Then, From The Same Generous
Hands, Came A Third Gift, - A Large Milk-Panful Of Huckleberries And
Grease Boiled Together,
- And, strange to say, this wonderful mess
went smoothly down to rest on the broad and deep salmon foundation.
Thus
Refreshed, and appetite sharpened, my sturdy crew made haste to
begin on the buck, beans, bread, etc., and, boiling and roasting,
managed to get comfortably full on but little more than half of it by
sundown, making a good deal of sport of my pity for the deer and
refusing to eat any of it and nicknaming me the ice ancou and the
deer and duck's tillicum.
Sunday was a wild, driving, windy day with but little rain but big
promise of more. I took a walk back in the woods. The timber here is
very fine, about as large as any I have seen in Alaska, much better
than farther north. The Sitka spruce and the common hemlock, one
hundred and fifty and two hundred feet high, are slender and
handsome. The Sitka spruce makes good firewood even when green, the
hemlock very poor. Back a little way from the sea, there was a good
deal of yellow cedar, the best I had yet seen. The largest specimen
that I saw and measured on the trip was five feet three inches in
diameter and about one hundred and forty feet high. In the evening
Mr. Young gave the Indians a lesson, calling in our Indian neighbors.
He told them the story of Christ coming to save the world. The
Indians wanted to know why the Jews had killed him. The lesson was
listened to with very marked attention. Toyatte's generous friend
caught a devil-fish about three feet in diameter to add to his stores
of food. It would be very good, he said, when boiled in berry and
colicon-oil soup. Each arm of this savage animal with its double row
of button-like suction discs closed upon any object brought within
reach with a grip nothing could escape. The Indians tell me that
devil-fish live mostly on crabs, mussels, and clams, the shells of
which they easily crunch with their strong, parrot-like beaks. That
was a wild, stormy, rainy night. How the rain soaked us in our tents!
"Just feel that," said the minister in the night, as he took my hand
and plunged it into a pool about three inches deep in which he was
lying.
"Never mind," I said, "it is only water. Everything is wet now. It
will soon be morning and we will dry at the fire."
Our Indian neighbors were, if possible, still wetter. Their hut had
been blown down several times during the night. Our tent leaked
badly, and we were lying in a mossy bog, but around the big camp-fire
we were soon warm and half dry. We had expected to reach Wrangell by
this time. Toyatte said the storm might last several days longer. We
were out of tea and coffee, much to Mr. Young's distress.
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