Chapter IX: Part 9

It was a sight of horror. On one side, close to the opening, with his head towards the outside, lay what was apparently a dead man. His jaw had dropped, his eyes were open, but fixed and glassy, his limbs were motionless. On the opposite was a poor fellow, alive to be sure, but without hands or feet, and with a spoon tied to the stump of his right arm. Two others seated on the ground, in the middle, had just got down a rubber bottle that hung on the tent-pole, and were pouring from it into a tin can. Directly opposite, on his hands and knees, was a dark man with a long matted beard, in a dirty and tattered dressing-gown, with a little red skull-cap on his head, and brilliant staring eyes. As Colwell appeared, he raised himself a little, and put on a pair of eye-glasses.

"Who are you?" asked Colwell.

The man made no answer, staring at him vacantly.

"Who are you?" again.

One of the men spoke up: "That's the major,--Major Greely."

Colwell crawled in and took him by the hand, saying to him, "Greely, is this you?"

"Yes," said Greely in a faint broken voice, hesitating and shuffling with his words, "yes--seven of us left--here we are--dying--like men. Did what I came to do--beat the best record."

Then he fell back exhausted.

The four men in the tent with Greely were two sergeants, Elison and Fredericks; Bierderbick, the hospital steward; and Private Connell, who, with Brainard and Long, were all that remained of the twenty-five members of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. The scene, as Colwell looked around, was one of misery and squalor. The rocky floor was covered with cast-off clothes, and among them were huddled together the sleeping-bags in which the party had spent most of their time during the last few months. There was no food left in the tent but two or three cans of a thin, repulsive-looking jelly, made by boiling strips cut from the seal-skin clothing. The bottle on the tent-pole still held a few teaspoonfuls of brandy, but it was their last, and they were sharing it as Colwell entered; it was evident that most of them had not long to live....

As soon as Colwell understood the condition of affairs, he sent Chief-Engineer Lowe back to the cutter to put off to the "Bear" with Long, to report what had happened, and bring off the others with the surgeon and stimulants. Fredericks and Bierderbick presently got up and came out. Colwell gave them, as well as Greely and Elison, a little of the biscuit he had in his pocket, which they munched slowly and deliberately. Then he gave them another bit, while Norman opened one of the cans of pemmican. Scraping off a little with a knife, Colwell fed them slowly by turns. It was a pitiable sight. They could not stand up, and had dropped down on their knees, and held out their hands begging for more. After they had each been fed twice, they were told that they had had enough, that they could not eat more then without danger; but their hunger had now come back with full force, and they begged piteously to be helped again, protesting that it could do them no harm. Colwell was wisely deaf to their entreaties and threw away the can. When Greely found that he was refused he took out a can of the boiled seal-skin, which had been carefully husbanded, and which he said he had a right to eat, as it was his own. This was taken away from him, but while Colwell was at work trying to raise the tent, some one got the half-emptied can of pemmican, and by the time it was discovered had eaten its contents.

The weaker ones were like children, petulant, rambling and fitful in their talk, absent, and sometimes a little incoherent. While they were waiting for the return of the boat, Colwell and the ice-masters did their best to cheer them up by telling them that relief was at hand, and that the others would soon arrive. They could not realize it, and refused to believe it. So they were humored, and by way of taking up their thoughts, Colwell told them something of what had been going on in the world during their three years of exile. Curiously enough, there was much that they knew already. It turned out that among the stores from the "Proteus" were two boxes of lemons, and the fruit had been wrapped up in scraps of English newspapers,--"those lemons which your dear wife put up for us," as one of them said to Colwell in a moment of wandering fancy. The latter could only disclaim the imaginary obligation to an imaginary person, but the impression had already faded.

As Greely complained of cold, Colwell gave him his gloves, and persuaded him to go back to his sleeping-bag. This was lying under the fallen tent-cloth, which the party had been too weak or too discouraged to raise up and disengage. Where the single remaining pole supported the tent there was a clear space of perhaps six feet, just enough for a man to stand upright, but around it the canvas was lying on the ground. The bag, from which Greely had hardly moved for a month, was found under the canvas, and by the united efforts of the three men the tent was partly raised.

Meanwhile, the "Bear" had arrived and Lowe had gone off in the cutter, taking with him Sergeant Long. Long was too weak to get on board without assistance, and was lifted over the side by some of the crew and taken to a chair in the wardroom. In reply to questions about the party and their condition, Long, in a husky voice, told his story: that all were dead except Greely and five others, who were on shore in "sore distress--sore distress;" that they had had a hard winter, and "the wonder was how in God's name they had pulled through." No words can describe the pathos of this man's broken and enfeebled utterance as he said, over and over, "a hard winter--a hard winter;" and the officers who were gathered about him in the wardroom felt an emotion which most of them were at little pains to conceal. The first sign of the relief expedition which had reached the camp was the sound from the steam whistle of the "Thetis," recalling the shore parties at Payer Harbor. Lieutenant Greely, lying on the ground in his tent, had heard it, as it was borne faintly over the neck of land, but the others had not noticed it in the roaring wind, and when he told them he had heard a steamer's whistle, they thought it only the impression of his disturbed imagination. Long crawled out of the tent and, bracing himself against the wind, struggled up to the ridge; but nothing could be seen but the rocky coast, and the ice-foot, and the chopping sea with the pack stretching off in the distance. It was a bitter disappointment. Long went back disheartened, but after waiting uneasily awhile longer, he mounted the ridge a second time. Still there was nothing to be seen but the same hopeless prospect, and he was about to return again when the cutter came into view around the point above. After all these months of waiting it was hard to believe that he was not dreaming, but when he saw the coxswain wave the familiar flag, he knew that relief had come at last.

