Whulge
editAccording to the cosmical law that regulates the west ends of the world, Whulge is more interesting than any of the eastern waters of our country, Tame Albemarle and Pamlico, Chesapeake and Delaware, Long Island Sound, and even the Maine Archipelago and Frenchman’s Bay, cannot compare with it. Whulge is worthy of the Scandinavian savor of its name. Its cockney misnomer should be dropped. Already the critical world demands who was “Puget,” and why should the title be saved from Lethe and given to a sound. Whulge is a vast fiord, parting rocks and forests primeval with a mighty tide. Chesapeakes and the like do very well for oyster “fundums” and shad-fisheries, but Whulge has a picturesque significance as much greater as its salmon are superior to the osseous shad of the east. Some of its beauties will appear in this my voyage.
I sat comfortably amidships in my stately but leaky galley, Bucentaur hight for the nonce. Olyman siwash steered. The Duke and Duchess, armed with idle paddles, were between him and me. The fishy trio were arranged forward, paddling to starboard and port. It was past noon of an August day, sultry, but not blasting, as are the summer days of that far Northwest. We sped on gallantly, paddling and spreading a blanket to the breeze.
The Duke, however, sogered bravely, and presently called a halt. Then, to my consternation, he produced a “lumoti” and passed it. Potations pottle-deep ensued. Each reveller took one sixth of the liquor, and, after the Duke’s exhaustive draught, an empty bottle floated astern. A general stagger began to be perceptible among the sitters. Their paddling grew spasmodic.
After an interval I heard again a popping sound, not unknown to me. A gurgle followed. I turned. The Duke was pouring out a cupful from his second bottle. He handed me the cup and lumoti for transmission to the fishy, forward. This must stop. I deposited the bottle by my side and emptied the cup into Whulge. Into an arm of the Pacific in the far Northwest I poured that gill of fire-water. Answer me from the northeast corner, O Neal Dow, was it well done?
Then raged the siwashes all, from Olyman perched on high and wielding a helmsman paddle aft, to a special blackguard in the bow with villain eyes no bigger than a flattened pea, and a jungle of coarse black hair, thick as the mane of a buffalo bull. All stowed their paddles and talked violently in their own tongue. It was a guttural, sputtering language in its calmest articulation, and now every word burst forth like the death-rattle of a garroted man.
Finally, in Chinook, “Kopet; be still,” said the Duke. “Keelapi; turnabout,” said, he.
They brandished paddles, and, whirling the canoe around, tore up the water violently for a few strokes. I said nothing. Presently they paused, and talked more frantically than before. Something was about to happen.
Aha! What is that, O Duke ? A knife!
What are these, O dirty siwashes ? Guns are these, flint-locks of the Hudson’s Bay pattern. “Guns for thee, O spiteful spiller of enlivening beverage, and capturer of a lumoti. Butchery is the order of the day!”
“Look you, then, aborigines all. I carry six siwash lives at my girdle. This machine — mark it well! — is called a six-shooter, an eight-inch navy revolver, invented by Col. Sam Colt, of Hartford, Conn. God bless him! We are seven, and I should regret sending you six others to the Unhappy Hunting-Grounds of the Kicuali Tyee, Anglice Devil, the lowermost chieftain. Look down this muzzle as I whisk it about and bring it to bear on each of you in turn. Rifled you observe. Pleasant, well-oiled click that cylinder has. Behold, also, this other double-barrelled piece of artillery, loaded, as you saw but now, with polecat-shot, in case we should see one of these black and white objects skulking along shore. Unsavory though ye be, my Klalams, I should not wish to identify you in your deaths with that animal.”
Saying this, with an air of indifference, but in expressive pantomime, I could not fail to perceive that the situation was critical. Three drunken Indians on this side, and two and a woman on that, and I playing bottle-holder in the midst, — what would follow? Their wild talk and threatening gestures continued. I kept my pistol and one eye cocked at him of the old clo’, the, teapots, and the daguerrotype; my other eye and the double-barrel covered the trio in the bow. This dead lock lasted several minutes. Meantime the canoe had yielded to the tide, and was now sweeping on in a favorable course.
