Picturesque California and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, from Alaska to Mexico.

On Burrow\u27s Bay. ALASKA. The great wilderness of Alaska, with its lofty mountains laden with glaciers and snow, its deep in-reaching fiords and flowery plains, and its boundless wealth of evergreen forests and islands, and shining, singing waters, offers a glorious field for lovers of fountain beauty, much of which is now within easy reach of the ordinary traveler. The trip by steamer from Puget Sound to the head of the Alexander Archipelago is perfectly enchanting. Leaving scientific interests entirely out of the count, no excursion that I know of may be made into any other portion of the wilds of America where so much fine and grand and novel scenery is so freely unfolded to view. Gazing from the deck of the steamer one is borne smoothly over calm blue waters, on and on through the midst of a thousand islands densely clothed ; with well-watered evergreens. The common discomforts of a sea-voyage are not felt, because the ] way is through a network of sheltered channels that are usually about as free as rivers are from heaving waves, and were it not for the brimy odor in the air and the strip of brown alga seen at low tide on either shore, it would be difficult to realize that we are sailing on salt ocean water; we seem rather to be tracing a succession of inland glacier-lakes. Day after day we float in the ; heart of true fairyland, each succeeding view seeming more and more beautiful. Never, before making this trip, have I found myself embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description. To sketch picturesque bits definitely bounded is comparatively an eas}\u27- task— a lake in the woods, a glacier meadow, a cascade in its dell, or even a grand mountain landscape J beheld from some clear outlook after climbing from height to height through veiling forests, these ; may be attempted and some picture more or less telling made of them; for in them we find place | for beginnings, starting from which we may make efforts that we may hope to conclude. But in this f web of scenery embroidering the northern coast there is such indefinite expansiveness, so great a [multitude of features without any redundance that may be slighted or left out, so varied and at the \u27same time so similar, their lines graduating delicately into one another in endless succession; while ithe whole is so. fine, so tender, so ethereal in light and shade, that any pen-work seems coarse and 194 Picturesque California. J unavailing. Tracing the shining ways through sound and strait, past forest and waterfall, island and mountain and far azure headland, it seems as if we must surely at length reach the very par- j adlse of poets, the abode of the blessed. Here you glide into a narrow channel hemmed in with mountains that are forested down to the water\u27s edge. There is no distant view, and the attention is held to the objects close about. I The forests are closely planted like a field of wheat, the steep slopes on which they are growing permitting almost every individual tree to be seen rising above one another like the individuals in an audience,—the blue-green sharply tapered spires of the Menzies spruce, the warm yellow-green j Merten spruces with their finger-like tops all pointing in the same direction or drooping gracefully like leaves of grass, and the airy, feathery brownish-green Alaska cedar, blending in harmony; lichens and mosses on the branches, a fringe of bushes along the shores. Gaps of paler green are seen where winter avalanches have cleared away the trees and on the higher summits, revealing hollows with snow in the shadows, the fountains of ancient glaciers, and short steep glens carrying cascading streams that are mostly hidden beneath fringes of dogwood and alder, showing white here and there where they leap sheer mossy cliffs, or unseen until they emerge on the brown algae of the shore. Perchance a few ducks shoot past over-head, a bald eagle may be seen leisurely dressing his feathers on the top of a dead spar, or a loon is heard uttering its intensely lonely cry, all the scenery being made up of wildness as closely shut in and withdrawn as the wildness of mountains. In the meantime the steamer may be so near the shore that you may almost reach the purple 1 H cones of the spruces as you pass. But new scenes are brought into the view with magical rapidity. 1 Rounding some bossy cape the eye is called away into far-reached vistas bounded by finely curved | headlands in charming array, one dipping gracefully beyond the other and growing fainter and more ! ethereal in the distance. The tranquil channel up which you are sailing stretches river-like between, 1 stirred here and there by the flashes of leaping salmon that rise a foot or two above the water J like vivid jets of silver, and by flocks of white gulls that float like lilies among the sun-spangles; 1 while the cool white sunshine, sifting over all, blends sky, land and water, in pale misty blue. 1 Then, while you are gazing with vague, dreamy longing into the depths of this leafy ocean lane j the steamer, turning into some hitherto unseen passage, glides through into a wide expanse, a sound 1 filled with islands sprinkled or clustered in forms and compositions such as only Nature can invent, jj Some sheer-faced, plunge abruptly into the blue prairie of brine; others are rounded off in smooth \ I convex brows, or with hollow curves