With Sack and Stock in Alaska

by Horatio George Broke

That day we had a quite shocking dining-car, so bad that I hereby publish its name, which was ‘Sandringham,’ in the hope that the Cuisinal Director of the C.P.R, whoever he may be, will have taken care to reform that car before I next meet with it.

As our Calgary friend got off the train at 2 A.M., some of us sat up till that hour to see him off, but we turned out again at four o’clock to enjoy the grand scenery of the Rockies, into the heart of which we crept, up the Bow River, over the Kicking-Horse Pass, down to Donald, and then we crossed the Columbia, and began to climb up the valley of the Beaver into the Selkirk range. This is even finer than the Rockies, owing to the greater size of the snowfields and glaciers, and the view from Glacier House, where we stopped for lunch, the grades in the mountains being too steep to allow of a dining-car being attached, was magnificent in the extreme. At this point the great Illecillewaet glacier descends into the valley, backed by the superb spire of Mount Sir Donald, and the C.P.R. have most obligingly built a summer track outside the snow-sheds to enable the passengers to see it in comfort. It was on this day that we crossed the trestle bridge in the Beaver Valley, 295 feet above the stream below; two of us happened to be sitting at the time on the step of the car, and as the bridge, which has no parapet or floor of any kind, is curved, we were tipped forward till we could contemplate the water far beneath between our feet as they overhung the edge of the step. We held on rather tight during the minute or so spent in creeping over it. This sitting on the step of the platform was most enjoyable, as there had been rain in the night, and consequently there was no dust, but every now and then the one who was sitting farthest from the projecting roof of the carriage received an icy shower-bath, as the train dashed suddenly into a snow-shed through the roof of which the melting snow was dripping, and little feminine squeals might be heard, intermixed with deeper bass grumblings.

At Glacier House I received a letter from H., saying they could not start for another fortnight, and recommending me to stop off there for a day or two and go up the glacier; but, as all my climbing things were in my checked baggage, I preferred to go on. We were detained an hour or so by a disobliging boulder which had playfully rolled down on to the track and had to be removed with dynamite before we could proceed, and then we went down over some marvellous loops, which resembled the twistings of the St. Gothard near Wasen, crossed the Columbia again, and climbed up into the Gold Range. From Revelstoke to Sicamous we were accompanied by a dining-car, but our dinner would, perhaps, have been more satisfactory, though more devoid of interest, had they not selected the moment at which we were running fast down a steep incline to jam the brakes on. Away went every wine-glass, soup hopped out of the plates, potatoes out of the dishes, and we might as well have been in a rough sea with no fiddles on. At last peace, and as much of the dinner as could be collected, were restored. Late in the evening we enjoyed a most lovely view over the broad smooth expanse of Lake Shusroap, the train running along its reedy shore for some time.

During the night we careered down the Thompson, and found ourselves at daybreak accompanying the Fraser in its wild career to the sea. We were compelled to breakfast at North Bend, at the objectionable hour of seven, and my toilet was hurried in a very undue manner; but the views all that morning were ample compensation for having been dragged out of bed.

All this time I had no conception of where H. was, his letter having said nothing, but in London I had been given an address in the town of Vancouver, and so had determined to go there first. Being a Monday, no boat ran to Victoria from Vancouver, and so I had to part with my friends and nearly all the other passengers at Westminster Junction, whence they went on to New Westminster. I reached Vancouver at two o’clock, and after securing comfortable, not to say luxurious, quarters in the brand-new C.P.R. hotel, strolled down to find out about H., and discovered that he and his brother were located at the famous Driard Hotel in Victoria.

