Alaska Part 30

When seen under favorable conditions, the Columbia Glacier is the most beautiful thing in Alaska. I have visited it twice; once at sunset, and again on an all-day excursion from Valdez.

The point on the western side of the entrance to Puerto de Valdes, as it was named by Fidalgo, was named Point Fremantle by Vancouver. Just west of this point and three miles north of the Conde, or Glacier, Island is the nearly square bay upon which the glacier fronts.

Entering this bay from the Puerto de Valdes, one is instantly conscious of the presence of something wonderful and mysterious. Long before it can be seen, this presence is felt, like that of a living thing. Quick, vibrant, thrilling, and inexpressibly sweet, its breath sweeps out to salute the voyager and lure him on; and with every sense alert, he follows, but with no conception of what he is to behold.

One may have seen glaciers upon glaciers, yet not be prepared for the splendor and the magnificence of the one that palisades the northern end of this bay.

The Fremantle Glacier was first seen by Lieutenant Whidbey, to whose cold and unappreciative eyes so many of the most precious things of Alaska were first revealed. He simply described it as "a solid body of compact, elevated ice ... bounded at no great distance by a continuation of the high ridge of snowy mountains."

He heard "thunder-like" noises, and found that they had been produced by the breaking off and headlong plunging into the sea of great bodies of ice.

In such wise was one of the most marvellous things of the world first seen and described.

The glacier has a frontage of about four miles, and its glittering palisades tower upward to a height of from three to four hundred feet.

There is a small island, named Heather, in the bay. Poor Whidbey felt the earth shake at a distance of three miles from the falling ice.

In ordinary light, the front of the glacier is beautifully blue. It is a blue that is never seen in anything save a glacier or a floating iceberg--a pale, pale blue that seems to flash out fire with every movement. At sunset, its beauty holds one spellbound. It sweeps down magnificently from the snow peaks which form its fit setting and pushes out into the sea in a solid wall of spired and pinnacled opal which, ever and anon breaking off, flings over it clouds of color which dazzle the eyes. At times there is a display of prismatic colors. Across the front grow, fade and grow again, the most beautiful rainbow shadings.

They come and go swiftly and noiselessly, affecting one somewhat like Northern Lights--so still, so brilliant, so mysterious.

There was silence upon our s.h.i.+p as it throbbed in, slowly and cautiously, among the floating icebergs--some of which were of palest green, others of that pale blue I have mentioned, and still others of an enchanting rose color. Even the woman who had, during the whole voyage, taken the finest edge off our enjoyment of every mountain by drawling out, "Oh--how--pretty! George, will you just come here and look at this pretty mountain? It looks good enough to eat"--even this woman was speechless now, for which blessing we gave thanks to G.o.d, of which we were not even conscious at the time.

It was still fired as brilliantly upon our departure as upon our entrance into its presence. The June sunset in Alaska draws itself out to midnight; and ever since, I have been tormented with the longing to lie before that glacier one whole June night; to hear its falling columns thunder off the hours, and to watch the changing colors play upon its brilliant front.

Even in the middle of the day a peculiarly soft and rich rose color flashes from it and over it. One who has seen the first snow sifting upon a late rose of the garden may guess what a delicate, enchanting rose color it is.

There are many fine glaciers barricading the inlets and bays in this vicinity; in Port Nell Juan, Applegate Arm, Port Wells, Pa.s.sage Ca.n.a.l--which leads to the portage to Cook Inlet--and Unakwik Bay; but they are scarcely to be mentioned in the same breath with the Fremantle.

The latter has been known as the Columbia since the Harriman expedition in 1899. It has had no rival since the destruction of the Muir.

Either the disagreeable features of the Alaskan climate have been grossly exaggerated, or I have been exceedingly fortunate in the three voyages I have made along the coast to Unalaska, and down the Yukon to Nome. On one voyage I travelled continuously for a month by water, experiencing only three rainy days and three cloudy ones. All the other days were clear and golden, with a blue sky, a sparkling sea, and air that was sweet with suns.h.i.+ne, flowers, and snow. I have never been in Alaska in winter, but I have for three years carefully compared the weather reports of different sections of that country with those of other cold countries; and no intelligent, thoughtful person can do this without arriving at conclusions decidedly favorable to Alaska.

