CHAPTER XVII.PERIL STRAITS AND KOOTZNAHOO.
When the steamer gets ready to leave Sitka, there is always regret that the few days in that port could not have been weeks. There are always regrets, too, at not seeing Mount St. Elias, when the passengers realize that the ship has begun the return voyage. Mr. Seward was most desirous of seeing Mount St. Elias from the sea, but was deterred from carrying out his plan by the stories of the rough water to be crossed, and the certainty of fogs and clouds obscuring his view when he reached the bay at the base of the great mountain. There are seldom any passengers or freight billed for Mount St. Elias, and the mail contract does not require the steamer to run up that three hundred miles to north-westward of Sitka and call at the mountain each month. The U. S. S.Adamscarried some prospectors up to Yakutat Bay in 1883, and its officers took that opportunity of visiting the great glacier that fronts for seventy miles on the coast at the foot of the giant peak of North America. One of the officers made a series of admirable water-color sketches, but no angles were taken to determine the exact height of the mountain, and the elevation of the untrodden summit is not yet determined with precision.
In June, 1884, theIdahowent up to the mouth of Copper River to land Lieutenant Abercrombie, U. S. A., and his exploring party, and the pilot’s story of the radiantly clear sky, and the view of Mount St. Elias, one hundred and fifty miles away, added poignancy to the regrets of the July passengers. From a height of 17,500 feet, the mountain has now risen to 19,500 feet, according to the latest “Coast Pilot,” and somewhere it has been given an elevation of 23,000 feet above the sea. Fame and glory await the mountain-climber who reaches its top, and every American who rides up the Righi, or has a guide pull him up other Alpine summits, should blush that a grander mountain in his own country, the highest peak of the continent, too, has never yet been accurately measured, or explored, or ascended.
When, as the log says, “the ship lets go from Sitka wharf,” there are two routes to choose in starting southward. One leads out through the beautiful Sitka Sound, and past Mount Edgecumbe, to the open sea, and then the course is down the shore of Baranoff Island and around Cape Ommaney to the inside waters. The mountain outlines of the Baranoff shore are particularly fine from the ocean, but a landsman finds more beauty in the peaks and ranges as seen from the quiet waters of Chatham Strait on the other side of the island. Cape Ommaney, in rough weather, is more dreaded by mariners than the Columbia River bar, and wits and punsters take liberties with its name when they round Cape Ommaney in a head wind and chop sea. The Pacific raises some mighty surges off that point, and there are small islands and hidden rocks on all sides of it. Vancouverhad to anchor for several days in a little bight before he could venture around the cape, and in later times it has been a place of peril and anxiety to the navigators of the coast.
The other route from Sitka leads around the north end of Baranoff Island, and through Peril Straits across to Chatham Strait. Peril Straits is a narrow gorge or channel between the two mountainous islands of Chicagoff and Baranoff, and is strewn through all of its tortuous way with rocks and ledges over which the rushing tides pour in eddies and rapids. Several wrecks have occurred in this dangerous passage, and in May, 1883, the freight steamerEurekastruck a rock, and was beached near shore in time to save it from complete destruction. All lives were saved, and the crew and salvage corps had a camp near the wreck for three weeks, before the ship was raised and taken to San Francisco for repairs.
It was aptly named Peril, or Pogibshi, Strait, by the Russians, though Petroff says that it was called that on account of the death of one hundred of Baranoff’s Aleut hunters, who were killed by eating poisonous mussels there, rather than on account of its reefs and furious tides. It takes a daring and skilful navigator to carry a ship through that dangerous reach, and it is something fine to watch Captain Carroll, when he puts extra men at the wheel and sends his big steamer plunging and flying through the rapids. The yard-arms almost touch the trees on the precipitous shores, and the bow heads to all the points of the compass in turn, as “the salt, storm-fighting old captain” stands on the bridge, with his hands run deep in his great-coatpockets, and drops an occasional “Stab’bord a bit!” “Hard a stab’bord!” or “Port your helm!” down the trap-door to the men at the wheel. Aside from its evil fame, it is a most picturesque and beautiful channel, the waters a clear, deep green, and the shores clothed with dense forests of darker green.
