George Broke with Harold Topham and William Williams, made the first exploration of the Alaskan Mt. St. Elias range, including the crossing of the great Malaspina Glacier and an attempt on the S.E. face of Mt. St. Elias itself. The journey is described in the interesting work With Sack and Stock in Alaska, vividly detailing the country visited and the characters met along the way.
By : George Broke (1861 - 1932)
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On the twenty-fifth of April, 1888, I was playing golf on our little links at home, and had driven off for the Stile Hole, situated on the lawn-tennis ground, when I observed the butler emerge from the house with an orange envelope in his hand, and come towards me across the lawn. Having with due deliberation played a neat approach shot over the railings on to the green, I climbed over after it, putted out the hole, and then went to meet him. The telegram proved to be from my friend Harold T., with whom at Saas in the previous summer I had discussed Seton-Karr’s book on Alaska, and we had both come to the conclusion that we should much like to go there. Finding that I should have the summer of ’88 at my disposal, I had written to him at the end of March to ask about his plans and now got this telegram in reply. It was sent from Victoria, B.C., and was an urgent appeal to join him and his brother at once, as they meant to make an attempt on Mount St. Elias that summer, and must start northward by the end of May. I retired to the smoking-room to consider the situation, and finally came to the conclusion that such a hurried departure might be managed.
I crossed over to Brussels, where I was then posted, packed up all my goods and chattels, left masses of P.P.C. cards, and returned again three days later. The afternoon of May 11 found me on board the Allan liner ‘Polynesian’ at Liverpool. I was fortunate in making some very charming acquaintances among the few saloon passengers on board, and though the good ship did not bely her sobriquet of ‘Roly-poly,’ we had a very pleasant crossing till the 17th, when we got into a horrible cold wet fog, the temperature on deck not rising above 34° for two days, while for about twelve hours we ran along the edge of, and occasionally through, thin field-ice, all broken into very small pieces. About noon on the 18th we sighted land to the north, covered with snow, and entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence next day. We stopped off Rimouski to pick up our pilot at lunch-time on Whit-Sunday, a lovely day but very cold, and having left summer in England, we seemed to have returned suddenly into winter. Next morning we awoke to find ourselves at Quebec.
As we had brought nine hundred emigrants, and the ‘Oregon’ and ‘Carthaginian’ came in at the same time, there was a mob of over two thousand despairing passengers at the landing-stage station hunting wildly for their luggage. I abandoned the conflict and went round the town, calling at the Post Office, in hopes of hearing something from H., but there was nothing, which was not very wonderful, as, though I had telegraphed to say I was coming, I had not indicated my route in any way. So I returned and collected my things, and after a successful interview with the Customs officials got the greater part of them checked to Vancouver, and conveyed the remainder to the railway station, where I found my friends of the voyage. There was a train to Montreal at half-past one, but it was very crowded, and we fell victims to the blandishments of a parlour-car conductor, who represented to us that his car would be attached to the emigrant special which would leave at three o’clock and reach Montreal as soon, if not sooner, than the ordinary train, as it would run right through. We fell into the snare, deposited our properties in the car, and went off into the town again, returning punctually at three. Alas there was no sign of the emigrant train, and it did not leave till six, while its progress even then was of the most contemptible character, stopping for long periods at benighted little stations, so that we did not reach Montreal till three in the morning. Fortunately we had furnished ourselves with biscuits, potted meat, etc., including whisky, and so did not actually starve, but we were all very cross, the ladies especially; and though the train was going to continue its weird journey we declined to have anything more to do with it, and hurried up to the big hotel, where we were soon wrapped in dreamless slumbers, which lasted so long that we very nearly came under the operation of a stern rule which decreed that no breakfasts should be served after half-past ten.
After seeing as much of the city as we could during the day, we had an excellent dinner, drove down in plenty of time to catch the 8.30 Pacific train, and ensconced ourselves in the recesses of a most admirable sleeping-car, the name of which was, I fancy, the ‘Sydney.’ The C.P.R. berths are most comfortable, and so wide that in many cases two people are willing to share one, but the greater part of dressing and undressing has to be done inside the berth, as in all Pullmans, which is inconvenient till you get used to it. In this respect the gentlemen are better off than the ladies, as we were able to make use of the smoking-room which was next our lavatories, while I fancy the ladies’ accommodation was much more circumscribed.
