[June 29th - July 5th]

                                           On board the steamer

                                           June 29

     You see the conditions were too much for me.  Just at the point where I stopped there was a call that the steamer was in sight.  And so, although it proved to be a false alarm, it not being our steamer, the interruption was enough to keep me from going on.  Now we are once more aboard and with more abundant leisure and better auspices I will try to tell where I have been and what doing the past five days since I last wrote.

     Sunday morning last dawned bright and glorious.  I was up at five and off for a lovely climb up the mountains that rise direct from the water's edge at Orca to a height of 2000 feet.  The walking was first thro' forest and then over snow patches and lovely alpine meadows with the earliest spring blossoms coming out—hepaticas, buttercups and the loveliest heather bells.  I reached the summit and enjoyed the view while the morning light was still soft and delicate on the distant mountains and experienced once more that peculiar satisfaction that always comes in a mountain panorama.  The descent was rapid and I got aboard in time for a second breakfast and a lazy morning on deck stretched in the hot sunshine.  About noon we sailed away for another part of the sound and about six o'clock a party of six of us left the ship for a camping expedition and exploration of a magnificent and unknown glacier before which the ship had come to a halt.  Gilbert was our captain, Curtis and Coville being the others of the party besides a cook and oarsman.

     We soon reached Camp Perfecto in a tiny cove a mile from the glacier on a high gravel beach with forest rising close behind.  A hasty cold supper and we were off for the summit of our island, Heather Island we called it, over the most delicious carpet of velvety moss and heather that ever foot trod.  The top was only 400 feet high but gave us a superb picture of the huge ice mass before us and enabled us to plan its exploration.  The sun set about 9:30 and we returned to camp for dinner at 10:30 after which we sought our tent and beds.  Monday was what one may fairly call a long day.  We rose at 2:30 had a solid breakfast were off in the boat at high tide by 3 o'clock and rowed 3 miles thro' winding channels and amid icebergs to one angle of the glacier front.  Here we separated, Gilbert remaining to work at his map, Curtis, Coville and I starting off to climb an island peak rising from amidst the ice 5 or 6 miles away.  Our first adventure was an odd one.  I found a family of wild geese in the grass and caught one of the goslings.  The parents ventured very near in their anxiety for the youngster and one of them fell a victim to the skillful aim of Coville's rock so that we had a famous goose stew for lunch next day.

     The walk over the ice was an easy one and the mountain views superb in the early moring light.  We reached our island or nunatak as it is more properly called about 7 and had a tremendously steep climb of two thousand feet to one of its lower summits, the higher front being inaccessible.  The only inhabitant we saw was a big white mountain goat who surveyed us a while and then calmly walked up the cliff we dared not attempt.  This is game which the so called "Big Game Committee" would have been glad enough to have sighted but of course we who had no guns but cameras were the ones to find it.  Here we lunched, photographed, studied the flow and sources of the glacier and turned back about 2 P.M.  The descent was rapid, largely over snow-fields, one of them steep enough for a glorious slide of 5 or 600 feet.  Then back over the ice by a different route, past several lakes and through lovely meadows.  It was nearly six by the time we rejoined Mr. Gilbert and then the tide had fallen and instead of our 3 mile row we had one of six miles around the island to camp where we arrived at 9 ready enough for dinner and bed.

     Tuesday dawned overcast and rainy.  We worked around the front of this glacier and climbed a small height on its left side towards evening getting soaked thro' by the rain, the wet bushes thro' which we walked and the long row home in the evening.  As an heroic means of getting warm when we reached camp at 8 P.M. I took a plunge bath in the bay among the floating ice cakes and came out shivering enough but soon was warm and happy and quite ready for supper.  The steamer was to have taken us up that evening but she did not appear.  Nor was she there Wednesday so Gilbert and I resolved on another tramp on the Glacier on the further side across the bay.  We had a late start for we did not get up till 9, but the day was rainy and we had quite enough of it after a four mile tramp over the ice.  Again we returned to camp, getting in at 6 P.M. in a heavy rain and then it was, after eating supper that I tried to begin this letter with no success.