[The conclusion of the story is longer than we have space to
give. It will suffice to say that the survivors were
gradually brought back to life and health, and that the
living and the bodies of the dead alike were brought back to
the United States; and that in the robust-appearing General
Greely of to-day there is nothing to indicate the terrible
strain of that dread winter in the realm of ice.]

THE MUIR GLACIER.

SEPTIMA M. COLLIS.

[No other country in the world possesses so many unique wonders
of nature as the United States. The Yosemite Valley,
Yellowstone Park, Mammoth Cave, Niagara Falls, and Sequoia
Groves each stands alone in its peculiar beauty or grandeur;
and to these we may add the Muir Glacier in Alaska, before
which the famous glaciers of the Alps shrink into
insignificance, and which has no rival outside the Arctic zone.
"A Woman's Trip to Alaska," by Mrs. Collis, gives a vivid and
picturesque description of this glacial wonder, which we here
append. The sketch given is preceded by a statistical one, in
which we are told that this glacier sheds from its front "one
hundred and sixty million cubic feet of ice every twenty-four
hours."]

The previous chapter has briefly outlined the main facts within my knowledge concerning the Muir Glacier which I had gathered from my reading, and upon which I had to create the image of what I expected to see. True, I had seen photographs of it; yes, and I had seen photographs of the Canyon of the Yellowstone, and of the Nevada Falls, and of Niagara, just as I have seen paste diamonds; I knew their shapes, and that is all I ever gathered from their portraits. Neither the expression, nor the complexion, nor the sound of the voice of nature are to be found upon the dull surface of the photograph; you simply get the general lines, some of the shadows, very erroneous perspective, and that is all. We had come to a stand-still while we were at lunch. I had observed the slackening of speed; next the stoppage of the machinery; then the absolute stillness of the ship; and finally a darkening of the saloon. We were evidently at a halt under the shadow of some immense elevation. A passenger on tiptoe looked through the port-hole, and uttered an exclamation of amazement; then we all rushed to similar apertures; climbed on the chairs; looked over the men's shoulders; in fact, did all kinds of unreasonable things, and at last stampeded up the companion-way to the deck.

I pray heaven that neither age nor infirmity may ever efface from my memory the sight and the sensation of that moment. To say that I was transfixed, speechless, fascinated to intoxication by the spell of this marvellous development is no exaggeration. Those who reached the deck first seemed paralyzed, halted, and thus blockaded the way for those who were to follow; others kept within the saloon from choice, as though they dreaded some phenomenal convulsion. I wedged my way as best I could, after the first shock of amazement had subsided, up to the very bow of the ship.

Upon each side of me, half a mile away, rose the same old mountains which I had seen everywhere from Tacoma north; at my feet the same Pacific Ocean, but in front of me, apparently so close that I could almost reach it with my fingers, the perpendicular wall of a canyon, not of rock, nor clay, nor grass, nor forest, but of ice,--a wall of ice a mile in length; and when I say a mile, I mean over eighteen hundred yards of it; and when I speak of ice, I do not mean the sooty, porous stuff that lodges in the valleys of the Alps; I mean the veritable, pure, clear, crystal ice of the ice-pitcher. A wall a hundred yards high, and in some places towering up an additional fifty; a wall extending down deeper in the ocean than it reaches from the ocean to the sky; hard as adamant, sharp and edged like flint, aqua-marine in color, deepening towards the water into indigo, tipped on the summits and projections with a froth of snow. If I did not know that it was ice, I should believe that it was glass. If I did not know that it was the work of the Creator, I should believe that here had assembled a convocation of architects, who in their collective ingenuity had reproduced a combination of the chefs-d'oeuvre of their art; for here were the buttresses of the English abbeys, and flying buttresses of Notre Dame, turrets of the Normans, towers of the early English, spires of the cathedral in Cologne, wonderful unoccupied niches, pilasters of the purest white marble and green malachite, and decorative carving and high polish worthy of Cellini.

It was a cloudy day, yet the front glistened with prismatic splendor. What will it be, I asked myself, if in the afternoon the setting sun shall light it up? But we are too close to it for our own safety, we learn, and are slowly moved back half a mile, where our anchor is dropped and preparations are made to row us on shore to climb to the top of the glacier. While we are moving a sharp detonation rings out like the firing of a rifle, and one of the beautiful spires on the crest of the very centre of the wall is shivered into atoms, and its fragments fall with a splash four hundred feet. Later there is a report as of a cannon, but without result; this, we are told, is the parting of the sea of ice somewhere far back in its mountain home. Presently two similar explosions, evidently right close to us, followed by rumbling echoes, and over topples a huge mass weighing tons, which sinks so far that several seconds elapse before it rises to the surface, swaying to and fro until it finds its equilibrium, and then floats down the current, one more turquoise gem added to the chain which precedes it.

