CHAPTER III.IN THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.

SITKA, ALASKA.

The harbor of Sitka is so full of small islands that looking at it from a height it seems as if it could only be mapped with a pepper-box, and one wonders how any vessel can get to her wharf. Once alongside, the water seems as clear as the atmosphere above, and the smallest objects can be easily identified at the bottom, though there must have been fully thirty or forty feet of water where we made our observations.

On one of the large islands in Sitka harbor, called Japanese Island, an old Niphon junk was cast, early in the present century, and her small crew of Japanese were rescued by the Russians. Sitka has been so often described that it is unnecessary to do more than refer the reader to other accounts of the place.

Ten o'clock in the forenoon of the 31st saw us under way steaming northward, still keeping to the inland passage, anden routeto deliver wrecking machinery at a point in Peril Straits where theEureka, a small steamer of the same line to which our ship belonged, had formerly run on a submerged rock in the channel, which did not appear upon the charts. The unfortunate boat had just time to reach the shore and beach herself before she filled with water. The Eureka's wreck was reached by two in the afternoon, and as our boat might be detained for some time in assisting the disabled vessel, many of us embraced the opportunity to go ashore in the wilds of the Alexander Archipelago. The walking along the beach between high and low tide was tolerable, and even agreeable for whole stretches, especially after our long confinement on the ship, where the facilities for promenading were poor. To turn inland from the shore was at once to commence the ascent of a slopethat might vary from forty to eighty degrees, the climbing of which almost beggars description. The compact mass of evergreen timber had looked dense enough from the ship, but at its feet grew a denser mass of tangled undergrowth of bushes and vines, and at their roots again was a solid carpeting of moss, lichens, and ferns that often ran up the trees and underbrush for heights greater than a man's reach, and all of it moist as a sponge, the whole being absolutely tropical in luxuriance. This thick carpet of moss extends from the shore line to the edges of the glaciers on the mountain summits, and the constant melting of the ice through the warm summer supplies it with water which it absorbs like a sponge. The air is saturated with moisture from the warm ocean current, and every thing you see and touch is like Mr. Mantalini's proposed body, "dem'd moist and unpleasant." It is almost impossible to conceive how heavily laden with tropical moisture the atmosphere is in this supposed sub-Arctic colony of ours. It oozes up around your feet as you walk, and drips from overhead like an April mist, and nothing is exempt from it. Even the Indians' tall, dead "totem-poles" of hemlock or spruce, which would make fine kindling wood any where else, bear huge clumps of dripping moss and foliage on their tops, at heights varying from ten to thirty feet above the ground. An occasional stray seed of a Sitka spruce may get caught in this elevated tangle, and make its home there just as well as if it were on the ground. It sprouts, and as its branches run up in the air, the roots crawl down the "totem-pole" until the ground is reached, when they bury themselves in it, and send up fresh sustenance to the trunk and limbs,which until then have been living a parasitic sort of life off the decayed moss. This is shown in illustration on page19, being a view at Kaigan Village. Imagine a city boy tossing a walnut from a fourth story window, and its lodging on top of a telegraph pole, there sprouting next spring, and in the course of a couple of years extending its roots down the pole, insinuating themselves in the crevices and splitting it open, then piercing the pavement; the tree continuing to grow for years until the boy, as a man, can reach out from his window and pick walnuts every fall, and the idea seems incredible; and yet the equivalent occurs quite often in the south-eastern portions of our distant colony. Nor is all this marshy softness confined to the levels or to almost level slopes, as one would imagine from one's experience at home, but it extends up the steepest places, where the climbing would be hard enough without this added obstacle. In precipitous slopes where the foot tears out a great swath of moist moss, it may reveal underneath a slippery shingle or shale where nothing but a bird could find a footing in its present condition. There is wonderful preservative power in all these conditions, for nothing seems to rot in the ground, and the accumulated timber of ages, standing and fallen, stumps, limbs, and trunks, "criss-cross and tumble-tangled," as the children say, forms a bewildering mass which, covered and intertwined as it is with a compact entanglement of underbrush and moss, makes the ascent of the steep hillsides a formidable undertaking. A fallen trunk of a tree is only indicated by a ridge of moss, and should the traveler on this narrow path deviate a little too far to the right or left, he may sinkup to his arm-pits in a soft mossy trap from which he can scramble as best he may, according to his activity in the craft of "backwoodsman-ship." Having once reached the tops of the lower hills—the higher ones are covered with snow and glacier ice the year round—a few small openings may be seen, which, if any thing, are more boggy and treacherous to the feet than the hillsides themselves, lagoon-like morasses, covered with pond lilies and aquatic plant life, being connected by a network of sluggish canals with three or four inches of amber colored water and as many feet of soft black oozy mud, with here and there a clump of willow brake or "pussy-tails" springing above the waste of sedge and flags. In these bayou openings a hunter may now and then run across a stray deer, bear, or mountain goat, but, in general, inland hunting in south-eastern Alaska is a complete failure, owing to the scarcity of game and the labor of hunting.

