While Our Messengers Were Away, I Climbed A Pure-White, Dome-Crowned
Mountain About Fifty-Five Hundred Feet High And Gained Noble Telling
Views To The Northward Of The Main Chilcat Glaciers And The Multitude
Of Mighty Peaks From Which They Draw Their Sources.
At a height of
three thousand feet I found a mountain hemlock, considerably dwarfed,
in company with Sitka spruce and the common hemlock, the tallest
about twenty feet high, sixteen inches in diameter.
A few stragglers
grew considerably higher, say at about four thousand feet. Birch and
two-leaf pine were common.
The messengers returned next day, bringing back word that we would
all be heartily welcomed excepting Toyatte; that the guns were loaded
and ready to be fired to welcome us, but that Toyatte, having
insulted a Chilcat chief not long ago in Wrangell, must not come.
They also informed us in their message that they were very busy
merrymaking with other visitors, Sitka Jack and his friends, but that
if we could get up to the village through the running ice on the
river, they would all be glad to see us; they had been drinking and
Kadachan's father, one of the principal chiefs, said plainly that he
had just waked up out of a ten days' sleep. We were anxious to make
this visit, but, taking the difficulties and untoward circumstances
into account, the danger of being frozen in at so late a time, while
Kadachan would not be able to walk back on account of a shot in his
foot, the danger also from whiskey, the awakening of old feuds on
account of Toyatte's presence, etc., we reluctantly concluded to
start back on the home journey at once. This was on Friday and a fair
wind was blowing, but our crew, who loved dearly to rest and eat in
these big hospitable houses, all said that Monday would be hyas klosh
for the starting-day. I insisted, however, on starting Saturday
morning, and succeeded in getting away from our friends at ten
o'clock. Just as we were leaving, the chief who had entertained us
so handsomely requested a written document to show that he had not
killed us, so in case we were lost on the way home he could not be
held accountable in any way for our death.
Chapter XII
The Return to Fort Wrangell
The day of our start for Wrangell was bright and the Hoon, the north
wind, strong. We passed around the east side of the larger island
which lies near the south extremity of the point of land between the
Chilcat and the Chilcoot channels and thence held a direct course
down the east shore of the canal. At sunset we encamped in a small
bay at the head of a beautiful harbor three or four miles south of
Berner's Bay, and the next day, being Sunday, we remained in camp as
usual, though the wind was fair and it is not a sin to go home.
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