Part 26 (2/2)

The fiord is so narrow that the tops of the high snow mountains have the appearance of overhanging their bases; and to the canoeist floating down the slender, translucent water-way, this effect adds to the austerity of the scene.

Captains of regular steamers are frequently offered good prices to make a side trip up Yakutat Bay to the beginning of Disenchantment; but owing to the dangers of its comparatively uncharted waters, they usually decline with vigor.

One who would penetrate into this exquisitely beautiful, lone, and enchanted region must trust himself to a long canoe voyage and complete isolation from his kind. But what recompense--what life-rememberable joy!

Each country has its spell; but none is so great as the spell of this lone and splendid land. It is too sacred for any light word of pen or lip. The spell of Alaska is the spell of G.o.d; and it holds all save the basest, whether they acknowledge it or deny. Here are sphinxes and pyramids built of century upon century's snow; the pale green thunder of the cataract; the roar of the avalanche and the glacier's compelling march; the flow of mighty rivers; the unbroken silences that swim from snow mountain to snow mountain; and the rose of sunset whose petals float and fade upon mountain and sea.

As one sails past these mountains days upon days, they seem to lean apart and withdraw in pearly aloofness, that others more beautiful and more remote may dawn upon the enraptured beholder's sight. For hundreds of miles up and down the coast, and for hundreds into the interior, they rise in full view from the ocean which breaks upon the nearer ones. At sunrise and at sunset each is wrapped in a different color from the others, each in its own light, its own glory--caused by its own peculiar shape and its position among the others.

While the steamer lies at Yakutat pa.s.sengers may, if they desire, walk through the forest to the old village, where there is an ancient Thlinkit settlement. There is a new one at the new town. The tents and cabins climb picturesquely among the trees and ferns from the water up a steep hill.

In 1880 there was a great gold excitement at Yakutat. Gold was discovered in the black-sand beaches. A number of mining camps were there until the late 'eighties, and by the use of rotary hand amalgamators, men were able to clean up forty dollars a day.

The bay was flooded by a tidal wave which left the beach covered with fish. The oil deposited by their decay prevented the action of the mercury, and the camp was abandoned.

The sea is now restoring the black sand, and a second Nome may one day spring up on these hills in a single night.

As I have said elsewhere, the Yakutat women are among the finest basket weavers of the coast. A finely twined Yakutat basket, however small it may be, is a prize; but the bottom should be woven as finely and as carefully as the body of the basket. Some of the younger weavers make haste by weaving the bottom coa.r.s.ely, which detracts from both its artistic and commercial value.

The instant the end of the gangway touches the wharf at Yakutat, the gayly-clad, dark-eyed squaws swarm aboard. They settle themselves noiselessly along the promenade decks, disposing their baskets, bracelets, carved horn spoons, totem-poles, inlaid lamps, and beaded moccasins about them.

If, during the hours of animated barter that follow, one or two of the women should disappear, the wise woman-pa.s.senger will saunter around the s.h.i.+p and take a look into her stateroom, to make sure that all is well; else, when she does return to it, she may miss silver-backed mirrors, bottles of lavender water, bits of jewellery that may have been carelessly left in sight, pretty collars--and even waists and hats--to say nothing of the things which she may later on find.

These poor dark people were born thieves; and neither the little education they have received, nor the treatment accorded them by the majority of white people with whom they have been brought into contact, has served to wean them entirely from the habits and the instincts of centuries.

At Yakutat, no matter how much good sound sense he may possess, the traveller parts with many large silver dollars. He thinks of Christmas, and counts his friends on one hand, then on the other; then over again, on both.

When the steamer has whistled for the sixth time to call in the wandering pa.s.sengers, and the captain is on the bridge; when the last squaw has pigeon-toed herself up the gangway, flirting her gay shawl around her and chuckling and clucking over the gullibility of the innocent white people; when the last strain from the phonograph in the big store on the hill has died across the violet water widening between the sh.o.r.e and the withdrawing s.h.i.+p--the spendthrift pa.s.senger retires to his cabin and finds the berths overflowing and smelling to heaven with Indian things. Then--too late--he sits down, anywhere, and reflects.

The western sh.o.r.e of Yakutat Bay is bounded by the largest glacier in the world--the Malaspina. It has a sea-frontage of more than sixty miles extending from the bay ”to Westward”; and the length of its splendid sweep from its head to the sea at the foot of Mount St. Elias is ninety miles.

For one whole day the majestic mountain and its beautiful companion peaks were in sight of the steamer, before the next range came into view. The sea breaks sheer upon the ice-palisades of the glacier.

Icebergs, pale green, pale blue, and rose-colored, march out to meet and, bowing, pa.s.s the s.h.i.+p.

One cannot say that he knows what beauty is until he has cruised leisurely past this glacier, with the mountains rising behind it, on a clear day, followed by a moonlit night.

On one side are miles on miles of violet ocean sweeping away into limitless s.p.a.ce, a fleck of sunlight flas.h.i.+ng like a fire-fly in every hollowed wave; on the other, miles on miles of glistening ice, crowned by peaks of softest snow.

At sunset warm purple mists drift in and settle over the glacier; above these float banks of deepest rose; through both, and above them, glimmer the mountains pearlily, in a remote loveliness that seems not of earth.

But by moonlight to see the glacier streaming down from the mountains and out into the ocean, into the midnight--silent, opaline, majestic--is worth ten years of dull, ordinary living.

It is as if the very face of G.o.d shone through the silence and the sublimity of the night.

CHAPTER XXI

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