The waters near abound in fish and water-fowl, and the forests with deer, bears, and other large game.
The place is coming but slowly to the recognition of the present generation. When the tropic beauty of its location and the curative powers of its waters are more generally known, it will be a Mecca for pilgrims.
The main station of Government Agricultural Experimental work in Alaska is located at Sitka. Professor C. C. Georgeson is the special agent in charge of the work, which has been very successful. It has accomplished more than anything else in the way of dispelling the erroneous impressions which people have received of Alaska by reading the descriptions of early explorers who fancied that every drift of snow was a living glacier and every feather the war bonnet of a savage.
In 1906, at Coldfoot, sixty miles north of the Arctic Circle, were grown cuc.u.mbers eight inches long, nineteen-inch rhubarb, potatoes four inches long, cabbages whose matured heads weighed eight pounds, and turnips weighing sixteen pounds--all of excellent quality.
At Bear Lake, near Seward and Cook Inlet, were grown good potatoes, radishes, lettuce, carrots, beets, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, Logan berries, blackberries; also, roses, lilacs, and English ivy. In this locality cows and chickens thrive and are profitable investments for those who are not too indolent to take care of them.
Alaskan lettuce must be eaten to be appreciated. During the hot days and the long, light hours of the nights it grows so rapidly that its crispness and delicacy of flavor cannot be imagined.
Everything in Alaska is either the largest, the best, or most beautiful, in the world, the people who live there maintain; and this soon grows to be a joke to the traveller. But when the a.s.sertion that lettuce grown in Alaska is the most delicious in the world is made, not a dissenting voice is heard.
Along the coast, sea-weed and fish guano are used as fertilizers; and soil at the mouth of a stream where there is silt is most desirable for vegetables.
In southeastern Alaska and along the coast to Kodiak, at Fairbanks and Copper Centre, at White Horse, Dawson, Rampart, Tanana, Council City, Eagle, and other places on the Yukon, almost all kinds of vegetables, berries, and flowers grow luxuriantly and bloom and bear in abundance.
One turnip, of fine flavor, has been found sufficient for several people.
In the vicinity of the various hot springs, even corn, tomatoes, and muskmelons were successful to the highest degree.
On the Yukon cabbages form fine white, solid heads; cauliflower is unusually fine and white; beets grow to a good size, are tender, sweet, and of a bright red; peas are excellent; rhubarb, parsley, and celery were in many places successful. Onions seem to prove a failure in nearly all sections of the country; and potatoes, turnips, and lettuce are the prize vegetables.
Grain growing is no longer attempted. The experiment made by the government, in the coast region, proved entirely unsatisfactory. It will usually mature, but August, September, and October are so rainy that it is not possible to save the crop. It is, however, grown as a forage crop, for which purpose it serves excellently.
The numerous small valleys, coves, and pockets afford desirable locations for gardens, berries, and some varieties of fruit trees.
In the interior encouraging success has been obtained with grain. The experiments at Copper Centre have not been so satisfactory as at Rampart, three and a half degrees farther north, on the Yukon.
At Copper Centre heavy frosts occur as early as August 14; while at Rampart no "killing" frosts have been known before the grain had ripened, in the latter part of August.
Rampart is the loveliest settlement on the Yukon, with the exception of Tanana. Across the river from Rampart, the green fields of the Experimental Station slope down to the water. The experiments carried on here by Superintendent Rader, under the general supervision of Professor Georgeson--who visits the stations yearly--have been very satisfactory.
Experimental work was begun at Rampart in 1900, and grain has matured there every year, while at Copper Centre only one crop of four has matured. In 1906, owing to dry weather, the growth was slow until the middle of July; from that date on to the latter part of August there were frequent rains, causing a later growth of grain than usual. The result of these conditions was that when the first "killing" frost occurred, the grain was still growing, and all plats, save those seeded earliest, were spoiled for the finer purposes. The frosted grain was, however, immediately cut for hay, twenty tons of which easily sold for four thousand, one hundred and fifty-two dollars.
These results prove that even where grain cannot be grown to the best advantage, it may be profitably grown for hay. For the latter purpose larger growing varieties would be sown, which would produce a much heavier yield and bring larger profits. At present all the feed consumed in the interior by the horses of pack trains and of travellers is hauled in from tide-water,--a hundred miles, at least, and frequently two or three times as far,--and two hundred dollars a ton for hay is a low price. The actual cost of hauling a ton of hay from Valdez to Copper Centre, one hundred miles, is more than two hundred dollars.
Road-house keepers advertise "specially low" rates on hay at twenty cents a pound, the ordinary retail price at that distance from tide-water being five hundred dollars a ton.
The most serious drawback to the advancement of agriculture in Alaska is the lack of interest on the part of the inhabitants. Probably not fifty people could be found in the territory who went there for the purpose of making homes. Now and then a lone dreamer of dreams may be found who lives there--or who would gladly live there, if he might--only for the beauty of it, which can be found nowhere else; and which will soon vanish before the brutal tread of civilization.
The others go for gold. If they do not expect to dig it out of the earth themselves, they plan and scheme to get it out of those who have so acquired it. There is no scheme that has not been worked upon Alaska and the real workers of Alaska.
