"Yaculta is a wicked spirit," said the pilot, pacing the bridge at four o'clock of a primrose dawn. "She lives down in the clear depths of these waters and is supposed to entice guileless sailors to their doom. Yaculta sleeps only at slack-tide, and then boats, or ships, may slip through in safety, provided they do not make sufficient noise to awaken her. If they try to go through at any other stage of the tide, Yaculta stirs the whole pass into action, trying to get hold of them. Many's the time I've had to back out and wait for Yaculta to quiet down."
If the steamer attempts the pass at an unfavorable hour, fearful seas are found racing through at a fourteen-knot speed; the steamer is flung from side to side of the rocky pass or sucked down into the boiling whirlpools by Yaculta. The brown, shining strands of kelp floating upon Ripple Reef, which carries a sharp edge down the centre of the pass, are the wild locks of Yaculta's luxuriant hair.
Pilots figure, upon leaving Seattle, to reach the narrows during the quarter-hour before or after slack-tide, when the water is found as still and smooth as satin stretched from shore to shore, and not even Yaculta's breathing disturbs her liquid coverlet.
Many vessels were wrecked here before the dangers of the narrows had become fully known: the steamer Saranac, in 1875, without loss of life; the Wachusett, in 1875; the Grappler, in 1883, which burned in the narrows with a very large loss of life, including that of the captain; and several less appalling disasters have occurred in these deceptive waters.
Three miles below Cape Mudge the tides from Juan de Fuca meet those from Queen Charlotte Sound, and force a fourteen-knot current through the narrows. The most powerful steamers are frequently overcome and carried back by this current.
Discovery Passage merges at Chatham Point into Johnstone Strait. Here the first Indian village, Alert Bay, is seen to starboard on the southern side of Cormorant Island. These are the Kwakiutl Indians, who did not at first respond to the advances of civilization so readily as most northern tribes. They came from their original village at the mouth of the Nimpkish River, to work in the canneries on the bay, but did not take kindly to the ways of the white man. A white child, said to have been stolen from Vancouver, was taken from these Indians a few years ago.
Some fine totem-poles have been erected here, and the graveyard has houses built over the graves. From the steamer the little village presents an attractive appearance, situated on a curving beach, with wooded slopes rising behind it.
Gorgeous potlatches are held here; and until the spring of 1908 these orgies were rendered more repulsive by the sale of young girls.
Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau
Howkan