At last the Duke laid down his knife, Olyman siwash his gun, the three fishy ones theirs, and his Grace, stretching forth an eloquent arm, made a neat speech. Fluency is impossible in few-worded Chinook jargon, but brevity is more potent.
- “Hyas silex nika; in wrathful sulks am I. Masatche nika tum tum copa mika; bitter is my heart toward thee. Wake cultus tyee Dooker-yawk; no paltry sachem, the Duke of York. Wake kamooks, halo pottlelum; no dog, by no means a soaker. Ancoti conoway tikky mamook iscum mika copa Squally, — alta halo; but now, all wished to conduct thee to Squally; now, not so. Alta nesika wake tikky pississy, pe shirt, pe polealely, pe Kaliaton, pe hiu ikta, — tikky keelapi; now we no want blankets and shirts and powder and shot and many traps, — want to return. Conoway silex, — tikky moosum; all in the sulks, — want to sleep.”
Whereupon, as if at a signal, all six dived deep into slumber, — slumber at first pretended, perhaps to throw me off my guard, perhaps a crafty method of evading the difficulty of a reconciliation, and the shame of yielding. So deep did they plunge into sham sleep, that they sunk into real, and presently I heard the gurgle of snores.
While they slept, the canoe drifted over Whulge. Fleet waters bore me on whither they listed, fortunately whither I also listed, and, if ever the vessel yawed, a few quiet strokes with the paddle set her right again. The current drew me away from under shore, and to the South, through distancing haze of summer the noble group of the Olympian Mountains became visible, — a grand family of vigorous growth, worthy more perfect knowledge. They fill the southern promontory, where Whulge passes into the Pacific, at the Straits of De Fuca. On the highest pinnacles of this sierra, glimmers of perpetual snow in sheltered dells and crevices gave me pleasant, chilly thoughts in that hot August day. After the disgusting humanity of King George’s realms, and after the late period of rebellion and disorganization, the calming influence of these azure luminous peaks, their blue slashed with silver, was transcendent.
So I sat watchful, and by and by I heard a gentle voice, “Wake nika moosum; I sleep not.”
“Sleepest thou not, pretty Duchess, flat-faced one, with chevrons vermilion culminating at thy nose-bridge? Wilt thou forgive me for spilling thy nectar, Lalage of the dulcet laugh, dulcet-spoken Lalage ? Would that thou wert clean as well as pretty, and had known but seldom the too fragrant salmon! — would that I had never seen thee toss off a waterless gill of fire-water! Please wake the Duke.”
The Duke woke. Olyman woke. Woke Klalams one and all. Sleep had banished wrath and rancor. All grasped their paddles, and, soon warming with work, the fugleman waked a wild chant, and to its stirring vibrations the canoe shook and leaped forward like a salmon in the buzz of a tideway.
We careered on for an hour. Then I suggested a pause and a picnic. Brilliant and friendly thought, — “Conoway tikky muckamuck”; all want to eat. Take then, my pardoned crew, from my stores, portions of dried cod. Thin it is, translucent, and very nice for Klalam or Yankee. Take also hardtack at discretion, — “pire sapolol,” or fired corn, as ye name it. Our picnic was rumless, wholesome, and amicable, and after it paddling and songs were renewed with vigor. We were not alone upon Whulge. Many lumber vessels were drifting or at anchor under the opposite shore, loaded mainly with fir-trees, soon to be drowned as piles for San Francisco docks. Those were prosperous days in the Pacific. The country which goes to sea through Whulge had recently split away from Oregon, and called itself Washington, after the General of that name. Indian Whulgeamish and Yankee Whulgers were reasonably polite to each other, the Pacific Railroad was to be built straightway, Ormus and Ind were to become tributary. It was the epoch of hope, but fruition has not yet come. Savages and Yankees have since been scalping each other in the most uncivil way, the P. R. R. creeps slowly outward, Ormus and Ind are chary of tribute. Dreams of growth are faster than growth.