terminate in level points tipped with sedge. Some are so small J that the trees growing on them seem like mere handfuls culled from the neighboring woods and 1 set in the water to keep them fresh, while here and there at wide intervals you may notice a bare 1 detached rock just above the water, like a black dot punctuating the end of a full outswelliug g sentence of islands, every line of which is reflected in the mirror water, form and meaning duplicated. I The variety we find, both as to the contours and collocation of the land masses in the green 1 archipelago, is due mainly to differences in the structure and composition of the rocks out of which 1 they are made and the unequal amount of glaciation different portions of the landscape have received, some sections having been deeply chiselled by the influx of large, steeply inclined glaciers from the mountains of the mainland. Especially heavy was this influence toward the close of the Glacier Period, when the general ice-sheet, moving in a direction nearly parallel with the trend of the coast, was beginning to fail, allowing the local glaciers from the mountains to push farther out to sea. And again, the higher mountains of the islands nourished small lingering glaciers which sculptured their summits and sides, giving rise in some instances to amphitheatres of considerable size with canons or valleys leading down from them to the sea. These causes have produced much of the obscuring variety of which Nature seems so fond, but none the less will the studious observer see the underlying harmony, the general trend of the islands in the direction of the flow of the ice-sheet, nearly parallel to the coast-line where the influence of local glaciers from the mainland was light, and in an oblique direction where the local influence was the greatest. Furthermore all the islands, great and small, as well as the headlands and promontories of the mainland, are seen to have a rounded, over-rubbed appearance, a finish free from angles, produced by the over-sweeping ice-flood during the period of glacial abundance, delicate complying harmony being everywhere apparent in broad generalizations. Picturesque California. 195 The canals, channels, straits, passages and sounds are of course subordinate in size and trend to the same forces as the land-masses and differ from them only in being portions of the general pre-glacial margin of the continent more deeply eroded and covered with the ocean Avaters, which floAved into them as the ice was melted out of them. Had the general glacial degradation been greatly less, then these ocean-ways Avould have been valleys, and the islands bounding them avouM haAe been rounded hills and ridges, forming landscapes Avith undulating features, like those found above the sea-level Avherever the rocks and glacial conditions have been similar. The extension of the domain of the sea in connection Avith glacial action has not yet ceased in Alaska. In many a mountain-Availed fiord of the mainland the advance of the waters may still be seen, beating against the crystal fronts of the glaciers, pressing sloAvly inland and taking possession inch by inch, century after century, as the shrinking glaciers withdraAV in compliance Avith conditions of climate sloAvly changing. Shaak\u27s House, Fort Wrangel. In a general way these inland-bound channels of the Archipelago are like rivers, not only in separate reaches as seen from the deck of a ship but for hundreds of miles in the case of the longest of them; the tide-currents, the fresh drift-AVOod brought down by avalanches, the inflowing tributary land-streams and luxuriant over-leaning foliage of the banks making the resemblance all the more complete. But their courses are more direct than those of rivers, because of the steadiness of the flow of the ice-sheet of which they Avere born. The largest of the islands are continents in effect from Avhate\-er direction they may be viewed, but far the greater number are small and appreciable as islands, hundreds of them being less than a mile in length, dotting the shining levels in perennial beauty. In their relations to each other the individual members of a group have evidently been derived from our rock-mass, yet they seldom seem broken or abridged in any Avay as to their lines of contour howeA\u27er abruptly they may dip their fronts. VieAved one by one they seem detached beauties, like extracts from a fine poem, while from the completeness of their lines and their individual ornamentation Avith trees, each 196 Picturesque California. seems a finished stanza in itself. In contemplating the arrangement of the trees a distinct impression is produced of their having been sorted and harmonized as to size and correlation like a well- balanced bouquet. In some of the smaller tufted islets a group of tapering spruces is planted in the middle, and tAvo smaller groups corresponding Avith each other are planted on the ends at about equal distances from the central group. Or the Avhole forms one group Avith marked fringing trees that match each other, spreading around the sides like flowers leaning outAvard against the rim of a vase. These harmonious relations in the island Avoods are so constant that they evidently are T \u27Gazing from the deck of the Steamer one is borne smoothly over calm Blue Waters.