Henry Wood Elliott

“ The fury of hurricane gales, the vagaries of swift and intricate currents in and out of the passages, the eccentricities of the barometer, the blackness of the fog enveloping all in its dark, damp shroud, so alarm and discomfit the white man that he willingly gives up the entire chase of the sea-otter to that brown-skinned Aleut, who alone seems to be so constituted as to dare and wrestle with these obstacles through descent from his hardy ancestors, who, in turn, have been centuries before him engaged just as he is to-day. ”

“ The seals crowd just as closely to the edge of this precipice along its entire face as they do at the tide-level. It is a very strange sight for that visitor who may sail under these bluffs with a boat in fair weather for landing, and, as you walk the beach, above which the cliff-wall frowns a sheer five hundred feet, there, directly over your head, the craning necks and twisting forms of restless seals, appear as if ready to launch out and fall below, ever and anon, as you glance upward, so closely and boldly do they press to the very edge of the precipice. ”

“ It constitutes the chief beauty of the sea-shore here, for it changes color like a chameleon, as it passes from wet to dry, being a rich steely-black at the surf-margin and then drying out to a soft purplish-brown and gray, succeeding to tints most delicate of reddish and pale neutral, when warmed by the sun and drifting up on to the higher ground with the wind. ”

“ Fleecy clouds of steamy moisture rise over all to betray from a distance this delightful retreat; the luxuriant vegetation, the variety of shrubs in full blossom here, when all botanical life about them is as dead as cold can make it, create thereon a spot in the early spring where all the senses of a traveller can rest with exquisite pleasure—the waters of the bay in front are covered with geese and ducks, while the rugged mountains that rise as a wall behind are teeming with deer and bear and grouse, secluded in the jungle. ”

“ Of the summer months, July, perhaps, is the warmest, with an average temperature between 46° and 50° in ordinary seasons. When the sun breaks out through the fog, and bathes the dripping, water-soaked hills and flats of the island in its hot flood of light, I have known the thermometer to rise to 60° and 64° in the shade, while the natives crawled out of that fervent and unwonted heat, anathematizing its brilliancy and potency. Sunshine does them no good; for, like the seals, they seem under its influence to swell up at the neck. ”

“ No language can express adequately your sensations when you first stroll over the outskirts of any one of those great breeding grounds of the fur-seal on St. Paul’s Island. There is no impression on my mind more fixed than is the one stamped thereon during the afternoon of a July day when I walked around the inner margins of that immense rookery at Northeast Point—indeed, while I pause to think of this subject, I am fairly rendered dumb by the vivid spectacle which rises promptly to my view—I am conscious of my inability to render that magnificent animal-show justice in definition. ”

“ Not a word is spoken, not a paddle splashes, but the vigilant, sensitive creature has taken the alarm, and has turned on to its chest, and with powerful strokes of its strong, webbed hind feet, has smote the water like the blades of a propeller’s screw, and down to depths below and away it speeds, while the hunter brings his swift bidarka to an abrupt standstill directly upon the bubbling wake of the otter’s disappearance. ”

“ The sensation is evidently so luxurious that it does not wish to have any side-issue draw off its blissful self-attention. Another, curled up like a cat on a rug, draws its breath, as indicated by the heaving of its flanks, quickly, but regularly, as though in heavy sleep. Another will lie flat upon its stomach, its hind flippers covered and concealed, while it tightly folds its fore-feet back against its sides, just as a fish carries its pectoral fins, and so on to no end of variety, according to the ground and the fancy of the animals. ”

“ Still, it should be well understood from the Muscovitic view, that in presenting Russian America to us, no loss to the glory or the power of the Czar’s Crown resulted; no surrender of smiling hamlets, towns or cities, no mines or mining, no fish or fishing, no mills, factories or commerce—nothing but her good will and title to a few thousand poor and simple natives, and a large wilderness of mountain, tundra-moor and island-archipelago wholly untouched, unreclaimed by the hand of civilized man. ”

