We pause for a moment, thoughtfully, to recall the brief hours passed in that boreal atmosphere, crowded to repletion with wonderful experiences, where the ice deposited during the glacial period is slowly wasting and wearing away, exposing giant cedars which have been buried for ages upon ages, a revelation and a process which we may nowhere else behold. There is no touch of civilization here; the quiet and solitude is unbroken, save by the thunder of the bergs breaking their long imprisonment. Somehow one feels older, grayer, sadder, after witnessing these great and startling throes of Nature, phenomena which have been in operation thousands of years. It reminds the observer only too forcibly how infinitesimal is the space he occupies upon this planet, and how utterly insignificant is his personality in the vast scheme of the universe. Travel, while teaching us numberless grand and beautiful truths, solving many mysteries and vastly enlarging our mental grasp, does not fail also to impress upon the most conceited the important and priceless lesson of humility. But let us banish brooding thoughts, and be glad for a little space; to-morrow the night cometh!
Among the evidences of the slow but steady receding of the glacier we have Vancouver’s record that he was unable to enter this bay in 1793, which is now navigable for over twelve miles inland. Once the ice field was level with the mountain tops, now it has melted until the peaks are far above its surface. Professor Muir tells us that in the earlier days of the ice-age this glacier stood at a height of from three to four thousand feet above its present level! Centuries hence the place of the glacier will doubtless be occupied by a flowing river, and the land will have entirely thrown aside its mantle of ice and snow. What a revelation this bay would have been to Agassiz! After an arduous half day’s climb, from the summit of the Muir glacier nearly thirty others are to be seen in various directions, all steadily forcing their resistless way towards the sea, slowly consummating the purpose of their existence. How far glacial action has been concerned in determining the topographical conditions of the globe will long be, as it has long been, a subject for deep scientific study.
At first thought it seems impossible that a substance like ice, often brittle as glass and as inelastic as granite, can move as though it were fluid. The motion of the giant mass is doubtless facilitated by subglacial streams issuing from its bottom into the bay. The water flowing from two sources of this character manifests itself at the surface on each corner of the ice-front, where it comes bubbling up with great force from the bottom, a distance of from sixty to eighty fathoms. As we lay in front of the grand façade what a revelry of color was spread before us! The immense and towering wall of ice seemed to throb with the softening rays of the sun, penetrating each broad fissure and narrow rift, all luminous with blue and gold.
Scidmore Island was pointed out to us, a green hilly land, near the mouth of the bay, named after Mrs. E. R. Scidmore, who has written so admirably about Alaska. Another island was designated whereon a silver mine of great promise has lately been successfully located and tested, yielding results surpassing the most sanguine anticipations of the owners.
All through this region one is constantly impressed with a sense of vastness, everything seems so stupendous; Nature is cast in a larger mould than she is in other sections of the world. The islands strike one as continental in dimensions, the rivers are among the largest on the globe, the ocean channels are the deepest, the primeval forests are made up of giant trees and cover thousands of square miles, the mountains are colossal, and the glaciers are elsewhere unequaled. It is a land of wonders, strange, fascinating, and beautiful.
The natives of this latitude are robust and hearty in appearance, their regular food supply being such as to sustain them in a good physical condition. Seal and fish oil are cheap and abundant, and enter into all of their cooking combinations. During the ripening season the wild berries, which are remarkably abundant, are gathered by the bushel, giving employment to the youthful portion of the community. Large quantities are dried for winter use, but during the bearing season the people almost live upon them, always adding a portion of oil as a condiment. Game, such as deer, bears, mountain goats, and wild geese, is very plenty a little way inland. These are hunted and supplied to the whites by the aborigines, but they do not themselves seem to care particularly for meat of any sort so long as they can obtain plenty of fish and oil. At Sitka and Fort Wrangel fine large codfish are retailed at five cents each, a twenty pound salmon costs in the season ten to fifteen cents, and halibut sell at about the same rate according to size. These latter average from eighty to a hundred pounds in weight on this coast, and in some parts of the waters bordering western Alaska they are twice that size. Ducks are to be had at ten and fifteen cents per pair, wild geese at fifteen cents each, and so on. The natives are preëminently fish-eaters, and are as a rule well developed about the chest and shoulders, though the lower parts of their bodies are diminutive owing to their exercise being taken almost altogether at the paddle while sitting in their boats. The physical contrast between them and our Western Indians, who are meat-eaters, is very decided. The one lives in a canoe a large portion of his time, the other upon horseback or engaged upon long foot-marches; the one is lithe and sinewy, the other is greasy and flabby. Though the physical condition of our Western Indians is unquestionably much superior to that of the native Alaskans, yet the latter are the most intelligent.
