Dyea, Alaska

“ Dyea, the new steamer landing and sub-port of entry, is at the head of navigation on the Chilkoot or eastern branch of this Lynn Canal, and takes its [40] name, in bad modern spelling, from the long-known Taiya Inlet, which is a prolongation inland for twenty miles of the head of the Chilkoot Inlet. It should continue to be spelled Tiaya. This inlet is far the better of the two for shipping, Chilkat Inlet being exposed to the prevalent and often dangerous south wind, so that it is regarded by navigators as one of the most dangerous points on the Alaskan coast. ”

“ The boundary of Alaska next became a subject for arbitration. Since the valley of the Yukon had attracted its first great migration in the summer of 1897 the mining-camps had steadily increased in importance. Many of these were on the Canadian side of the meridian of 141°, and all were reached either by the river steamers or the trails from the south. The most important ports of entry were Dyea and Skaguay, at the head of the Lynn Canal, a long fiord projecting some ninety miles into the continent. ”

“ The weather was not cold, and the moving of this large party of forty persons with their entire outfit was progressing as favorably as could be expected. A camp had been made at Dyea as the base of operations; another was made at Sheep Camp. At each place the women of the party did the cooking in tents while men gathered wood, built fires, and brought water. Other men worked steadily at the hauling, and most of their supplies had already been transported to the upper camp ”

“ I know not, nor have I ever found any who did know, what it is that makes one who has ever lived in Alaska, and who has left there, unhappy and discontented until they go back once more to the land of gold.
I have seen and talked with old “sourdoughs,” trappers and dog team freighters, and they all tell the same story. When the first big clean-up had been made in Dawson, I remember well, the winter following found a mob of big, boisterous, pleasure loving, money spending, carefree and happy hearted [104] Klondike miners in the hotels of Seattle, San Francisco and New York. ”

“ At half-past nine fine print could be read by daylight, and at eleven it was by no means dark.
The next day the steamer touched at Douglas Island, giving its passengers time for a run up to the richest gold mine in the world. In the early afternoon the Queen steamed across the strait to Juneau, only a few miles distant, and stopped there for the night.
It was a larger town than any they had yet seen in Alaska, and curved around a fine bay at the base of high mountains, on whose high slopes could be seen patches of snow and “young glaciers,” as Fred called them. ”

“ Here, on the grassy flat, where she had played as a child and shrunk back at the sound of her voice echoing from glacier to glacier, ten thousand men tramped ceaselessly up and down, grinding the tender herbage into the soil and mocking the stony silence. And just up the trail were ten thousand men who had passed by, and over the Chilcoot were ten thousand more. And behind, all down the island-studded Alaskan coast, even to the Horn, were yet ten thousand more, harnessers of wind and steam, hasteners from the ends of the earth. The Dyea River as of old roared turbulently down to the sea ”

“ He shook his head. "Indian have no boat. Kilbuck, he Big Chief. He all time say: 'Mind you business or Indian get no grub. Tomorrow I go.' He all time say 'Tomorrow.'"
Tomorrow! From the lips of Kayak Bill who knew his Alaska, Ellen and Jean knew what tragedies lie behind that word. From waiting on wind and tide and the next steamer to go someplace, from waiting on summer or winter to do something, from waiting on an indifferent government to act on something, people of the North have found that Alaska has become essentially a Land of Tomorrow! A month in Alaska becomes as a day in the States. ”

“ A grand salt-water river it is that stretches from Puget Sound, itself a beautiful sheet of water, to our distant colony of Alaska, a good round thousand miles, and whose waters are as quiet as an Alpine lake, even though a fierce gale rage on the broad Pacific outside.
Beyond the parallel of Sitka, though the grand scenery may be no more imposing than that through which the tourist will have passed in coming from Washington Territory, he will find some of the curiosities of nature which are to be found only in the dreaded frigid zones,—icebergs and glaciers. ”

“ Minneapolis, and New York, we would hear no more of the rigors of the Alaskan climate than we hear of those of the cities mentioned. It is more agreeable than the climate of Montana, Nebraska, or the Dakotas.
With large cities, rich and gay cities; prosperous inhabitants clad in costly furs; luxurious homes, well warmed and brilliantly lighted; railway trains, sleighs, and automobiles for transportation; splendid theatres, libraries, art galleries,—with these and the hundreds of advantages enjoyed by the people of other cold countries, Alaska's winters would hold no terrors. ”

“ Of all green and verdant woods, I know of none that so satisfy one with their rank luxuriance, their beauty and picturesqueness; and one feels a little sorrow for those people who, never having seen Alaska, are blindly worshipping the barren, burnt, dried-out, starved-out forests of the East. In still stretches of this lake at Naha there are mirrored the snow-capped summits whose melting snows fill its banks, and the echo from a single pistol-shot is flung back from side to side before it dies away in a roar. ”

“ After having reached latitude 54° 40′ we come upon Dixon Entrance, a reach of the sea which separates Alaska from British Columbia, and from this point we are sailing exclusively in the purple shadow of our own shore, and in the waters of the United States. At times we pass islands as large as the State of Massachusetts, whose picturesque and irregular mountainous surfaces are covered with immemorial trees, 187and whose unknown interiors are believed to be rich in coal, iron, silver, and other metals. The axe has never echoed in the deep shade of these dense plantations of nature ”

“ Throughout the whole inland passage, one is passing now and then some Indian village, of more or less imposing appearance and numbers. In Alaska they all belong to a single great tribe, the T'linkit, bound together by a common language, but by no stronger ties, for each village, or cluster of villages, makes a sub-tribe, having no sympathies with the other, and they often war against one another.
It is not often that one would want to call a tourist's attention to an Indian village, for the average encampment or habitation of the “noble red man” is not the most attractive sight or study ”

