Part 62 (1/2)
We were landed upon the wet sand and we waded through the tall wet gra.s.ses of the beach to the mission. At every step fresh swarms of mosquitoes rose from the gra.s.s and a.s.sailed us. A gentleman had sent us his mosquito hats. These were simply broad-brimmed felt hats, with the netting gathered about the crowns and a kind of harness fastening around the waist.
The governor had no protection; and never, I am sure, did any governor go forth to a reception and a ”programme” in his honor in such a frame of mind and with such an expression of torture as went that morning the governor of ”the great country.” It was a silent and dismal procession that moved up the flower-bordered walk to the mission--a procession of waving arms and flapping handkerchiefs. At a distance it must have resembled a procession of windmills in operation, rather than of human beings on their way to a reception in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle.
So ceaseless and so ferocious were the attacks of the mosquitoes that before the sleeping children were aroused and ready for their programme, my friend and I, notwithstanding the protection of the hats, yielded in sheer exhaustion, and, without apology or farewell, left the unfortunate governor to pay the penalty of greatness; left him to his reception and his programme; to the earnest priests, the smiling, sweet-faced sisters, and the little solemn-eyed Eskimo children.
This mission is cared for by the order of Jesuits. Two priests and several brothers and sisters reside there. Fifty or more children are cared for yearly,--educated and guided in ways of thrift, cleanliness, industry, and morality. They are instructed in all kinds of useful work.
About forty acres of land are in cultivation; the flowers and vegetables which we saw would attract admiration and wonder in any climate. The buildings were of logs, but were substantially built and attractive, each in its setting of brilliant bloom. How these sisters, these gentle and refined women, whose faces and manner unconsciously reveal superior breeding and position, can endure the daily and nightly tortures of the mosquitoes is inconceivable.
”They are not worth notice now,” one said, with her sweet and patient smile. ”Oh, no! You should come earlier if you would see mosquitoes.”
”Our religion, you know,” another said gently, ”helps us to bear all things that are not pleasant. In time one does not mind.”
In time one does not mind! It is another of the lessons of the Yukon; and reading, one stands ashamed. There those saintly beings spend their lives in G.o.d's service. Nothing save a divine faith could sustain a delicate woman to endure such ceaseless torment for three months in every year; and yet, like the lone woman at Nation, their faces tell us that we, rather than they, are for pity. The stars upon their brows are the white and blessed stars of peace.
The steamer lands at neither Russian Mission nor Andreaofsky; but at both may be seen, on gra.s.sy slopes, beautiful Greek churches, with green, pale blue, and yellow roofs, domes and bell-towers, chimes and glittering crosses.
Down where the mouth of the Yukon attains a width of sixty miles we ran upon a sand-bar early in the afternoon, and there we remained until nearly midnight. It was a weird experience. Dozens of natives in bidarkas surrounded our steamer, boarded our barges, and offered their inferior work for sale. The brown lads in reindeer parkas were bright-eyed and amiable. Cookies and gum sweetened the way to their little wild hearts, and they would hold our hands, cling to our skirts, and beg for ”more.”
A splendid, stormy sunset burned over those miles of water-threaded lowlands at evening. Rose and lavender mists rolled in from the sea, parted, and drifted away into the distances stretching on all sides; they huddled upon islands, covering them for a few moments, and then, withdrawing, leaving them drenched in sparkling emerald beauty in the vivid light; they coiled along the horizon, like peaks of rosy pearl; and they went sailing, like elfin shallops, down poppy-tinted water-ways. Everywhere overhead geese drew dark lines through the brilliant atmosphere, their mournful cries filling the upper air with the weird and lonely music of the great s.p.a.ces. Up and down the water-ways slid the bidarkas noiselessly; and along the sh.o.r.es the brown women moved among the willows and sedges, or stood motionless, staring out at their white sisters on the stranded boat. There were times when every one of the millions of sedges on island and sh.o.r.e seemed to flash out alone and apart, like a dazzling emerald lance quivering to strike.
They are dull of soul and dull of imagination who complain of monotony on the Yukon Flats. There is beauty for all that have eyes wherewith to see. It is the beauty of the desert; the beauty and the lure of wonderful distances, of marvellous lights and low skies, of dawns that are like blown roses, and as perfumed, and sunsets whose mists are as burning dust. When there is no color anywhere, there is still the haunting, compelling beauty that lies in distance alone. Vast s.p.a.ces are majestic and awesome; the eye goes into them as the thought goes into the realm of eternity--only to return, wearied out with the beauty and the immensity that forever end in the fathomless mist that lies on the far horizon's rim. It is a mist that nothing can pierce; vision and thought return from it upon themselves, only to go out again upon that mute and trembling quest which ceases not until life itself ceases.