The worst part of Peril Strait being ahead of us, we backed out with our long unwieldy vessel and turned westward, passing out late in the evening through Salisbury Strait to the Pacific Ocean, ours being, according to the pilot, the first steam vessel to essay the passage. A last night on the Pacific's rolling water, and early next morning we rounded Cape Ommaney, and entered the inland passage of Chatham Strait, our prow once more pointed northward, the sheet of water lying as quiet as a mill pond. About 4P.M.we reached Killisnoo, a pretty little port in the Strait. Cod-fish abounding here in unusual numbers, a regular fishery has been established by a company for the purpose of catching and preserving the cod for the marketsof the Pacific coast. Here I saw many of the Kootznahoo Indians of the place, who do the principal fishing for the white men. Their already ugly faces were plastered over with black, for which, according to the superintendent, there were two causes. A few of the Indians were clad in mourning, to which this artificial blackness is an adjunct, while the remainder followed the custom in order to protect their faces and especially their eyes from the intense glare of the sun on the water while fishing. Chatham Strait at its northern end subdivides into Icy Straits and Lynn Canal, the latter being taken as our course. At its northern end it again branches into the Chilkat and Chilkoot Inlets, the former being taken; and at its head, the highest northing we can reach in this great inland salt-water river, our voyage on theVictoriaterminated. Icy Straits lead off to the westward and unite with the Pacific, by way of Cross Sound, the most northern of these connecting passages, which marks the point where the archipelago, and with it the inland passage, ceases, for from here northward to St. Elias and beyond a bold bad coast faces the stormy Pacific, and along its frowning cliffs of rock and ice even the amphibious Indian seldom ventures.

CHILEAT BRACELET MADE FROM SILVER COIN.

The Chilkatcountry was reached on the morning of the 2d of June and we dropped anchor in a most picturesque little port called Pyramid Harbor, its name being derived from a conspicuous conical island that the Chilkats call Schlay-hotch, and the few whites, Pyramid Island, shown on page43. There were two salmon canneries just completed, one on each side of the inlet, awaiting the "run" or coming of salmon, which occurred about two weeks later. Each cannery was manned by about a half dozen white men as directors and workmen in the trades departments, the Chilkats doing the rougher work, as well as furnishing the fish. They differed in no material respect from the salmon canneries of the great Columbia River, so often described. Just above them comes in the Chilkat river, with a broad shallow mouth, which, at low water (sixteen feet below high water) looks like a large sand flat forming part of the shores of the harbor. On these bars the Indians spear the salmon when the water is just deep enough to allow them to wade around readily.

