With Sack and Stock in Alaska

by Horatio George Broke

Our next expedition was to Kruzoff and Mount Edgcumbe, and this time we had rather a sickener. As we had about fifteen miles of much more open sea we took a bigger canoe, and had to pull the beastly thing all the way, so landed in the first place which came handy, a very awkward landing with a lot of big rocks about. From the appearance of clouds of mosquitoes in the evening Dick prophesied bad weather, and he was right, for it poured the whole of the next day, most of which we spent in the tent. In the afternoon I went out to look for deer, but the bush was so dense that it was impossible to get through it silently, and though I just glimpsed a couple as they started away, I couldn’t even get a snap-shot, and returned bredouille in a very dripping condition. The following day the weather was not quite so adverse, though there was still plenty of rain, and getting our canoe afloat we rowed for an hour and a half along the beach, till we reached a spot where the men said the bush was not so thick. In this they were right, but the ground was broken into countless ravines which always seemed to be at right angles to our course, and getting up and down the slippery sides of these with a heavy knapsack on one’s back proved rather exhausting, so that the afternoon was well advanced by the time we began to climb the steeper slopes of Edgcumbe itself. At last we came on a small clear space in the middle of the thick scrub; and though no level spot could be found for the tent, we decided to pitch camp. A lot of cedar boughs were cut and arranged as evenly as possible for our bed, and after we had fried with bacon and disposed of a ptarmigan H. had picked off with his rifle as we came up, we made what the Indians called ‘a white man’s fire,’ and so got warm if not dry before crawling into our blankets for the night. On the previous evening we had made a nondescript meal off cockles and ‘gumboots,’ a large species of chiton found adhering to the rocks. The Indians are very fond of these and attribute soporific powers to them, but I certainly cannot recommend them, for they resemble nothing more than the indiarubber after which they are named, being absolutely tasteless and appallingly tough.

It rained all night, but the Edgington tent stood it well, very little coming through, and that, I fancy, only where carelessness had left some article touching the canvas. With a view to assisting the commissariat department, we separated in the morning, E. and H. going up to the top of Edgcumbe, and securing two more ptarmigan on the way. They found the bottom of the shallow crater covered with snow, and on the summit itself encountered the tracks of one of the enormous Alaska brown bears (Ursus Richardsonii). I took Dick towards the Camelsback, but we never saw a sign of deer or bear, and so about two o’clock I turned to come home, giving him the rifle that he might make a last effort to procure venison. I had no doubt about being able to find my way back, for I had taken my bearings carefully, and a fair-sized dead tree standing in the middle of our small clearing afforded a capital landmark. I went at a fair pace, and though all the ravines were very much alike, I presently felt pretty sure I was nearing camp, an opinion confirmed in a minute or two by hearing, as I thought, the crooning song of the Indian we had left behind. Still no dead tree appeared, and thinking I must have been mistaken, I pushed on for another quarter of an hour, by which time I felt sure I had gone far enough. I struggled up the mountain, I scrambled down, I shouted and yelled, I had an exciting chase after a couple of ptarmigan, one of which I managed to bag with my revolver, but nowhere could I see this mangy tree, and began to feel very unhappy, as it was gradually borne in on me that I was very decidedly lost. At last I saw far below me two tiny lakes which we had passed on the previous day, and decided to go down to them, as I felt pretty sure I could make camp from there. Hardly had I descended a hundred yards, when I came into the corner of a clearing, and heard E.’s voice. And then the mystery was explained; the other Indian, with praiseworthy but most mistaken industry, had cut down the dead tree for firewood. It had rained all day, and in the night a tremendous south-west gale came on which proved the last straw, and we settled to return to Sitka, where we were going to dismiss the Dude, with whom we had had a row. He had accidentally left his blankets on the beach by the canoe, and though we had lent him one of ours, he was very dissatisfied, and apparently coming to the conclusion that serving us was not likely to be all beer and skittles, announced that he was not coming to Yakutat. We made no attempt to get him to change his mind, for we had already come to the conclusion that he had much too good an opinion of himself, and was more than a little lazy, though he was an entertaining conversationalist, and gave us interesting scraps of information, either social, such as the number of slaves he had till quite recently possessed, or geographical, such as that twenty-one miles up the Copper River a glacier stretches across its whole width, a phenomenon which existed on the Stickheen till comparatively lately. He added that the river was two miles wide at this point, and that a portage of fifteen miles across the ice was made by the Indians with skin canoes, or bidarkies, but as he had never been there I am inclined to doubt his details. Although we were unanimous as to the expediency of dismissing him, we were not at all so united as to how he was to be replaced, and became, indeed, a little despondent as to whether we should get further than Yakutat, so that had we been able to communicate by telegraph with W., I am not at all sure that the expedition would not have then and there come to an end, and the members of it taken refuge in the Selkirks. Luckily we had to wait for him, and in the interval more cheerful counsels prevailed.

Meanwhile we packed down again to the canoe; the wind was very high and there was a lot of sea, but the men thought that as the wind was fair we might venture, and after lunch off a confiding grouse which had fallen a victim to E.’s rifle, we started, and found that, whether we liked it or not, we had got to go on, as returning to the island in the teeth of the gale was quite impossible. The rollers were enormous, but with a little scrap of sail we flew along finely, and in about two hours were back in Sitka harbour.

