Part 48 (1/2)
I went up the companionway and stepped out upon the deck; and there in the north, across the blue, mist-softened sea, in the rich splendor of an Aleutian sunset, trembled and glowed the exquisite thing of my desire.
In the absolute perfection of its conical form, its chaste and delicate beauty of outline, and the slender column of smoke pus.h.i.+ng up from its finely pointed crest, s.h.i.+shaldin stands alone. Its height is not great, only nine thousand feet; but in any company of loftier mountains it would s.h.i.+ne out with a peerlessness that would set it apart.
The sunset trembled upon the North Pacific Ocean, changing hourly as the evening wore on. Through scarlet and purple and gold, the mountain shone; through lavender, pearl, and rose; growing ever more distant and more dim, but not less beautiful. At last, it could barely be seen, in a flood of rich violet mist, just touched with rose.
So steadily I looked, and with such a longing pa.s.sion of greeting, rapture, possession, and farewell in my gaze and in my heart, that lo!
when its last outline had blurred lingeringly and sweetly into the rose-violet mist, I found that it was painted in all its delicacy of outline and soft splendor of coloring upon my memory. There it burns to-day in all its loveliness as vividly as it burned that night, ere it faded, line by line, across the widening sea. It is mine. I own it as surely as I own the green hill upon which I live, the blue sea that sparkles daily beneath my windows, the gold-brilliant constellations that move nightly above my home, or the song that the meadow-lark sings to his mate in the April dawn.
The sea breaks into surf upon s.h.i.+shaldin's base, and snow covers the slender cone from summit to sea level, save for a month or two in summer when it melts around the base. Owing to the mists, it is almost impossible to obtain a sharp negative of s.h.i.+shaldin from the water.
They played with it constantly. They wrapped soft rose-colored scarfs about its crest; they wound girdles of purple and gold and pearl about its middle; they set rayed gold upon it, like a crown. Now and then, for a few seconds at a time, they drew away completely, as if to contemplate its loveliness; and then, as if overcome and compelled by its dazzling brilliance, they flung themselves back upon it impetuously and crushed it for several moments completely from our view.
Large and small, the islands of the Aleutian Archipelago number about one hundred. They drift for nearly fifteen hundred miles from the point of the Aliaska Peninsula toward the Kamchatkan sh.o.r.e; and Attu, the last one, lies within the eastern hemisphere. This chain of islands, reaching as far west as the Komandorski, or Commander, Islands--upon one of which Commander Behring died and was buried--was named, in 1786, the Catherina Archipelago, by Forster, in honor of the liberal and enlightened Empress Catherine the Second, of Russia.
The Aleutian Islands are divided into four groups. The most westerly are Nearer, or Blizni, Islands, of which the famed Attu is the largest; the next group to eastward is known as Rat, or Kreesi, Islands; then, Andreanoffski Islands, named for Andreanoff, who discovered them, and whose largest island is Atka, where it is said the baskets known as the Attu baskets are now woven.
East of this group are the Fox, or Leesi, Islands. This is the largest of the four Aleutian groups, and contains thirty-one islands, including Unimak, which is the largest in the archipelago. Others of importance in this group are Unalaska, formerly spelled Unalashka; Umnak; Akutan; Akhun; Ukamak; and the famed volcano islands of St. John the Theologian, or Joanna Bogoslova, and the Four Craters. Unimak Pa.s.s, the best known and most used pa.s.sage into Behring Sea, is between Unimak and Akhun islands. Akutan Pa.s.s is between Akutan and Unalaska islands; Umnak Pa.s.s, between Unalaska and Umnak islands. (These _u_'s are p.r.o.nounced as though spelled _oo_.)
Unalaska and Dutch Harbor are situated on the Island of Unalaska. By the little flower-bordered path leading up and down the green, velvety hills, these two settlements are fully two miles apart; by water, they seem scarcely two hundred yards from one another. The steamer, after landing at Dutch Harbor, draws her prow from the wharf, turns it gently around a green point, and lays it beside the wharf at Unalaska.
The bay is so surrounded by hills that slope softly to the water, that one can scarcely remember which blue water-way leads to the sea. There is a curving white beach, from which the town of Unalaska received its ancient name of Iliuliuk, meaning ”the beach that curves.” The white-painted, red-roofed buildings follow this beach, and loiter picturesquely back over the green level to the stream that flows around the base of the hills and finds the sea at the Unalaska wharf.