Captain Coghlan made a survey of Peril Straits before leaving Alaska, and marked off the channel with buoys. He found so many rocks and reefs that had been unsuspected, that the mariners said that they would never dare to venture through Peril Straits again, after learning how rock-crowded and dangerous it was.
Down ChathamStrait,Strait,green and snow-covered mountains rise on either side, and on the shores of Admiralty Island marble bluffs show like patches of snow on the long shore line of eternal green. The old Indian village of Kootznahoo, the “Bear Fort” of the natives, lies in a cove on the Admiralty shore, and, from first to last, the Kootznahoo tribe have proved an unruly set. They made hostile demonstrations to Vancouver’s men when they explored the strait, and in 1869 the authorities had to deal severely with them, destroying a village and carrying the chief away as hostage, or prisoner, on the U. S. S.Saginaw. In October, 1882, the shelling of this Kootznahoo village by Captain Merriman, U. S. N., made a great stir, and editors six thousand miles away heaped vituperation and invective upon the head of that officer, without waiting to know of anything but the bare fact of the shelling. The docility of the Indians since then, and the expressed approval of the Tyee’s action by the chiefs of the tribe, provehow efficacious his course was at the battle of Kootznahoo. In Alaska, where the history of that bombardment is still fresh, and the survivors are walking about in paint and nose rings, the whole thing wears a different aspect, and fragments that one remembers of those blazing editorials appear now as most laughable. Every scribe brought in a ringing sentence about the “eternal ice and snows of an arctic winter;” but they don’t have arctic winters in this part of Alaska, as a study of the Japan Current and the isothermal lines will show, and while the battle raged the thermometer stood higher than it did in New York. Other errors were bound to creep in where the fires of enthusiasm were kindled with so little information, and to the officers and people of Sitka the newspapers were a source of unending entertainment when the bombardment of Kootznahoo began to reach their columns.
As related on the spot, that Kootznahoo story of the torpedo and the whale is Homeric in its simplicity. Some Indians went out in a canoe with the white men employed by the Northwest Trading Company at Killisnoo. While paddling towards a whale, one of the bombs attached to a harpoon exploded and killed an Indian. If it had been a common Indian, nothing would ever have been heard of the incident, but when the natives saw their great medicine man laid low, they raised an uproar. Going back to first causes, they demanded two hundred blankets from the trading company as compensation for their loss. The company naturally ignored this tax levied by the coroner’s jury, and straightway there were signs of war.
The Indians’ demand for blood or ransom was madestronger by their capturing one of the white men and holding him as hostage, but when they found that he was one-eyed they tried to send him back for exchange. They claimed that he wascultus(worthless), and demanded a whole and sound man for their dead shaman. They made ready to murder all the white men at the adjoining station, intending, however, to spare the agent’s wife and children, as they afterwards confessed. As the signs of the coming trouble were more apparent, the little steamerFavoritewas sent to Sitka with the agent’s family, and an appeal made for help to theAdams. Captain Merriman returned in theFavorite, accompanied by the revenue cutterCorwin.
A greatwa-wawas held with the ringleaders and marauders, and to their bold demand for the two hundred blankets, Captain Merriman responded with a counter-demand, that the Indians should bring him four hundred blankets, and forever after keep the peace, or he would shell their village. Mistaking his word for that of a common Indian agent, the red men went their riotous way, and at dusk of a November afternoon theCorwinanchored outside the reef and sent the shot hurtling through the village. The Indians gathered up their blankets and their stores of winter provisions, and took to the woods, but the bombardment was not so severe, but that a few rascally Kootznahoos stayed in the village and plundered the abandoned houses. The tribute of blankets was paid, the Kootznahoos humbled themselves before the big Tyee, or their “good father,” and a more docile, penitent, and industrious community does not exist than those same obstreperous Indians.
