad, icy sea, the highest of all the white mountains, and the
greatest of all the glaciers I had yet seen. Climbing higher for a
still broader outlook, I made notes and sketched, improving the
precious time while sunshine streamed through the luminous fringes of
the clouds and fell on the green waters of the fiord, the glittering
bergs, the crystal bluffs of the vast glacier, the intensely white,
far-spreading fields of ice, and the ineffably chaste and spiritual
heights of the Fairweather Range, which were now hidden, now partly
revealed, the whole making a picture of icy wildness unspeakably pure
and sublime.

Looking southward, a broad ice-sheet was seen extending in a gently
undulating plain from the Pacific Fiord in the foreground to the
horizon, dotted and ridged here and there with mountains which were
as white as the snow-covered ice in which they were half, or more
than half, submerged. Several of the great glaciers of the bay flow
from this one grand fountain. It is an instructive example of a
general glacier covering the hills and dales of a country that is not
yet ready to be brought to the light of day--not only covering but
creating a landscape with the features it is destined to have when,
in the fullness of time, the fashioning ice-sheet shall be lifted by
the sun, and the land become warm and fruitful. The view to the
westward is bounded and almost filled by the glorious Fairweather
Mountains, the highest among them springing aloft in sublime beauty
to a height of nearly sixteen thousand feet, while from base to
summit every peak and spire and dividing ridge of all the mighty host
was spotless white, as if painted. It would seem that snow could
never be made to lie on the steepest slopes and precipices unless
plastered on when wet, and then frozen. But this snow could not have
been wet. It must have been fixed by being driven and set in small
particles like the storm-dust of drifts, which, when in this
condition, is fixed not only on sheer cliffs, but in massive,
overcurling cornices. Along the base of this majestic range sweeps
the Pacific Glacier, fed by innumerable cascading tributaries, and
discharging into the head of its fiord by two mouths only partly
separated by the brow of an island rock about one thousand feet high,
each nearly a mile wide.

Dancing down the mountain to camp, my mind glowing like the sunbeaten
glaciers, I found the Indians seated around a good fire, entirely
happy now that the farthest point of the journey was safely reached
and the long, dark storm was cleared away. How hopefully, peacefully
bright that night were the stars in the frosty sky, and how
impressive was the thunder of the icebergs, rolling, swelling,
reverberating through the solemn stillness! I was too happy to sleep.

About daylight next morning we crossed the fiord and landed on the
south side of the rock that divides the wall of the great glacier.
The whiskered faces of seals dotted the open spaces between the
bergs, and I could not prevent John and Charley and Kadachan from
shooting at them. Fortunately, few, if any, were hurt. Leaving the
Indians in charge of the canoe, I managed to climb to the top of the
wall by a good deal of step-cutting between the ice and dividing
rock, and gained a good general view of the glacier. At one favorable
place I descended about fifty feet below the side of the glacier,
where its denuding, fashioning action was clearly shown. Pushing back
from here, I found the surface crevassed and sunken in steps, like
the Hugh Miller Glacier, as if it were being undermined by the action
of tide-waters. For a distance of fifteen or twenty miles the
river-like ice-flood is nearly level, and when it recedes, the ocean
water will follow it, and thus form a long extension of the fiord,
with features essentially the same as those now extending into the
continent farther south, where many great glaciers once poured into
the sea, though scarce a vestige of them now exists. Thus the domain
of the sea has been, and is being, extended in these ice-sculptured
lands, and the scenery of their shores enriched. The brow of the
dividing rock is about a thousand feet high, and is hard beset by the
glacier. A short time ago it was at least two thousand feet below the
surface of the over-sweeping ice; and under present climatic
conditions it will soon take its place as a glacier-polished island
in the middle of the fiord, like a thousand others in the magnificent
archipelago. Emerging from its icy sepulchre, it gives a most telling
illustration of the birth of a marked feature of a landscape. In this
instance it is not the mountain, but the glacier, that is in labor,
and the mountain itself is being brought forth.

The Hoona Glacier enters the fiord on the south side, a short
distance below the Pacific, displaying a broad and far-reaching
expanse, over which many lofty peaks are seen; but the front wall,
thrust into the fiord, is not nearly so interesting as that of the
Pacific, and I did not observe any bergs discharged from it.

In the evening, after witnessing the unveiling of the majestic peaks
and glaciers and their baptism in the down-pouring sunbeams, it
seemed inconceivable that nature could have anything finer to show
us. Nevertheless, compared with what was to come the next morning,
all that was as nothing. The calm dawn gave no promise of anything
uncommon. Its most impressive features were the frosty clearness of
the sky and a deep, brooding stillness made all the more striking by
the thunder of the newborn bergs. The sunrise we did not see at all,
for we were beneath the shadows of the fiord cliffs; but in the midst
of our studies, while the Indians were getting ready to sail, we were
startled by the sudden appearance of a red light burning with a
strange unearthly splendor on the topmost peak of the Fairweather
Mountains. Instead of vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared, it
spread and spread until the whole range down to the level of the
glaciers was filled with the celestial fire. In color it was at first
a vivid crimson, with a thick, furred appearance, as fine as the
alpenglow, yet indescribably rich and deep--not in the least like a
garment or mere external flush or bloom through which one might
expect to see the rocks or snow, but every mountain apparently was
glowing from the heart like molten metal fresh from a furnace.
Beneath the frosty shadows of the fiord we stood hushed and
awe-stricken, gazing at the holy vision; and had we seen the heavens
opened and God made manifest, our attention could not have been more
tremendously strained. When the highest peak began to burn, it did
not seem to be steeped in sunshine, however glorious, but rather as
if it had been thrust into the body of the sun itself. Then the
supernal fire slowly descended, with a sharp line of demarcation
separating it from the cold, shaded region beneath; peak after peak,
with their spires and ridges and cascading glaciers, caught the
heavenly glow, until all the mighty host stood transfigured, hushed,
and thoughtful, as if awaiting the coming of the Lord. The white,
rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the
California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all
the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains
themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still
more impressive. How long we gazed I never knew. The glorious vision
passed away in a gradual, fading change through a thousand tones of
color to pale yellow and white, and then the work of the ice-world
went on again in everyday beauty. The green waters of the fiord were
filled with sun-spangles; the fleet of icebergs set forth on their
voyages with the upspringing breeze; and on the innumerable mirrors
and prisms of these bergs, and on those of the shattered crystal
walls of the glaciers, common white light and rainbow light began to
burn, while the mountains shone in their frosty jewelry, and loomed
again in the thin azure in serene terrestrial majesty. We turned and
sailed away, joining the outgoing bergs, while "Gloria in excelsis"
still seemed to be sounding over all the white landscape, and our
burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling that, whatever the
future might have in store, the treasures we had gained this
glorious morning would enrich our lives forever.

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