Were Alaska possessed of the same degree of civilization that is enjoyed by St. Petersburg, Chicago, St. Paul, 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.

It is the present loneliness of the winter that appalls. The awful s.p.a.ces and silences; the limitless snow plains; the endless chains of snow mountains; the silent, frozen rivers; the ice-stayed cataracts; the bitter, moaning sea; the hastily built homes, lacking luxuries, sometimes even comforts; the poverty of congenial companions.h.i.+p; the dearth of intelligent amus.e.m.e.nts--these be the conditions that make all but the stoutest hearts pause.

But the stout heart, the heart that loves Alaska! Pity him not, though he spend all the winters of his life in its snow-bound fastnesses. _He_ is not for pity. Joys are his of which those that pity him know not.

According to a report prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Gla.s.sford, of the United States Signal Corps Service, on February 5, 1906, the temperature was twenty-six degrees above zero in Grand Junction, Colorado, and in Salchia, Alaska; twenty-two degrees in Flagstaff, Arizona, Memphis, Salt Lake, Spokane, and Summit, Alaska; fourteen degrees in Cairo, Illinois, Cincinnati, Little Rock, Pittsburgh, and Della, Alaska; twelve degrees in Santa Fe and in Fort Egbert and Eagle, on the Yukon; ten degrees in Helena, Buffalo, and Workman's, Alaska; zero in Denver, Dodge, Kansas, and Fairbanks and Chena, Alaska; five degrees below in Dubuque, Omaha, and Copper Centre and Mata.n.u.ska, Alaska; ten degrees below in Huron, Michigan, and in Gokona, Alaska; fifteen degrees below in Bismarck, St.

Paul, and in Tanana Crossing, Alaska; twenty degrees below in Fort Brady, Michigan, and in Ketchumstock, Alaska.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau

WHITE HORSE RAPIDS]

Statistics giving the absolute mean minimum temperature in the capital cities of the United States prove that out of the forty-seven cities, thirty-one were as cold or colder than Sitka, and four were colder than Valdez.

On the southern coast of Alaska there are few points where zero is recorded, the average winter weather at Juneau, Sitka, Valdez, and Seward being milder than in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. In the interior, the weather is much colder, but it is the dry, light cold. At Fairbanks, it is true that the thermometer has registered sixty degrees below zero; but it has done the same in the Dakotas and other states, and is unusual. Severely cold weather occurs in Alaska as rarely as in other cold countries, and remains but a few days.

Alaska has unfortunately had the reputation of having an unendurable climate thrust upon her, first by such chill-blooded navigators as Whidbey and Vancouver; and later, by the gold seekers who rushed, frenziedly, into the unsettled wastes, with no preparation for the intense cold which at times prevails.

Almost every winter in Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, and the Dakotas, children of the prairies and their teachers freeze to death going to or from school, and it is accepted as a matter of course. In Alaska, where hundreds of men traverse hundreds of miles by dog sleds and snow-shoes, with none of the comforts of more civilized countries and with road houses few and far, if two or three in a winter freeze to death, the tragedy is wired to all parts of the world as another mute testimony to the "tremendously horrible" climate of Alaska.

The intense heat, of which dozens of people perish every summer in New York and other eastern states is unknown in Alaska. Cyclones and cloud-bursts are unchronicled. Fatal epidemics of disease among white people have never yet occurred.

As for the summer climate of Alaska, both along the coast and in the interior, it is possessed of a charm and fascination which cannot be described in words.

"You can just _taste_ the Alaska climate," said an old Klondiker, on a White Pa.s.s and Yukon train. We were standing between cars, clinging to the brakes--sooty-eyed, worn-out with joy as we neared White Horse, but standing and looking still, unwilling to lose one moment of that beautiful trip.