The liquor that the Hudson Bay Company and the Russian traders furnished to the Indians was very weak and very expensive, and the Kootznahoos rest some of their claims to distinction on the fact that the native drink, orhoochinoo, was first distilled by their people. A deserter from a whaling-ship taught them the secret, and from molasses or sugar, with flour, potatoes, and yeast, they distil the vilest and most powerful spirit. An old oil can and a musket barrel, or a section of the long, hollow pipe of the common seaweed (nereiocistum) furnish the apparatus, and thehoochinoo, quickly distilled, can be used at once. After any quantity of it has been made, its presence is soon declared, and the Indians are frenzied by it.Hoochinoois the great enemy of peace and order, and the customs officers can much easier detect a white man smuggling whiskey than catch the Indians in the distilling act. It is apparent enough when they have imbibed the rank and fiery spirit, but it is impossible to watch all the illicit stills that they set up in their houses, or hide in lonely coves and places in the woods. The man-of-war is always on the lookout for indications ofhoochinoo, and at the first signs a raid is made on a village, the houses and the woods searched, and the stills and supplies destroyed. With the cunning of a savage race they have wonderful ways of hiding it in underground and up-tree warehouses, and many exciting stories are told by the naval officers of the greathoochinooraids they have taken part in.
Lummeor rum, these children of nature sometimes call the forbidden fluid, as, like their Chinese cousins, the Thlinkets are unable to pronounce theletterr, and give thel-sound as its equivalent in every case. There are many points of resemblance between the Kootznahoos and the Orientals; and in writing of the origin of these Thlinket tribes of the archipelago, Captain Beardslee, in his official report, says:—
“All of the tribes mentioned except the Kootznahoos seem to have sprung from a common origin; they speak the same language and have similar customs and superstitions, and from these the Kootznahoos differ so slightly that a stranger cannot detect the difference. Their legend is that originally all lived in the Chilkat country; that there came great floods of ice and water, and the country grew too poor to support them, and that many emigrated south; that the Auks are outcasts from the Hoonah tribes, and the Kakes from the Sitkas, and both tribes deserve to be still so considered; that the Kootznahoos came from over the sea, and the Haidas, who live on Vancouver’s Island, from the south. I have imbibed an impression, which, however, I could not obtain much evidence to support, that all of the tribes except the Haidas are Oriental,—in every respect they resemble the Ainos of Japan far more than they do our North American Indians,—and that the Kootznahoos are of Chinese origin; while the Haidas, who are superior to all of the others in intelligence and skill in various handicrafts, are the descendants of the boat-loads whom Cortez drove out of Mexico, and who vanished to the north.”
All this part of Admiralty Island is a coal field, and veins and outcroppings of lignite have been found on every side of it, and along the inlets andcreeks leading to the interior. A good coal mine would be worth more than a gold mine, in Alaska, and though seams have been discovered with regularity since 1832, none of the explorers seem to have found just the thing yet. In 1868 Lieutenant-Commander Mitchell explored Kootznahoo Inlet, leading into the heart of Admiralty Island, and at the head of the perilous channel opened a coal seam. In the following year, Mr. Seward’s party went up to the Mitchell mine, and they were enthusiastic over its promises. The coal burned beautifully in the open air, but when the real tests were put to it, and it was tried in the boiler-room of the ship, it was found to contain so much crude resin that it was destruction to boiler iron. Geologically, the country is too young to have even any very good lignite beds, but the archipelago is now swarming with coal prospectors and coal experts, and there is such a general craze for coal that it may yet be forthcoming. At present the Nanaimo coal is depended upon entirely for steaming purposes, and the mail-steamer has to carry its own supply for the whole round trip, and take as freight the coal needed for the government ships at Sitka.
After Captain Hooper’s mine of true coal at Cape Lisburn, on the Arctic coast, the most promising indications are at Cook’s Inlet and around the Kenai peninsula. Although irrelevant in this connection, it perhaps naturally follows in this lignite vein to mention a coal mine accidentally discovered by an English yachtsman, Sir Thomas Hesketh, while cruising about Kenai. He treed an eagle on a hunting trip, and, other means failing to dislodge it, the sportsmanset fire to the tree. The roots ran down into a coal seam, that, taking fire, was burning two years later, when the last ship touched there. Another escapade of the yachting party was to set a dead monkey adrift in a box, and when it washed ashore near Kodiak, the Indians, who had had a tradition that the evil spirit would come to earth in the shape of a little black man, fled that part of the island in terror and never went back.