Part 12

MY DEAR BOY,

The steamer yesterday did not bring me a letter from you or your mother. I was much disappointed. If you had written as late as June 3rd it would have reached me. I got one from Hiram, he is well and his bees are doing well. There will be no other chance to get letters until we return the last of July. I dreamed of you last night and you told me the grapes were not doing well. I read in the papers of the heat in the east and we all wish for some of it here. I got me a heavy flannel shirt here and I feel warmer. The mercury is from 52 to 55 to-day. Dandelions are just past the height of their bloom, currant bushes just blooming, peas are up ten inches and weeds have a good start. There is no agriculture in Alaska, though potatoes do well. I have seen one cow, a yoke of oxen and a few horses. There are no roads except about one mile here. The streets of most of the towns are only broad plank sidewalks. Yet hens scratch here and roosters crow the same as at home. This town is very prettily situated; back of it rise steep, dark spruce-covered mountains, about 3,000 feet--in front of it a large irregular bay studded with tree-tufted islands, beyond that ten miles away rise snow capped peaks, from the top of which one could look down upon the Pacific. No land has been cleared except where the town stands. There may be 1,500 people here, half of them Indians. The Indians are well clad and clean and quiet and live in good frame houses. Many of them are half breeds. The forests are almost impassable on account of logs, brush, moss and rocks. We have nothing like it in the east. The logs are as high as your head and the moss knee deep. There are plenty of deer and bears here. Day before yesterday one of Mr. Harriman's daughters shot a deer. There are four nice girls in the party from sixteen to eighteen, as healthy and jolly and unaffected as the best country girls--two of Mr. Harriman's, a cousin of theirs, and a friend, a Miss Draper. Then there are three governesses and a trained nurse.

This is a land of ravens and eagles. The ravens perch on the houses and garden fences and the eagles are seen on the dead trees along shore. The barn swallow is here and the robin and red-start. One day we went down to the hot springs and I drank water just from Hades: it reeked with its sulphur fumes and steamed with its heat. I wish we had such a spring on board, it would help warm us. I have met a Hyde Park man here, De Graff. I have met four people here who read my books and two at Juneau and one at Skagway. We leave here tonight for Yakutat Bay, 30 hours at sea. I should be quite content to go home now or spend the rest of the time in the west. I would give something to know how things are with you--the vineyards and the celery and what your plans are and your mother's. I still eat and sleep well and am putting on flesh. Love to you both. Let me find letters at Portland in July.

Your loving father,

J. B.

Near Orca, Prince William Sound, Alaska, June 27 {1899}.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

Since I wrote you at Sitka we have come further north and spent five days in Yakutat Bay and since Saturday in this sound--have seen innumerable glaciers and lofty mountains and wild strange scenes. At Yakutat we went into Disenchantment Bay, 30 miles where no large steamer had ever gone before. This bay is a long slender arm of the sea which puts out from the head of Yakutat Bay and penetrates the St. Elias range of mountains. It was a weird grand scene. Birds were singing and flowers were blooming with snow and ice all about us. I saw a single barn swallow skimming along as at home. There were many Indians hunting seal among the icebergs.

In coming on here the ship rolled a good deal and I was not happy, though not really sick. On Saturday we entered this sound in clear sunshine and the clear skies continued Sunday and Monday. This morning it is foggy and misty. We steamed eighty-miles across the sound on Sunday in the bright warm sunshine over blue sparkling waters. How we all enjoyed it! Far off rose lofty mountains as white as in midwinter, next to them a lower range streaked with snow and next to them and rising from the water a still lower range, dark with spruce forests.

Orca, where we anchored Saturday night, is a small cluster of houses on an arm of the sound where they can salmon, immense numbers of them. Two hundred men are employed there at this season. The salmon run up all the little rivers and streams, some of our party have shot them with rifles. Camping parties go out from the ship to collect birds and plants and to hunt bears and to stay two or three nights. No bears have as yet been seen. I stick to the ship. The mosquitoes are very thick on shore and besides that my face has troubled me a good deal, till the sunshine came on Sunday. I must have a taste of camp life on Kadiak Island, where we expect to be eight or ten days. Yesterday we found many new glaciers and two new inlets not down on the largest maps. We are now anchored to pick up a camping party we left on Sunday. Near us are two islands where two men are breeding blue foxes, their skins bring $20. We have seen one Eskimo here in his kyack. One can read here on deck at eleven o'clock at night. We have set our watches back six hours since leaving New York. I am rather dainty now about my eating, but keep well. I dreamed last night again about home and that the grapes were a failure. I hope dreams do go by opposites. I suppose you are shipping the currants. We get no mail. I hope to send this by a steamer from the north, said to be due. We have lectures and concerts and games and the people enjoy themselves much. I keep aloof much of the time. I hope you both keep well. Love to you both. J. B.

