On the way back
to the canoe I gathered ripe salmon-berries an inch and a half in
diameter, ripe huckleberries, too, in great abundance, and several
interesting plants I had not before met in the territory.
About noon, when the tide was in our favor, we set out on the return
trip to the gold-mine camp. The sun shone free and warm. No wind
stirred. The water spaces between the bergs were as smooth as glass,
reflecting the unclouded sky, and doubling the ravishing beauty of
the bergs as the sunlight streamed through their innumerable angles
in rainbow colors.
Soon a light breeze sprang up, and dancing lily spangles on the water
mingled their glory of light with that burning on the angles of the
ice.
On days like this, true sun-days, some of the bergs show a purplish
tinge, though most are white from the disintegrating of their
weathered surfaces. Now and then a new-born one is met that is pure
blue crystal throughout, freshly broken from the fountain or recently
exposed to the air by turning over. But in all of them, old and new,
there are azure caves and rifts of ineffable beauty, in which the
purest tones of light pulse and shimmer, lovely and untainted as
anything on earth or in the sky.
As we were passing the Indian village I presented a little tobacco to
the headmen as an expression of regard, while they gave us a few
smoked salmon, after putting many questions concerning my exploration
of their bay and bluntly declaring their disbelief in the ice
business.
About nine o'clock we arrived at the gold camp, where we found Mr.
Young ready to go on with us the next morning, and thus ended two of
the brightest and best of all my Alaska days.
Chapter XV
From Taku River to Taylor Bay
I never saw Alaska looking better than it did when we bade farewell
to Sum Dum on August 22 and pushed on northward up the coast toward
Taku. The morning was clear, calm, bright - not a cloud in all the
purple sky, nor wind, however gentle, to shake the slender spires of
the spruces or dew-laden grass around the shores. Over the mountains
and over the broad white bosoms of the glaciers the sunbeams poured,
rosy as ever fell on fields of ripening wheat, drenching the forests
and kindling the glassy waters and icebergs into a perfect blaze of
colored light. Every living thing seemed joyful, and nature's work
was going on in glowing enthusiasm, not less appreciable in the deep
repose that brooded over every feature of the landscape, suggesting
the coming fruitfulness of the icy land and showing the advance that
has already been made from glacial winter to summer. The care-laden
commercial lives we lead close our eyes to the operations of God as a
workman, though openly carried on that all who will look may see. The
scarred rocks here and the moraines make a vivid showing of the old
winter-time of the glacial period, and mark the bounds of the
mer-de-glace that once filled the bay and covered the surrounding
mountains. Already that sea of ice is replaced by water, in which
multitudes of fishes are fed, while the hundred glaciers lingering
about the bay and the streams that pour from them are busy night and
day bringing in sand and mud and stones, at the rate of tons every
minute, to fill it up. Then, as the seasons grow warmer, there will
be fields here for the plough.
Our Indians, exhilarated by the sunshine, were garrulous as the gulls
and plovers, and pulled heartily at their oars, evidently glad to get
out of the ice with a whole boat.
"Now for Taku," they said, as we glided over the shining water.
"Good-bye, Ice-Mountains; good-bye, Sum Dum." Soon a light breeze
came, and they unfurled the sail and laid away their oars and began,
as usual in such free times, to put their goods in order, unpacking
and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has an old
flintlock musket suggestive of Hudson's Bay times, which he wished to
discharge and reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired at
a gull that was flying past before I could prevent him, and it fell
slowly with outspread wings alongside the canoe, with blood dripping
from its bill. I asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed
the question by a severe reprimand for his stupid cruelty, to which
he could offer no other excuse than that he had learned from the
whites to be careless about taking life. Captain Tyeen denounced the
deed as likely to bring bad luck.
Before the whites came most of the Thlinkits held, with Agassiz, that
animals have souls, and that it was wrong and unlucky to even speak
disrespectfully of the fishes or any of the animals that supplied
them with food. A case illustrating their superstitious beliefs in
this connection occurred at Fort Wrangell while I was there the year
before. One of the sub-chiefs of the Stickeens had a little son five
or six years old, to whom he was very much attached, always taking
him with him in his short canoe-trips, and leading him by the hand
while going about town. Last summer the boy was taken sick, and
gradually grew weak and thin, whereupon his father became alarmed,
and feared, as is usual in such obscure cases, that the boy had been
bewitched. He first applied in his trouble to Dr. Carliss, one of the
missionaries, who gave medicine, without effecting the immediate cure
that the fond father demanded.