And this continued all day, sometimes at intervals of seconds only, sometimes of half an hour, and when we retired at night the explosion and the splash became as monotonous and periodical as the tinkling of the street-car bell or the footstep of the passer-by does at home. There was one tremendous breaking-off towards evening; the sun, as we had hoped, was out in full glory, and at the distance from which we now viewed the glacier it was a mountain of snow-covered ice chopped off in front. For many miles we could see over and beyond the facade, as though looking at a great river of snow; yet the facade itself was a face of corrugated emerald, reflecting the sun's rays at every imaginable angle, and changing and scintillating with every movement of the ship.

Suddenly, near the centre, the top began to incline forward, and the whole face of probably twenty yards in width, from the top of the glacier to the bottom of the bay, fell outward as a ladder would fall, without a break anywhere. There was a tremendous upheaving of the water, of course; then the report of the invariable explosion reached us, but no trace remained of the fallen ice, save the swell in the water, which had almost reached and rocked the steamer. I do not know how much time elapsed before the lovely thing rose to the surface, but it seemed an age, and then it came in a dozen pieces, each of the same exquisite diaphanous blue, which, as they approached us gradually, changed to a clear transparent sapphire.

If it will help to serve the purpose of giving a just idea of the colossal proportions of the scene I endeavor to describe, let me say that the Capitol at Washington, the City Hall in Philadelphia, the Cathedral, the Equitable, and the Mills Buildings in New York, and all the mammoth newspaper offices in the same city might be floated in front of the Muir Glacier, and yet its emerald walls would overtop and engulf them all. As a contrast to all that is pure and chaste in the scene before us, there rushes out from the eastern end of the glacier a subglacial stream of thick, dirty water, much resembling, as it boils up from its cavernous outlet, the mud geyser of the Yellowstone. This is a perpetually flowing river, charged with sediment and _debris_ from the scouring process produced by the friction of the moving ice along its bed of rock; it gives the water in the inlet a thick, gray color, utterly destroying the charm of its otherwise transparent character.

If you are amiable enough to say that what I have written gives a sufficiently correct idea of what you expect to see, I beg to differ from you. No camera, no pencil, no vocabulary, can do more than produce a desire to see for one's self. I can only say that it has been my fortune to behold much that is grand in nature and in art at home and abroad, but the hours spent at Muir Glacier made the great event of my life. If God spares me, I hope to see it often. And fearing I might be accused of exaggeration, which is far from my desire, for I am searching in vain for superlatives which would do the subject justice, let me quote from others who preceded me, and all of whom have established their reputation as authorities.

Miss Kate Field says, "In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty, air-holed ice that has fastened itself, like a cold porous plaster, to the side of an Alp. Distance alone lends enchantment to the view. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been suddenly frozen when about to plunge into the sea.... Think of Niagara Falls frozen stiff, add thirty-six feet to its height, and you have a slight idea of the terminus of Muir Glacier, in front of which your steamer anchors; picture a background of mountains fifteen thousand feet high, all snow-clad, and then imagine a gorgeous sun lighting up the ice-crystals with rainbow coloring. The face of the glacier takes on the hue of aquamarine, the hue of every bit of floating ice, big and little, that surround the steamer and make navigation serious. These dazzling serpents move at the rate of sixty-four feet a day, tumbling headlong into the sea, and, as they fall, the ear is startled by submarine thunder, the echoes of which resound far and near. Down, down, down goes the berg, and woe to the boat in its way when it rises again to the surface."

Charles Hallock in "Our New Alaska," pp. 172-733: "The glacier wall overhung us with its mighty majesty, three times the height of the steamer's mast or more, and we seemed none too far away to escape the constantly cleaving masses which dropped from its face with deafening detonations. The foam which gathered from the impetus of the plunges surged upward fully two-thirds of the height of the cliff, and the resulting swell tossed the large steamer like a toy, and rolled up in breakers of surf upon the beach.... The glacier is by no means smooth, but is seamed and riven in every part by clefts and fissures. It is hollowed into caverns and grottos, hung with massive stalactites, and fashioned into pinnacles and domes. Every section and configuration has its heart of translucent blue or green, interlaced or bordered by fretted frostwork of intensest white, so that the appearance is at all times gnome-like and supernatural....

"I cannot conceive how any one can sit by and contemplate without emotion the stupendous throes which give birth to the icebergs, attended with detonations like explosions of artillery, and reverberations of thunder across the sky, and the mighty wreckage which follows each convulsion. Nevertheless, I have seen a lady loll with complaisance in her steamer chair comfortably wrapped for the chilly air, and observe the astounding scene with the same languid contemplation that she would discuss her social fixtures and appointments. Zounds! I believe that such a human negation would calmly view the wrecks of worlds and hear the crack of doom at the final rendering, if it did not affect her set. She could watch, at a suitable distance, the agony of Christian martyrs, the carnage of great battles, the sweep of cyclones, the diluvial submergence. Dynamite would not appall her, but to me it would be the acme of satisfaction, ineffably supreme, to startle such clods of inanition by a cry of mouse, and electrify them into momentary emotion. No vinaigrette would ever mitigate the shock."...