The next day was very hot, and was spent in running past little lakes and through marshy forest, called ‘muskeg’ or peat land. Early in the morning we picked up an excellent dining-car in which we breakfasted, lunched, and dined most luxuriously, the intervals of the day being occupied with whist, tobacco, and light literature. On the following morning we found ourselves skirting the northern edge of Lake Superior, enjoying superb scenery as the line followed the curves of the rock-bound shore. That day we had the best dining-car of the whole trip, which unfortunately was taken off after lunch, and we had to content ourselves with high tea at Savanne; but a far greater disaster awaited us next morning, for, on inquiring for our breakfast at a fairly early hour, we heard that an ill-mannered goods train had run into it in the night as it was peaceably waiting for us, and had reduced it to a heap of disintegrated fragments. This was a pretty state of things, but I had been warned beforehand that such calamities were sometimes to be met with, and so our party were prepared. Setting up an Etna inside a biscuit-tin so as to guard against the possibility of disaster from the jolting of the carriage, we brewed our tea, and made a comfortable meal off biscuits, potted meat, sardines, and marmalade, while the rest of the passengers, who seemed to have neglected these precautions, glared upon us in hungry envy. However, we reached Winnipeg at noon, and they rushed in a tumultuous body to the refreshment-room. Here we overtook that ghastly train in which we had started from Quebec, and some waifs and strays were recovered which the ladies had left behind. At Portage-la-Prairie a dining-car was attached, and we were enabled to get our evening meal in peace. Next morning, Saturday, we secured our travelling restaurant at a place called Moosejaw about six o’clock—at least I was told so.
And here I wish to protest against the insane habit of early rising which seems to possess the passengers on the C.P.R. I am an early riser myself, in fact I pique myself on it, but in this car I was always the last, with the exception of one of my friends, a young Englishman ranching at Calgary. By seven o’clock the Babel of voices, and the noise made by our coloured attendant as he stowed away the beds, compelled one to get up, which was unkind if one had been talking and smoking till 1 or 2 a.m. One could, however, always get a nap in the smoking-room.
That day we had a quite shocking dining-car, so bad that I hereby publish its name, which was ‘Sandringham,’ in the hope that the Cuisinal Director of the C.P.R, whoever he may be, will have taken care to reform that car before I next meet with it.
As our Calgary friend got off the train at 2 a.m., some of us sat up till that hour to see him off, but we turned out again at four o’clock to enjoy the grand scenery of the Rockies, into the heart of which we crept, up the Bow River, over the Kicking-Horse Pass, down to Donald, and then we crossed the Columbia, and began to climb up the valley of the Beaver into the Selkirk range. This is even finer than the Rockies, owing to the greater size of the snowfields and glaciers, and the view from Glacier House, where we stopped for lunch, the grades in the mountains being too steep to allow of a dining-car being attached, was magnificent in the extreme. At this point the great Illecillewaet glacier descends into the valley, backed by the superb spire of Mount Sir Donald, and the C.P.R. have most obligingly built a summer track outside the snow-sheds to enable the passengers to see it in comfort. It was on this day that we crossed the trestle bridge in the Beaver Valley, 295 feet above the stream below; two of us happened to be sitting at the time on the step of the car, and as the bridge, which has no parapet or floor of any kind, is curved, we were tipped forward till we could contemplate the water far beneath between our feet as they overhung the edge of the step. We held on rather tight during the minute or so spent in creeping over it. This sitting on the step of the platform was most enjoyable, as there had been rain in the night, and consequently there was no dust, but every now and then the one who was sitting farthest from the projecting roof of the carriage received an icy shower-bath, as the train dashed suddenly into a snow-shed through the roof of which the melting snow was dripping, and little feminine squeals might be heard, intermixed with deeper bass grumblings.
