Alaska Part 50

He disappeared, and presently returned with a perfect treasure of a samovar,--old, battered, green with age and use. We went into ecstasies over it.

"I'll take it," I said. "How much is it?"

"It was twenty-five dollars," said he, dismally. "It is sold."

"How very peculiar," said my companion, as we went away, "to keep bringing out samovars that are sold."

For two years my thoughts reverted at intervals to those "sold" samovars at Unalaska. Last summer I went down the Yukon. At St. Michael I was entertained at the famous "Cottage" for several days. One day at dinner I asked a gentleman if he knew Captain Gray.

"Of Unalaska?" exclaimed two or three at once. Then they all burst out laughing.

"We all know him," one said. "Everybody knows him."

"But why do you laugh?"

"Oh, because he is so 'slick' at taking in a tourist."

"In what manner?" asked I, stiffly. I remembered that Captain Gray had asked me if I were a tourist.

They all laughed again.

"Oh, _especially_ on samovars."

My face burned suddenly.

"On samovars!"

"Yes. You see he gets a tourist into his warehouses and shows him samovar after samovar--fifty or sixty of them--and tells him that every one is sold. He puts on the most mournful look.

"'This one was twenty-five dollars,' he says. 'A captain on a government cutter bought them to take to Boston.' Then the tourist gets wild. He offers five, ten, twenty dollars more to get one of those samovars. He always gets it; because, you see, Gray wants to sell it to him even worse than he wants to buy it. It always works."

We walked over the hills to Dutch Harbor--once called Lincoln Harbor.

There is a stretch of blue water to cross, and we were ferried over by a gentleman having much Fourth-of-July in his speech and upon his breath.

His efforts at politeness are remembered joys, while a sober ferryman would have been forgotten long ago. But the sober ferrymen that morning were like the core of the little boy's apple.

It was the most beautiful walk of my life. A hard, narrow, white path climbed and wound and fell over the vivid green hills; it led around lakes that lay in the hollows like still, liquid sapphire, set with the pearl of clouds; it lured through banks of violets and over slopes of trembling bluebells; it sent out tempting by-paths that ended in the fireweed's rosy drifts; but always it led on--narrow, well-trodden, yet oh, so lonely and so still! Birds sang and the sound of the waves came to us--that was all. Once a little brown Aleutian lad came whistling around the curve in the path, stood still, and gazed at us with startled eyes as soft and dark as a gazelle's; but he was the only human being we saw upon the hills that day.

We saw acres that were deep blue with violets. They were large enough to cover silver half-dollars, and their stems were several inches in length. Fireweed grew low, but the blooms were large and of a deep rose color.

Standing still, we counted thirteen varieties of wild flowers within a radius of six feet. There were the snapdragon, wild rose, columbine, b.u.t.tercup, Solomon's seal, anemone, larkspur, lupine, dandelion, iris, geranium, monk's-hood, and too many others to name, to be found on the hills of Unalaska. There are more than two thousand varieties of wild flowers in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. The blossoms are large and brilliant, and they cover whole hillsides and fill deep hollows with beautiful color. The bluebells and violets are exquisite. The latter are unbelievably large; of a rich blue veined with silver. They poise delicately on stems longer than those of the hot-house flower; so that we could gather and carry armfuls of them.

The site of Dutch Harbor is green and level. Fronting the bay are the large buildings of the North American Commercial Company, with many small frame cottages scattered around them. All are painted white, with bright red roofs, and the town presents a clean and attractive appearance.

Dutch Harbor is the prose, and Unalaska the poetry, of the island. There is neither a hotel nor a restaurant at either place. It was one o'clock when we reached Dutch Harbor; we had breakfasted early, and we sought, in vain, for some building that might resemble an "eating-house."

We finally went into the big store, and meeting the manager of the company, asked to be directed to the nearest restaurant.

He smiled.

"There isn't any," he said.

"Is there no place where one may get _something_ to eat? Bread and milk?

We saw cows upon the hills."