This is one of the safest harbors in the world. It is one great, sparkling sapphire, set deep in solid emerald and pearl. It is entered more beautifully than even the Bay of Sitka. It is completely surrounded by high mountains, peak rising behind peak, and all covered with a thick, green, velvety nap and crowned with eternal pearl.
The entrance way is so winding that these peaks have the appearance of leaning aside to let us slide through, and then drawing together behind us, to keep out the storms; for s.h.i.+ps of the heaviest draught find refuge here and lie safely at anchor while tempests rage outside.
Now and then, between two enchantingly green near peaks, a third s.h.i.+nes out white, far, glistening mistily--covered with snow from summit to base, but with a dark scarf of its own internal pa.s.sion twisted about its outwardly serene brow.
The _Kuro Siwo_, or j.a.pan Current, breaks on the western end of the Aleutian Chain; half flows eastward south of the islands, and carries with it the warm, moist atmosphere which is condensed on the snow-peaks and sinks downward in the fine and delicious mist that gives the gra.s.s and mosses their vivid, brilliant, perpetual green. The other half pa.s.ses northward into Behring Sea and drives the ice back into the ”Frozen Ocean.” Dall was told that the whalers in early spring have seen large icebergs steadily sailing northward through the strait at a knot and a half an hour, against a very stiff breeze from the north. In May the first whalers follow the Kamchatkan Coast northward, as the ice melts on that sh.o.r.e earlier than on ours. The first whaler to pa.s.s East Cape secures the spring trade and the best catch of whales.
The color of the _Kuro Siwo_ is darker than the waters through which it flows, and its j.a.panese name signifies ”Black Stream.” Pa.s.sing on down the coast, it carries a warm and vivifying moisture as far southwest as Oregon. It gives the Aleutians their balmy climate. The average winter temperature is about thirty degrees above zero; and the summer temperature, from fifty to sixty degrees.
The volcano Makus.h.i.+n is the noted ”smoker” of this island, and there is a hot spring, containing sulphur, in the vicinity, from which loud, cannon-like reports are frequently heard. The natives believe that the mountains fought together and that Makus.h.i.+n remained the victor. These reports were probably supposed to be fired at his command, as warnings of his fortified position to any inquisitive peak that might chance to fire a lava interrogation-point at him.
In June, and again in October, of 1778, Cook visited the vicinity, anchoring in Samghanooda Harbor. There he was visited by the commander of the Russian expedition in this region, Gregorovich Ismaloff. The usual civilities and gifts were exchanged. Cook sent the Russian some liquid gifts which were keenly appreciated, and was in return offered a sea-otter skin of such value that Cook courteously declined it, accepting, instead, some dried fish and several baskets of lily root.
The Russian settlement was at Iliuliuk, which was distant several miles from Samghanooda. Several of the members of Cook's party visited the settlement, notably Corporal Ledyard, who reported that it consisted of a dwelling-house and two storehouses, about thirty Russians, and a number of Kamchatkans and natives who were used as servants by the Russians. They all lived in the same houses, but ate at three different tables.
Cook considered the natives themselves the most gentle and inoffensive people he had ever ”met with” in his travels; while as to honesty, ”they might serve as a pattern to the most civilized nation upon earth.” He was convinced, however, that this disposition had been produced by the severities at first practised upon them by the Russians in an effort to subdue them.
Cook described them as low of stature, but plump and well-formed, dark-eyed, and dark-haired. The women wore a single garment, loose-fitting, of sealskin, reaching below the knee--the parka; the men, the same kind of garment, made of the skin of birds, with the feathers worn against the flesh. Over this garment, the men wore another made of gut, which I have elsewhere described under the name of kamelinka, or kamelayka. All wore ”oval-snouted” caps made of wood, dyed in colors and decorated with gla.s.s beads.
The women punctured their lips and wore bone labrets. ”It is as uncommon, at Oonalashka, to see a man with this ornament as to see a woman without it,” he adds.
The chief was seen making his dinner of the raw head of a large halibut.
Two of his servants ate the gills, which were cleaned simply ”by squeezing out the slime.” The chief devoured large pieces of the raw meat with as great satisfaction as though they had been raw oysters.