The halibut, to which reference has just been made, is found in great abundance upon the coast at nearly all seasons of the year, and forms a large portion of the food supply of the native population, both for summer and winter. They prefer to catch these fish by means of their own awkward wooden hooks, rather than to use the steel barbed instrument of the whites. They go out for the purpose in their boats, exposing themselves in nearly all sorts of weather, anchoring upon well-known fishing grounds by making use of a stone fastened to a cedar-bark rope of their own manufacture. Having filled their canoe, which they can do in a very short time, they leisurely return to the shore, where the fish are turned over to the care of the women, who soon clean them, also removing the large bones, head, fins, and tails, after which they cut the bodies into broad thin slices, and doing so much of this business they become very expert. These slices of the halibut are hung on wooden frames, where they rapidly dry in the wind and sun, no salt being used in the process; indeed, the natives seem to have no use for salt so far as their own food is concerned, and do not eat it as a seasoning. After the halibut is thus cured, the pieces are packed away in the large cedar box which forms each family’s storehouse for such food, and when wanted it is always ready, requiring but little further treatment to make it palatable to native Alaskan taste. As thus preserved the fish will now and again become putrid. This, however, is not considered by the people to detract in any degree from its excellence and usefulness, but rather to add zest to the flavor, just as a highly civilized gourmand requires his birds to be kept until they become a little “gamey” before he considers them fit to serve to himself or his guests. At certain seasons of the year the salmon are eagerly sought and eaten, both fresh and dried, but as intimated the halibut is a fish which can be caught at nearly any time, and is therefore perhaps more used than any other. There are periods when these fish also leave the coast for a short season, and against this absence the native provides as we have described. The kind of salmon which is mostly canned and prepared for export in barrels from Alaska is of a pink species, which is chosen, not because it possesses any peculiar excellence of flavor, but because the color is generally thought to be more desirable. They are not considered here, either by the whites or the natives, to be of quite so good quality as some others which abound in this region, but it is the pink salmon which the fanciful public demand, and pink salmon which they get.
All the cooking these natives seem to know anything about is to boil or stew such food as they do not consume nearly raw. Iron kettles have been in their possession for many generations, and were originally procured from the Russians. The condiment which they most affect has already been referred to, being nothing more nor less than rancid fish or seal oil, cooled and hardened into a sort of oleomargarine, the bare smell of which is sickening to the nostrils of a white person. This grease is spread liberally upon all their food and eaten with manifest relish. The inner bark of the spruce and hemlock trees is collected by the women in considerable quantities at certain seasons of the year, and is eaten by them, both in the green and dried state, after being dipped in this grease as described. The Sitka Indians make a most atrocious salad of sea-weed mixed with seal-oil, sometimes adding the roe of herring, of which peculiar mixture they partake with ravenous appetites, the roe having been purposely kept until it is nearly or quite putrid. The salmon-berry, while it is in season, is a most welcome and wholesome addition to their rather circumscribed larder. This berry is a sort of cross between a strawberry and a blackberry, though it is larger than the average of these delicious berries as they grow in the woods of New England. Hundreds of barrels of the native cranberry are gathered by the aborigines and shipped annually from here to San Francisco; they are smaller than the cultivated berry bearing the same name, which is grown in our Eastern States. The wild strawberries found among these islands and on the mainland excel in flavor the highly cultivated berry of our thickly-settled States, and may be found growing in abundance in the very shadow of the glaciers.
The natives hereabouts have no domestic animals except a multitude of dogs of a mongrel breed; wolfish-looking creatures; which are of no possible use, dozing all day and howling all night. At the north the regularly bred Eskimo dog is a very different animal, quite indispensable to his master, and invaluable in connection with sledge traveling.
The tribe occupying the region near to Glacier Bay is known as the Hooniahs, an ingenious and industrious people, who manufacture bracelets, spoons, and various ornaments out of silver and copper. Some of the men of this tribe wear a ring in their noses, like the women, but this seems to be going slowly out of fashion. We were told that the men have as many wives as they choose to take, and that they are not always careful to properly discriminate between other men’s and their own, an act of dereliction from propriety which is, however, by no means confined to savage life. A great laxity in morals is also said to prevail among most of the tribes from Behring Strait southward to the Aleutian group of islands. Let us not, however, be too censorious in judging them; if their virtues are found to be in the minority, is not this also the case with most communities which boast the elevating advantages of culture and civilization?