Up this Chilkat river are the different villages of the Chilkat Indians, one of fifteen or twenty houses being in sight, on the east bank, the largest, however, which contains four or five times as many houses, called Klukwan,being quite a distance up the river. These Chilkats are subdivided into a number of smaller clans, named after the various animals, birds and fishes. At about the time of my arrival the chief of the Crow clan had died, and as he was a very important person, a most sumptuous funeral was expected to last about a week or ten days. These funerals are nothing but a series of feasts, protracted according to the importance of the deceased, and as they are furnished at the expense of the administrators or executors of the dead man's estate, every Indian from far and wide, full of veneration for the dead and a desire for victuals, congregates at the pleasant ceremonies, and gorges to his utmost, being worthless for work for another week afterward. As I urgently needed some three or four score of these Indians to carry my effects on their backs across the Alaskan coast range of mountains to the head waters of the Yukon river, this prolonged funeral threatened seriously to prevent my getting away in good time. Ranking me as a chief, I was invited to the obsequies and promised a very conspicuous position therein, especially on the last day when the body was to be burned on a huge funeral pyre of dry resinous woods. Cremation is the usual method of disposing of the dead among these people, the priests or medicine men being the only ones exempt. The latter claim a sort of infallibility and all of their predictions, acts, and influences capable of survival, live after them so long as their bodies exist, but should these be lost by drowning, devouring, or cremation, this infallibility ceases. Therefore these defunct doctors of savage witch-craft inhabit the greatest portion of the few graveyards that one sees scattered here and there over the shores ofthe channels and inlets that penetrate the country. Cremation is not always resorted to, however, with the laity, for whenever convenience dictates otherwise, they too may be buried in boxes, and this practice, I understand, is becoming more common. Cremation is a savage honor, nevertheless, and slaves were not entitled to the rite. All the Indians were extremely anxious that I should attend the obsequies of their dear departed friend, for if I did they saw that they might also be present and yet feel sure of employment on my expedition over the mountains. I declined the invitation, however, and by being a little bit determined managed to persuade enough strong sturdy fellows away to do my proposed packing in two trips over the pass, which had the effect of inducing the others to come forward in sufficient numbers to accomplish the work in a single journey, and preparations were commenced accordingly. These preparations consisted mostly in assorting our effects with reference to every thing that we could possibly leave behind, taking as little as we could make our way through with, and putting that little into convenient bags, boxes, and bundles of about one hundred pounds each, that being the maximum load the Indians could well carry over such Alpine trails. Some boys, eight or ten, even came forward to solicit a share in the arduous labor, and one little urchin of not over fourteen, a son of the Chilkat chief, Shot-rich, manfully assumed the responsibility of a sixty-eight pound box, the distance he had to carry it being about thirty miles, but thirty miles equal to any one hundred and thirty on the good roads of a civilized country. There were a few slaves among my numerous Indian packers, slaveryhaving once flourished extensively among the Chilkats, but having diminished both in vigor and extent, in direct ratio to their contact with the whites. Formerly, slaves were treated in the many barbarous ways common to savage countries, sacrificed at festivals and religious ceremonies, and kept at the severest tasks. They were often tied in huge leathern sacks stretched at full length on the hard stony ground and trodden to death. The murderers, great muscular men, would jump up and down on their bodies, singing a wild death chant, with their fists clinched across their breasts, every cracking of a rib or bone being followed by loud shouts of derisive laughter. Sometimes the slave was bound to huge bowlders at the water's edge at low tide, and as the returning waves came rolling in and slowly drowned the wretch, his cries were deafened by the hideous shouts from the spectators on the land. Of course, as with all slave-holders, an eye was kept open toward mercenary views, and the sacrifices were nearly always of the aged, infirm, or decrepit; those who had ceased to be useful as interpreted by their own savage ideas of usefulness. Entering a Chilkat house nowadays, one can hardly distinguish a slave from the master, unless one is acquainted with the insignificant variations in dress which characterize them, and while the slaves are supposed to do all the work the enforcement of the rule appears to be very lax. Still it is interesting to know that the fourteenth amendment to the United States constitution is not held inviolable in all parts of that vast country. As among nearly all savages, the women are brutalized, but they appear to have one prerogative of the most singular character, that is well worth relating. Nearly every thing descends on the mother's side, yet a chattel may be owned, or at least controlled, by the men, although a traveler will notice many bargains wherein the woman's consent is first obtained. The royal succession is most oddly managed with reference to women's rights. The heir-apparent to the throne is not the oldest or any other child of the king and queen, but is the queen's nearest blood relative of the male persuasion, although the relationship may be no closer, perhaps, than that of cousin. As this curiously chosen king may marry any woman of the tribe, it is easy to see that any one may in this indirect way become the sovereign of the savages, and with the help of luck alone, may acquire royal honors. One rich Indian woman of Sitka who took a fancy to a slave, purchased him for the purpose of converting him into a husband, at a cost of nearly a thousand dollars in goods and chattels, and if he was not very expensive thereafter he may have been cheaper than the usual run of such bargains. When a couple of Chilkats tie the nuptial knot, they at once, if possible, adopt a boy and a girl, although these can hardly be said to stand in the place of adopted children, when it is understood that they are really a conjugal reserve corps for the bride and bridegroom in case of death. Should the man die the boy becomes the widow's husband without further ceremony, andvice versa. Of course such conjugal mixtures present the most incongruous aspects in the matter of age, but happily these examples are infrequent.