At Glacier House I received a letter from H., saying they could not start for another fortnight, and recommending me to stop off there for a day or two and go up the glacier; but, as all my climbing things were in my checked baggage, I preferred to go on. We were detained an hour or so by a disobliging boulder which had playfully rolled down on to the track and had to be removed with dynamite before we could proceed, and then we went down over some marvellous loops, which resembled the twistings of the St. Gothard near Wasen, crossed the Columbia again, and climbed up into the Gold Range. From Revelstoke to Sicamous we were accompanied by a dining-car, but our dinner would, perhaps, have been more satisfactory, though more devoid of interest, had they not selected the moment at which we were running fast down a steep incline to jam the brakes on. Away went every wine-glass, soup hopped out of the plates, potatoes out of the dishes, and we might as well have been in a rough sea with no fiddles on. At last peace, and as much of the dinner as could be collected, were restored. Late in the evening we enjoyed a most lovely view over the broad smooth expanse of Lake Shusroap, the train running along its reedy shore for some time.
During the night we careered down the Thompson, and found ourselves at daybreak accompanying the Fraser in its wild career to the sea. We were compelled to breakfast at North Bend, at the objectionable hour of seven, and my toilet was hurried in a very undue manner; but the views all that morning were ample compensation for having been dragged out of bed.
All this time I had no conception of where H. was, his letter having said nothing, but in London I had been given an address in the town of Vancouver, and so had determined to go there first. Being a Monday, no boat ran to Victoria from Vancouver, and so I had to part with my friends and nearly all the other passengers at Westminster Junction, whence they went on to New Westminster. I reached Vancouver at two o’clock, and after securing comfortable, not to say luxurious, quarters in the brand-new C.P.R. hotel, strolled down to find out about H., and discovered that he and his brother were located at the famous Driard Hotel in Victoria.
The afternoon was spent in wandering about the town, the evening in smoking at the house of an hospitable fellow-countryman, and the next day the little steamer ‘Yosemite’ conveyed me across the blue waters of the Gulf of Georgia, muddied in one place by the flood of the Fraser, to Victoria, a distance of about seventy miles. We had an exciting race with the old Cunarder ‘Abyssinia,’ now employed in the mail-service between Canada and Japan. She moved first from her moorings in Burrard Islet, but her head was lying the wrong way, and before she got round we were out of the harbour with a quarter of a mile’s start. Down the long straight piece that followed she gained slowly but steadily, and was almost level with us on our left when we just succeeded in getting into Plumper’s Pass first, and in the intricate windings of this tortuous channel, where the ship kept spinning round in little over her own length, we again got a long start which was gradually reduced till there was nothing of it left as we neared the south-east point of Vancouver Island; but here we cut inside a group of small islands, where apparently the larger vessel could not come, and this time we gained such an advantage that we were not again caught. We steamed round the corner into the very beautiful harbour of Victoria, and reached the wharf at half-past eight. Here I was met by H., apprised by telegraph of my approach, and really hardly recognised him without his moustache, which for some obscure reason he had chosen to shave off while staying at the Glacier House in the spring. Having entrusted my baggage to an express man, we did not go up at once to the Driard, as it was too late to procure dinner, or indeed anything else to eat there, but repaired to the Poodle Dog, where my hunger was at last appeased. We then proceeded to the hotel, where we found E., H.’s brother, and most unlike him, and talked over plans far into the night. A fourth man, W., an American member of the A.C., was coming to join us, but the taking of his degree was delaying him. Still he did his best for us by sending us long telegrams of advice every day.
The next few days passed rapidly, the mornings being spent in shopping, though that was a task which fell chiefly to H., who had been elected ‘boss’ of the party, or in frantic endeavours to ascertain how we were going to get from Sitka to Yakutat, a distance of nearly three hundred miles. We entered into negotiations with the owners of two steam-schooners, but as one asked fifty dollars a day and the other four thousand for the whole trip, we rejected these noble offers. The afternoons were spent by E. and me in sailing on the harbour in ‘plungers,’ stiff little Una-rigged cutters, which revealed the meaning of their name if there was any sea on, or in lawn-tennis in the gardens of various hospitable magnates of Victoria. At the house of one of these I encountered an old friend, a neighbour at home, whose ship was now on the station, and I had the pleasure of dining with him on board at Esquimault the next evening.