\u27 the result of design, as much so as the arrangement of the feathers of a bird or the scales of a fish. Thus thoughtfully beautiful are these blessed islands, and their beauty is the beauty of youth. For though the freshness of their verdure must be attributed to the copious moisture in Avhich they are bathed from the Avarm ocean current coming from the sunny fountains of Japan, the portion of the Japan current that bathes these shores is itself young; Avhile the very existence of the islands, their features, finish, and peculiar distribution, are all immediately referable to the creative action of floAving ice during the great Avinter of the Glacial Period just uoav drawing to a close. The first Important stop made by the Alaska steamers after coaling at Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, is usually at Fort Wrangel, the distance betAveen the tAvo points being about six hundred miles. The toAvn of Wrangel is situated on Wrangel Island, near the mouth of the Stikeen River. It is a miry, dilapidated, forbidding place, but has many advantages, particularly as a center from which excursions may be made to some of the most interesting portions of the country. Its grim boulder-like huts and houses, varying Avildly in size and shape, are built in a Avrangling, angling fashion around the boggy shore of the harbor for a mile or so, Avithout manifesting the slightest subordination to the points of the compass or to building laAvs of any kind. Stumps and logs block the two crooked streets of the settlement, each stump and log, by reason of the dampness of the climate, moss-groAvn and grass-tufted on the top, but muddy and decaying at the bottom where the hogs, which do most of the street Avork of the place, have dressed against them. These picturesque obstructions, hoAvever, are not much in the way, as no Avheel of carriage or wagon ever turns here. At the time of my last visit there Avas not a horse on the island. Indians, mostly of the Stikeen tribe, occupy the two ends of the toAvn, the feAV whites the middle portion; but there is no determinate line of demarcation between them, the dwellings of the natives being mostly as large and as solidly built of logs as those of the Avhites. The fort is a quadrangular stockade Avith a dozen block and frame buildings located on rising ground just back Picturesque California. 197 Old Fort Wrangel, X of the business portion of the toAvn. It was built shortly after the purchase of Alaska in 1867, but in a feAv years Avas abandoned and sold to private parties. Wrangel is a tranquil place. During a residence of several months I never heard a noisy braAvl among the people, or a stormy Avind in the streets, or a clap of thunder, or anything like a storm-sound in the waves along the beach. During the summer the abundant rains come straight down into the lush vegetation steamy and tepid. The clouds are usually united, filling all the sky, not racing in threatening ranks suggesting energy of a destructive kind, but settling down in the form of a bland, muffling poultice. The clear days are usually intensely calm, gray and brooding, inclining one to dreamy meditation. The islands seem to float and droAvse on the glassy Avaters, and in the Avoods every tree is at rest. But the very brightest of Wrangel days are not what Californians would call bright, for the sunshine is tempered in sifting through the moisture-laden atmosphere, preventing glare and dazzling brilliancy except under rare conditions. After sunrise a few smoke columns may be seen rising languidly to tell of the first stir of the people. Then an Indian or two may be noticed here and there at the doors of their big barn-like cabins, or a merchant getting ready for trade; but scarcely a definite sound is heard, only a muffled stir Avhich gradually deepens. Later you may hear the strokes of an axe on fireAvood and the croaking of ravens. About eight or nine o\u27clock the toAvn is generally aAvake and in its boots and boats. Indians, mostly Avomen and children, begin to gather on the front platforms of the half-dozen stores, sitting carelessly in their blankets, every other face blackened hideously, a naked circle about the eyes, and perhaps a spot over each cheek-bone and on the tip of the nose where the smut has been weathered off. Some of the children also are blackened, and none are OA-erclad. The larger girls and young Avomen are brilliantly arrayed in calico and ribbons and shine among the blackened and blanketed old crones like tanagers among blackbirds. Most of the Avomen have berries to sell, basketfuls of huckleberries, red and black, and the large yellow salmon berries and bog raspberries, looking fresh and clean, in striking relief to the surrounding squalor. They sit and wait in patience for purchasers until hungry; then if they cannot sell their berries they wisely eat them and go to the hillside back of the town and gather more. Yonder you see a canoe gliding out from the shore containing perhaps a man, a Avoman, and a child or two, all paddling together in easy rhythm. They are going to catch a fish, no difficult matter, and Avhen that is done their day\u27s vork is over. Another party is putting out to glean driftwood, to procure fuel in this Avay being easier than to drag it down through the bushes from the edge of the Avoods. As the day advances there is quite a fleet of canoes along the shore, all 1-98 Picturesque California. fashioned after one pattern, Avith high and long beak-like prows and sterns, and lines as fine as those about the breast of a wild duck. What the mustang is to the Mexican vaquero the canoe is to these