Mrs. E. R. Scidmore, in "Journeys in Alaska," says, "Avalanches of crumbling snow and great pieces of the front were continually falling with the roar and crash of artillery, revealing new caverns and rifts of deeper blue light, while the spray dashed high and the great waves rolled along the icy wall, and, widening in their sweep, washed the blocks of floating ice up on the beaches on either side.... The nearer one approached the higher the ice-walls seemed, and all along the front there were pinnacles and spires weighing several tons, that seemed on the point of toppling every moment. The great buttresses of ice that rose first from the water and touched the moraine were as solidly white as marble, veined and streaked with rocks and mud, but farther on, as the pressure was greater, the color slowly deepened to turquoise and sapphire blues."

Alexander Badlam, in his "Wonders of Alaska," p. 42, quotes Professor Muir himself as saying that the front and brow of the glacier were "dashed and sculptured into a maze of yawning chasm, ravines, canyons, crevasses, and, a bewildering chaos of architectural forms, beautiful beyond the measure of description, and so bewildering in their beauty as to almost make the spectator believe he was revelling in a dream." "There were," he said, "great clusters of glistening spires, gables, obelisks, monoliths, and castles, standing out boldly against the sky, with bastion and mural, surmounted by fretted cornice, and every interstice and chasm reflecting a sheen of scintillating light and deep-blue shadow, making a combination of color, dazzling, startling, and enchanting."

The next sensation in store for the tourist is the climb to the top of the glacier. All the row-boats were lowered, and about a dozen passengers in each, armed with alpenstocks, were ferried in successive groups from the ship to the eastern beach, a distance of perhaps half a mile, instructions being given to each steersman to keep a sharp lookout for falling icebergs. And here your trouble commences unless you are well advised. The ascent is exceedingly difficult; what looks like a mountain of rock over which you must wend your way to the ice-fields, is really a mountain of ice covered by a layer of slimy mud, crusted with pieces of flinty granite, standing up on end like broken bottle glass on top of a wall. I wore India-rubber high boots when I started, and I needed crutches before I finished. It may be chilly as you leave the ship, according as the sun may be out or in; if chilly, get your escort to carry an extra shawl for you to wrap yourself in when you row back to the ship; if the weather is bright and warm, clothe yourself lightly, for it grows warmer with the glare from the ice and the physical exertion. Be very careful where you step, and if you are wise follow in the footsteps of others; do not undertake to lead, else one foot may be trying to ascertain the depth of a quagmire and the other exploring a fissure.

After an ascent of perhaps two and a half miles, which seem more like ten, you will find yourself on the edge of a frozen sea, frozen, as it were, while in the throes of a tempest, a bay of storm-tossed waves solidified as by a signal; and this extends as far as the eye can reach up into the mountains towards the north, and several miles across to the hills upon the opposite shore. The ice is by no means clear or brilliant, on the contrary, its color is milky and its formation honey-combed, plastic, porous, and yielding to the tread; besides which it is besmeared with sediment from mountain thaws which have traversed its rifts, and disfigured by fallen logs and drift-wood.

I confess if I visited Muir Glacier a hundred times I should always remain on deck and watch the pyrotechnics of the facade rather than undergo the thankless fatigue of climbing to the top, which is infinitely more laborious than the ascent of Vesuvius on foot through the lava, or any work to be done on the trails of the Yosemite. To those who are willing to undertake it, however, I suggest that when they have ascended the first mile, which will bring them on a line with the top of the wall of the glacier, they should look back at their little tiny ship, floating like the "Maid of the Mist" beneath Niagara, to fully realize the immense proportions of the glacier.

It is said that persons have been missed and never again found who made this ascent, and I know that at least one case is authentic, that of a young clergyman, who, straying away from his companions, was never again seen, though the most diligent search was made for him by his friends and the ship's crew. A slip into one of those crevasses which is covered by a thin coat of ice, means to be precipitated in an instant to a depth where no human aid can reach you. In fact, I would advise all who wish to preserve the impression of Muir Glacier in its pure, idealized, unsullied grandeur, to stay aboard and gaze on its beautiful face.

It is a Persian custom, after plucking the fruit, to tear it asunder in the middle, hand the sunny side to the friend and throw the other half away, the best portion being the only part good enough for those they love. It is my duty to present to you the better half of the glacier and to cast away the other. Tired, footsore, and muddy, we were all early in bed, and while dozing to sleep I was much impressed with the awful stillness of the hour; everybody had retired, not even the tread of the man on watch was heard, the very machinery was sleeping, but every now and then there was a splash and a report and an echo that brought with them the proof that the forces of nature were ever awake, and that what was, "is, and ever shall be, world without end."

A SUMMER TRIP TO ALASKA.

JAMES A. HARRISON.

[Nature possesses no scenery more beautiful than that to be
found on the Pacific coast of Washington and in the island
region leading to north Alaska. And the description of it given
below is well worth reproduction, for its poetic appreciation
of this rich scenic route.]

The whole fourteen hundred--one might say two thousand--miles of coast extending from Puget's Sound to Behring's Strait is a succession of beautiful and picturesque archipelagoes, consisting of hundreds, if not thousands, of islands, through which there are countless water-caves, lakes, bays, inlets, as smooth as Lake George and the Hudson, and far more lovely. The smoothness of the water is such that life on the steamer is a luxurious rest, and the stimulating coolness of the air in summer contributes to pleasant days and delightful nights. Our summer trip covered about two thousand five hundred miles from Portland and back, and we had ample opportunities to stop at the various settlements, talk with the Indians, and collect curiosities.