The northernmost mouth of the Yukon has been called the Aphoon or Uphoon, ever since the advent of the Russians, and is the channel usually selected by steamers, the Kwikhpak lying next to it on the south. By sea-coast measurement the most northerly mouth is nearly a hundred miles from the most southerly, and five others between them a.s.sist in carrying the Yukon's gray, dull yellow, or rose-colored floods out into Behring Sea, whose shallow waters they make fresh for a long distance. It is not without hazard that the flat-bottomed river boats make the run to St. Michael; and the pilots of steamers crossing out anxiously scan the sea and relax not in vigilance until the port is entered.
CHAPTER XLIX
We were released from the sand-bar near midnight, and at eight o'clock on the following morning we steamed around a green and lovely point and entered Norton Sound, in whose curving blue arm lies storied St.
Michael.
St. Michael is situated on the island of the same name, about sixty miles north of the mouth of the Yukon. It was founded in 1833 by Michael Tebenkoff, and was originally named Michaelovski Redoubt. The Russian buildings were of spruce logs brought by sea from the Yukon and Kuskoquim rivers, as no timber grows in the vicinity of St. Michael or Nome. Some of the original Russian buildings yet remain,--notably, the storehouse and the redoubt. The latter is an hexagonal building of heavy hewn logs, with sloping roof, flagstaff, door, and port-holes. It stands upon the sh.o.r.e, within a dozen steps of the famous ”Cottage,”--the residence of the managers of the Northern Commercial Company, under whose hospitable roof every traveller of note has been entertained for many years,--and in front of it the sh.o.r.e slopes green to the water.
Inside lie half a dozen rusty Russian cannons, mutely testifying to the sanguinary past of the North.
The redoubt was attacked in 1836 by the hostile Unaligmuts of the vicinity, but it was successfully defended by Kurupanoff. The Russians had a temporary landing-place built out to deep water to accommodate boats drawing five feet; this was removed when ice formed in the bay.
The tundra is rolling, with numerous pools that flame like bra.s.s at sunset; only low willows and alders grow on the island and adjacent sh.o.r.es. The island is seven miles wide and twenty-five long, and is separated from the mainland by a tortuous channel, as narrow as fifty feet in places. The land gradually rises to low hills of volcanic origin near the centre of the island. These hills are called the Shaman Mountains. The meadow upon which the main part of the town and the buildings of the post are situated is as level as a vast parade-ground; but the land rises gently to a slender point that plunges out into Behring Sea, whose blue waves beat themselves to foam and music upon its tundra-covered cliffs.
On the day that I stood upon this headland the sunlight lay like gold upon the island; the winds were low, murmurous, and soothing; flowers spent their color riotously about me; the tundra was as soft as deep-napped velvet; and the blue waves, set with flashes of gold, went pus.h.i.+ng languorously away to the sh.o.r.es of another continent. Scarcely a stone's throw from me was a small mountain-island, only large enough for a few graves, but with no graves upon it. In all the world there cannot be another spot so n.o.ble in which to lie down and rest when ”life's fevers and life's pa.s.sions--all are past.” There, alone,--but never again to be lonely!--facing that sublime sweep of sapphire summer sea, set here and there with islands, and those miles upon miles of glittering winter ice; with white sails drifting by in summer, and in winter the wild and roaring march of icebergs; with summer nights of lavender dusk, and winter nights set with the great stars and the magnificent brilliance of Northern Lights; with the perfume of flowers, the songs of birds, the music of lone winds and waves, out on the edge of the world--could any clipped and cared-for plot be so n.o.ble a place in which to lie down for the last time? Could any be so close to G.o.d?
The entire island is a military reservation, and it is only by concessions from the government that commercial and transportation companies may establish themselves there. Fort St. Michael is a two-company post, under the command of Captain Stokes, at whose residence a reception was tendered to Governor Hoggatt. The filmy white gowns of beautiful women, the uniforms of the officers, the music, flowers, and delicate ices in a handsomely furnished home made it difficult for one to realize that the function was on the sh.o.r.es of Behring Sea instead of in the capital of our country.
There is an excellent hotel at St. Michael, and the large stores of the companies are well supplied with furs and Indian and Eskimo wares.
Beautiful ivory carvings, bidarkas, parkas, kamelinkas, baskets, and many other curios may be obtained here at more reasonable prices than at Nome. There are public bath-houses where one may float and splash in red-brown water that is never any other color, no matter how long it may run, but which is always pure and clean.
No description of St. Michael is complete that does not include ”Lottie.” No liquors are sold upon the military reservation, and Lottie conducts a floating groggery upon a scow. It has been her custom each fall to have her barge towed up the ca.n.a.l just beyond the line of the military reservation, ten miles from the flagstaff at the barracks, thus placing herself beyond the control of the authorities, greatly to their chagrin. In summer she anchors her barge in one of the numerous bights along the sh.o.r.e, and they are again powerless to interfere with her brilliantly managed traffic, since it has been decided that their sway extends over the land only.