As in all Indian villages, the fierce, wolfish-looking dogs showed an inclination to growl and snap at the white people, but the hard-featured, strong-minded women of the Chilkat tribe silenced them with a word, or a skilfully thrown brand snatched from the family camp fire. The children and the dogs were always getting under foot and crowding into each group, and in the Alpine valley, where the afternoon shadows brought a pleasant sharpness to the air, the youngsters were as scantily clad as in the tropics. They sat on the damp ground and stole handfuls of rice from the pots boiling on the fires, or furtively dipped the spoons into the mess one minute and hit the dogs with the table utensil the next. One boy, who had sold a great many little carved toys to the visitors, dashed off into a thicket of wild roses, and gallantly brought back fragrant pink blossoms for his customers. Sitka Jack’s carved canoe was drawn up on shore, and that grandee at last appeared to us, and after selling his own pipe and carved possessions, he wandered about and interfered in every one’s bargains by urging the natives to ask more for their curios.
Of the white celebrities residing at Pyramid Harbor, there was one with the enviable fame of being “the handsomest man in Alaska,” and when he went gliding out to the ship in a swift native canoe, and appeared on deck as if just stepped aside from a Broadway stroll, there was a perceptible flutter in the ladies’ cabin. Another fine-looking man of distinguished manner, found wandering on shore, proved to be a French count, who, having dissipated three fortunes in the gayeties of a Parisian life, has hidden himself in this remote corner of the world to ponder on the philosophy of life, and wait for the favorable stroke that shall enable him to return and shine once more among his gay comrades of the boulevard, the Bois and the opera foyer.
At Pyramid Harbor the ship reached the most northern point on her course and the end of the inside passage. At 59° 11´ N. we were many degrees distant from the Arctic Circle, but, although it was mid-July, the sun did not set until half past nine o’clock by ship’s time, and the clear twilight lasted until the royal flush of sunrise was bathing the summits of the higher mountains. At midnight fine print could be read on deck, and at the hour when churchyards yawn the amateur photographers turned their cameras upon the matchless panorama before them, and the full witchery of that serene northern night was felt when the crescent of the young moon showed itself faint and ethereal in the eastern sky.
We had been watching a rocky platform up on the mountain side, in the hopes of seeing the bear with her cubs, who, living in some crevice near there, was said to promenade on her airy perch at all hours of the day and look down defiantly on the settlement. We were tiring of that cuckoo-clock amusement, when a shaggy man came on the scene and said to the photographers,—
“You ought to have been here in June, if you wanted to see long days. You never would know when it was time to go to bed then.”
“Doesn’t it ever get dark here?” we yawned at him in chorus.
“Sometimes,” he answered. “’Bout long enough to get your overcoat off, I reckon.”
A year later there was the same beautiful trip up Lynn Canal, and as a mark of growth and progress the Ancon found a large wharf to tie up to at Pyramid Harbor. The cannery building had been enlarged, and the Indian tents replaced with log and bark houses. The cannery, that had been a losing venture in the first year, gave promise of better returns, and Pyramid Harbor wore quite a prosperous air. The Indians and their curios were again the sole distracting interest of the passengers, and the Chilkats, as before, sold everything desirable that they owned.
A strapping young Indian seized upon us as we were wandering on shore, rattled off the few words, “My papa, Sitka Jack, my papa heap sick,” and soon we were chasing over grass and gravel, at the heels of this young Hercules, to his neat log house. The son of Sitka Jack showed first the curios he had for sale, and then his pretty wife, who wore a yellow dress and a bright blue blanket, and had a clean face illuminated by soft black eyes and rosy cheeks. Lastly he led us at a quickstep to the place where his venerable papa sat crouched in a blanket. The son spoke English well, but so rapidly, that he brought himself up breathless every few minutes, and the docile, infantile way in which this six-footed fellow spoke of his “papa” more than amused us.
The “papa” is one of the head chiefs of the Sitka tribe, but goes to Chilkat Inlet every summer to visit his wife’s relations during the salmon season. He is an arrant old rascal, and has made a great deal of trouble at times; but in his feeble old age he has a kindly and pleasant smile, and a quiet dignity that is in great contrast to his vehement, impetuous young son. Mrs. Sitka Jack is the sister of Doniwak, the one-eyed tyrant who rules the lower Chilkat village, and now that her liege is becoming helpless, her influence is more supreme than ever. She sat like a queen, kindly relaxing some of the grimness of her expression when she saw that we had been buying from her son, but everything indicated that she had the most eloquent and obstreperous chief of the Sitkans completely disciplined. One of her Chilkat nephews was introduced to us by her glib son, and the hulking young savage fairly crushed our civilized hands in his friendly grasp, and critically examined our purchases.