     We began to seriously consider the question of food supply, for besides bacon, pepper and vinegar we had but two meals left.  We turned in about 10:30 and at midnight were aroused by the steamer's whistle so out we turned in the rain and half light, packed up our outfit and went aboard.  There was a warm welcome awaiting us however in shape of a glorious welsh rarebit which tasted mighty good and of course I had to smoke after it and 2:30 saw me in bed.  The steamer had had various exciting experiences while we were gone.  They had sailed up an inlet known as Port Wells with innumerable glaciers cascading down its sides, had found one whole bay with five great glacier cascades which was wholly unknown even to our pilots—a bay 16 miles long with grand mountains rising on either hand—Harriman Inlet it is now called of course—and had left a party there to map it.  Then they discovered that the propeller was broken and had to return to Orca, beach the steamer and make repairs which accounted for the delay in taking us up.  There had been a picnic party during the repairing etc. etc. 

     We headed back for Harriman Inlet to pick up Gannett and Muir so that we too had a sight of the newly discovered country in the early morning of Thursday.  Then the steamer turned westward again and in the course of the day made her way through a devious channel out of Prince William Sound to the open ocean again.  I am writing now on Friday morning June 30th while lying at anchor off the tiny town of Homer in Cook Inlet, our next post office.  We reached here this A.M. in lovely sunshine and are waiting to go ashore as soon as plans for our stay in this vicinity are complete.  Homer is a lovely [lonely?] spot on the end of a long sand spit that juts out into Kachemak Bay.  The surroundings however are attractive—low wooded mountains on one side and fine mountains with big glaciers on the other.  There is interesting geology and soon—tomorrow perhaps we shall be in the region of the big volcanoes we saw this morning in the distance as we came in so I am looking forward with interest to the Cook Inlet stay.  So far Prince William Sound has been the most attractive part of Alaska we have seen and from a scenic standpoint at least the part I should care most to revisit.

     I must close this now for plans seem to be maturing and the letter must go to the P.O.  Our trip is half over and I count the days that remain with less feeling of hopelessness that they will never be over.  I assure you that I would go home tormorrow if I could—still do not think that I am not reaping a harvest in the trip.  Every day I am learning things of value and if all the facts are not tangible still in the end they will be more appreciable.

     Good-bye once more for the present.  Probably my next willl be from St. Paul—Kodiak Island.  Love, Love to my dear from your

                                          Charlie

                                           On board steamer

                                           Kodiak

                                           July 4th '99

My dear:

     What I wonder have you been doing this glorious fourth!  I hope you have had as lovely a day for it as have we here in this charming place.  Too charming indeed for I have spent the whole day ashore instead of writing to you as I should have done.  For this is the last you will hear of me until we return to Seattle.  It is the northern limit of the mail steamers and we are off tonight for a long run to the west and north and leave our communications here.  Look on the map and follow us on the following route.  First to Unalaska and Dutch Harbor then to the Seal or Prybiloff Islands where we shall see the Fur Seals in their haunts.  Then northward to St. Lawrence Island where we shall see the Polar Bear perhaps—then still north and west to the coast of Siberia at Indian Point almost at Behring Straits.  That is the plan and then we turn southward again and hurry back to Seattle stopping only at Cook Inlet on the way.  We keep our time and shall be in Seattle about Aug. 1st as far as we can now tell.  As I write on the upper deck a crowd is admiring the skin of a big bear and her cub shot yesterday by Mr. Harriman on this Island much to the satisfaction of the whole party—for this was one of the main objects of the trip.  It is a huge yellowish brown skin and a fine trophy. 

     I sent my last letter at Homer.  We expected to stay some time in Cook Inlet but for reasons known only to Mr. Harriman but chiefly having to do with the hunting we turned sharp around the same day and ran over here.  The next morning found us at a place called Uyak Bay where we left a party of bear hunters and then came on to this port.  I got up very early to see the party leave and tho' they did not do so till after breakfast I was glad I got up for I had a most delightful sun bath for two hours in the charming bay in which we lay. 