The afternoon was spent in wandering about the town, the evening in smoking at the house of an hospitable fellow-countryman, and the next day the little steamer ‘Yosemite’ conveyed me across the blue waters of the Gulf of Georgia, muddied in one place by the flood of the Fraser, to Victoria, a distance of about seventy miles. We had an exciting race with the old Cunarder ‘Abyssinia,’ now employed in the mail-service between Canada and Japan. She moved first from her moorings in Burrard Islet, but her head was lying the wrong way, and before she got round we were out of the harbour with a quarter of a mile’s start. Down the long straight piece that followed she gained slowly but steadily, and was almost level with us on our left when we just succeeded in getting into Plumper’s Pass first, and in the intricate windings of this tortuous channel, where the ship kept spinning round in little over her own length, we again got a long start which was gradually reduced till there was nothing of it left as we neared the south-east point of Vancouver Island; but here we cut inside a group of small islands, where apparently the larger vessel could not come, and this time we gained such an advantage that we were not again caught. We steamed round the corner into the very beautiful harbour of Victoria, and reached the wharf at half-past eight. Here I was met by H., apprised by telegraph of my approach, and really hardly recognised him without his moustache, which for some obscure reason he had chosen to shave off while staying at the Glacier House in the spring. Having entrusted my baggage to an express man, we did not go up at once to the Driard, as it was too late to procure dinner, or indeed anything else to eat there, but repaired to the Poodle Dog, where my hunger was at last appeased. We then proceeded to the hotel, where we found E., H.’s brother, and most unlike him, and talked over plans far into the night. A fourth man, W., an American member of the A.C., was coming to join us, but the taking of his degree was delaying him. Still he did his best for us by sending us long telegrams of advice every day.

The next few days passed rapidly, the mornings being spent in shopping, though that was a task which fell chiefly to H., who had been elected ‘boss’ of the party, or in frantic endeavours to ascertain how we were going to get from Sitka to Yakutat, a distance of nearly three hundred miles. We entered into negotiations with the owners of two steam-schooners, but as one asked fifty dollars a day and the other four thousand for the whole trip, we rejected these noble offers. The afternoons were spent by E. and me in sailing on the harbour in ‘plungers,’ stiff little Una-rigged cutters, which revealed the meaning of their name if there was any sea on, or in lawn-tennis in the gardens of various hospitable magnates of Victoria. At the house of one of these I encountered an old friend, a neighbour at home, whose ship was now on the station, and I had the pleasure of dining with him on board at Esquimault the next evening.

There was great uncertainty even about the arrival of the ‘Ancon,’ the steamer which was to take us up to Sitka; she was expected to arrive early on the 4th of June, but did not turn up till the evening of the 5th, crammed with American tourists. With the utmost difficulty we obtained a fairly airy but exceedingly diminutive cabin, for at first we found ourselves condemned to a pocket edition of the Black Hole. H. tried to make us believe that the majesty of his presence had over-awed the purser, but we somehow fancied that bribery and corruption had something to do with it. In consequence of this mob of passengers there were three breakfasts, three lunches, etc., a most horrible arrangement, while at all of them the food was bad, and the waiting worse. Thus we grumbled, little thinking with what enthusiasm the same cookery would be received on our return.

As a sea voyage this trip up to Sitka is quite unique, though possibly travelling among the fiords of Norway might be compared to it in quality if not in quantity, for these steamers travel about eight hundred miles between Victoria and Sitka, only about thirty miles of which, the crossing of Queen Charlotte’s Sound, can in any sense be termed open sea, though the whole of it is on salt water. The whole coast up to Cape Spencer is fringed with a mass of islands separated by deep and very narrow channels, in some instances so narrow that, as in the case of Peril Straits and Seymour Narrows, even a steamer can only pass them at slack water. One American gentleman assured me that in the latter strait the tide had been known to run seventeen knots! All these islands are densely wooded with conifers, among which may every now and then be detected the white streak of a waterfall racing down the steep hill-side.

We stopped to coal at Nanaimo, and while this objectionable process was going on, H. and I spent the afternoon in drifting about the harbour in an Indian canoe, a dug-out about twelve feet long, managed in just the same way as the Canadian canoes we have in England, and in endeavouring to acquire some Chinook, the jargon invented more or less by the old traders, and used all over British Columbia and the southern part of Alaska. It contains chiefly Indian words, most of which are common to various different tribes, a few English, a few Russian, and a good many French words, such as Siwash (i.e. sauvage) for Indian, and sawmon for any kind of fish.