On leaving Port Townsend early in August, our ship made for the Straits of Georgia, and for a long time followed the aqueous boundary-line between the British and American possessions. The fog dissolved, and we caught views of Smith's Island, Bellingham Bay, and other points. The scenery became river-like, the strait now opening into waveless lakes, now contracting, like the neck of a bottle, into channels where there were counter-currents and chopped seas.

At Active Bay we could not tell which way we were going, the passage seemed closed by lofty mountains, and the sea appeared to flow against their bases; but presently the wall of rock split into a wooded gorge, through which we shot with a graceful curve.

The long meandering line of Vancouver Island followed for three hundred miles on the left, and we crossed the Gulf of Georgia in water of enchanting tranquillity.

Our first days were spent in threading the wilderness of islands off Vancouver, and we were close enough to the coast on the right to see it distinctly. There was the continental coast range of the Cascade Mountains, vanishing streaks of snow and silver on our eastern horizon, rising from five hundred to two thousand five hundred feet above the sea-level. Its peaks lay in every imaginable shape, twisted, coiled, convoluted against the horizon-bar, now running up into a perfect cone, like the Silberhorn of Switzerland, now elongating in rippling lines along the east, now staining the sky with deep-blue masses of ultramarine flecked with pearly lines.

The smoke of the burning forests of Washington Territory and British Columbia had filled the air for days, and worried us not a little; but one morning we awoke in perfect sunshine, and found an atmosphere impregnated with frosty sparkles from the distant snow-peaks. Just before night-fall, when we were about to cross Queen Charlotte's Sound, a fog came up, and the pilot thought it advisable to lie by for the night, more particularly as the coast is a dangerous one and is strewn with reefs and rocks; so, while we were at dinner, the ship wheeled around, and we reversed our course, going south until we reached Port Alexandria, one of the most perfect little harbors conceivable. It is a cove just like the foot of a stocking; a tiny, circle-shaped island lies in its mouth, and richly-wooded heights throw their green shimmer on the placid water.

Here we lay till morning, as "snug as a bug in a rug." Just before entering the cove, which is only about two hundred yards wide, we saw in the distance an Indian sea-canoe, with its wet paddles flashing in the sun, and the agreeable thought was suggested, Suppose we should be surrounded and scalped in the night! Nothing could have been easier in this lonely neighborhood.

The perpetual wheeling of the vessel in her nautical evolutions as she steamed through each successive archipelago gave rise to ever-new comment on the new vistas and island-combinations before us. The coast of Maine is not to be mentioned in comparison with this, nor the island-dusted Caribbean Sea. These inland-sweeping seas open in long river reaches, beyond which, in sharp sunshine, rise the everlasting peaks, burnished with ice. The shores of British Columbia are densely clothed with diminutive needle-wood, much of which is dead, so that the pale yellow-green is toned with brown-gray. The water is intensely salt, and is skimmed by wild duck and by low-flying, tufted water-fowl.

As we were passing along one morning, an Indian crew came dashing out in a canoe, with a deer for sale. There were stunted-looking squaws in the boat, and all quacked and gesticulated and grunted after the peculiar linguistic fashion of the neighborhood. These Indians are wonderfully deft with their fingers, and weave bottle-cases, satchels, baskets, and table-mats out of split and dyed grasses with curious delicacy and skill. Their face-type is the homeliest I have seen: enormous skulls, high-angled cheek-bones, blinking black eyes, flattish noses, and shocks of horsehair. Evidently they are expert huntsmen and sportsmen: often we saw their camp-fires, or a canoe stealing along the silent water, filled with crouching forms.

Day after day there was a never-ending succession of lake-scenery,--long, winding lanes of green water between steep snow-streaked domes and precipices. The evenings softened into singularly lovely nights, with close-hugging shores, volumes of dark, iodine-hued water, lingering stars, and phosphorescence. The light hung over the hyperborean landscape as if loath to leave. At ten o'clock one evening we went out and found the ship steaming up a lane of purple glass,--the water magically still, the air full of soft, plaintive cries from the breeding gulls, the tinkle of the parted sea around our bows, and the dim, spectral water lighted up at the end of the long avenue by a haunting aurora.

Many a time the cabin door formed a delightful frame for a forest-picture,--gliding water, pale-blue sky, a broken shore, and, behind, long lines of brilliant snow-peaks, with their chased and frozen silver. We would lie asleep for a few moments in the cool dark of the cabin-interior, and then wake up with one of these perfect, swiftly-moving views in the foreground. Before we caught it, often it had gone,--the pale, plenteous beauty of the fir-crowned shore, the dancing islets, the sedgy strand-line, the many-colored rocks, with their pools and fountain-basins of transparent water caught from the deep and held in by their rocky framework in a lightness and purity of crystal dew.

Then the ship ran dangerously near to the coast, or again out into the open sound, with its mediterranean sprinkle of islets, serrated walls of rocks, coves and island-mounds, wherein nested shadows of amethyst or indigo.