This Chilkat country is most thoroughly Alpine in character, and in the quiet, still evenings, far up on the steep hillsides, where the dense spruce timber is brokenup by natural clearings, one could often see a brown or black bear come out and nose around to get at some of the many roots and berries that there abound, and more than once I was a spectator of a bear hunt, for as soon as Bruin put in an appearance there was always some Indian hunter ambitious enough to toil up the steep mountain sides after him. I have spoken of their extreme fear of the great brown or cinnamon bear, which they seldom attack. So great indeed is the Chilkats' respect for him that the most aristocratic clan is called the Cinnamon Bears. Another high class clan is the Crows, the plebeian divisions being the Wolves and Whales, and the division line is so strong that it leads to feuds between the clans that, in respect of slaughter, are almost entitled to the name of wars, while between the high and low caste intermarriage is almost unknown. As the Brown Bears, or Cinnamon Bears as they are generally called, are the highest clan, so copper is their most highly prized metal. With copper the Chilkats have always been familiar, gold and silver coming with the whites; and therefore a brown bear's head carved in copper is their most venerated charm. In regard to engraving and sculpture it is not too much to say that the Chilkats stand well in the front rank of savage artists. When civilization first came in contact with these people they were in the Paleolithic stone age of that material, and their carvings were marvels of design and execution, although subserving the simplest wants of a simple people. Of metals they possessed only copper, and that in such small quantities as to be practically out of the account. With the whites came gold and silver, and the latter from its comparative cheapness becametheir favorite metal. Coins were hammered out into long slender bars, bent into bracelets, and then beautifully engraved, some of their designs having been borrowed from civilization and copied faithfully in detail, although the old savage ideas of workmanship are for obvious reasons preferred by most purchasers. Some of their women wear a dozen or more bracelets on each arm, covering them up to the elbows and beyond, but this seems to be only a means of preserving them until the arrival of white customers, when they are sold at from one to five or six dollars a pair according to their width. The initial piece of this chapter is sketched from one in the possession of the author and made by one of his hired Indians. Ear-rings, finger-rings, beads and ornamental combs for the hair are made of silver and gold, mostly of silver; and the Chilkats seem to be as imitative in respect to ideas and designs as the Mongolians, whose talents are so much better known. It is in wood and horn, however, that their best examples of this art have been displayed, and so unique and intricate are they that language is inadequate to describe them. Of wood carvings their "totem" poles show the cleverest workmanship and variety of design. The exact significance of these totem poles remains still undetermined, and the natives themselves seem averse to throwing much light on the subject. This fact alone would appear to indicate a superstitious origin. Some say the totem poles represent family genealogies, life histories, and tribal accounts, all of which conjectures may be well founded. They are simply logs of wood standing on end in front of the houses, and facing the water. This face is covered fromtop to bottom, for a height of from five to thirty feet, with the most curious carvings, as shown to a limited extent on page19. The "totem" or tribal symbol, which may be a wolf, a bear, a raven, or a fish, often predominates, while representations of crouching human figures are favorite designs. The making of totem poles has ceased among the Indians, although they carefully preserve those that still exist. Still many of them fall into the clutches of white men in compensation for a few dollars, and hardly a museum of note in the country but displays a Tlinkit totem pole or two, while some possess extensive collections. The best carving is shown in the isolated poles standing in front of the houses, but frequently the houses themselves are fantastically carved in conspicuous places to suit the owner's fancy.

PYRAMID HARBOR, CHILKAT INLET. (Chilkat Indian Canoe in the foreground.)

Some of these houses are quite respectable for savage house-making, the great thick puncheon planks of the floor being often quite well polished, or at any rate neatly covered with white sand. Attempts at civilization are made in the larger and more aristocratic abodes by partitioning the huge hovel into rooms by means of draperies of cloth or canvas. In some the door is made as high as it can be cut in the wall and is reached by steps from the outside, while a similar flight inside gives access to the floor. The fire occupies the center of the room, enough of the floor being removed to allow it to be kindled directly on the ground, the smoke escaping by a huge hole in the roof. The vast majority of the houses are squalid beyond measure, and the dense resinous smoke of the spruce and pine blackens the walls with a funereal tinge, and fills the house with an odor which, when mingled with that of decayed salmon, makes one feel like leaving his card at the door and passing on. It takes no stretch of the imagination to conceive that such architecture provides the maximum of ventilation when least needed, and it is a fact that the winter hours of the Chilkats are cold and cheerless in the extreme. They sit crouched around the fire with their blankets closely folded about them and even drawn over their heads, the house serving indeed as a protection from the fierce wind and deep snow drifts, but no more. They look on all this foolishness, however, witha sort of Spartan fortitude as necessary to toughen them and inure them to the rough climate, and at times, impelled by this belief, they will deliberately expose themselves with that object in view. When the rivers and lakes are frozen over the men and boys break great holes in the ice and plunge in for a limited swim, then come out, and if a bank of soft snow is convenient roll around in it like so many polar bears; and when they get so cold that they can't tell the truth they wander leisurely back to the houses and remark that they have had a nice time, and believe they have done something toward making themselves robust Chilkat citizens able to endure every thing. There is no wonder that such people adopt cremation; and in fact one interpretation of its religious significance is based on the idea of future personal warmth in the happy hunting grounds, which they regard as a large island, whose shores are unattainable except by those whose bodies have been duly consumed by fire. Unless the rite of cremation has been performed the unhappy shade shivers perpetually in outer frost. It is the impossibility of cremation which makes death by drowning so terrible to a Chilkat.

The reason that theshamans, or medicine men (whose bodies are not cremated) have no such dread, is that their souls do not pass to the celestial island, but are translated into the bodies of infants, and in this way the crop of medicine men never diminishes, whatever may be the status of the rest of the population. Dreams and divinations, or various marks of the child's hair or face, are relied upon to determine into which infant the supreme and mysterious power of the defunct doctor of Tlinkit divinity has entered. To enumerate all of thesesigns would consume more of my space than the subject is worth. When a Chilkat dies the body is burned at sunrise, having first been dressed for the ceremony in a costume more elaborate than any which it ever wore in life. The corpse must not be carried out at the door, which is deemed sacred, a superstition very common among savage races. A few boards may be taken from the rear or side of the hovel, or the body may be hoisted through the capacious chimney in the roof; but when the Chilkat in his last illness sought his house to lie down and die in it he passed over its threshold for the last time. Demons and dark spirits hover around like vultures, and are only kept out of doors by the dreaded incantations of the medicine men, and these may seize the corpse as it passes out. So fiendishly eager are they to secure and stab their prey that all that is needed is to lead out a dog from the house, which has been brought into it at night, when the witches fall upon it and exhaust their strength in attacking it before they discover their mistake. The cremation is seldom perfect, and the charred bones and remnants are collected and put into a small box standing on four posts in the nearest graveyard. In the burial of medicine men, or before cremation with others, the bodies are bent into half their length, the knees drawn up to the breast and secured by thongs and lashings.