"You would not care to go to the native houses," he replied, still smiling. "But come with me."

He led the way along a neat board walk to a residence that would attract attention in any town. It was large and of artistic design.

"It was designed by Molly Garfield," the young man somewhat proudly informed us. "Her husband was connected with the company for several years, and they built and lived in this house."

The house was richly papered and furnished. It was past the luncheon hour, but we were excellently served by a perfectly trained Chinaman.

For more than a hundred years the great commercial companies--beginning with the Shelikoff Company--have dispensed the hospitality of Alaska, and have acted as hosts to the stranger within their gates. The managers are instructed to sell provisions at reasonable prices, and to supply any one who may be in distress and unable to pay for food.

They frequently entertain, as guests of the company they represent, travellers to these lonely places, not because the latter are in need, but merely as a courtesy; and their hospitality is as free and generous--but not as embarra.s.sing--as that of Baranoff.

That night I sat late alone upon the hills, on a tundra slope that was blue with violets. I could not put my hand down without crus.h.i.+ng them.

The lights moving across Unalaska were as poignantly interesting as the thoughts that come and go across a stranger's face when he does not know that one is observing.

All the lights and shadows of the vanis.h.i.+ng Aleutian race seemed to be moving across the hills, the village, the blue bay.

Scarcely a day has pa.s.sed that I have not gone back across the blue and emerald water-ways that stretch between, to that lovely place and that luminous hour.

Perhaps, I thought, Veniaminoff may have looked down upon this exquisite scene from this same violeted spot--Veniaminoff, the humble, devout, and devoted missionary, whom I should rather have been than any man or woman whose history I know; Veniaminoff, who _lived_--instead of _wrote_--a great, a sublime, poem.

Unalaska's commercial glory has faded. It was once port of entry for all vessels pa.s.sing in or out of Behring Sea; the s.h.i.+ps of the Arctic whaling fleet called here for water, coal, supplies, and mail; during the years that the _modus vivendi_ was in force it was headquarters of the United States and the British fleets patrolling Behring Sea, and lines of captured sealers often lay here at anchor.

During the early part of the present decade Unalaska saw its most prosperous times. Thousands of people waited here for transportation to the Klondike, via St. Michael and the Yukon. Many s.h.i.+ps were built here, and one still lies rotting upon the ways.

The Greek church is second in size and importance to the one at Sitka only, and the bishop once resided here. There is a Russian parish school, a government day-school, and a Methodist mission, the Jessie Lee Home. The only white women on the island reside at the Home. The bay has frequently presented the appearance of a naval parade, from the number of government and other vessels lying at anchor.

No traveller will weary soon of Unalaska. There are caves and waterfalls to visit, and unnumbered excursions to make to beautiful places among the hills. Especially interesting is Samghanooda, or English, Harbor, where Cook mended his s.h.i.+ps; while Makus.h.i.+n Harbor, on the western coast, where Glottoff and his Russians first landed in 1756, is only thirty miles away.

The great volcano itself is easy of ascent, and the view from its crest is one of the memories of a lifetime. Borka, a tiny village at Samghanooda, is as noted for its Dutch-like cleanliness as Belkoffski is for its filth.

The other islands of the Aleutian chain drift on to westward, lonely, unknown--almost, if not entirely, uninhabited. Now and then a small trading settlement is found, which is visited only by Captain Applegate,--the last remaining white deep-sea otter hunter,--and once a year by a government cutter, or the Russian priest from Unalaska, or a shrewd and wandering trader.

These green and unknown islands are the islands of my dreams--and dreams do "come true" sometimes. This voyage out among the Aleutians is the most poetic and enchanting in the world to-day; and I shall never be entirely happy until I have drifted on out to the farthest island of Attu, lying within the eastern hemisphere, and watched those lonely, dark women, with the souls of poets and artists and the patience of angels, weaving _their_ dreams into ravis.h.i.+ng beauty and sending them out into the world as the farewell messages of a betrayed and vanis.h.i.+ng people. As we treat them for their few remaining years, so let us in the end be treated.