The persons of my crew have been described. They all, according to a superstition quite common among Indians, declined to give their names, or even an alias, as other scamps might do, except the Duke and Duchess, proud in their foreign appellatives. I will substitute, therefore, the names of the crew of another canoe in which I had previously voyaged from Squally to Vancouver’s Island, with Dr. Tolmie, factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company at the former place. These were, 1. Unstu or Hahal, the handsome; 2. Mastu or La Hache; 3. Khaadza; 4. Snawhaylal; 5. Ay-ay-whun, briefly A-wy; 6. Ai-tu-so; 7. Nuckutzoot; 8. Paicks; and two women, Tlaiwhal and Smoikit-um-whal, “Smoikit” meaning chief. They were of several different tribes, Squallyamish, Skagets, members of the different “amish” that dwell along the Sound, and two, Ai-tu-so and Nuckutzoot, proudly distinguished themselves as Haida, a generic name applied to nations northward of Whulge. These few type names, not without melody or drollery, may be interesting to the philo-siwash. It would be inappropriate to the method of this sketch to go into detail with regard to Indians of Whulge. But literature has taken little notice of those distant gentry, and before they retreat into the dim past, to become subjects of threnody with other lost tribes, let me chronicle a few surface facts of their life and manners.
It seems a sorry thing but is really a wise admonition of Nature, that we should first distinguish in people their faults and deformities. The first observation when one of the Whulgeamish appears is, “Lo the flat-head!” Among them a tight-strapped cushion controls the elastic skull of childhood, crushing it back idiotic. Now a forehead should not be too round, or a nose too straight, or a cheek too ruddy, or a hand too small. Nature, however, does quite well enough by those she means to be flat-head beauties. Indians do not recognize this, and strive to better Nature. Civilization, beholding the total failure of the skull-crushing system, is warned, and resolves to discard its coxcombries and deformities, and to strive to develop, not to distort, the body and soul.
Are thoughts equally profound to be suggested by other corporeal members of Klalams and their brethren ? All are bow-legged. All of a sad-colored, Caravaggio brown, through which salmon-juices exude, and which is varnished with fish-oil. All have coarse black hair, and are beardless. Old people of either sex are hardly to be distinguished, man from woman. The young ladies are not without charms, and blush ingenuously. The fashion of fish-ivory ornaments, hung to the lower lip, has retreated northward, and glass beads and necklaces of hiaqua, a shell like a quill tooth-pick, conchologically known as a species of Dentalium, have replaced the disgusting labial appendages. Hickory shirts and woollen blankets are worn instead of skin raiment, mat aprons, and Indian blankets, woven of the hair of the fleecy dog. In fact, except for paint, these Indians might pass well enough for dirty lazzaroni.
Gigantic clams, cod, and other maritimes, but chiefly salmon, are the food of the Whulgeamish. Ducks and geese visit their shores, and are bagged. No infrequent polecat skulks about their unsavory cabins, and meets the fatal arrow. Grasshoppers and crickets, dried, yield them pies. They cultivate a few potatoes, pluck plentiful berries, and dig sweet kamas bulbs in the swamps. Few things edible are disdained by them.
Once, the same summer, as I voyaged with a crew of the Lummi tribe toward Frazer’s River, they discerned a dead seal grotesquely floating on the water. Him they embarked, with roars of laughter, as his unwieldiness slipped through their fingers; and they supped and surfeited unharmed on rancid phoca that evening. But salmon, netted, hooked, trolled, speared, weired, scooped, — salmon taken by various sleight of savage skill, — is the chief diet of Whulge. In the tide-ways toward the Sound’s mouth, the Indians anchor two canoes parallel, fifteen feet apart, and stretch a flat net of strips of inner bark between them, sinking it just below the surface. They don a head-gear like a “rat’s nest,” confected of wool, feathers, furry tails, ribbons, and rags, considered attractive to salmon, and “hyas tamanoüs,” highly magical. Salmon, either wending their unconscious way, or tuft-hunting for the enchantments of the magic cap, come swimming in shoals across the suspended net. Whereupon every fisher, with inconceivable screeches, whoops, and howls, beats the water to bewilder the silver swimmers, and, hauling up the net, clutches them by dozens. Sometimes fleets of canoes go a trolling, one fisherman in each slight shallop. He fastens his line to his paddle, and as he paddles trolls. A pretty sight to behold is a rocky bay of Whulge, gay with a fleet of these agile dug-outs, and ever and anon illumined with a gleam when a salmon takes the bait. In the voyage I have mentioned with Dr. Tolmie, a squadron of such trollers near the Indian village of Kowitchin crowded about us, praying to be vaccinated, and paying a salmon for the privilege. Small-pox is the fatalest foe of the Indian.