A walk into the woods around Chilkat shows the traveling to be somewhat better than in equally mountainous country near the coast, and where paths had been cut through the dense timber to the charcoal pits formed and maintained by the canneries, the walking was exceedingly agreeable and pleasant, especially by way ofcontrast. As one recedes from the coast and gets beyond the influence of the warm Japanese current with its ceaseless fogs, rains and precipitation generally, the woods and marshes become more and more susceptible of travel, and by the time the Alaska coast range of mountains is crossed and the interior reached, one finds it but little worse than the tangle-woods and swamps of lower latitudes. 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. By means of these industries the wedge has begun to enter, and we may hope it will be driven home by means of a wise administration of government, a boon which has been denied to Alaska since the Russians left the territory.

The principal fisheries will always be those of salmon and cod, since these fish are most readily prepared for export, while halibut, Arctic smelt or candle-fish, brook trout, flounders and other species will give ample variety for local use. The salmon has long been the staple fish food of the Chilkats, but this is slowly giving way to the products of civilization which they acquire in return for services at the canneries and for loading and unloading the vessels which visit the port. The salmon season is ushered in with considerable ceremony by the Chilkats, numerous festivals mark its success and its close is celebrated by other feasts. A Chilkat village during the salmon fishing season is a busy place. Near the water, loaded with the fish, their pink sides cut open ready for drying, are the scaffoldings, which are built just highenough, to prevent the dogs from investigating too closely; while out in the shallow water of the shoals or rapids, which often determine the site of a village, may be seen fish-weirs looking like stranded baskets that had served their purpose elsewhere and been thrown away up the stream, and which had lodged here as they floated down. Many of the salmon are converted into fish-oil, which is used by the Chilkats as food, and resembles a cross between our butter and the blubber of the Eskimo. Taking a canoe that is worn out, yet not so badly damaged as not to be completely water-tight, it is filled some six to eight inches deep with salmon, over which water is poured until the fish are well covered. This being done on the beach there are always plenty of stones around, and a number of these are heated to as high a temperature as possible in an open fire alongside of the canoe, and are then rapidly thrown into the water, bringing it to a boiling heat, and cooking the mass. As the oil of the fat fish rises to the surface it is skimmed off with spoons, and after all has been procured that it is possible to obtain by this means, the gelatinous mass is pressed so as to get whatever remains, and all is preserved for winter food. The salmon to be dried are split open along the back until they are as flat as possible, and then the flesh is split to the skin in horizontal and vertical slices about an inch to an inch and a half apart, which facilitates the drying process. Each little square contracts in drying and makes a convenient mouthful for them as they scrape it from the skin with their upper canine teeth like a beaver peeling the bark from a cottonwood tree. In packing over the Alaska coast range of mountains, a task which keeps the Indians absent from three to five days,a single salmon and a quart of flour are considered a sufficient ration per man for even that severe trip. If they are working for white men the employers are supposed to furnish the flour and the Indians the fish. While these Tlinkits of south-eastern Alaska, of which the Chilkats and Chilkoots are the most dreaded and war-like band, are a most jolly, mirth-making, and oftentimes even hilarious crowd of people, yet any thing like a practical joke played upon one of them is seldom appreciated by the recipient with the sheepish satisfaction so common to civilization. An army officer, Lieut. C. E. S. Wood, who spent some time among them sketching and drawing something besides his pay, relates in the Century Magazine the story of an Indian who laboriously crawled up on a band of decoy ducks that somebody had allowed to remain anchored out near the water's edge, and wasted several rounds of ammunition on them before he discovered his mistake. Instead of sneaking back into the brush, dodging through out-of-the-way by-paths to his home, and maintaining a conspicuous silence thereafter, as we of a more civilized country would have done under like circumstances, he sought out the owner of the decoys and demanded direct and indirect damages for the injuries he had suffered and the ammunition he had wasted, and was met by laughter, which only increased his persistency until his demands were satisfied to get rid of him.