The flow of life in some of these coves and estuary-like indentations is marvellous, the fish coming in egg-laden, and looking for streams of fresh water in which to deposit their ova. We anchored in one of these inlets, and found on the land luxuriant ferns and splendid clumps of yellow cedar and hemlock, with snow-banks behind. Half a dozen little bucks and half-breeds were tumbling about in the water through the long afternoon light, which seemed to have an amaranthine quality and to be unfading. The sun did not set till after eight o'clock, and there was cold, ghostly, green light up in the north till nearly midnight. When darkness did come, it was of the genuine cuttle-fish kind,--inky,--splashed with stars. There was now and then a delicate shell of a moon incising the sky against a mountain-side and lending the most fragile transfiguration to its top.

As we approached Fort Wrangel, the ship's company turned out in the sweet evening sunshine and found a glorious panorama awaiting them. The sheen of a mighty mass of embattled peaks and pinnacles and feathery floating snow-points shone high up in the evening air, just mellowing under a magnificent sunset. These mountains guard the entrance to the Stickeen River and mount up the horizon after the Duke of Clarence Strait has been traversed.

Wrangel itself is most memorably situated just on one side of these sheeny peaks and glaciers, almost in the shadow of the Devil's Thumb, which rises about four hundred feet above its own mountain-cluster and forms one of a throng of confused and radiant _aiguilles_ overlooking the Stickeen. The sunset had not entirely faded at nine o'clock, when we touched shore and rejoiced our eyes with a series of wonderful semi-arctic color-pictures,--coal-black islands, purple islands, lilac islands, islands in india-ink and amber, lying in glacier-water of pale green, and above and beyond all the glorious flush of the sun stealing in between the white snow-needles and throwing them out and up into luminous relief.

Opposite the town is an island shaped like the cocked hat of a gendarme, where it was said that the curious polygonal garnets embedded in schist and peculiar to this region are found. There were plenty of them as large as walnuts for sale at twenty-five cents a dozen. Odd carved boxes, too, made of an unknown wood and inlaid with shells, were here in plenty; cases of buckskin, containing the conjuring-sticks or gambling-kits of the Thlinkit medicine-men; loin-cloths, ornamented with multitudes of rattling puffin-beaks; head-dresses of defunct warriors; fantastic and horrible masks; huge spoons carved out of the horns of the mountain-ibex; bead-work on leather; robes of many-colored skins quilted together; images carved to resemble otters; fleecy robes of wild sheep and goat; pipes cut with nude figures; antlers; stuffed animals; white-breasted loons, and the like.

After a short stop for landing the mails, the vessel was soon traversing Wrangel Strait, just under some splendid glaciers and snowy mountains, the water perfectly smooth, though full of small icebergs, which glittered in the sunshine and had broken off from the descending ice-mass. Enormous rivers of ice flow down between these mountains and debouch in the sea, their current mysteriously stayed by the low temperature. We were particularly fortunate in having fine, clear weather early in the morning, especially at this point, where we could see the great Pattison Glacier. The ship entered the enchanted region through a narrow passage, which one of us christened the "Silver Gates," the Beulah Mountains edging our Pilgrim's Progress in passionless white as we zigzagged along the course.

A little later, the scenery on Frederic Sound became truly transcendent: grand mountains, forms that would be awful but for the sunshine resting on their heads, the lake-like sound, with its blue spits of land and cameo-like promontories profiled against the sky, motionless _glace-de-Venise_ water reflecting a thousand shades of azure and gray and white, gulls resting on the water, with white bodies and black tips, almost a complete circle of brilliant snow-banks peeping above the clouds that hung to them amorously, and far-away vistas of blue-white glaciers coming down to meet the water-margin.

Schools of spouting whales played in the distance, and the passengers sent balls out of their pistols hissing on the water, but happily hitting nothing. During the last trip two lovely antlered creatures came swimming along in the water, trying to cross one of the channels to another grazing-ground. They were taken on board, but one of them died.

The next landing-place was Killimoo, a little Indian village on an island surrounded by dim-green heights and flickering, ever-changing mountain-views. It is a great station for drying cod-fish, long lines of which lay spread out on the wharf in the sun to dry. As night fell the squaws and Indian maidens gathered the rattling fish-carcasses under little ark-like receptacles, where they lay till morning out of the dew.

At Juneau some of the passengers walked or rowed off to the gold-mines in the mountains, where they picked up specimens of gold-quartz and some teacupfuls of sifted gold-dust. One of these was said to be worth six hundred dollars, another over twelve hundred dollars. One was reminded of the gold-dust story of Alkmaion in Herodotus.

Shortly after this the ship cast anchor at Chilkat and Pyramid Harbor, our two highest points in Alaska waters, about latitude 59 deg. 12' north. We had but a poor glimpse of the glaciers on the Chilkat side,--one a magnificent down-flow of pale-blue ice, the other a frozen river caught and compressed in between strangling hills.

The location of Pyramid Harbor is very beautiful,--a wind-sheltered nook, a curving shore, covered with pebbles, alder-clad heights just behind, and dimly-flashing ice-peaks peeping out of the mist just over the shoulder of a huge green rock-slope. A salmon-cannery in the foreground, flanked by an Indian village, a semilune of pure green water, nearly fresh, and a curious pyramid-shaped knoll rising from it, constituted other features of the environment. The lifting mists drew aside for a while, and refreshed the sight with views of the great sculpture-lines of the surrounding mountains.

