Along Alaska's Great River: A Popular Account of the Travels of an Alaska Exploring Expedition along the Great Yukon River, from Its Source to Its Mouth, in the British North-West Territory, and in the Territory of AlaskaSchwatka, Frederick
History
Along Alaska's Great River: A Popular Account of the Travels of an Alaska Exploring Expedition along the Great Yukon River, from Its Source to Its Mouth, in the British North-West Territory, and in the Territory of Alaska
Schwatka, Frederick
Alaska -- Description and travel; United States -- Discovery and exploration; Yukon River (Yukon and Alaska) -- Description and travel
The new bend now becomes Johnstone Strait and so continues to Queen
Charlotte Sound, with which it connects by one strait, two passages
and a channel, all alike, except in name, and none much over ten miles
long. At nearly every point where a new channel diverges both arms take
on a new name, and they change as rapidly as the names of a Lisbon
street, which seldom holds the same over a few blocks. The south side
of Johnstone Strait is particularly high, rising abruptly from the
water fully 5,000 feet, and in grandeur not unlike the Yellowstone
Cañon. These summits were still covered with snow and probably on
northern slopes snow remains the summer through. One noticeable valley
was on the Vancouver Island side, with a conspicuous conical hill in
its bosom that may have been over a thousand feet in height. These
cone-like hills are so common in flat valleys in north-western America
that I thought it worth while to mention the fact in this place. I
shall have occasion to do so again at a later point in my narrative.
Occasionally windrows occur through the dense coniferous forests of
the inland passage, where the trees have been swept or leveled in a
remarkable manner. Such as were cut vertically had been caused by an
avalanche, and in these instances the work of clearing had been done as
faithfully as if by the hands of man. Sometimes the bright green moss
or grass had grown up in these narrow ways, and when there was more
than one of about the same age there was quite a picturesque effect of
stripings of two shades of green, executed on a most colossal plan.
These windrows of fallen trees sometimes stretched along horizontally
in varying widths, an effect undoubtedly produced by heavy gales
rushing through the contracted "passage."
One's notice is attracted by a species of natural beacon which
materially assists the navigator. Over almost all the shoals and
submerged rocks hang fields of kelp, a growth with which the whole
"passage" abounds, thus affording a timely warning badly needed where
the channel has been imperfectly charted. As one might surmise the
water is very bold, and these submerged and ragged rocks are in general
most to be feared. Leaving Johnstone Strait we enter Queen Charlotte
Sound, a channel which was named, lacking only three years, a century
ago. It widens into capacious waters at once and we again felt the
"throbbing of old Neptune's pulse," and those with sensitive stomachs
perceived a sort of flickering of their own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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