     Kodiak is a tiny town on a very narrow arm of the sea at the base of a high range of hills which are free from timber but clothed in a superb coating of high grass literally filled with lovely wild flowers.  We reached the wharf by 3 o'clock and I was off on the minute for a solitary tramp up the first hilltops and along them a couple of miles, then down and along the bay shore back.  I returned laden with lovely flowers of twenty kinds but the rocks were as in most places uninteresting.  You can hardly imagine the pleasure we all feel to once more be in a regioin not all forest or bare rock and glacier.  The green fields have a wonderfully homelike air and when the fog rolled in on me on Saturday shutting out the distant views, the feeling that I was on the Berkeley hills, develooped by the myriad flowers and certain elements of the landscape grew almost to conviction. 

     Sunday morning Mrs. H. asked me to join a camp up the bay where the girls were to have their first taste of outdoor life.  Mr. H. and his huntners had located the camp on Saturday and then gone off on his hunt.  Several of us went up in the launch about 10 o'clock, arriving in time for luncheon, eaten among many mosquitoes but in a lovely place.  Coville and Merriam were the other men in camp and the four girls were very enthusiastic.  We went for a walk after lunch and the event was the discovery of an eagle's nest up to which I climbed and killed the funny downy young one which I found there.  The evening meal was a lively one for each girl was bound to cook her own bacon and flapjack notwithstanding the four men besides ourselves who were at hand to serve.  Then we—that is the girls and I escapd the flies by going out in the boat, the girls rowing and I trying to tell stories.  We landed on a little island which proved to be a gem of a wild garden and returned in the twilight for a little chat about the campfire and a fine sleep.  For strange to say every mosquito disappeared at dusk and I slept under the stars in entire comfort.

     Monday dawned hot and clear—a real summer day for once.  Coville and I went off for a tramp up a fine peak—about 3000 feet high but far enough away to make it quite a climb and interesting from the many and varied flowers all along the way.  We returned at four to find camp broken up.  We returned to the ship in the evening and later came the bear hunters not with their booty but with the good news of their success.  This morning dawned again clear and hot, the temperature going up to 80° during the day and for once I enjoyed light summer clothes in Alaska.

     A small cannon opened the concert at 7 soon followed by another one on board with a double salute for the day and the bear.  I went off with Gilbert and Emerson fossil hunting all morning with some slight success.  After lunch came our celebration on the upper deck with an oration, poems, singing and graphophone music and then there were some boat and canoe races which however I did not see as I went off for a walk with Coville and some of the younger girls.  Now it is later in the evening and we soon leave so I must draw to a close.

     The period of our long stops has come to a close.  From now on we travel rapidly with few short stops.  I would almost rather spend nearly all the time in Cook Inlet which seemed a very interesting place but we have no choice and are thankful enough for what we have been able to do. 

     I bought a bearskin here which I hope will make a handsome rug for some place in the "Room".  How is it getting on by the way? and what have you been able to do for its furnishings.  What would I not give to know all you are and have been doing—to have a letter from you with any news atall!  The next three weeks will be far the longest of all and I wish they were all over.  Good night my dear and good bye.  I slip in a bit of Forget-me-not which grows here in abundance with the finest color I have ever seen.  I wish it might reach you before it turns black and ugly.  Farewell with much love from your

                                          Charlie

                                           Kodiak                    

                                           July 5th

My dear:

     Instead of going off last night as we intended the steamer stuck in the mud near the wharf and this morning we got up to find her decks sloping at an angle of about 20 degrees so that locomotion was difficult and it looked as though we were all a little the worse for the 4th.

     I have just come aboard from a short stroll after breakfast and find the ship afloat again so there is nothing to delay her starting and I have just time to say one more good bye.  It is a calm hot morning, just like some Cambridge mornings except that it is fresher.

     I went into the big fur warehouse at the dock again this morning and wished I was a millionaire to be able to bring you some of the beauties I saw there.  But alas it is all too little that I have and I must not spend it too freely as you warned me before.

     Well I wish I could at least continue to write to you for that has been some consolation even tho' I could not hear from you.  At least I can write even tho' I cannot send and you will get the letters some time.