At one of the two salmon canneries of which I have spoken as being in Chilkat Inlet, there was also kept a trading store, and here the Indians would bring their furs and peltries and barter for the articles that were so temptingly displayed before their eyes; and if the skinswere numerous and valuable this haggling would often continue for hours, as the Indian never counts time as worth any thing in his bargains. While we were there an Indian brought in a few black fox skins to barter for trading material, a prime skin of this kind being worth about forty dollars in goods from the store, and grading from that down to nearly one-fourth of the amount. At the time when the Chilkats learned the great value of the black fox skins, not many years back, they also learned, in some unaccountable way, the method of making them to order by staining the common red fox or cross fox skin by the application of some native form of blacking, probably made from soot or charcoal. Many such were disposed of before the counterfeit was detected, and even after the cheat was well known the utmost vigilance was needed to prevent natives playing the trick in times of great business activity. The method of detection was simply to place the skin on any hard flat surface like the counter of a trader's store, and rub the clean hand vigorously and with considerable pressure backward and forward over the fur side of the skin, when, if the skin were dyed, the fact would be shown by the blackened hand. This fact had been explained to us by the trader, and the Doctor entering just as the conversation as to the price became animated, and perceiving that the palmar surface of his hand was well soiled and blackened, owing to his having been engaged assorting packs for our Indians, he playfully stepped up to the counter, ran his hand jauntily through the skin once or twice and displayed to the two traders his blackened palm, to the surprise of the white man and absolute consternationof the Indian. The former rapidly but unavailingly tried to verify the Doctor's experiment, when the latter broke out into a hearty laugh, in which the trader joined. Not so with the Indian; when he recovered his senses he was furious at the imputation on his character; and the best light he could view it in, after all the explanations, was that it had been a conspiracy between the two white men to get the skin at low rates, and the plot having failed, according to their own confession, and he himself having received his own price to quiet him, ought to be satisfied. The Doctor remarked as he finished the story, that he did not believe there was the remotest sense of humor among the whole band of Chilkat or Chilkoot Indians. The constant life of the Tlinkits in their canoes when procuring food or at other occupations on the water has produced, in conformity with the doctrine of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, a most conspicuous preponderating development of the chest and upper limbs over the lower, and their gait on land, resembling that of aquatic birds, is scarcely the poetry of motion as we understand it. The Chilkats, however, are not so confined to a seafaring life, and their long arduous trading journeys inland have assisted to make this physical characteristic much less conspicuous among them than among other tribes of Tlinkits, although even the Chilkats can not be called a race of large men. While they may not compare with the Sioux or Cheyennes, or a few others that might be mentioned, yet there are scores of Indian tribes in the United States proper which are greatly inferior to the Chilkats both in mental, physical, and moral qualities. In warfare they are as brave as the average Indiansof the United States, and have managed to conduct their own affairs with considerable order, in spite of governmental interference at times. I quote from a correspondent writing from there as late as August, 1884, to theNew York Timesof November 23d: "The Indians have a great respect for a man-of-war, with its strict discipline and busy steam launches that can follow their canoes to the remote creeks and hiding places in the islands, and naval rule has been most praiseworthy. The army did no good for the country or the natives, and its record is not a creditable one. The Tlinkits sneered openly at the land forces, and snapped their fingers at challenging and forbidding sentries, and paddled away at their pleasure."

CHILKAT INDIAN PACKER.

Bythe 6th of June all of our many arrangements for departure were fully completed, and the next day the party got under way shortly before 10 o'clock in the forenoon. Mr. Carl Spuhn, the Manager of the North-west Trading Company, which owned the western cannery in the Chilkat Inlet, where my party had been disembarked, who had been indefatigable in his efforts to assist me in procuring Indian packers, and in many other ways aiding the expedition, now placed at my disposal the little steam launch of the company, and behind it, tied one to the other by their towing ropes, was a long string of from twelve to twenty canoes, each containing from two to four Chilkat Indians, our prospective packers. Some of the Indians who had selected their packs carried them in the canoes, but the bulk of the material was on the decks of the steam-launch "Louise." They disappeared out of sight in a little while, steaming southward down the Chilkat Inlet, while with a small party in a row-boat I crossed thischannel and then by a good trail walked over to the Haines Mission, in Chilkoot Inlet, presided over by Mr. Eugene S. Willard and his wife, with a young lady assistant, Miss Mathews, and maintained by the Presbyterian Board of Missions as a station among the Chilkat and Chilkoot Indians. Crossing the "mission trail," as it was called, we often traversed lanes in the grass, which here was fully five feet high, while, in whatever direction the eye might look, wild flowers were growing in the greatest profusion. Dandelions as big as asters, buttercups twice the usual size, and violets rivaling the products of cultivation in lower latitudes were visible around. It produced a singular and striking contrast to raise the eyes from this almost tropical luxuriance and allow them to rest on the Alpine hills, covered, half way down their shaggy sides, with snow and glacier ice, and with cold mist condensed on their crowns. Mosquitoes were too plentiful not to be called a prominent discomfort, and small gnats did much to mar the otherwise pleasant stroll. Berries and berry blossoms grew in a profusion and variety which I have never seen equaled within the same limits in lower latitudes. A gigantic nettle was met with in uncomfortable profusion when one attempted to wander from the beaten trail. This nettle has received the appropriate name of "devil-sticks;" and Mr. Spuhn of the party told me it was formerly used by the Indian medicine-men as a prophylactic against witch-craft, applied externally, and with a vigor that would have done credit to the days of old Salem, a custom which is still kept up among these Indians. Gardens have been cultivated upon this narrow peninsula, the only comparatively level track ofconsiderable size in all south-eastern Alaska, with a success which speaks well for this part of the territory as far as climate and soil are concerned, although the terribly rough mountainous character of nearly all of this part of the country will never admit of any broad experiments in agriculture. By strolling leisurely along and stopping long enough to lunch under the great cedar trees, while the mosquitoes lunched off us, we arrived at the mission on Chilkoot Inlet just in time to see the little launch in the distance followed by its long procession of canoes, heading for us and puffing away as if it were towing the Great Eastern. It had gone down the Chilkat Inlet ten or twelve miles to the southward, turned around the sharp cape of the peninsula, Point Seduction, and traveled back northward, parallel to its old course, some twelve to fifteen miles to where we were waiting for it, having steamed about twenty-five miles, while we had come one-fifth the distance to the same point. Here quite a number of Chilkoot natives and canoes were added to the already large throng; Mrs. Schwatka, who had accompanied me thus far, was left in the kind care of the missionary family of Mr. Willard; adieus were waved and we once more took our northward course up the Chilkoot Inlet.