“ The houses, too, are carved inside and out. Every utensil they have is sculptured deep with diabolical but well executed designs, and their spoons of mountain sheep and goat horn are marvels of savage work. All these are for sale to tourists, and every excursion steamer brings [Pg 52] numbers of these romantic remembrances of a yet more romantic journey back to civilization.
But the inland passage to Alaska is not the only grand and picturesque part of that great territory visited by the excursion steamers ”

“ By some happy dispensation of the Creator every savage is so constituted that here in Alaska, at least, he believes in his own particular area of existence as the very best realm of the earth—he becomes homesick and refuses to be comforted if taken to California or Oregon, enters into a slow decline, and soon dies if not returned to the dreary spot of his birth—a sad illustration of fatal nostalgia. ”

“ In the far-distant corners, hidden away from the eyes of man, one will come upon the scattered missions of the various churches to reach which one must journey thousands of miles! So, whenever a man from Nome speaks of Alaska he means that part of it which he himself knows,—the Seward Peninsula. The man from Cordova, [39] or Valdez, talks of the Prince William Sound country and calls it Alaska! The man from Juneau speaks of Alaska, but all that he means is the southeastern coast. This is why so much that is written of the country is contradictory. In fact, Alaska is not one but many countries! ”

“ The waters swarm with life, which is warmed by this heat-bearing current, and I think I do not exaggerate in saying that Alaska and its numerous outlying islands will alone, in the course of a short time, repay us annually more than the original cost of the great territory. ”

“ That an important country, so easily accessible, should remain comparatively unexplored seems singular in the nineteenth century, especially when its great mineral wealth and natural attractions are freely admitted. The trip to Sitka, the capital of the Territory, and back is easily accomplished in three months, affording also ample time to visit the principal points of interest on the route, including the marvels of the Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, which 2is not only not surpassed in grandeur and beauty by any scenery on the continent, but in fact has no parallel on the globe. ”

“ Its remoteness from the centres of European settlement and from the lines of trade and travel, and its inhospitable climate made Alaska one of the latest regions to yield to the advances of the explorer, surveyor and settler. At a date when the colonies on the North Atlantic coast of America numbered millions of prosperous people, already preparing to take independent rank among the nations of the world, the very existence of this enormous country was unknown. ”

“ It was during the latter half of the voyage, and after our discovery of Glacier Bay. The climax of the trip, so far as the missionary interests were concerned, was our visit to the Chilcat and Chilcoot natives on Lynn Canal, the most northern tribes of the Alexandrian Archipelago. Here reigned the proudest and worst old savage of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His wealth was very great in Indian treasures, and he was reputed to have cached away in different places several houses full of blankets, guns, boxes of beads, ancient carved pipes, spears, knives and other valued heirlooms. ”

“ The roughing and hardships of the California forty-niners, who, bountifully supplied by nature on all sides, needed no cover at night other than the canopy of heaven, and who could work twelve months in the year, seem trifling compared with the conditions which the Alaska pioneers have confronted in a land disconsolately barren and inhospitable, that metes out a meager four-months season for their labor. ”

“ Nowhere else in all the world are there such wondrous tints as in Alaska. To appreciate the beauty of the land, however, one needs must be an early riser. To have seen the marvelous change which comes over the pure whiteness of the snow-crowned crests between the darkness and the dawn! ”

“ The most sanguine do not expect to see Alaska enter the sisterhood of States during this century, but they claim with reason that southeastern Alaska will develop so rapidly that it will become necessary to make it a separate Territory with full and complete form of government, and skeleton rule be confined to the dreary and inhospitable regions of the Yukon mainland. ”

“ There are many other glaciers in Alaska, but this one is the largest and the most wonderful of them all. Geysers and volcanos are also to be found in the country. One of the mountains, named Mt. McKinley, is the highest peak in North America. Another, Mt. Elias, rises almost out of the ocean, and its cloak of snow and ice reaches nearly to its base. When boys and girls wish to travel where they can see many strange and wonderful sights, they would do well to take a summer’s trip to Alaska,—the land of gold and fur, of waterfalls, geysers and glaciers. ”

“ A grander array of rocks and waterfalls I have never yet beheld in Alaska.
The amount of timber on the walls is about the same as that on the Yosemite walls, but owing to greater moisture, there is more small vegetation,—bushes, ferns, mosses, grasses, etc.; though by far the greater portion of the area of the wall-surface is bare and shining with the polish it received when occupied by the glacier that formed the fiord. The deep-green patches seen on the mountains back of the walls at the limits of vegetation are grass, where the wild goats, or chamois rather, roam and feed. ”

“ About her, shielding her from the Arctic wind was a tent.
“Tomorrow,” she thought, “we start to the Promised Land.” This land was the Matamuska Valley in Alaska. “Not far now, only a short way by rail. And then—” A thrill ran through her being. They were to be pioneers, modern pioneers, she and Mary, Mark and her aunt. What would life in this new land be?
[20]
She had seen much of life, had Florence, city life, country life, the wild beauty of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and the finished beauty of France were not new to her. But Alaska! ”

“ On the way up to Olympia, then a hopeful little town situated at the end of one of the longest fingers of the Sound, one is often reminded of Lake Tahoe, the scenery of the widest expanses is so lake-like in the clearness and stillness of the water and the luxuriance of the surrounding forests. Doubling cape after cape, passing uncounted islands, new combinations break on the view in endless variety, sufficient to satisfy the lover of wild beauty through a whole life. When the clouds come down, blotting out everything, one feels as if at sea ”

“ Is it not a little singular that the lonely and monotonous course of the Yukon River, reaching as it does to the very limits of the pathless interior of a vast, unexplored region on either side, should be that one section of all others in Alaska the best known to us? ”