[We may pass the description of Sitka, and proceed.]

We were greatly favored when we left Sitka. Starting off in a rain, in which everything lay in muddy eclipse, we woke up next morning and found ourselves tracing the outside route to the Muir Glacier in sparkling sunshine. The transition was delightful, and, though most of the passengers were sick from the tossing of the ship on the long outside ocean-swell, I believe they all enjoyed the sunshine as it flashed into their cabin windows, played on the walls, and pricked and scattered the enormous vapor masses that hung over the mountains on our right. There were no longer the vaulted vapors of the preceding days, the dense counterpane of nebulous gray that covered the whole sky with its monotony. The heavy cloud-banks clung to the mountains, leaving an exquisite arc of sky, almost Italian in its sunny azure.

Nothing could be more superb than the deep, dark, velvety tints of the crinkled and crumpled mountains as they shelved to the sea and came in contact there with an edging of foam from the blue Pacific. Huge jelly-fish flapped about in the clear water, nebular patches of protoplasmic existence, capable, apparently, of no other functions than sensation, motion, and self-propagation. Some of them were richly streaked, long-tailed, delicately margined, with comet-like streamers, jelly-frills, and nuclei like a wide-open sunflower. Their motion was so indolently graceful that I could not help gazing at them.

Mount St. Elias! Yes, there it was, they affirmed, on the northeastern horizon, a vapory, unsubstantial cone, dancing up and down in the refracting light. I looked and looked, persuading myself that I saw the glorious vision nineteen thousand five hundred feet high. Others persuaded themselves of the same fact, being naturally ambitious of carrying away remembrances of the tallest mountain in all America. But, after all, I fancy that nobody had a very strong faith in his discovery, particularly as the reputed mountain seemed to change its place, flit hither and thither on the curve of the sky, and finally disappear.

But yonder! What is that? Clouds? Apparently. But look again. What, that small speck just on the edge of the water? No, higher up--up--up. What a sight! Certainly the grandest view we have had yet. A huge, white, snow-tipped back, like a camel's hump, now loomed apparently right out of the water's edge,--the mighty range of Mount Fairweather, Mount Crillon, and eight or ten other domes and peaks, the highest fifteen thousand five hundred feet high, according to the measurement of the United States Coast Survey. This is the finest mountain-landscape we have ever seen, not even excepting the Alps from Neufchatel. The peaks looked enormously high as they shot up just behind the sea-edge, far above the first stratum of cloud which ran along midway of the mountain in deep slate-colored belts. Now and then the vapor thinned to the fineness of tulle and Brousa gauze, behind which the mountain-colors loomed in vague and yet radiant purity. Gradually the ardent sun melted away the misty striated belts of cloud, and the great peaks stood out calmly and gloriously effulgent in the crystal August air, a scene of exquisite loveliness and sublimity. At one end a mighty glacier ran down to the sea, and at the other the pygmy mountains (two or three thousand feet high) we had been coasting lay like ebon carvings against the white, a ripple of dark velvet against ermine.

For hours we steamed towards this splendid picture, which, while growing more and more distinct, did not appear to be any nearer than when we first saw it. In the afternoon we turned to the right of this range into icy straits, and soon we were in the midst of a scene more wonderful, perhaps, than that through which we had just passed. On the light-green water lay literally hundreds of icebergs, of all shapes and sizes, some a deep translucent blue, the blue of cobalt, others green, others a pure white,--serrated, castellated, crenellated, glittering,--from the size of a tureen to that of a small church. We seemed on the point of entering that ancient palaeocrystic sea of which the geologists speak,--ice everywhere, our ship cutting its way through impinging ice.

THE FORT WILLIAM HENRY MASSACRE.

JONATHAN CARVER.

[Carver's interesting "Travels through the Interior Parts of
North America, in the years 1766, 1767, and 1768," is the
source of the narrative given below, relating to an event with
which most of our readers are probably familiar from historical
reading, though few of them have read the experience of an
actual participant. Carver served as a captain in the French
and Indian War, and tells this most thrilling narrative of the
American wars as an illustrative episode in his subsequent work
of travels. He is describing the cruel actions of the Indians
in war.]

I have frequently been a spectator of them, and once bore a part in a similar scene. But what added to the horror of it was that I had not the consolation of being able to oppose their savage attacks. Every circumstance of the adventure still dwells on my memory, and enables me to describe with greater perspicuity the brutal fierceness of the Indians when they have surprised or overpowered an enemy.

As a detail of the massacre at Fort William Henry in the year 1757, the scene to which I refer, cannot appear foreign to the design of this publication, but will serve to give my readers a just idea of the ferocity of this people, I shall take the liberty to insert it, apologizing at the same time for the length of the digression and those egotisms which the relation renders unavoidable.

General Webb, who commanded the English army in North America, which was then encamped at Fort Edward, having intelligence that the French troops under Mons. Montcalm were making some movements towards Fort William Henry, he detached a corps of about fifteen hundred men, consisting of English and provincials, to strengthen the garrison. In this party I went as a volunteer among the latter.