coast Indians. They skim over the glassy sheltered Avaters to fish and hunt and trade, or merely to visit their neighbors. They exhibit much family pride and are extremely sociable, meeting frequently to inquire after one another\u27s health, to hold potlaches and dances, and to gossip concerning coming marriages, deaths, births, or the last murder, and Avhat number of blankets should be demanded as blood-money. Some seem to sail for the mere pleasure of the tiling and to keep themselves and the children in practice, their canoes decorated with handfuls of the purple epilobium. Yonder you may see a whole family, grandparents and all, making a direct course for some island or promontory five or six miles away. They are going to gather berries, as the baskets tell. NoAvhere else in my travels, north or south, have I found so lavish an abundance of wild berries. The Avoods and meadoAvs are full of them, along the banks of the glaciers on the mountains as well as on the loAvlands—huckleberries of many species, salmon berries, blackberries, raspberries, currants, and gooseberries, Avith straAvberries and service berries in the drier openings, and cranberries in the bogs, sufficient for every bird, beast and human being in the territory, and thousands of tons to spare. The huckleberries are specially abundant. Those that grow on the mountains, on bushes about a foot high, are the best. The berries of the commonest species are smaller and coATered Avith a dusty bluish bloom. The bushes are from three to six or seven feet high, and groAv almost everywhere about the margins of the Avoods. This is the species on which the Indians most depend, Avho gather them in large quantities, beating them into pulp, and pressing them into cakes about an inch thick for Avinter use. The salmon and service berries are preserved in the same Avay, the cakes being thoroughly dried before they are stored. The salmonberry is quite generally distributed through the opener portions of the forests and along stream banks, and when in bloom makes a glorious shoAv of rose-like floAvers. The berries are about an inch in diameter and so abundant that in many places a quart or more may be gathered without moving from the spot Avhere one is standing. Berries alone are sufficient to make a telling advertisement of the fruitfulness of this wilderness, Avithout the aid of the forests or fertile foodful Avaters. The climate of the islands and of that portion of the coast bathed by the warm Japan current is remarkably bland and temperate and free from extremes of heat or cold throughout the year. It is rainy, however, so much so that haymaking Avill not be extensively engaged in, Avhatever future developments may reveal, unless, as in some parts of NorAvay, artificial means of drying be resorted to. But even this rainy Aveather is good of its kind, mild in temperature, gentle in its fall, filling the fountains of the deep, cool rivers, feeding the luxuriant vegetation, and keeping the whole land fresh and fruitful; Avhile anything more delightful than the shining weather in the midst of the rain, the great round sun-days of June and July, can hardly be found elsewhere. An Alaskan midsummer day is a day without night. In the extreme northern part of the territory the sun does not set for Aveeks, and even as far south as Sitka at its loAvest point it is only a feAV degrees below the horizon, so that the colors of the sunset blend Avith those of the sunrise, leaving no gap of night-darkness between. What is called the midnight of divided days is here only a low noon, the middle point in the gloaming, Avith light enough to read by. The thiu clouds that are almost always present are then colored orange and red, marking in a very striking Avay the progress of the sun around the northern horizon. The day opens sloAvly, a Ioav arch of light steals round to the northeastward Avith gradual increase of height and span and intensity of tone; and Avhen at length the sun appears above the horizon it is without much of that stirring pomp, that flashing, awakening, triumphant energy so suggestive of the bible imagery—a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoicing like a strong man to run a race. The red clouds with yellow dissolving edges subside into a hazy dimness, the islands Avith ruffs of mist about them cast ill-defined shadoAvs on the glistening Avaters, and the Avhole firmament becomes pale pearl-gray. For three or four hours after sunrise there is nothing particularly impressive to be felt iu the landscape. The sun though seemingly unclouded may almost be looked in the face, and the islands and mountains, Avith all their Avealth of Avood and ice and varied beauty of nature\u27s architecture, seem comparatively dull and silent. Picturesque California. 199 As the day advances toAvard high noon the sun-flood streaming in full power through the damp atmosphere lights the Avater-levels and the sky to gloAving silver. Brightly play the ripples about the edges of the islands and over the plume-shaped streaks between them, stirred by some passing breeze. On the mountain and in the high-Availed fiords still grander is the Avork of the sunshine. The broad snoAvy bosoms of the glaciers gloAv in dense pressed Avhite, and their crystal fronts and the multitude of bergs that linger about them are kindled into a perfect blaze of irised light. The Avarm air throbs and makes itself felt as a life-giving, energizing ocean, embracing all the Avorld. No