Spearmen also for food are the siwashes. In muddy streams, where Boston eyes would detect nothing, Indian sees a ripple, and divines a fish. He darts his long wooden spear, and out it ricochets, with a banner of salmon at its point. But salmon may escape the coquettish charms of the trolling-hook, may safely run the gauntlet of the parallel canoes and their howling, tamanoüs-cap wearers; the spear, misguided in the drumly gleam, may glance harmless from scale-armed shoulders: still other perils await them. These aristos of the waters need change of scene. Blubberly fish may dwell through a life-long pickle in the briny deep, and grow rancid there like olives too salt, but the delicate salmon must have his bubbles from the brunnen. Besides, his youthful family, the Parrs, must be cradled on the ripples of a running stream, and in innocent nooks of freshness must establish their vigor and consistency, before they brave the risks of cosmopolitan ocean life. For such reasons gentleman salmon seeks the rivers, and Indian, expecting him there, builds a palisade of poles athwart the stream. The traveller, thus obstructed, whisks his tail, and coasts along, seeking a passage. He finds one, and dashes through, but is stopped by a shield of wicker-work, and, turning blindly, plunges into a fish-pot, set to take him as he whirls to retreat, bewildered.
At the magnificent Cascades of the Columbia, the second-best water bit on our continent, there is more exciting salmon-fishing in the splendid turmoil of the rapids. Over the shoots, between boulders and rifts of rock, the Indians rig a scaffolding, and sweep down stream with a scoop-net. Salmon, working their way up in high exhilaration, are taken twenty an hour, by every scooper. He lifts them out, brilliantly sheeny, and, giving them, with a blow from a billet of wood, a hint to be peaceable, hands over each thirty-pounder to a fusty attaché, who, in turn, lugs them away to the squaws to be cleaned and dried.
Thus in Whulge and at the Cascades the salmon is taken. And now behold him caught, and lying dewy in silver death, bright as an unalloyed dollar, varnished with opaline iridescence. “How shall he be cooked?” asks squaw of sachem. “Boil him, entoia, my beloved” (Haida tongue), “in a mighty pot of iron, plumping in store of wapatoo, which pasaiooks, the pale-faces, name potatoes. Or, my cloocheman, my squaw, roast of his thicker parts sundry chunks on a spit. Or, best of all, split and broil him on an upright framework, a perpendicular gridiron of aromatic twigs. Thus by highest simple art, before the ruddy blaze, with breezes circumambient and wafting away any mephitic kitcheny exhalations, he will toast deliciously, and I will feast thereupon, O my cloocheman, whilst thou, O working partner of our house, art preparing these brother fish to be dried into amber transparency, or smoked in a lachrymose cabin, that we may sustain ourselves through dry-fish Lent, after this fresh-fish Carnival is over.” Such discussions occur not seldom in the drama of Indian life.
In the Bucentaur, after our lunch on kippered cod and biscuits, we had not tarried. Generally in that region, in breezeless days of August, smoke from burning forests falls, and envelops all the world of land and water. In such strange chaos, voyaging without a compass is impossible. Canoes are often detained for days, waiting for the smoke to lift. To-day, fortunately for my progress, there was a fresh breeze from China-way. Only a soft golden haze hung among the pines, and toned the swarthy coloring of the rocky shores.