From Kadiak Father wrote of the "epidemic of verse writing" that broke out among the members of the expedition. It was the custom to hang the verses up in the smoking room, and on that fact, even, Father later wrote some doggerel. It was while on this expedition that he wrote, "Golden Crowned Sparrow in Alaska," one verse especially:

But thou, sweet singer of the wild, I give more heed to thee; Thy wistful note of fond regret Strikes deeper chords in me.

seems so strangely pathetic and like many of his moods.

Kadiak, July 5, '99.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

In trying to get off last night the ship got aground and must wait for high tide. I wrote to your mother yesterday. It is bright and lovely this morning, the mercury at 70--it is hot. I send you a jingle. Several of the men write doggerel and put it up in the smoking room, so I am doing it too. Mine is best so far. We will soon be off now, I trust you are well. I try not to worry.

Bow westward faithful steamer And show the east your heels New conquests lie before you In far Aleutian fields Kick high, if high you must But don't do so at meals, Oh don't do so at meals. Your swinging it is graceful But I do detest your reels.

We're bound for Unalaska And we do not care who squeals But mend your pace a little And show the east your heels But in your waltzing with old Neptune Don't forget the hours of meals Don't forget the hours of meals I'm sure you have no notion How dreadful bad it feels!

Push onward into Bering And hasten to the seals One glance upon their harems Then take unto your heels More steam into your boilers More vigor in your wheels But in flirting with the billows Oh regard the hours of meals Do regard the hours of meals. If in this we are exacting Please remember how it feels.

We're bound for Arctic waters And for the midnight sun Then quicken your propeller And your pace into a run We'll touch at lone Siberia To take a polar bear Then hie away through Bering Straits And more frigid regions dare But in all thy wild cavorting Oh don't forget our prayer

A noble task's before us And we'll do it ere we go We'll cut the Arctic circle And take the thing in tow And put it round the Philippines And cool 'em off with snow. Our boys will hail our coming, But a chill will seize the foe. And we'll end the war in triumph Go you homeward fast or slow.

Kadiak, July 2, 1899.

Though this was a delightful trip, one might say, an ideal trip, he was homesick, sea sick, and, as he says of himself, of all the party the most ignorant, the most untravelled, the most silent. It was a new experience to him, this going with a crowd. I know he often spoke of the expedition's cheer, and how they would all give it when they came into stations--

Who are we! Who are we! We're the Harriman, Harriman H. A. E.! H. A. E.!

and "how the people would stare at us!" Father said. He liked it, this jolly comradeship and crowd spirit, but it was new to him, almost painfully new, and though no one had more human sympathy, more tenderness and understanding with human weaknesses and shortcomings, no one had less of the crowd spirit. As he said, he kept aloof--not from aloofness but from embarrassment and shyness. Later he overcame most of this and was able to face a crowd or an audience with composure and sureness. With this picture in mind another is recalled, one of him here at Riverby on summer days, scraping corn to make corn cakes. With an armful of green corn that he had picked, I can see him seated and with one of Mother's old aprons tucked under his beard. He would carefully cut down the rows of kernels and then with the back of a knife would scrape the milk of the corn into a big yellow bowl. He would hold the white ears in his brown hands and deftly cut each row, a look of composure and serenity in his eyes. He could eat his share of the cakes, too, and I like to think of those summer days. That fall he wrote from Slabsides:

Nov. 30, 1899

MY DEAR JULIAN,

I am over here this morning warming up and making ready for dinner. Hud and his wife and your mother are coming over soon. We are to have a roast duck and other things and I shall do the roasting and baking here. I wish you were here too. It is a cloudy day, but still and mild. I keep pretty well and am working on my Alaska trip--have already written about ten thousand words. The Century paid me $75 for two poems--three times as much as Milton got for "Paradise Lost." The third poem I shall weave into the prose sketch. The N. Y. World sent a man up to see me a couple of weeks ago to get me to write six or seven hundred words for their Sunday edition. They wanted me to write on the Thanksgiving turkey! Offered me $50--they wanted it in two days. Of course I could not do it off-hand in that way. So I fished out of my drawer an old MS, that I had rejected and sent that. They used it and sent me $30. It was in the Sunday World of Nov. 19.