The steamer lands at neither Russian Mission nor Andreaofsky; but at both may be seen, on grassy slopes, beautiful Greek churches, with green, pale blue, and yellow roofs, domes and bell-towers, chimes and glittering crosses.
Down where the mouth of the Yukon attains a width of sixty miles we ran upon a sand-bar early in the afternoon, and there we remained until nearly midnight. It was a weird experience. Dozens of natives in bidarkas surrounded our steamer, boarded our barges, and offered their inferior work for sale. The brown lads in reindeer parkas were bright-eyed and amiable. Cookies and gum sweetened the way to their little wild hearts, and they would hold our hands, cling to our skirts, and beg for "more."
A splendid, stormy sunset burned over those miles of water-threaded lowlands at evening. Rose and lavender mists rolled in from the sea, parted, and drifted away into the distances stretching on all sides; they huddled upon islands, covering them for a few moments, and then, withdrawing, leaving them drenched in sparkling emerald beauty in the vivid light; they coiled along the horizon, like peaks of rosy pearl; and they went sailing, like elfin shallops, down poppy-tinted water-ways. Everywhere overhead geese drew dark lines through the brilliant atmosphere, their mournful cries filling the upper air with the weird and lonely music of the great spaces. Up and down the water-ways slid the bidarkas noiselessly; and along the shores the brown women moved among the willows and sedges, or stood motionless, staring out at their white sisters on the stranded boat. There were times when every one of the millions of sedges on island and shore seemed to flash out alone and apart, like a dazzling emerald lance quivering to strike.
They are dull of soul and dull of imagination who complain of monotony on the Yukon Flats. There is beauty for all that have eyes wherewith to see. It is the beauty of the desert; the beauty and the lure of wonderful distances, of marvellous lights and low skies, of dawns that are like blown roses, and as perfumed, and sunsets whose mists are as burning dust. When there is no color anywhere, there is still the haunting, compelling beauty that lies in distance alone. Vast spaces are majestic and awesome; the eye goes into them as the thought goes into the realm of eternity—only to return, wearied out with the beauty and the immensity that forever end in the fathomless mist that lies on the far horizon's rim. It is a mist that nothing can pierce; vision and thought return from it upon themselves, only to go out again upon that mute and trembling quest which ceases not until life itself ceases.
The northernmost mouth of the Yukon has been called the Aphoon or Uphoon, ever since the advent of the Russians, and is the channel usually selected by steamers, the Kwikhpak lying next to it on the south. By sea-coast measurement the most northerly mouth is nearly a hundred miles from the most southerly, and five others between them assist in carrying the Yukon's gray, dull yellow, or rose-colored floods out into Behring Sea, whose shallow waters they make fresh for a long distance. It is not without hazard that the flat-bottomed river boats make the run to St. Michael; and the pilots of steamers crossing out anxiously scan the sea and relax not in vigilance until the port is entered.
CHAPTER XLIX
We were released from the sand-bar near midnight, and at eight o'clock on the following morning we steamed around a green and lovely point and entered Norton Sound, in whose curving blue arm lies storied St. Michael.
St. Michael is situated on the island of the same name, about sixty miles north of the mouth of the Yukon. It was founded in 1833 by Michael Tebenkoff, and was originally named Michaelovski Redoubt. The Russian buildings were of spruce logs brought by sea from the Yukon and Kuskoquim rivers, as no timber grows in the vicinity of St. Michael or Nome. Some of the original Russian buildings yet remain,—notably, the storehouse and the redoubt. The latter is an hexagonal building of heavy hewn logs, with sloping roof, flagstaff, door, and port-holes. It stands upon the shore, within a dozen steps of the famous "Cottage,"—the residence of the managers of the Northern Commercial Company, under whose hospitable roof every traveller of note has been entertained for many years,—and in front of it the shore slopes green to the water. Inside lie half a dozen rusty Russian cannons, mutely testifying to the sanguinary past of the North.