Wonderland; or, Alaska and the inland passage / With a description of the country traversed by the Northern Pacific Railroad

by John Hyde; Frederick Schwatka

an travels for business and pleasure. The former can be easily described, by a slight interpolation in a well-known mathematical definition, as “the shortest distance and quickest time between two points.” The latter bears to this mathematical rectilinear exactness the relation of the curves,—Hogarth's “line of beauty,” the rotund circle and graceful sweep of the Archimedean spiral, and bends of beauty beyond computation; and, as any of these are more pleasing to the eye than the stiff straight line, so any tourist's jaunt is more pleasing to all the senses than the business man's travels. But, as all straight lines are alike, and all curves are different, so are their equivalents in travel, to which we have alluded. One tourist, as a Nimrod, dons his hunting shirt and high-topped boots, and, seeking the solemn recesses of the Rockies, slays the grizzly and mountain lion, and thus has his “good time;” another drives through the grand old gorges of the Yellowstone Park, and the deep impressions left by a lofty nature are his ample rewards; and yet again, where physical exertion is to be avoided by delicate ones or those averse to its peculiarities, one may float down the distant Columbia, with its colossal contours, and, without even lifting a finger to aid one's progress, view as vast and stupendous scenery as the world can produce. Thus each place suits each varying disposition, from the most roystering “roughing it,” developing the muscles in mighty knots, to where the most ponderous panorama of nature may be enjoyed from a moving mansion, as it were. Could we conceive a place where all these advantages would be united into one, or where one after the other might be indulged at pleasure, we would certainly have a tourists' paradise, an ever-to-be-sought and never-to-be-forgotten nook of creation. Such a tour is to be encountered on “the inland passage to Alaska,” as it is called by those knowing it best.

In this rough, rocky region, Nature has been prodigal of both land and water,—making the former high and picturesque, and the latter deep and navigable, and running in all directions through the other, apparently for the purpose that it might be easily viewed. From the northwest corner of Washington Territory, through all of the coast line of British Columbia, and along Alaska's shores to the long-cast shadows of Mount St. Elias, stretches for nearly two thousand miles a picturesque panorama that seems as if the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, Colorado, and Switzerland and the Alps, were passing in review before the spectator; and, when the greatest northing is gained, Greenland and Norway have added their glacier-crowned and iceberg-bearing vistas to the view. It looks as if the Yellowstone National Park had sunk into the sea until the valleys were waterways, and the feet of the high mountains had been converted into shores. A grand salt-water river it is that stretches from Puget Sound, itself a beautiful sheet of water, to our distant colony of Alaska, a good round thousand miles, and whose waters are as quiet as an Alpine lake, even though a fierce gale rage on the broad Pacific outside.

Beyond the parallel of Sitka, though the grand scenery may be no more imposing than that through which the tourist will have passed in coming from Washington Territory, he will find some of the curiosities of nature which are to be found only in the dreaded frigid zones,—icebergs and glaciers. Before the waters of Northwestern Washington Territory are out of sight, great patches of snow are to be seen on the highest of the grand mountains bordering the inland passage. These little white blotches in the northern gullies become larger and larger as the excursion steamer wends her way northward, until the loftiest peaks are crowned with snow. Then, across connecting ridges, they join their white mantles; and, in a few more miles, the blue ice of glaciers peeps from out the lower edges of the deep snow. Lower and lower they descend as the steamer crawls northward, until the upper parts of the passage are essayed, when they have come to the ocean's level, and, plunging into the sea, snap off at intervals, and float away as icebergs, some of them higher than the masts of the large, commodious steamers that bear tourists to this fairy-land of the frigid zones, if one can be allowed such an expression. Glacier Bay, which the excursion steamers visit on their summer trips, has a great number of these frozen rivers of ice debouching into it; and its clear, quiet waters, reflecting the Alpine scenery of its shores, are ruffled only by the breaking of the icebergs from the terminal fronts of the glacier, that send waves across its whole breadth, and with a noise like the firing of a sea-coast cannon. Muir Glacier is the greatest of this grand group, and surpasses anything nearer than the polar zones themselves. There is no use in going into mathematical measurements,—its two and three hundred feet in height and its breadth of several miles; for they but feebly represent its grandeur, the deep impressions that figures can not measure when viewing this frozen Niagara of the North. Not until the blue Adriatic has pierced its way into the heart of the high Alps, or some ocean inlet has invaded the valleys of the vast Yellowstone Park, will we ever have an equivalent to this display of Nature's noblest efforts in scenic effects. Were the other scenery as monotonous as the ceaseless plains, a visit to the Alaskan glaciers and icebergs would well repay any one's time and effort; but, when the tourist travels through the greatest Wonderland of the wide West to reach these curious sights, he or she will be paid over and over tenfold.

So far everything may be seen from the decks of an elegant steamer; but, should the tourist want a little “roughing it,” let him stop over in Glacier Bay, from one steamer's visit to another, two weeks to a month apart, and clamber over the glaciers and row around among the icebergs to his heart's content, and until he almost imagines he is an arctic explorer. He will descend from the tumbled surface of the frozen seas of ice on the glacier's surface, only to wade through grass up to his waist, that waves in the light winds like the pretty pampas fields of South America. In these fields of grasses he may pitch his tent, which, with a cook stove and a month's rations for each person, is all that is needed, beyond the baggage of the other tourists. Hunting is found in the mountains back of the bay, fish in the waters, and small game in the woods near by.

