Queen Charlotte Sound is one of the few openings to the Pacific Ocean. It is about fifty miles long, and, in some places, nearly half as wide, and looks like getting out to sea after having passed through the narrow channels just left behind. It was entered and named by Wedgeborough in the summer of 1786; so those visitors of 1886 to its grand waters may celebrate its centennial, and drink a toast to Queen Charlotte, the queen of King George III., and queen for fifty-seven years. About nine or ten miles on its waters, and to our left, is Fort Rupert, a Hudson Bay Company's trading post, with a large Indian village clustered around it. Here fruits and vegetables are grown for the local demand. About half way through Queen Charlotte Sound, and we pass through a narrow channel, twenty-two miles long, named Goletas Channel. Emerging from it, we leave Cape Commerell on our left side, and bid good-bye to Vancouver Island, for this is its northernmost cape. Near the exit from Goletas Channel, but by another passage, now seldom used, is where the United States man-of-war “Suwanee” was wrecked, on a submerged rock, in July, 1869, when the inland passage was not so well known by pilots as it is now. We can now look out to sea toward the Pacific Ocean; but a short journey plunges us into one of the many passages ahead of us, the smallest, or one nearest the mainland, being taken, called Fitzhugh Sound. It was named in 1786 by Captain Hanna, is about forty miles long, and with a width of about three miles. The first island to our left on entering is Calvert Island. About ten miles from its southern cape is an indentation in the island, called Safety Cove or Port Safety, probably a mile deep. It was while delayed in this picturesque little harbor, in 1885, that Mr. Charles Hallock, the well-known author on piscatorial pursuits, penned the following lines, descriptive of the inland passage, which we find in the American Angler of September, 1885:
“The mainland is flanked throughout nearly its entire extent by a belt of islands, of which the majority are sea-girt mountains. Of course, throughout this extended coast-line there are many islands of many different phases,—some of them mere rocks, to which the kelps cling for dear life, like stranded sailors in a storm; while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with fir; and others, still, precipitous cliffs standing breast deep in the waves. Most aptly has this wave-washed region been termed an archipelago of mountains and land-locked seas. Steaming through the labyrinths of straits and channels which seem to have no outlets; straining the neck to scan the tops of snow-capped peaks which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor; watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and herds of sea-lions, which seem as if penned up in an aquarium, so completely are they enclosed by the shadowy hills,—one seems, indeed, in a new creation, and watches the strange forms around him with an intensity of interest which almost amounts to awe.
“In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no sand beaches or gravelly shores. All the margins of mainland and islands drop down plump into inky fathoms of water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. * * * * * When the tide sets in, great rafts of algæ, with stems fifty feet long, career along the surface; millions of jelly-fish and anemones crowded as closely as the stars in the firmament; great air-bulbs, with streamers floating like the long hair of female corpses; schools of porpoises and fin-back whale rolling and plunging headlong through the boiling foam; all sorts of marine and Mediterranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible army. Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the ledges, where they squat content or run about feeding.
“Here and there along the almost perpendicular cliffs the outflow of the melting snow in the pockets of the mountains leaps down in dizzy waterfalls from heights that are higher than the Yosemite. From the cañons which divide the foot-hills, cascades pour out into the brine, and all their channels are choked with salmon crowding toward the upper waters. I could catch them with my hands as long as my strength endured, so helpless and infatuated are these creatures of predestination. At the heads of many of these rivulets there are lakes in which dwell salmon trout, spotted with crimson spots as large as a pea; and the rainbow trout, with his iridescent lateral stripe; and his cousin germain, the ‘cut-throat trout,’ slashed with carmine under the gills. And there is another trout, most familiar to the eye in Eastern waters, and doubly welcome to the sight in this far-off region—the Salvelinus Canadensis, or ‘sea-trout,’ which I have recognized these many years as a separate species. * * * Here he is in his garniture of crimson, blue and gold, just like his up-stream neighbors of New England and the Provinces. * *
“The seas are full of strange species. Here the family Percidæ is regnant and supreme among the food fishes. The number of species and varieties is remarkable. Here are the Embiotocidæ, or viviparous perch, which bring forth their young in litters, like cats or dogs, to the number of eight to forty at a time. There are no less than seventeen known varieties of them. Here, also, are at least fifteen varieties of Scorpænidæ, all fine table fish, which are locally known as rock-cod, groupers and snappers, but having no close relations at all to the family of Gadidæ. I send herewith the differential characteristics of four of them taken near our present berth, in latitude 51 degrees 30 minutes. The scarlet snapper seems very closely allied to the Lutjanus Blackfordi of Eastern Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, from which he could scarcely be distinguished in appearance. The others are all fish of brilliant colors. No. 2 can scarcely be distinguished from the fresh-water bass of the lakes lying west of the Mississippi,—the Micropterus,—either in form, fin system or color. At Sitka I found a fish of exactly the same shape, but black as a sea-bass of the Atlantic (Centropristis atrarius). No. 4 belongs, I believe, to the family of Chiridæ, and is locally known as a sea-trout. * * * These fish take salmon roe, clams, sand-worms, crabs, meat and cut-fish bait. The black bass of Sitka is taken alongshore with a trolling spoon. * * * The other fish were taken chiefly in thirty fathoms of water on the young flood tide.
“Besides these fish, we have taken halibut, two kinds of flounder, skates, dogfish of several kinds and strange shapes, sharks, sculpins, etc.; some of the sculpins were beautifully marked in blue, red and brown. * * I have had several of the species painted in oil, and will forward them to the Smithsonian, with descriptions.”