All now in good humor, and Col. Colt in retirement, we swept along through narrow straits, between piny islands, and by sheltered bays where fleets might lie hidden. With harmonious muscular throes, in time with Indian songs, the three stoutly paddled. The Duke generally sogered, or dipped his blade with sham vehemence, as he saw me observing him. Olyman steered steadily, a Palinurus skilful and sleepless. Jenny Lind, excusable idler, did not belie her musical name. She was our prima donna, and leader of the chorus. Often she uttered careless bursts of song, like sudden slants of rays through cloudiness, and often droned some drowsy lay, to which the crew responded with disjointed, lurching refrain. Few of these airs were musical according to civilized standards. Some had touches of wild sentiment or power, but most were grotesque combinations of guttural howls. In all, however, there were tones and strains of irregular originality, surging up through monotony, or gleams of savage ire suddenly flashing forth, and recalling how one has seen, with shudders, a shark, with white sierras of teeth, gnash upon him not far distant, from a bath in a tropic bay. I found a singular consolation in the unleavened music of my crew. Why should there not be throbs of rude power in aboriginal song? It is well to review the rudiments sometimes, and see whether we have done all we might in building systems from the primal hints.
The songs of Chin Lin, Duchess of York, chorussed by the fishy, seemed a consoling peace offering. The undertone of sorrow in all music cheats us of grief for our own distress. To counteract the miseries of civilization, we must have the tender, passionate despairs of Favorita and Traviata; for the disgusts of barbarism I found Indian howls sufficient relief.
By and by, with sunset, paddle-songs died away, and the Bucentaur slowed. The tide had turned, and was urgently against us. My tired crew were oddly dropping off to sleep. We landed on the shingle for repose and supper. Twilight was already spreading downward from the zenith, and pouring gloom among the sombre pines. Grotesque masses of blanched drift-wood strewed the shore and grouped themselves about, — strange semblances of monstrous shapes, like amorphous idols, dethroned and waiting to perish by the iconoclastic test of fire. Poor Prometheus may have been badly punished by that cruel fowl of Caucasus, but we mortals got the unquenchable spark. I carried a modicum of compact flame in a match-box, and soon had a funeral pyre of those heathenish stumps and roots well ablaze, — a glory of light between the solemn wall of the forest and the dark glimmering flood.
On the romantic shores of Whulge, illumined by my fire, 1 had toasted salt pork for supper, while the siwashes banqueted to repletion on dried fish and the unaccustomed luxury of hard-tack, and were genially happy. But when, with kindly mind, I, their chieftain, brewed them a princely pot of tea, and tossed in sugar lavishly, sprinkling also unperceivedly the beverage with forty drops from the captured lumoti, and gave them tobacco, enough to blow a cloud, then happiness capped itself with gayety and merriment. They heaped the pyre with fuel, and made it the chief jester of their jolly circle, chuckling when it crackled, and roaring with laughter when the frantic tongues of flame leaped up, and shot a glare, almost fiendish, over the wild scene.
I sat apart with my dhudeen, studying the occasion for its lesson. “Would I be an Indian, — a duke of the Klalams?” I asked myself. “As much as I am to-night, — no more, and no longer. To-night I am a demi-savage, jolly for my rest and my supper, and content because my hampers hold enough for to-morrow. I can identify myself thoroughly, and delight that I can, with the untamed natures of my comrades. I can yield myself to the dominion of the same impulses that sway them out of impassiveness into frantic excitement. They sit here over the fire, now jabbering lustily, and now silent and drifting along currents of association, undiverted by discursive thought, until some pervading fancy strikes them all at once, and again all is animation and guttural sputter of sympathy. I can also let myself go bobbing down the tide of thoughtless thought, until I am caught by the same shoals, or checked by the same reef, or launched upon the same tumultuous seas, as they. These influences are primeval, aboriginal, fresh, enlivening for their anti-cockney savor. Wretchedly slab-sided, and not at all fitting among the many-sided, is he who cannot adapt himself to the dreams and hopes, the awes and pleasures of savage life, and be as good a savage as the brassiest Brass-skin.
“However, it is not amiss,” continued my soliloquy, puffing itself away with the last whiffs of my pipe, “to have the large results of the world’s secular toil in posse. It is sometimes pleasant to lay aside the resumable ermine. It is easy to linger while one has a hand upon the locomotive’s valve. I will, on the whole, remain an American of the nineteenth century, and not subside into a Klalam brave. Every sincere man has, or ought to have, his differences or his quarrels with status quo, — otherwise what becomes of the millennium ? My personal grudge with the present has not yet brought me to the point of rupture and reaction.”