The next few days were spent chiefly in endless confabulations with various white men and Indians who were willing to accompany us as porters, which resulted in the engagement of two white men, Lyons and McConnahay, and four Sitka Indians, the former to receive three, the latter two dollars a day and their food. E. and I occupied ourselves one morning in the ascent of Verstovia. We left at four o’clock along the Indian River by a fair trail for about an hour, and then, crossing the stream by a fallen tree, struck up to the right through the most abominable bush, full of devil’s clubs, an exceedingly evil plant with large green leaves and scarlet berries, covered as to the stem and the backs of the leaves with minute prickles which penetrate the human skin with unpleasant facility, and, if left in, cause festering sores. It was steamingly hot in the low ground, but we struggled up somehow, or rather I did the struggling, for E. appeared provokingly cool while I was dripping and breathless, and eventually reached the top of the sharp rocky cone which forms the highest peak, at half-past seven, getting just scrambling enough in the last hundred feet to find our rifles rather a nuisance. As we had been told we should take at least six hours, we were rather pleased with ourselves, and after spending an hour on the top and setting up a flagstaff left there some years before by a party of marines, we descended leisurely by the west face, instead of the north-west ridge up which we had come, and got back to Sitka just after eleven.

At last the ‘Alpha’ returned from sealing with 119 skins on board and was beached for repairs. She was followed next day by the ‘Elder,’ which brought W., and after two or three days’ packing and arranging, we actually started on Tuesday, July 3, at 10.30 A.M. About half of the slender population of Sitka came down to see us off, and to wish us every success. While the little five-and-twenty-ton schooner was beating out between the islands against the fresh north-west breeze we discovered that we were being pursued, and soon afterwards a boat came up, bringing an American flag, provided by the kindness of Mr. Hayden, the Acting Governor, and we accordingly hoisted the Stars and Stripes at the masthead. Mrs. Hayden had previously presented us with a small silk flag to be left on the summit of Mount St. Elias, if we ever got there. Dinner was soon announced and we proceeded below, but recoiled from the fearful heat and smell, caused by the want of ventilation in the cabin in which was the cooking-stove. E., who was proof against anything, remained below, but H., W., and I retired to the deck, where we ate our meals during the greater part of our voyage. Shortly afterwards we three yielded to the gruesome attacks of seasickness, as the little vessel was now pitching freely; W., who had often cruised off the east coast of the United States in small yachts, soon recovered, but H. and I remained more or less prostrate the whole time we were on board.

The wind was dead ahead, west by north (magnetic), and our craft made so much leeway that our onward progress was insignificant. Next morning, under a grey sky, we were only fifteen miles from Sitka; Edgcumbe was still in sight the morning after that; and it was not till Friday the 6th that we sighted Mounts Fairweather and Crillon, some sixty miles off, and right ahead. Next day we were only about twenty miles from them, and went tacking steadily up the coast, the glories of which were veiled in almost constant rain and cloud, without making much progress.

On Sunday we at last got past Lituya Bay, near which we saw a humming-bird. In the evening, the wind, which we now regarded as a personal enemy, since, blowing from the north-west, it ought at least to have brought fine weather, began to die away, and at about two in the morning a vigorous south-easter sprang up, so that we flew along finely in the right direction at last; but, to our intense disgust, Captain Jimmy, whose only fault was over-caution, perhaps a natural one on these very dangerous coasts, hove to, fearing lest we might be driven ashore in the thick weather that prevailed. In the evening the wind collapsed and we got a glimpse of land, as to the identity of which there arose a considerable argument, but on the whole those who had been there before held the opinion that we were about thirty miles from Ocean Cape, which view proved correct, as next morning, which was more or less fine, we were only ten miles off. Mount St. Elias and the range as far east as Mount Vancouver were visible, but swathed in clouds. Their height did not impress us much at first sight, but we were greatly struck with the enormous mass of the Malaspina Glacier, the white upper part of which presented such a curiously regular appearance that at first we believed it to be a layer of cloud, till undeceived by the telescope. There was hardly any wind, but we crept round Cape Phipps at last, and came in sight of Yakutat. Once round the corner, the light breeze from the west sent us along faster, and we were soon abreast of the ‘ranche’ on Kantag Island. Great was the excitement among our men: ‘There’s De Groff,’—‘and Callsen,’—‘and Dalton.’

We had hoisted our flag, but the halliards got entangled and the Stars and Stripes were an unsightly ball, omen perhaps of what was to befall us, for as we rounded the point at the end of the island, we kept a little too far out, the tide, ebbing swiftly through the narrow channel, caught our bows, and we ran hard and fast on to a rocky shoal instead of sailing into the harbour known as Port Mulgrave. We were evidently a fixture till the tide rose again, and so went ashore in the hope of finding strawberries, in which we were disappointed, as, though there were any number of plants, the Indian women and children had been beforehand with us, and we only collected a meagre half-dozen. We made the acquaintance of Mr. De Groff, Vanderbilt’s partner, and so part-owner of the ‘Alpha,’ a short, rather good-looking man, with blue eyes and fair hair and beard. Our Siwashes soon found friends and relations in the village, and we agreed to pay them board wages at the rate of $1.25 per day for the lot, while McConnahay (‘Shorty’) and Lyons were to feed with us on the ‘Alpha.’ Another little schooner, the ‘Three Brothers,’ of Kayak Island, was in the harbour when we arrived, but took her departure next day.

There being some alarm as to whether the water would not come in and damage our stores when the schooner floated, we at first resolved to sit up, but eventually we gave it up and turned in. About midnight she was got off and beached in front of the ranche without our knowing anything about it, and without taking in any water.

From this point onwards I give the events just as they are noted in my diary.