Part I.Map of the Alaska Exploring Expedition of 1883.Compiled and drawn by Mr. C. A. Homan, Topographical Assistant.

After four or five miles the main inlet bears off to the westward, but a much narrower one still points constantly to the north star, and up the latter we continued to steam. It is called the Dayay Inlet and gives us about ten miles of "straight-away course" before coming to the mouth of the river of the same name. This Dayay Inlet is of the same general character as the inland passages in this part of Alaska, of which I have alreadyspoken; a river-like channel between high steep hills, which are covered with pine, cedar and spruce from the water's line nearly to the top, and there capped with bare granite crowns that in gulches and on the summits are covered with snow and glacier ice, which in melting furnish water for innumerable beautiful cascades and mountain torrents, many of them dashing from such dizzy precipitous heights that they are reduced to masses of iridescent spray by the time they reach the deep green waters of the inlet.

With a score of canoes towing behind, the ropes near the launch kept parting so often that we were considerably delayed, and as the Indians were seldom in any great hurry about repairing the damages, and treated it in a most hilarious manner as something of a joke on the launch, the master of that craft, when the rope had parted near the central canoe for about the twentieth time, finally bore on without them, leaving the delinquents to get along as best they could, there being about five miles more to make. Fortunately just then a fair southern breeze sprang up, so that most of the tardy canoes soon displayed canvas, and those that could not, hastily improvised a blanket, a pea-jacket, or even a a broad-shouldered pair of pantaloons, to aid their progress, for the Indian in all sections of the country is much more ingenious than one is apt to suppose, especially if his object be to save manual labor. The mouth of the Dayay river being reached about six in the afternoon, it was found to consist of a series of low swampy mud flats and a very miry delta. Here it is necessary to ascend the swift river at least a mile to find a site that is even half suitable for a camp. During the timewhen the greatest sediment is brought down by the swift muddy stream,i.e., during the spring freshets and summer high water, the winds are usually from the south, and blow with considerable force, which fact accounts for the presence of soft oozy deposits of great extent so near the mouth of the stream. Through this shallow water the canoes carried our effects. The river once reached the canoes proceeded up the stream to camp, the launch whistled us adieu, and as she faded from sight, the last link that bound us to civilization was snapped, and our explorations commenced. The distance from the Haines' Mission to the mouth of the Dayay where we disembarked was sixteen miles.

