“In the total neglect of the government (since Alaska was purchased) to provide for the educational needs of Alaska Indians, they have been indebted for such schools as they have had solely to religious societies, and for most of these schools they are indebted to the society which Dr. Kendall represents. For the establishment and support of its schools that society, last year, expended over $20,000, and also expended nearly $5,000 for mission work. In the enlargement of their educational work in Alaska, they have therefore the first claim to assistance from the appropriation recently made by government for the support of schools in Alaska. Moreover, they have now on the ground officers and employees who can carry on the work.”
A contract was therefore made with the mission authorities at Sitka for the education and care of one hundred pupils, at an expense to the government of $120 per capita per annum, the expenditure to be made in quarterly payments from the appropriation named above. It was estimated that for the first year the whole expenditure would not exceed $9,000 or $10,000. The contracts are temporary, and can be annulled at two months’ notice should a different policy prevail at headquarters; and the original intention of establishing a government industrial school after the plan of the successful institution at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., will probably not be carried out for some time.
The Roman Catholics built a chapel at Fort Wrangell some years ago, but it has been closed for a long time, and there are no missions of that church now maintained in southeastern Alaska at least. It would seem as though this were a field particularly adapted to the efforts of the Jesuits, who have always been so successful among the native tribes of the Pacific coast.
Two Moravian missionaries from Bethlehem, Pa., the Rev. Adolphus Hartman and the Rev. William Weinland, were taken up to the Yukon region by the U. S. S. Corwin in the spring of 1884, and will devote themselves to mission work among the Indians of the interior.
CHAPTER XVII.
PERIL STRAITS AND KOOTZNAHOO.
When the steamer gets ready to leave Sitka, there is always regret that the few days in that port could not have been weeks. There are always regrets, too, at not seeing Mount St. Elias, when the passengers realize that the ship has begun the return voyage. Mr. Seward was most desirous of seeing Mount St. Elias from the sea, but was deterred from carrying out his plan by the stories of the rough water to be crossed, and the certainty of fogs and clouds obscuring his view when he reached the bay at the base of the great mountain. There are seldom any passengers or freight billed for Mount St. Elias, and the mail contract does not require the steamer to run up that three hundred miles to north-westward of Sitka and call at the mountain each month. The U. S. S. Adams carried some prospectors up to Yakutat Bay in 1883, and its officers took that opportunity of visiting the great glacier that fronts for seventy miles on the coast at the foot of the giant peak of North America. One of the officers made a series of admirable water-color sketches, but no angles were taken to determine the exact height of the mountain, and the elevation of the untrodden summit is not yet determined with precision.
In June, 1884, the Idaho went up to the mouth of Copper River to land Lieutenant Abercrombie, U. S. A., and his exploring party, and the pilot’s story of the radiantly clear sky, and the view of Mount St. Elias, one hundred and fifty miles away, added poignancy to the regrets of the July passengers. From a height of 17,500 feet, the mountain has now risen to 19,500 feet, according to the latest “Coast Pilot,” and somewhere it has been given an elevation of 23,000 feet above the sea. Fame and glory await the mountain-climber who reaches its top, and every American who rides up the Righi, or has a guide pull him up other Alpine summits, should blush that a grander mountain in his own country, the highest peak of the continent, too, has never yet been accurately measured, or explored, or ascended.
When, as the log says, “the ship lets go from Sitka wharf,” there are two routes to choose in starting southward. One leads out through the beautiful Sitka Sound, and past Mount Edgecumbe, to the open sea, and then the course is down the shore of Baranoff Island and around Cape Ommaney to the inside waters. The mountain outlines of the Baranoff shore are particularly fine from the ocean, but a landsman finds more beauty in the peaks and ranges as seen from the quiet waters of Chatham Strait on the other side of the island. Cape Ommaney, in rough weather, is more dreaded by mariners than the Columbia River bar, and wits and punsters take liberties with its name when they round Cape Ommaney in a head wind and chop sea. The Pacific raises some mighty surges off that point, and there are small islands and hidden rocks on all sides of it. Vancouver had to anchor for several days in a little bight before he could venture around the cape, and in later times it has been a place of peril and anxiety to the navigators of the coast.
The other route from Sitka leads around the north end of Baranoff Island, and through Peril Straits across to Chatham Strait. Peril Straits is a narrow gorge or channel between the two mountainous islands of Chicagoff and Baranoff, and is strewn through all of its tortuous way with rocks and ledges over which the rushing tides pour in eddies and rapids. Several wrecks have occurred in this dangerous passage, and in May, 1883, the freight steamer Eureka struck a rock, and was beached near shore in time to save it from complete destruction. All lives were saved, and the crew and salvage corps had a camp near the wreck for three weeks, before the ship was raised and taken to San Francisco for repairs.
It was aptly named Peril, or Pogibshi, Strait, by the Russians, though Petroff says that it was called that on account of the death of one hundred of Baranoff’s Aleut hunters, who were killed by eating poisonous mussels there, rather than on account of its reefs and furious tides. It takes a daring and skilful navigator to carry a ship through that dangerous reach, and it is something fine to watch Captain Carroll, when he puts extra men at the wheel and sends his big steamer plunging and flying through the rapids. The yard-arms almost touch the trees on the precipitous shores, and the bow heads to all the points of the compass in turn, as “the salt, storm-fighting old captain” stands on the bridge, with his hands run deep in his great-coat pockets, and drops an occasional “Stab’bord a bit!” “Hard a stab’bord!” or “Port your helm!” down the trap-door to the men at the wheel. Aside from its evil fame, it is a most picturesque and beautiful channel, the waters a clear, deep green, and the shores clothed with dense forests of darker green.