The schemers go there to get gold; honestly, if possible, but to get gold; to live "from hand to mouth," while they are there, and to get away as quickly as possible and spend their gold far from the country which yielded it. They have neither the time nor the desire to do anything toward the development of the country itself.
Ex-Governor John G. Brady is one of the few who have devoted their lives to the interest and the up-building of Alaska.
Thirty years ago he went to Alaska and established his home at Sitka.
There he has lived all these years with his large and interesting family; there he still lives.
He has a comfortable home, gardens and orchards that leave little to be desired, and has demonstrated beyond all doubt that the man who wishes to establish a modern, comfortable--even luxurious--home in Alaska, can accomplish his purpose without serious hardship to his family, however delicate the members thereof may be.
The Bradys are enthusiasts and authorities on all matters pertaining to Alaska.
Governor Brady has been called the "Rose Governor" of Alaska, because of his genuine admiration for this flower. He can scarcely talk five minutes on Alaska without introducing the subject of roses; and no enthusiast has ever talked more simply and charmingly of the roses of any land than he talks of the roses of Alaska,--the cherished ones of the garden, and the big pink ones of Unalaska and the Yukon.
As missionary and governor, Mr. Brady has devoted many years to this splendid country; and the distressful troubles into which he has fallen of late, through no fault of his own, can never make a grateful people forget his unselfish work for the up-building and the civilization of Alaska.
To-day, Sitka is idyllic. Her charm is too poetic and too elusive to be described in prose. A greater contrast than she presents to such hustling, commercial towns as Juneau, Valdez, Cordova, and Katalla, could scarcely be conceived. To drift into the harbor of Sitka is like entering another world.
The Russian influence is still there, after all these years--as it is in Kodiak and Unalaska.
CHAPTER XIX
In rough weather, steamers bound for Sitka from the westward frequently enter Cross Sound and proceed by way of Icy Straits and Chatham to Peril.
Icy Straits are filled, in the warmest months, with icebergs floating down from the many glaciers to the north. Of these Muir has been the finest, and is a world-famous glacier, owing to the charming descriptions written of it by Mr. John Muir. For several years it was the chief object of interest on the "tourist" trip; but early in 1900 an earthquake shattered its beautiful front and so choked the bay with immense bergs that the steamer _Spokane_ could not approach closer than Marble Island, thirteen miles from the front. The bergs were compact and filled the whole bay. Since that time excursion steamers have not attempted to enter Glacier Bay.
In the summer of 1907, however, a steamer entered the bay and, finding it free of ice, approached close to the famed glacier--only to find it resembling a great castle whose towers and turrets have fallen to ruin with the pa.s.sing of years. Where once shone its opaline palisades is now but a field of crumpled ice.
There are no less than seven glaciers discharging into Glacier Bay and sending out beautiful bergs to drift up and down Icy Straits with the tides and winds. Rendu, Carroll, Grand Pacific, Johns Hopkins, Hugh Miller, and Geikie front on the bay or its narrow inlets.
Brady Glacier has a three-mile frontage on Wimbledon, or Taylor, Bay, which opens into Icy Straits.
When, on her mid-June voyage from Seattle in 1905, the _Santa Ana_ drew out and away from Sitka, and turning with a wide sweep, went drifting slowly through the maze of green islands and set her prow "to Westward,"
one of the dreams of my life was "come true."
I was on my way to the far, lonely, and lovely Aleutian Isles,--the green, green isles crested with fire and snow that are washed on the north by the waves of Behring Sea.
It was a violet day. There were no warm purple tones anywhere; but the cool, sparkling violet ones that mean the nearness of mountains of snow.
One could almost feel the crisp _ting_ of ice in the air, and smell the sunlight that opalizes, without melting, the ice.
Round and white, with the sunken nest of the thunder-bird on its crest, Mount Edgec.u.mbe rose before us; the pale green islands leaned apart to let us through; the sea-birds, white and lavender and rose-touched, floated with us; the throb of the steamer was like a pulse beating in one"s own blood; there were words in the violet light that lured us on, and a wild sweet song in the waves that broke at our prow.
"There can be nothing more beautiful on earth," I said; but I did not know. An hour came soon when I stood with bared head and could not speak for the beauty about me; when the speech of others jarred upon me like an insult, and the throb of the steamer, which had been a sensuous pleasure, pierced my exaltation like a blow.
The long violet day of delight wore away at last, and night came on. A wild wind blew from the southwest, and the mood of the North Pacific Ocean changed. The ship rolled heavily; the waves broke over our decks.
We could see them coming--black, bowing, rimmed with white. Then came the shock--followed by the awful shudder and struggle of the boat. The wind was terrific. It beat the breath back into the breast.
It was terrible and it was glorious. Those were big moments on the texas of the _Santa Ana;_ they were worth living, they were worth while. But on account of the storm, darkness fell at midnight; and as the spray was now breaking in sheets over the bridge and texas, I was a.s.sisted to my cabin--drenched, shivering, happy.
"Shut your door," said the captain, "or you will be washed out of your berth; and wait till to-morrow."