"It tastes different every hundred miles," he went on, with that beam in his eye which means love of Alaska in the heart. "You begun to taste it in Grenville Channel. It tasted different in Skagway, and there's a big change when you get to White Horse. I golly! at White Horse, you'll think you never tasted anything like it; but it don't hold a candle there to the way it tastes going down the Yukon. If you happen to get into the Ar'tic Circle, say, about two in the morning, you dress yourself and hike out on deck, an' I darn! you can taste more'n climate.

You can taste the Ar'tic Circle itself! Say, can you guess what it tastes like?"

I could not guess what the Arctic Circle tasted like, and frankly confessed it.

"Well, say, weepin' Sinew! It tastes like icicles made out of them durn little blue flowers you call voylets. I picked some out from under the snow once, an' eat 'em. There was moisture froze all over 'em--so I know how they taste; and that's the way the Ar'tic Circle tastes, with--well, maybe a little _rum_ mixed in, the way they fix things up at the Butler down in Seattle. I darn!... Just you remember, when you get to the Circle, an' say, straight goods, if Cyanide Bill ain't right."

"Talkin' about climate," he resumed, as the train hesitated in pa.s.sing the Grand Canyon, "there's a well at White Horse that's got the climate of the hull Yukon country in it. It's about two blocks toward the rapids from White Pa.s.s Hotel. It stands on a vacant lot about fifty steps from the sidewalk, on your right hand goin' toward the Rapids. Well, I darn!

I've traipsed over every country on this earth, an' I never tasted such water. Not anywheres! You see, it's dug right down into solid ice an'

the sun just melts out a little water at a time, an' everything nice in Alaska tastes in that water--ice an' snow, an' flowers an' sun--"

"Do you write poetry?" I asked, smiling.

His face lightened.

"No; but say--there's a young fellow in White Horse that does. He's wrote a whole book of it. His name's Robert Service. Say, I'd shoot up anybody that said his poetry wasn't the real thing."

"I'm sure it is," said I, hastily.

"You bet it is. You can hear the Yukon roar, an' the ice break up an' go down the river, standin' up on end in chunks twenty feet high, an'

carryin' everything with it; you can wade through miles an' miles of flowers an' gether your hands full of 'em an' think there's a woman somewhere waitin' for you to take 'em to her; you can tromp through tundra an' over rocks till your feet bleed; you can go blind lookin' for gold; you can get kissed by the prettiest girl in a Dawson dance hall, an' then get jilted for some younger fellow; you can hear glaciers grindin' up, an' avylanches tearin' down the mountains; you can starve to death an' freeze to death; you can strike a gold mine an' go home to your fambly a millionnaire an' have 'em like you again; you can drink champagne an' eat sour-dough; you can feel the heart break up inside of you--an' yes, I G.o.d! you can go down on your knees an' say your prayers again like your mother showed you how! You can do every one of them d.a.m.n fool things when you're readin' that Service fellow's poetry. So that's why I'm ready to shoot up anybody that says, or intimates, that his poetry ain't the genuine article."

CHAPTER XXIV

Port Valdez--or the Puerto de Valdes, as it was named by Vancouver after Whidbey's exploration--is a fiord twelve miles long and of a beauty that is simply enchanting.

On a clear day it winds like a pale blue ribbon between colossal mountains of snow, with glaciers streaming down to the water at every turn. The peaks rise, one after another, sheer from the water, pearl-white from summit to base.

It has been my happiness and my good fortune always to sail this fiord on a clear day. The water has been as smooth as satin, with a faint silvery tinge, as of frost, s.h.i.+mmering over its blue.

At the end, Port Valdez widens into a bay, and upon the bay, in the shadow of her mountains, and shaded by her trees, is Valdez.

Valdez! The mere mention of the name is sufficient to send visions of loveliness glimmering through the memory. Through a soft blur of rose-lavender mist s.h.i.+ne houses, glacier, log-cabins, and the tossing green of trees; the wild, white glacial torrents pouring down around the town; and the pearly peaks linked upon the sky.