With What Grateful
Enthusiasm The Trees Welcomed The Life-Giving Rain!
Strong, towering
spruces, hemlocks, and cedars tossed their arms, bowing, waving, in
every leap, quivering and rejoicing together in the gray, roaring
storm.
John and Charley put on their gun-coats and went hunting for
another deer, but returned later in the afternoon with clean hands,
having fortunately failed to shed any more blood. The wind still held
in the south, and Toyatte, grimly trying to comfort us, told us that
we might be held here a week or more, which we should not have minded
much, for we had abundance of provisions. Mr. Young and I shifted our
tent and tried to dry blankets. The wind moderated considerably, and
at 7 A.M. we started but met a rough sea and so stiff a wind we
barely succeeded in rounding the cape by all hands pulling their
best. Thence we struggled down the coast, creeping close to the
shore and taking advantage of the shelter of protecting rocks, making
slow, hard-won progress until about the middle of the afternoon, when
the sky opened and the blessed sun shone out over the beautiful
waters and forests with rich amber light; and the high, glacier-laden
mountains, adorned with fresh snow, slowly came to view in all their
grandeur, the bluish-gray clouds crawling and lingering and
dissolving until every vestige of them vanished. The sunlight made
the upper snow-fields pale creamy yellow, like that seen on the
Chilcat mountains the first day of our return trip. Shortly after the
sky cleared, the wind abated and changed around to the north, so that
we ventured to hoist our sail, and then the weary Indians had rest.
It was interesting to note how speedily the heavy swell that had been
rolling for the last two or three days was subdued by the
comparatively light breeze from the opposite direction. In a few
minutes the sound was smooth and no trace of the storm was left, save
the fresh snow and the discoloration of the water. All the water of
the sound as far as I noticed was pale coffee-color like that of the
streams in boggy woods. How much of this color was due to the inflow
of the flooded streams many times increased in size and number by the
rain, and how much to the beating of the waves along the shore
stirring up vegetable matter in shallow bays, I cannot determine. The
effect, however, was very marked.
About four o'clock we saw smoke on the shore and ran in for news. We
found a company of Taku Indians, who were on their way to Fort
Wrangell, some six men and about the same number of women. The men
were sitting in a bark hut, handsomely reinforced and embowered with
fresh spruce boughs. The women were out at the side of a stream,
washing their many bits of calico. A little girl, six or seven years
old, was sitting on the gravelly beach, building a playhouse of white
quartz pebbles, scarcely caring to stop her work to gaze at us.
Toyatte found a friend among the men, and wished to encamp beside
them for the night, assuring us that this was the only safe harbor to
be found within a good many miles. But we resolved to push on a
little farther and make use of the smooth weather after being
stormbound so long, much to Toyatte and his companion's disgust. We
rowed about a couple of miles and ran into a cozy cove where wood and
water were close at hand. How beautiful and homelike it was! plushy
moss for mattresses decked with red corner berries, noble spruce
standing guard about us and spreading kindly protecting arms. A few
ferns, aspidiums, polypodiums, with dewberry vines, coptis, pyrola,
leafless huckleberry bushes, and ledum grow beneath the trees. We
retired at eight o'clock, and just then Toyatte, who had been
attentively studying the sky, presaged rain and another southeaster
for the morrow.
The sky was a little cloudy next morning, but the air was still and
the water smooth. We all hoped that Toyatte, the old weather prophet,
had misread the sky signs. But before reaching Point Vanderpeut the
rain began to fall and the dreaded southeast wind to blow, which soon
increased to a stiff breeze, next thing to a gale, that lashed the
sound into ragged white caps. Cape Vanderpeut is part of the terminal
of an ancient glacier that once extended six or eight miles out from
the base of the mountains. Three large glaciers that once were
tributaries still descend nearly to the sea-level, though their
fronts are back in narrow fiords, eight or ten miles from the sound.
A similar point juts out into the sound five or six miles to the
south, while the missing portion is submerged and forms a shoal.
All the cape is forested save a narrow strip about a mile long,
composed of large boulders against which the waves beat with loud
roaring. A bar of foam a mile or so farther out showed where the
waves were breaking on a submerged part of the moraine, and I
supposed that we would be compelled to pass around it in deep water,
but Toyatte, usually so cautious, determined to cross it, and after
giving particular directions, with an encouraging shout every oar and
paddle was strained to shoot through a narrow gap. Just at the most
critical point a big wave heaved us aloft and dropped us between two
huge rounded boulders, where, had the canoe been a foot or two closer
to either of them, it must have been smashed. Though I had offered no
objection to our experienced pilot's plan, it looked dangerous, and I
took the precaution to untie my shoes so they could be quickly shaken
off for swimming. But after crossing the bar we were not yet out of
danger, for we had to struggle hard to keep from being driven ashore
while the waves were beating us broadside on.
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