“ Right under the towering slopes of Fairweather, as at St Elias, is a large area of upland entirely destitute of verdure of any kind, except the brown and russet mosses and lichens; huge, rugged masses of naked rocks are strewn about in every direction—an old prehistoric lava-flood, perhaps.
The coast, from the head of Cross Sound to Fairweather, is not sandy, but may be well described as the surf-beaten base of a frozen range of magnificent Alpine peaks. ”

“ Beautiful mats of wild poppies are nodding their yellow heads as the gusts sweep over them on the hillsides, and a rank, rich growth of tall grasses by the creek-margins and the sea-shore in sheltered places shimmers and sways like so many fields of uncut green grain do at home. Vegetation everywhere, except on the summits of the highest peaks and ridges and the mural faces of the bluffs! Even there some tiny lichens grow, however, and give rich tones of golden ochre and purplish-bronzed reflections from the cold, moist rocks, whereto they cling. ”

“ We have strayed from the landing which we made at Wrangel, and, returning to the contemplation of that town, candor compels an exclamation of disappointment—it is not inviting, for we see nothing but a straggling group of hastily erected shanties and frame store-houses, which face a rickety wharf and a dirty trackway just above the beach-level; a dense forest and tangled jungle spring up like a forbidding wall at the very rear of the houses, which are supplemented by a number of Indian rancheries that skirt the beach just beyond, and hug the point ”

“ Think of the enormous food-consumption of these rookeries and hauling-grounds; what an immense quantity of finny prey must pass down their voracious throats as every year rolls by! A creature so full of life, strung with nerves, muscles like bands of steel, cannot live on air, or absorb it from the sea. Their food is fish, to the practical exclusion of all other diet. I have never seen them touch, or disturb with the intention of touching it, one solitary example in the flocks of water-fowl which rest upon the surface of the water all about the islands. ”

“ So we go, and a patient, good-humored native trots ahead to keep us on the road and bring us back safely, lest the fog descend and shut all in darkness which is now so light and bright. A narrow foot-trail that is deeply worn by the pigeon-toed Aleutes into moss and sphagnum, or fairly choked by rank-growing grasses and annuals in low warm spots, winds around and over the divide between Oonalashka village and Borka. As we reach the rippling, rocky strand of Beaver Bay, a cascade arrests our attention on account of its exceeding beauty. ”

“ George at any season, prehistoric or present, during the breeding of the water-birds there, where myriads of croaking murres and flocks of screaming gulls darken the light of day with their fluttering forms, and deafen the ear with their shrill, harsh cries as they do now, for music is denied to all those birds of the sea. ”

“ When driven, a sea-lion balances and swings its long and heavy neck, as a lever, to and fro, with every hitching up behind of its posterior limbs, which it seldom raises from the ground, drawing them up after the fore-feet with a sliding drag over the grass or sand and rocks, as the case may be, ever and anon pausing to take a sullen and savage survey of the field and the natives who are urging it. ”

“ A gleam of light falls upon a broad expanse of the estuary beyond that point under which the schooner lies at anchor, and brings out the thickly wooded banks of an opposite shore, causing us to note the fact that, for some reason or other, no timber seems ever to have spread down so far toward the sea on this side of the stream, or where the settlement stands, since nothing but scattered copses of alder- and willow-bushes grow on its suburbs or anywhere else as far as an eye can range up the valley. ”

“ The small, black, snaky eyes gleam with the most wild and vindictive light when the owner is startled; the skin lies over its body in loose folds, so that when taken hold of in lifting the carcass out of the water, it is slack and draws up like the elastic hide on the nape of a young dog. ”

“ With Cape York just astern, you pass under the lee of those sheer and lofty walls of that shoulder to our continent, Cape Prince of Wales. Its bold front stands in full but silent recognition of an Asiatic coast westward, just thirty-six miles away, over the shallow flood of Bering Straits. What changes in a great northland and seas would have been wrought had a tithe of such volcanic energy which raised up the Aleutian archipelago been only exerted here in throwing a basaltic dike across from continent to continent! ”