Had I uttered these reflections in a prosy lecture, my fishy suite could not have been sounder asleep than they now were. They had coiled themselves about the fire, in genuine slumber, after labor and overfeeding. Without dread of treachery, I bivouacked near them. I was more placable and less watchful than I should have been had I known that the Kahtai Klalams, under the superintendence of King George and the Duke, were in the habit of murdering. They sacrificed a couple of pale-faced victims within the year, as I afterwards was informed. However, the lamb lay down with the wolf, and suffered no harm. From time to time I awoke, and rolled another log upon the pyre, and then returned to my uneasy naps on the pebbles, — uneasy, not because the pebbles dimpled me somewhat harshly through my blankets, not because, the inextinguishable stars winked at me fantastically through ether, nor because my scalp occasionally gave premonitions of departure; but because I did not wish, when offered the boon of a favorable tide, to be asleep at my post and miss it.
A new flood-tide was about to be sent whirling up into the bays and coves and nooks of Whulge when I shook up my sobered hero of the libellous teapots, shook up Olyman and his young men, and touched the Duchess lightly on the shoulder, as she lay with her red-chevroned visage turned toward the zenith. The Duke alone grumbled, and shirked the toil of launching the Bucentaur. We others went at it heartily, dragging our vessel down the shingle to the chorus of a guttural De Profundis. It was an hour before dawn. We reloaded, and shoved off into the chill, star-lighted void, — a void where one might doubt whether the upper stars or the nether stars were the real orbs. Our red fire watched us as we sailed away, glaring after us like a Cyclops sentinel until we rounded a point and passed out of his range, only to find ourselves sadly gazed at by a pale, lean moon just lifting above the pines. With the flames of dawn a wind arose and lent us wings. I succeeded in inspiring my crew with a stolid intention to speed me. A comradery grew up between me and the truculent blackguard who wielded the bow paddle, so that he essayed unintelligent civilities from time to time, and when we landed to breakfast, at a point where a giant arbor-vitae stood a rich pyramid of green, he brought me sallal-berries, and arbutus-leaves to dry for smoking; meaning perhaps to play Caliban to my Stephano, and worshipping him who bore the lumoti. The Duke remained either “hyas k1a hye am,” in the wretched dumps, or “hyas silex,” in the deep sulks, as must happen after an orgie, even to a princely personage. I could get nothing from him, either in philology or legend, — nothing but the Klalam name of Whulge, K’uk’lults. However, thanks to a strong following wind and a blanket-sail, we sped on, never flinching from the tide when it turned and battled us.
We had rounded a point, and opened Puyallop Bay, a breadth of sheltered calmness, when I, lifting sleepy eyelids for a dreamy stare about, was suddenly aware of a vast white shadow in the water. What cloud, piled massive on the horizon, could cast an image so sharp in outline, so full of vigorous detail of surface ? No cloud, as my stare, no longer dreamy, presently discovered, no cloud, but a cloud compeller. It was a giant mountain dome of snow, swelling and seeming to fill the aerial spheres as its image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water. The smoky haze of an Oregon August hid all the length of its lesser ridges, and left this mighty summit based upon uplifting dimness. Only its splendid snows were visible, high in the unearthly regions of clear blue noonday sky. The shore line drew a cincture of pines across the broad base, where it faded unreal into the mist. The same dark girth separated the peak from its reflection, over which my canoe was now pressing, and sending wavering swells to shatter the beautiful vision, before it.
Kingly and alone stood this majesty, without any visible comrade or consort, though far to the north and the south its brethren and sisters dominated their realms, each in isolated sovereignty, rising above the pine-darkened sierra of the Cascade Mountains, — above the stern chasm where the Columbia, Achilles of rivers, sweeps, short-lived. and jubilant, to the sea, — above the lovely vales of the Willamette and Umpqua. Of all the peaks from California to Frazer’s River, this one before me was royalest. Mount Regnier Christians have dubbed it, in stupid nomenclature perpetuating the name of somebody or nobody. More melodiously the siwashes call it Tacoma, — a generic term also applied to all snow peaks. Whatever keen crests and crags there may be in its rock anatomy of basalt, snow covers softly with its bends and sweeping curves. Tacoma, under its ermine, is a crushed volcanic dome, or an ancient volcano fallen in, and perhaps as yet not wholly lifeless. The domes of snow are stateliest. There may be more of feminine beauty in the cones, and more of masculine force and hardihood in the rough pyramids, but the great domes are calmer and more divine, and, even if they have failed to attain absolute dignified grace of finish, and are riven and broken down, they still demand our sympathy for giant power, if only partially victor. Each form — the dome, the cone, and the pyramid — has its type among the great snow peaks of the Cascades.
