Next Morning, Soon After We Left Our Harbor, We Were Caught In A
Violent Gust Of Wind And Dragged Over
The seething water in a
passionate hurry, though our sail was close-reefed, flying past the
gray headlands in most
Exhilarating style, until fear of being
capsized made us drop our sail and run into the first little nook we
came to for shelter. Captain Toyatte remarked that in this kind of
wind no Indian would dream of traveling, but since Mr. Young and I
were with him he was willing to go on, because he was sure that the
Lord loved us and would not allow us to perish.
We were now within a day or two of Chilcat. We had only to hold a
direct course up the beautiful Lynn Canal to reach the large Davidson
and other glaciers at its head in the canyons of the Chilcat and
Chilcoot Rivers. But rumors of trouble among the Indians there now
reached us. We found a party taking shelter from the stormy wind in a
little cove, who confirmed the bad news that the Chilcats were
drinking and fighting, that Kadachan's father had been shot, and that
it would be far from safe to venture among them until blood-money had
been paid and the quarrels settled. I decided, therefore, in the mean
time, to turn westward and go in search of the wonderful
"ice-mountains" that Sitka Charley had been telling us about.
Charley, the youngest of my crew, noticing my interest in glaciers,
said that when he was a boy he had gone with his father to hunt seals
in a large bay full of ice, and that though it was long since he had
been there, he thought he could find his way to it.
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