“ At places the ship seems to really be at sea, then she enters a canal whose lofty walls of syenite, slate, and granite shut out the light of day, and against which her rigging scrapes, and the passenger’s hand may almost touch—a hundred thousand sparkling streams fall in feathery cascades, adown their mural heights, and impetuous streams beat themselves into white foam as they leap either into the eternal depths of the Pacific or its deep arms. ”

“ The scream of their whistles and puffing of these little trading-steamers as they slowly drag such tows against a rapid current, is the only enlivenment which the immense lonely solitudes of the Yukon are subjected to by our people. That area of watery waste is so wide and long, and the boats are so small and few in number, that even this innovation must be watched for every year with a hawk’s eye, or it will pass unobserved. ”

“ Hundreds of thousands of these birds alone are thus engaged about the 29th of every June on this little rocky island, roosting stacked up together as tight as so many sardines in a box, as compactly as they can be stowed, each and all of them uttering an incessant, muffled, hoarse, grunting noise. How fiercely they quarrel among themselves—everlastingly! and in this way thousands of eggs are rolled off into the sea, or into crevices, or into fissures, where they are lost and broken. ”

“ Two aged males, surrounded by their meek, polygamous families, were impelled towards each other by those latent fires of hate and jealousy which seemed to burst forth and fairly consume the angry rivals. Opening with a long, round, vocal prelude, they gradually came together, as the fur-seal bulls do, with averted heads, as though the sight of each other was sickening—but fight they must. One would play against the other for an unguarded moment in which to assume the initiative, until it had struck its fangs into the thick skin of its opponent’s jowl ”

“ There are less than sixteen hundred Indians living over the entire Yukon region—a fact which speaks eloquently for an exceeding scantiness of the population of that vast landed expanse of this interior of the Alaskan mainland—a great arctic moor north of the Kvichpak, which is a mere surface of slightly thawed swale, swampy tundra, lakes and pools, sloughs and sluggish rivers, in the summer solstice, while the wildest storms of frigid winds, laden with snow and sleet, career in unchecked fury over them during winter. ”

“ So our two hunters, perhaps the only two souls among the fifty or sixty now camped on Saanak, who are brave enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling gale, run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead of them, and sneak from that direction over the land and across to the windward coast, so as to silently and surely creep up and on to the kelp-bedded victims, when, in the fury of the storm, the fast falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its unconscious head. ”

“ To this dissipation the Alaskan savage is desperately prone; the monotonous chant of the stick-shuffling players is ever on the air in the villages. These worthies sit on the ground, in a circle usually, in the centre of which a mat is spread; six or seven small wooden pins about as large as the little finger of your hand, upon which various values are marked or carved, are taken into the hands of the first gambler, who thrusts them into a ball of soft teased cedar bark, or holds them under his blanket, then shuffles them rapidly, meanwhile shouting a deep guttural hah-hah-ee-nah-hah! ”

“ A swarm of sea-parrots fly out from its rocky bluffs on the south shore, stirred into unwonted activity and curiosity by the near approach of our vessel, while a dozing herd of sea-lions suspiciously stretch their long necks into the air, smell us, then simultaneously and precipitately plump themselves into the foaming breakers just below their basking-place above the surf-wash. ”

“ As the years roll by, these trunks gradually bleach out to almost a grayish white, the charred, blackened bark is all weathered off, and gradually such trees fall, as they decay at the stump, in every conceivable direction upon the ground, across one another, like so many jack-straws, making a perfectly impassable barricade to human travel without tedious labor. A brisk growth of small poplars, birch, and willow springs up in place of the original spruce forest, but none of these trees and shrubs ever grow to any great size. ”

“ They throw off their garments; they shout and dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed on, and produces a lather which they rinse off with cold water; and, to cap the full enjoyment of this satanic bath, these naked actors rush out and roll in a snow-bank or plunge into the icy flood of some lake or river adjoining, as the season warrants. This is the most enjoyable occasion of an Innuit’s existence, so he solemnly affirms. ”