Or, if longer and rougher jaunts are wanted, ascend the Lynn Channel, and then the Chilkat, or Chilkoot, Inlet, hiring two or three Indians to carry one's camping effects on their backs to the lakes at the source of the great Yukon river of the British Northwest Territory and Alaska,—the third river of America. Going by the Chilkoot trail, over the Alaskan coast range of mountains, which will furnish Alpine climbing enough to suit the most eager, on snow and glacier ice, one comes to a series of lakes aggregating 150 miles in extent; and along these he may paddle and return, shooting an occasional brown or black bear, moose, caribou or mountain goat, while aquatic life is everywhere on these pretty Alpine lakes.

Throughout the whole inland passage, one is passing now and then some Indian village, of more or less imposing appearance and numbers. In Alaska they all belong to a single great tribe, the T'linkit, bound together by a common language, but by no stronger ties, for each village, or cluster of villages, makes a sub-tribe, having no sympathies with the other, and they often war against one another.

It is not often that one would want to call a tourist's attention to an Indian village, for the average encampment or habitation of the “noble red man” is not the most attractive sight or study; but, in the T'linkit towns, we have no such hesitation, for, in the curiosities to be seen in their houses and surroundings, they are certainly one of the strangest people on earth. They are the artistic savages of the world. In front of each log house, and often rearing its head much higher than it by two or three fold, are one or two posts, called “totem poles,” which are merely logs on end; but, on the seaward face, the savage sculptor has exhausted all the resources of his barbaric imagination in cutting in hideous faces and figures, that, with a hundred or so such terrible “totems” in front of a village, makes one think of some nightmare of his childish days. The houses, too, are carved inside and out. Every utensil they have is sculptured deep with diabolical but well executed designs, and their spoons of mountain sheep and goat horn are marvels of savage work. All these are for sale to tourists, and every excursion steamer brings numbers of these romantic remembrances of a yet more romantic journey back to civilization.

But the inland passage to Alaska is not the only grand and picturesque part of that great territory visited by the excursion steamers; for beyond and as far as Mount St. Elias, they often sail to this the greatest cluster of high mountains on the Western Continent,—Lituya Peak, 10,000 feet high; and Fairweather and Crillon, a third taller; then beyond, Cook and Vancouver cluster near sublime St. Elias, nearly 20,000 feet above the ocean that thunders at its base, and whose jagged top may be seen a hundred and fifty miles to sea. How disappointing are the Colorado peaks of 12,000 and 14,000 feet to one, for the simple reason that they spring from a plain already 6,000 to 8,000 feet above sea-level, and seem, as they are, but high hills on a high plateau. How like pygmies they appear to Hood, Tacoma, Shasta, and others not so high above the ocean base line, but whose nearly every foot above sea-level is in mountain slope. How grand, then, must be hoary-headed St. Elias, whose waist is the waters of the wide sea, and whose 20,000 feet above sea-level springs from the Pacific Ocean, from whose calm waters we view its majestic height.

But let us commence at the starting point of our journey, and take our readers step by step over the whole route.

For many years the people of our great Northwest country, Oregon, Washington and Idaho Territories, have spoken familiarly of “the Sound” as one of their great geographical features,—in much the same way as the people of Southern Connecticut or Long Island speak of “the Sound,”—referring thereby to Puget Sound, that cuts deep into the northwestern corner of Washington Territory. Many have visited it, and sailed on its beautiful waters; beautiful enough in themselves or their own immediate surroundings, but thrice grand and gorgeous in their silver framing of snow-clad peaks and mountain ranges, surrounding them on all sides. The long, narrow, picturesque sound, that looked not unlike a Greenland fjord, or close-walled bay at the mouth of some grand river,—one of those bays so slowly converging that a person can hardly define where it ceases and the river commences,—was considered one of the most beautiful and scenic places of the Northwest; and its people delighted to show it to strangers, with its enhancing surroundings, reaching from the prettily situated capital of the Territory, Olympia, at the head of “the sound,” to where the broad Juan de Fuca Strait leads to the great Pacific Sea. Then Alaska was known only as Russian America, when it was spoken of at all, so seldom was it heard, and seemed to be as far away from the United States on that side of the continent, and as little thought of, as Greenland or Iceland is to-day with our people of the Atlantic coast. An occasional Hudson's Bay Company trading boat steamed out of Victoria harbor, and disappeared northward, crawling through a maze of intricate inland channels and Alpine-like waterways to some distant and seemingly half-mythical trading post of that lonesome land; but, as to anything definite as to where she was going, as little was known by the people as if an arctic expedition was leaving the harbor of New York or Boston, and not one hundredth of the furor was made about the departure, if, in fact, any notice was taken of it at all. With the accession of Alaska, through the efforts of Secretary Seward and Senator Sumner, the discovery of the Cassiar mines, in British Columbia, but which must be reached through Alaska, and a few other minor incentives, set many people to looking northward; they then found that they could continue their trips on a long inland salt-water river, of which the well-known Puget Sound was but a small part,—hardly the equivalent of Narragansett Bay taken from Long Island Sound, or Green Bay from Lake Michigan. Not that these were the first explorations and discoveries of importance in the inland passage and its surrounding woods and waters, by any manner of means. Cook and Clerke, as early as 1776; Dixon, from 1785 to 1788; Langsdorff, in 1803–8; La Perouse, in 1785–88; Lisianski, from 1803 to 1806; Meares, of the Royal navy, from 1788 to 1789; and especially Vancouver, from 1790 to 1795,—had all peeped into this part of the country, and many of the explorations and surveys were of the most extended nature; but, at about the time of which I speak, the knowledge of the inland passage to the bulk of the people, even in these parts so near to it, was nearly as musty as the old volumes on the library shelves that gave the most information. In fact, but little knowledge or interest was to be found regarding these parts. Their history of development from that embryonic state where everything told is regarded as bordering on the mythical, to where a line of ocean steamers visits them with crowded passenger lists, is the usual history of such developments.