And now let the Duke of York drowse, the Duchess cease awhile longer her choking chant, and the rest nap it on their paddles, floating on the image of Tacoma, while I ask recognition for the almost unknown glories of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. We are poorly off for such objects east of the Mississippi. There are some roughish excrescences known as the Alleghanies. There is a knobby group of brownish White Mountains. Best of all, high in Down-East is the lonely Katahdin. Hillocks these, — never among them one single summit brilliant forever with snow, golden in sunshine, silver when sunshine has gone; not one to bloom rosy at dawn, and to be a vision of refreshment all the sultry summer long; not one to be lustrous white over leagues of woodland, sombre or tender; not one to repeat the azure of heaven among its shadowy dells. Exaltation such as the presence of the sublime and solemn heights arouses, we dwellers eastward cannot have as an abiding influence. Other things we may have, for Nature will not let herself anywhere be scorned; but only mountains, and chiefest the giants of snow, can teach whatever lessons there may be in vaster distances and deeper depths of palpable ether, in lonely grandeur without desolation, and in the illimitable, bounded within an outline. Therefore, needing all these emotions at their maximum, we were compelled to make pilgrimages back to the mountains of the Old World, — commodiously as may be when we consider sea-sickness, passports, Murray’s red-covers, and h-less Britons everywhere. Yes, back to the Old World we went, and patronized the Alps, and nobly satisfying we found them. But we were forced to inspect also the heritage of human institutions, and such a mankind as they had made after centuries of opportunity, — and very sadly depressing we found the work, so that, notwithstanding many romantic joys and artistic pleasures, we came back malecontent. Let us, therefore, develop our own world. It has taken us two centuries to discover our proper West across the Mississippi, and to know by indefinite hearsay that among the groups of the Rockys are heights worth notice.
Farthest away in the west, as near the western sea as mountains can stand, are the Cascades. Sailors can descry their landmark summits firmer than cloud, a hundred miles away. Kulshan, misnamed Mount Baker by the vulgar, is their northernmost buttress up at 49° and Frazer’s River. Kulshan is an irregular, massive, mound-shaped peak, worthy to stand a white emblem of perpetual peace between us and our brother Britons. The northern regions of Whulge and Vancouver’s Island have Kulshan upon their horizon. They saw it blaze the winter before this journey of mine; for there is fire beneath the Cascades, red war suppressed where the peaks, symbols of truce, stand in resplendent quiet. Kulshan is best seen, as I saw it one afternoon of that same August, from an upland of Vancouver’s Island, across the golden waves of a wheat-field, across the glimmering waters of the Georgian Sound, and far above its belt of misty gray pine-ridges. The snow-line here is at five thousand feet, and Kulshan has as much height in snow as in forest and vegetation. Its name I got from the Lummi tribe at its base, after I had dipped in their pot at a boiled-salmon feast. As to Baker, that name should be forgotten. Mountains should not be insulted by being named after undistinguished bipeds, nor by the prefix of Mt. Mt. Chimborazo, or Mt. Dhawalaghiri, seems as feeble as Mr. Julius Caesar, or Signor Dante.
South of Kulshan, the range continues dark, rough, and somewhat unmeaning to the eye, until it is relieved by Tacoma, vulgo Regnier. Upon this Tacoma’s image I was now drifting, and was about to make nearer acquaintance with its substance. One cannot know too much of a nature’s nobleman. Tacoma the second, which Yankees call Mt. Adams, is a clumsier repetition of its greater brother, but noble enough to be the pride of a continent. Dearest charmer of all is St. Helen’s, queen of the Cascades, queen of Northern America, a fair and graceful volcanic cone. Exquisite mantling snows sweep along her shoulders toward the bristling pines. Sometimes she showers her realms with a boon of light ashes, to notify them that her peace is repose, not stupor, and sometimes lifts a beacon of tremulous flame by night from her summit. Not far from her base the Columbia crashes through the mountains in a magnificent chasm, and Mt. Hood, the vigorous prince of the range, rises in a keen pyramid fourteen or sixteen thousand feet high, rivalling his sister in glory. Mt. Jefferson and others southward are worthy snow peaks, but not comparable with these; and then this masterly family of mountains dwindles ruggedly away toward California and the Shasta group.
