About Nine O'clock We Arrived At The Gold Camp, Where We Found Mr.
Young Ready To Go On With Us The Next Morning, And Thus Ended Two Of
The Brightest And Best Of All My Alaska Days.
Chapter XV
From Taku River to Taylor Bay
I never saw Alaska looking better than it did when we bade farewell
to Sum Dum on August 22 and pushed on northward up the coast toward
Taku. The morning was clear, calm, bright - not a cloud in all the
purple sky, nor wind, however gentle, to shake the slender spires of
the spruces or dew-laden grass around the shores. Over the mountains
and over the broad white bosoms of the glaciers the sunbeams poured,
rosy as ever fell on fields of ripening wheat, drenching the forests
and kindling the glassy waters and icebergs into a perfect blaze of
colored light. Every living thing seemed joyful, and nature's work
was going on in glowing enthusiasm, not less appreciable in the deep
repose that brooded over every feature of the landscape, suggesting
the coming fruitfulness of the icy land and showing the advance that
has already been made from glacial winter to summer. The care-laden
commercial lives we lead close our eyes to the operations of God as a
workman, though openly carried on that all who will look may see. The
scarred rocks here and the moraines make a vivid showing of the old
winter-time of the glacial period, and mark the bounds of the
mer-de-glace that once filled the bay and covered the surrounding
mountains. Already that sea of ice is replaced by water, in which
multitudes of fishes are fed, while the hundred glaciers lingering
about the bay and the streams that pour from them are busy night and
day bringing in sand and mud and stones, at the rate of tons every
minute, to fill it up. Then, as the seasons grow warmer, there will
be fields here for the plough.
Our Indians, exhilarated by the sunshine, were garrulous as the gulls
and plovers, and pulled heartily at their oars, evidently glad to get
out of the ice with a whole boat.
"Now for Taku," they said, as we glided over the shining water.
"Good-bye, Ice-Mountains; good-bye, Sum Dum." Soon a light breeze
came, and they unfurled the sail and laid away their oars and began,
as usual in such free times, to put their goods in order, unpacking
and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has an old
flintlock musket suggestive of Hudson's Bay times, which he wished to
discharge and reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at
a gull that was flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell
slowly with outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping
from its bill. I asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed
the question by a severe reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to which
he could offer no other excuse than that he had learned from the
whites to be careless about taking life.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 120 of 163
Words from 62696 to 63215
of 85542