But let us leave this piscatorial paradise, as painted by one who is an artist in his line, and wend our way through the forty miles of Fitzhugh Sound. Then comes Lama Passage, contracted, winding and picturesque, about fourteen or fifteen miles long. About half way through we pass very near the Indian village of Bella-Bella, and which is also a Hudson Bay Company trading post. The Bella-Bellas were once a large tribe living in these parts; but the little village, of about twenty Indian houses, that the tourist passes on his left, represents the greater portion of the tribe at present, and gives one a practical and forcible illustration of the disappearance of “the noble red man.” A mission residence and a church, with the cattle on the cleared hills, give the place quite a civilized aspect. After Lama Passage comes Seaforth Channel, just as winding and pretty; the swingings to the right and left, in places where the passage is apparently right ahead, increase your respect for the pilot, and you wonder, in all these intricacies, like Goldsmith's village schoolmaster, “how one small head could carry all he knew.” At Milbank Sound we look out to sea for a brief half-hour, and then plunge into Finlayson Channel, a typical waterway of the inland passage, like a great river. The sides are very high mountains, densely timbered nearly to the top, where snow exists the year round, forming a base of supplies for the beautiful waterfalls that dash down the precipitous heights, like silvery columns, on a deep green background. It is said that all the little streams of this region swarm with salmon, giving the Indians a most bountiful supply. Then comes Graham Reach, about twenty miles long; then Fraser Reach, of ten miles; and McKay Reach, of seven,—that could all have been given a single name, and much trouble have been saved. A little, irregular sheet of water, called Wright Sound, and Grenville Channel, “as straight as an arrow,” gives us nearly fifty miles of rectilinear sailing.
We are now getting far enough north to make the sight of snow a familiar one, and the dense timber is striped with perpendicular windrows, where large avalanches have cut their way through them in the winter, when the snow falls heavily in these parts. Chatham Sound is the last channel we essay in British domain, and a royal old sheet of water it is, with a width of nearly ten miles, and about three or four times as long. After about three hours on its bosom a great channel is opened east and west before us, on which the swells from the broad Pacific enter. This is Dixon Entrance, and the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska beyond, whose blue mountains we see in the distance. The islands still continue; and the number, in this part of Alaska alone, has been estimated at eleven hundred, and this, too, excludes the rocks and islets. Clarence Strait is the main channel as soon as Alaskan waters are entered; but there are others on both sides of it which may be taken. It is a little over a hundred miles long, and somewhat variable in its width. It was named by Vancouver, nearly a hundred years ago, after the Duke of Clarence. From Clarence Strait we enter Stickeen Strait; for most of the steamers call at Wrangell, and this bends us off of our course.
Wrangell is a tumble-down, dilapidated-looking town, in a most beautifully picturesque situation, and the first impression is to make one ashamed of the displays of the human race compared with those of nature. It is the port to the Cassiar mines; or, better speaking, it was, for they have seen their palmiest days, a fact which is quite evident on looking at their dependency, the town of Wrangell. The Cassiar mines are in British Columbia, and to reach them the Stickeen river, emptying near Wrangell, must be ascended, itself a most picturesque stream, and one well worth visiting if the tourist can catch one of the little boats that yet occasionally depart from Wrangell to ascend the rushing, impetuous river. Says one writer of it, in the Philadelphia Dispatch: “The Stickeen is navigable for small steamers to Glenora, one hundred and fifty miles, flowing first in a general westerly direction, through grassy, undulating plains, darkened here and there with patches of evergreens; then, curving southward, and receiving numerous tributaries from the north, it enters the Coast Range, and sweeps across it to the sea through a Yosemite valley more than a hundred miles long, and one to three miles wide at the bottom, and from five thousand to eight thousand feet deep, marvelously beautiful and inspiring from end to end. To the appreciative tourist, sailing up the river through the midst of it all, the cañon, for a distance of one hundred and ten miles, is a gallery of sublime pictures,—an unbroken series of majestic mountains, glaciers, falls, cascades, forests, groves, flowery garden spots, grassy meadows in endless variety of form and composition,—furniture enough for a dozen Yosemites! while, back of the walls, and thousands of feet above them, innumerable peaks and spires and domes of ice and snow tower grandly into the sky. About fifteen miles above the mouth of the river you come to the first of the great glaciers, pouring down through the forest in a shattered ice-cascade nearly to the level of the river. Twelve miles above this point a noble view is opened along the Skoot river cañon—a group of glacier-laden Alps, from ten thousand to twelve thousand feet high. Thirty-five miles above the mouth of the river the most striking object of all comes in sight; this is the lower expansion of the great glacier, measuring about six miles around the ‘snout,’ pushed boldly forward into the middle of the valley among the trees, while its sources are mostly hidden. It takes its rise in the heart of the range, some thirty or forty miles away. Compared with this, the Swiss mer de glace is a small thing. It is called the ‘Ice Mountain.’ The front of the snout is three hundred feet high, but rises rapidly back for a few miles to a height of about one thousand feet. Seen through gaps in the trees growing on one of its terminal moraines, as one sails slowly along against the current, the marvelous beauty of the chasms and clustered pinnacles shows to fine advantage in the sunshine.”
Wrangell's log-cabin backwoods stores are good places to search for Indian relics, the Stickeen Indians living in the vicinity being the most prolific in the manufacture of these savage curios. Leaving Wrangell, a westward-trending strait (Sumner Strait, after Senator Sumner) of forty or fifty miles carries us directly out to the Pacific Ocean; but an hour's run finds us turning into another passage,—Chatham Strait,—one of the largest of the almost innumerable channels of the inland passage, and which points squarely to the north. It is nearly one hundred and fifty miles long, and about five or six miles wide. It was named by Vancouver, about the end of last century, after the then Earl of Chatham, and is a most noble sheet of water.