The Cascades are known to geography, — their summits to the lists of volcanoes. Several gentlemen in the United States Army, bored in petty posts, or squinting along Indian trails for Pacific railroads, have seen these monuments. A few myriads of Oregonians have not been able to avoid seeing them, have perhaps felt their ennobling influence, and have written, boasting that St. Helen’s or Hood is as high as Blanc. Enterprising fellows have climbed both. But the millions of Yankees — from codfish to alligators, chewers of spruce-gum or chewers of pig-tail, cooks of chowder or cooks of gumbo — know little of these treasures of theirs. Poet comes long after pioneer. Mountains have been waiting, even in ancient worlds, for cycles, while mankind looked upon them as high, cold, dreary, crushing, as resorts for demons and homes of desolating storms. It is only lately, in the development of men’s comprehension of nature, that mountains have been recognized as our noblest friends, our most exalting and inspiring comrades, our grandest emblems of divine power and divine peace.
More of these majesties of the Cascades hereafter; but now meseems that I have long enough interrupted the desultory progress of my narrative. We have floated long enough, my Klalam braves, on the white reflection of Tacoma. To thy paddle, then, sluggard Duke. Dip and plough into Whulge, ye salmon-fed. Squally and blankets be the war-cry of our voyage.
But first obey the injunction of an Indian ditty, oddly sung to the air of Malbrook: —
- “Klatawah ocook polikely,
- Klatawah Steilacoom”;
“Go to-night, — go to Steilacoom.” Steilacoom was a military post a mile inland from Whulge. It had a port on the Sound, consisting of one warehouse, where every requisite of pioneer life was to be had. Thither I directed my course, pork and hard-tack to buy, compact prog for my mountain journey. Also, because I could not ride the leagues of a transcontinental trip, barebacking the bonyness of prairie nags, a friend had given me an order for a capital saddle of his, stored there. The crafty trader at Port Steilacoom denied the existence of my friend’s California saddle, a grandly roomy one I had often bestrode, and substituted for it an incoherent dragoon saddle. He hoped, the scamp, that my friend would never return to claim his property, and he would be left residuary legatee.
Some strange Indians lounging here gave me a helpful fact. The Klickatats, so the Sound Indians name generally the Yakimahs and other ultramontane tribes, had just arrived at Nisqually, on their annual trading-trip. Horses and a guide I could surely get from them for crossing the Cascades into their country. Here I heard first the mighty, name of Owhhigh, a chief of the Klickatats, their noblest horse-thief, their Diomed. He was at Nisqually, with his tail on, — his tail of bare-legged highlanders, — buying blankets and sundries, with skins, furs, and stolen steeds.
Squally, euphonized to Nisqually, is six or seven miles from Steilacoom. We sped along near the shore, just away from the dense droop of the water-wooing arbor-vitae pyramids.
How now, my crew? Why this sudden check? Why this agitated panic? What, Dookeryawk! Are ye paralyzed by Tamanoüs, by demoniacal influence?”
“By fear are we paralyzed, O kind protector,” responded the Klalam. “Foes to us always are the Squallyamish. But more cruel foes are the mountain horsemen. We dare not advance. Conoway quash nesika; cowards all are we.”
“Fear naught, my cowards. The retinue of my high mightiness is safe, and shall be honored. Ye shall not be maltreated, nor even punished by me for your misdeeds. Have a mighty heart in your breasts, and onward.”
Panic over, we paddled lustily, and soon landed at a high bluff, — the port of Nisqually. We hauled up the Bucentaur, grateful to the talisman shells along its gunwale, that they had guarded us against Bugaboo. I looked my last, for that time, upon the sturdy tides of Whulge, and led the way under the oaks toward the Fort.