There was great uncertainty even about the arrival of the ‘Ancon,’ the steamer which was to take us up to Sitka; she was expected to arrive early on the 4th of June, but did not turn up till the evening of the 5th, crammed with American tourists. With the utmost difficulty we obtained a fairly airy but exceedingly diminutive cabin, for at first we found ourselves condemned to a pocket edition of the Black Hole. H. tried to make us believe that the majesty of his presence had over-awed the purser, but we somehow fancied that bribery and corruption had something to do with it. In consequence of this mob of passengers there were three breakfasts, three lunches, etc., a most horrible arrangement, while at all of them the food was bad, and the waiting worse. Thus we grumbled, little thinking with what enthusiasm the same cookery would be received on our return.
As a sea voyage this trip up to Sitka is quite unique, though possibly travelling among the fiords of Norway might be compared to it in quality if not in quantity, for these steamers travel about eight hundred miles between Victoria and Sitka, only about thirty miles of which, the crossing of Queen Charlotte’s Sound, can in any sense be termed open sea, though the whole of it is on salt water. The whole coast up to Cape Spencer is fringed with a mass of islands separated by deep and very narrow channels, in some instances so narrow that, as in the case of Peril Straits and Seymour Narrows, even a steamer can only pass them at slack water. One American gentleman assured me that in the latter strait the tide had been known to run seventeen knots! All these islands are densely wooded with conifers, among which may every now and then be detected the white streak of a waterfall racing down the steep hill-side.
We stopped to coal at Nanaimo, and while this objectionable process was going on, H. and I spent the afternoon in drifting about the harbour in an Indian canoe, a dug-out about twelve feet long, managed in just the same way as the Canadian canoes we have in England, and in endeavouring to acquire some Chinook, the jargon invented more or less by the old traders, and used all over British Columbia and the southern part of Alaska. It contains chiefly Indian words, most of which are common to various different tribes, a few English, a few Russian, and a good many French words, such as Siwash (i.e. sauvage) for Indian, and sawmon for any kind of fish.
Then for six days it rained at intervals, while a grey pall of cloud stretched ceaselessly over our heads, and we spent most of our time playing whist or euchre in our cabin, which would just hold four people. Our fourth on these occasions was a most cheerful Scotchman, known to us as the King of Cassiar, to which kingdom he was now returning. He possessed a large stock of most excellent whisky when he came on board. During these sad and gloomy days we visited sundry salmon canneries, and about midnight on Sunday the 10th we arrived at Wrangel. We had now got so far north that there was quite light enough even at that hour to walk about the streets, and I accompanied our Scotch friend ashore, as he was to leave us here and go up the Stickheen river. While in the town I gleaned the information that canoes went up almost every summer from Hooniah to Yakutat along the unprotected part of the coast, and we proceeded to sketch out plans for conveying our expedition in the same way.
The next day was still wet and cold, and though we met sundry small icebergs floating down from the glaciers in Taku Inlet, we saw nothing of the mountains which gave them birth. Some excitement was caused by our stopping about eleven o’clock to pick up a fair-sized canoe with four of Mr. Duncan’s Metlakatla Indians in her, who had encountered rough weather and damaged their frail craft. We reached the mining city (!) of Juneau in the evening, and H. and I plunged about till late at night, seeking, with the assistance of Mr. Reed, a Juneau store-keeper, for some sloop or schooner which might convey us up to Yakutat. This we failed to find, but we engaged a certain Dick as interpreter, who was said to be the smartest Indian in Alaska, and rejoiced in the appellation of the Dude. For this aristocratic Siwash’s services we weakly consented to pay four dollars a day and his food, and he accompanied us on board, his luggage being about as voluminous as that of a Swiss guide.
On Tuesday the 12th we had at last a perfectly beautiful day, during which we steamed from Douglas Island, the seat of the biggest gold-mine in Alaska, up the Lynn Canal to Pyramid Harbour. The mountains on each side of the narrow inlet were covered with glaciers, all obviously shrinking, and none of any great size, till we came to the Davidson Glacier, close to Pyramid Harbour, which at a distance appears to come right into the sea, though it is really separated from it by a narrow belt of moraine. Retracing our course next day down the Lynn Canal, we then went down Chatham Strait to Killisnoo, where I saw the biggest salmon that I ever came across in Alaska, a brace of about fifty pounds each, and then, passing through most beautiful scenery in Peril Straits, finally reached Sitka at 11 p.m.
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