I Left Fort Wrangell The 16th Of August, Accompanied By Mr. Young, In
A Canoe About Twenty-Five Feet Long And Five Wide, Carrying Two Small
Square Sails And Manned By Two Stickeen Indians - Captain Tyeen And
Hunter Joe - And A Half-Breed Named Smart Billy.
The day was calm, and
bright, fleecy, clouds hung about the lowest of the mountain-brows,
while far above
The clouds the peaks were seen stretching grandly
away to the northward with their ice and snow shining in as calm a
light as that which was falling on the glassy waters. Our Indians
welcomed the work that lay before them, dipping their oars in exact
time with hearty good will as we glided past island after island
across the delta of the Stickeen into Soutchoi Channel.
By noon we came in sight of a fleet of icebergs from Hutli Bay. The
Indian name of this icy fiord is Hutli, or Thunder Bay, from the
sound made by the bergs in falling and rising from the front of the
inflowing glacier.
As we floated happily on over the shining waters, the beautiful
islands, in ever-changing pictures, were an unfailing source of
enjoyment; but chiefly our attention was turned upon the mountains.
Bold granite headlands with their feet in the channel, or some
broad-shouldered peak of surpassing grandeur, would fix the eye, or
some one of the larger glaciers, with far-reaching tributaries
clasping entire groups of peaks and its great crystal river pouring
down through the forest between gray ridges and domes. In these grand
picture lessons the day was spent, and we spread our blankets beneath
a Menzies spruce on moss two feet deep.
Next morning we sailed around an outcurving bank of boulders and sand
ten miles long, the terminal moraine of a grand old glacier on which
last November we met a perilous adventure. It is located just
opposite three large converging glaciers which formerly united to
form the vanished trunk of the glacier to which the submerged moraine
belonged. A few centuries ago it must have been the grandest feature
of this part of the coast, and, so well preserved are the monuments
of its greatness, the noble old ice-river may be seen again in
imagination about as vividly as if present in the flesh, with
snow-clouds crawling about its fountains, sunshine sparkling on its
broad flood, and its ten-mile ice-wall planted in the deep waters of
the channel and sending off its bergs with loud resounding thunder.
About noon we rounded Cape Fanshawe, scudding swiftly before a fine
breeze, to the delight of our Indians, who had now only to steer and
chat. Here we overtook two Hoona Indians and their families on their
way home from Fort Wrangell. They had exchanged five sea-otter furs,
worth about a hundred dollars apiece, and a considerable number of
fur-seal, land-otter, marten, beaver, and other furs and skins, some
$800 worth, for a new canoe valued at eighty dollars, some flour,
tobacco, blankets, and a few barrels of molasses for the manufacture
of whiskey.
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