With this survey of the Alexander archipelago fixed on our minds, we pass from it through the bold Cross Sound headlands that loom above those storm-churned swells of an open ocean, which break here in unceasing turmoil, and we sail out into an area that charts tell us is the “Fairweather ground,” over which that superb peak itself and sister, Crillon, stand like vast sentinel-towers, rearing their immense bulk into many successive strata of clouds, until the elevation of thirteen thousand and fourteen thousand feet is reached, sheer and bold above the sea. This great expanse of the Pacific Ocean between us and Kadiak Island, five hundred and sixty miles to the west, and again down to Victoria, nine hundred miles farther to the south, was the rendezvous of the most successful and numerous whaling fleet that the history of the business records. In these waters the large “right” whale did most congregate, and the capture of it between 1846 and 1851 drew not less than three and four hundred ships with their hardy crews to this area backed by the Alaskan coast. They never landed, however, unless shipwrecked, which was a rare occurrence, but cruised “off and on” with the majestic head of Mount Fairweather as their point of arrival and departure.
When the whalemen saw the summit of that snow-clad peak unveiled by clouds they were sure of fair weather for several consecutive days afterward, hence the name. Early one June morning Captain Baker, of the Reliance, called the author up to see a mountain which was sharply defined in the warm, hazy glow of the dawning sunrise on the horizon—there, bearing N.N.E.,[34] was the image of Mount Fairweather, just as clear cut as a cameo, and lofty as the ship’s spars, though one hundred and thirty-five miles distant! Closely associated and fully as impressive and quite as high, was the heavier form of the snowy Crillon.
That long stretch of more than four hundred miles of bare Alaskan coast, between Prince William’s Sound and Cape Spencer, which stands at the northern entrance to the Sitkan waters, is one that sustains very little human or animal life, and is so rough and is so bleak, that from September until May it is feared and avoided by the hardiest navigator. The flanks of Mounts Fairweather and Crillon rise boldly from the ocean at their western feet, and this sheerness of elevation undoubtedly gives them that effect of cloud-compelling, which does not lose its awe-inspiring power even when a hundred miles away. To the northward and westward of Fairweather, however, the alpine range which it dominates abruptly sets back from the coast some forty or fifty miles, then turns about and faces the sea in an irregular, lofty half-moon of more than three hundred miles in length. A low table-land, or rolling shelf, is extended at its base, intervening between the mountains and the wash of the Pacific. It is timbered with spruce quite thickly, and reported by the Indians to be the best berrying ground in all Alaska.
The Fairweather shore is a steep, woody one, much indented with roadstead coves or bays; the coast line is hilly and uneven, with some rocks and rocky islets scattered along not far out from the surf. The sand-beaches which extend from Fairweather toward the feet of those under St. Elias are remarkably broad and extensive; so much so that, from the ship’s mast-head, large lagoons within the outer swell of the open ocean are frequently seen. These beach-locked estuaries communicate with the ocean by shallow breaks in the outer beach-wall of sand and gravel, across all of which the sea rolls with great violence.
MT. SAINT ELIAS: 19,500 FEET
Under the shadow of this great mountain. Bering’s crew landed in July, 1741; they were the first white men to behold its sullen grandeur, and it fitly stands as the initial point of that early recognition of Russian America. In clear weather it is distinctly seen by mariners, 150 miles at sea; usually, however, it is wrapped in clouds
Right under the towering slopes of Fairweather, as at St Elias, is a large area of upland entirely destitute of verdure of any kind, except the brown and russet mosses and lichens; huge, rugged masses of naked rocks are strewn about in every direction—an old prehistoric lava-flood, perhaps.
The coast, from the head of Cross Sound to Fairweather, is not sandy, but may be well described as the surf-beaten base of a frozen range of magnificent Alpine peaks.
In the centre of the arc of this grand crescent-range is the superb body and hoary crest of Mount St Elias, which is, save Mount Wrangel, now known to be the loftiest peak on the North American coast; the latter is slightly higher. Triangulated from a base line in Yakootat, in 1874, by one[35] of the most accomplished mathematicians of the U. S. Coast Survey, the summit of that royal mountain was determined to be more than nineteen thousand feet above the level of the tide at the observer’s feet. It was under the shadow of this “bolshoi sopka” that Bering first saw the Continent of North America on the 18th of July, 1741, and undoubtedly he discerned it from a long distance, ere his boat landed. Two days before anchoring, he records the fact that “the country had terrible high mountains, which were covered with snow.”