The apprehensions of the English general were not without foundation, for the day after our arrival we saw Lake George (formerly Lake Sacrament), to which it lies contiguous, covered with an immense number of boats, and in a few hours we found our lines attacked by the French general, who had just landed with eleven thousand regulars and Canadians and two thousand Indians. Colonel Munro, a brave officer, commanded in the fort, and had no more than two thousand three hundred men with him, our detachment included.

With these he made a brave defence, and probably would have been able at last to preserve the fort had he been properly supported and permitted to continue his efforts. On every summons to surrender sent by the French general, who offered the most honorable terms, his answer repeatedly was, that he found himself in a condition to repel the most vigorous attacks his besiegers were able to make; and if he thought his present force insufficient, he could soon be supplied with a greater number from the adjacent army.

But the colonel having acquainted General Webb with his situation, and desired he would send him some fresh troops, the general despatched a messenger to him with a letter, wherein he informed him that it was not in his power to assist him, and therefore gave him orders to surrender up the fort on the best terms he could procure. This packet fell into the hands of the French general, who immediately sent a flag of truce, desiring a conference with the governor.

They accordingly met, attended only by a small guard, in the centre between the lines, when Mons. Montcalm told the colonel that he was come in person to demand possession of the fort, as it belonged to the king, his master. The colonel replied that he knew not how that could be, nor should he surrender it up while it was in his power to defend it.

The French general rejoined, at the same time delivering the packet into the colonel's hand, "By this authority do I make the requisition." The brave governor had no sooner read the contents of it, and was convinced that such were the orders of the commander-in-chief, and not to be disobeyed, than he hung his head in silence, and reluctantly entered into a negotiation.

In consideration of the gallant defence the garrison had made, they were to be permitted to march out with all the honors of war, to be allowed covered wagons to transport their baggage to Fort Edward, and a guard to protect them from the fury of the savages.

The morning after the capitulation was signed, as soon as day broke, the whole garrison, now consisting of about two thousand men, besides women and children, were drawn up within the lines, and on the point of marching off, when great numbers of the Indians gathered about and began to plunder. We were at first in hopes that this was their only view, and suffered them to proceed without opposition. Indeed, it was not in our power to make any, had we been so inclined, for, though we were permitted to carry off our arms, yet we were not allowed a single round of ammunition. In these hopes, however, we were disappointed; for presently some of them began to attack the sick and wounded, when such as were not able to crawl into the ranks, notwithstanding they endeavored to avert the fury of their enemies by their shrieks or groans, were soon despatched.

Here we were fully in expectation that the disturbance would have concluded, but in a short time we saw the same division driven back, and discovered that we were entirely encircled by the savages. We expected every moment that the guard, which the French, by the articles of capitulation, had agreed to allow us, would have arrived, and put an end to our apprehensions, but none appeared. The Indians now began to strip every one, without exception, of their arms and clothes, and those who made the least resistance felt the weight of their tomahawks.

I happened to be in the rear division, but it was not long before I shared the fate of my companions. Three or four of the savages laid hold of me, and whilst some held their weapons over my head, the others soon disrobed me of my coat, waistcoat, hat, and buckles, omitting not to take from me what money I had in my pocket. As this was transacted close by the passage that led from the lines on to the plain, near which a French sentinel was posted, I ran to him and claimed his protection, but he only called me an English dog, and thrust me with violence back again into the midst of the Indians.

I now endeavored to join a body of our troops that were crowded together at some distance, but innumerable were the blows that were made at me with different weapons as I passed on; luckily, however, the savages were so close together that they could not strike at me without endangering each other, notwithstanding which one of them found means to make a thrust at me with a spear, which grazed my side, and from another I received a wound with the same kind of weapon on my ankle. At length I gained the spot where my countrymen stood, and forced myself into the midst of them. But before I got thus far out of the hands of the Indians the collar and wristbands of my shirt were all that remained of it, and my flesh was scratched and torn in many places by their savage grips.

By this time the war-whoop was given, and the Indians began to murder those that were nearest to them without distinction. It is not in the power of words to give any tolerable idea of the horrid scene that now ensued; men, women, and children were despatched in the most wanton and cruel manner, and immediately scalped. Many of the savages drank the blood of their victims as it flowed warm from the fatal wound.

We now perceived, though too late to avail us, that we were to expect no relief from the French; and that, contrary to the agreement they had so lately signed to allow us a sufficient force to protect us from these insults, they tacitly permitted them; for I could plainly perceive the French officers walking about at some distance, discoursing together with apparent unconcern. For the honor of human nature I would hope that this flagrant breach of every sacred law proceeded rather from the savage disposition of the Indians, which I acknowledge it is sometimes almost impossible to control, and which might now unexpectedly have arrived to a pitch not easily to be restrained, than from any premeditated design in the French commander. An unprejudiced observer would, however, be apt to conclude that a body of ten thousand Christian troops, most Christian troops, had it in their power to prevent the massacre from becoming so general. But whatever was the cause from which it arose, the consequences of it were dreadful, and not to be paralleled in modern history.

As the circle in which I stood enclosed by this time was much thinned, and death seemed to be approaching with hasty strides, it was proposed by some of the most resolute to make one vigorous effort, and endeavor to force our way through the savages, the only probable method of preserving our lives that now remained. This, however desperate, was resolved upon, and about twenty of us sprung at once into the midst of them.