At this camp No. 2, we found a small camp of wanderingTahk-heeshIndians, or as they are locally called by the few whites of the country, theSticks, a peaceful tribe whose home is over the Alaskan coast range of mountains and along the headwaters of the great Yukon, the very part of the very stream we desired to explore. It has only been within the last few years that these Tahk-heesh Indians have been allowed to cross over the mountains into the Chilkat country for purposes of trade, the Chilkats and Chilkoots united having from time immemorial completely monopolized the profitable commerce of the interior fur trade, forbidding ingress to the whites and denying egress to the Indians of the interior. From the former they bought their trading goods and trinkets, and making them into convenient bundles or parcels of about one hundred pounds each, they carried them on their backs across the snow and glacier crowned mountains, exchanging them for furs with the tribes of the interior for many hundreds ofmiles around. These furs were again lashed in packs and carried back over the same perilous paths to the coffers of the white traders, and although they realized but a small fractional portion of their value, yet prices were large in comparison with the trifling cost to the venders. When the trade was at its best many years ago, these trips were often made twice a year during the spring and summer, and so great was the commerce in those days, that no less than from eight to ten tons of trading material found its way into the interior by way of these Alpine passes, and was exchanged for its equivalent in furs. As a consequence, the Chilkat nation is the richest tribe of Indians in the great North-west. Their chief, Shot-rich, alone is worth about ten or twelve thousand dollars in blankets, their standard of wealth, and others in proportion, according to their energy in the trade. Shot-rich has three large native houses at Klukwan, the main Chilkat town, two of which are filled with blankets worth from two to four dollars apiece. The trail on which we were now plodding along is known among the Indians as the Chilkoot trail to the interior, and takes from two to four days, packing their goods on their backs, until the headwaters of the Yukon are reached. It was monopolized solely by the Chilkoots, who had even gone so far as to forbid the Chilkats, almost brothers in blood, from using it, so that the latter were forced to take a longer and far more laborious route. This route of the Chilkats led them up the Chilkat River to near its head, where a long mountain trail that gave them a journey of a week or ten days, packing on their backs, brought them to a tributary of the Yukon, by means of which the interior was gained. Once on this tributary no serious rapids orother impediments were in their line of travel, while the Yukon, with its shorter trail, had many such obstacles. The great Hudson Bay Company with its well-known indomitable courage, attempted as early as 1850 to tap this rich trading district monopolized by the Chilkat Indians, and Fort Selkirk was established at the junction of the Yukon and Pelly, but so far away from their main base of supplies on Hudson's Bay, that it is said it took them a couple of years to reach it with trading effects. The Indians knew of but one method of competition in business. They went into no intricate inventories for reducing prices of stock, nor did they put bigger advertisements or superior inducements before their customers. They simply organized a war party, rapidly descended the main Yukon for about five hundred miles, burned the buildings and appropriated the goods.

As the Tahk-heesh orStickswere allowed to come abroad so the white men were allowed and, in fact, induced to enter, for the coast Indians found ample compensation in carrying the white men's goods over the trail of about thirty miles at a rate which brought them from ten to twelve dollars per pack of a hundred pounds in weight; and it was my intention to take advantage of this opportunity to reach the head of the river, and then fight my way down it, rather than against its well known rapid current, of which I had heard so much from the accounts of explorers on its lower waters. When it was known, however, that I expected to do my explorations on a raft, the idea was laughed at by the few white men of the country, as evincing the extreme of ignorance, and the Indians seemed to be but little behind them in ridicule of the plan. The latter emphatically affirmed that ahundred and fifty or two hundred miles of lakes stretched before us, and what, they argued, can be more helpless than a raft on a still lake? Eight or ten miles of boiling rapids occurred at various points in the course of the stream, and these would tear any raft into a shapeless wreck, while it would be hard to find Indians to portage my numerous effects around them. The unwieldiness of a great raft—no small one would serve for us and our stores—in a swift current was constantly pointed out, and I must confess I felt a little discouraged myself when I summed up all these reasons. Why this or the Chilkat route was not attempted long ago by some explorer, who might thereby have traversed the entire river in a single summer, instead of combating its swift current from its mouth, seems singular in the light of the above facts, and I imagine the only explanation is that men who would place sufficient reliance in Indian reports to insert in their maps the gross inaccuracies that we afterward detected, would rely also upon the Indian reports that from time immemorial have pronounced this part of the river to be unnavigable even for canoes, except for short stretches, and as filled with rapids, cañons, whirlpools and cascades.

After camping that night on the Dayay, bundles were all assorted and assigned. The packs varied from thirty-six to a hundred and thirty-seven pounds in weight, the men generally carrying a hundred pounds and the boys according to their age and strength. The "Sticks" or Tahk-heesh Indians camped near us were hunting black bear, which were said to be abundant in this locality, an assertion which seemed to be verified by the large number of tracks we saw in the valley. From this band ofIndians we completed our number of packers, a circumstance which irritated the others greatly, for the Chilkats seem to regard theSticksalmost in the light of slaves. Here I also secured a stout, sturdy fellow, at half rates, merely to go along in case of sickness among my numerous retinue, in which event he would be put on full wages. His onerous duties consisted in carrying the guidon, or expedition flag, weighing four or five pounds, and he improvised himself into a ferry for the white men at the numerous fords which the tortuous Dayay River presented as we ascended. As every one gave him a nickel or dime at each ford, and the guidon staff was simply a most convenient alpenstock, he was the envy of all the others as he slowly but surely amassed his gains; not so slowly either, for the river made so many windings from one side of its high walled valley to the other, that his receipts rivaled a western railroad in the matter of mileage, but the locomotion was scarcely as comfortable as railroad travel.

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