One Of Our Men
Amused Himself By Seizing Them Above The Tail And Swinging Them Over
His Head.
Thousands could thus be taken by hand at low tide, while
they were making their way over the shallows among the stones.
Whatever may be said of other resources of the Territory, it is
hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of the fisheries. Not to
mention cod, herring, halibut, etc., there are probably not less than
a thousand salmon-streams in southeastern Alaska as large or larger
than this one (about forty feet wide) crowded with salmon several
times a year. The first run commenced that year in July, while the
king salmon, one of the five species recognized by the Indians, was
in the Chilcat River about the middle of the November before.
From this wonderful salmon-camp we sailed joyfully up the coast to
explore icy Sum Dum Bay, beginning my studies where I left off the
previous November. We started about six o'clock, and pulled merrily
on through fog and rain, the beautiful wooded shore on our right,
passing bergs here and there, the largest of which, though not over
two hundred feet long, seemed many times larger as they loomed gray
and indistinct through the fog. For the first five hours the sailing
was open and easy, nor was there anything very exciting to be seen or
heard, save now and then the thunder of a falling berg rolling and
echoing from cliff to cliff, and the sustained roar of cataracts.
About eleven o'clock we reached a point where the fiord was packed
with ice all the way across, and we ran ashore to fit a block of
wood on the cutwater of our canoe to prevent its being battered or
broken. While Captain Tyeen, who had had considerable experience
among berg ice, was at work on the canoe, Hunter Joe and Smart Billy
prepared a warm lunch.
The sheltered hollow where we landed seems to be a favorite
camping-ground for the Sum Dum seal-hunters. The pole-frames of
tents, tied with cedar bark, stood on level spots strewn with seal
bones, bits of salmon, and spruce bark.
We found the work of pushing through the ice rather tiresome. An
opening of twenty or thirty yards would be found here and there, then
a close pack that had to be opened by pushing the smaller bergs aside
with poles. I enjoyed the labor, however, for the fine lessons I got,
and in an hour or two we found zigzag lanes of water, through which
we paddled with but little interruption, and had leisure to study the
wonderful variety of forms the bergs presented as we glided past
them. The largest we saw did not greatly exceed two hundred feet in
length, or twenty-five or thirty feet in height above the water. Such
bergs would draw from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet of
water. All those that have floated long undisturbed have a projecting
base at the water-line, caused by the more rapid melting of the
immersed portion. When a portion of the berg breaks off, another base
line is formed, and the old one, sharply cut, may be seen rising at
all angles, giving it a marked character. Many of the oldest bergs
are beautifully ridged by the melting out of narrow furrows strictly
parallel throughout the mass, revealing the bedded structure of the
ice, acquired perhaps centuries ago, on the mountain snow fountains.
A berg suddenly going to pieces is a grand sight, especially when the
water is calm and no motion is visible save perchance the slow drift
of the tide-current. The prolonged roar of its fall comes with
startling effect, and heavy swells are raised that haste away in
every direction to tell what has taken place, and tens of thousands
of its neighbors rock and swash in sympathy, repeating the news over
and over again. We were too near several large ones that fell apart
as we passed them, and our canoe had narrow escapes. The
seal-hunters, Tyeen says, are frequently lost in these sudden berg
accidents.
In the afternoon, while we were admiring the scenery, which, as we
approached the head of the fiord, became more and more sublime, one
of our Indians called attention to a flock of wild goats on a
mountain overhead, and soon afterwards we saw two other flocks, at a
height of about fifteen hundred feet, relieved against the mountains
as white spots. They are abundant here and throughout the Alaskan
Alps in general, feeding on the grassy slopes above the timber-line.
Their long, yellowish hair is shed at this time of year and they were
snowy white. None of nature's cattle are better fed or better
protected from the cold. Tyeen told us that before the introduction
of guns they used to hunt them with spears, chasing them with their
wolf-dogs, and thus bringing them to bay among the rocks, where they
were easily approached and killed.
The upper half of the fiord is about from a mile to a mile and a half
wide, and shut in by sublime Yosemite cliffs, nobly sculptured, and
adorned with waterfalls and fringes of trees, bushes, and patches of
flowers; but amid so crowded a display of novel beauty it was not
easy to concentrate the attention long enough on any portion of it
without giving more days and years than our lives could afford. I was
determined to see at least the grand fountain of all this ice. As we
passed headland after headland, hoping as each was rounded we should
obtain a view of it, it still remained hidden.
"Ice-mountain hi yu kumtux hide," - glaciers know how to hide
extremely well, - said Tyeen, as he rested for a moment after rounding
a huge granite shoulder of the wall whence we expected to gain a view
of the extreme head of the fiord. The bergs, however, were less
closely packed and we made good progress, and at half-past eight
o'clock, fourteen and a half hours after setting out, the great
glacier came in sight at the head of a branch of the fiord that comes
in from the northeast.
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