CHAPTER VI. WRANGELL NARROWS AND TAKU GLACIERS.
If there were not so many more wonderful places in Alaska, Wrangell Narrows would give it a scenic fame, and make its fortune in the coming centuries when tourists and yachts will crowd these waters, and poets and seafaring novelists desert the Scotch coast for these northwestern isles. Instead of William Black’s everlasting Oban, and Staffa, and Skye, and heroines with a burr in their speech, we will read of Kasa-an and Kaigan, Taku and Chilkat, and maidens who lisp in soft accents the deep, gurgling Chinook, or the older dialects of their races. Wrangell Narrows is a sinuous channel between mountainous islands, and for thirty miles it is hard to determine which one of the perpendicular walls at the end of the strait will finally stop us with its impassable front. There are dangerous ledges and rocks, and strong tides rushing through this pass, and the average depth of from four to twelve fathoms is very shallow water for Alaska. Although long known and used by the Indians and the Hudson Bay Company’s traders, it was not considered a safe inside passage; and as Vancouver had not explored it, and there were not any complete charts, it was little traversed by regular commerce. After United States occupation, and the increased travel to Sitka, the perils of Cape Ommaney, off the south end of Baranoff Island, quite matched any dangers there might be in the unknown channel. Captain R. W. Meade, in command of the U. S. S. _Saginaw_, made a survey of the Narrows in 1869, and gradually the way through the ledges and flats and tide rips became better known. In 1884 Captain Coghlan, commander of the U. S. S. _Adams_ carefully sounded and marked off the channel with stakes and buoys, and the navigators now only look for the favorable turn of the tide in going through the picturesque reaches.
Leaving Fort Wrangell in the afternoon, it was an enchanting trip up that narrow channel of deep waters, rippling between bold island shores and parallel mountain walls. Besides the clear, emerald tide, reflecting every tree and rock, there was the beauty of foaming cataracts leaping down the sides of snow-capped mountains, and the grandeur of great glaciers pushing down through sharp ravines, and dropping miniature icebergs into the water. Three glaciers are visible at once on the east side of the Narrows, the larger one extending back some forty miles, and measuring four miles across the front, that faces the water and the terminal moraine it has built up before it. The great glacier is known as Patterson Glacier, in honor of the late Carlisle Patterson, of the United States Coast Survey, and is the first in the great line of glaciers that one encounters along the Alaska coast. Under the shadow of a cloud the glacier was a dirty and uneven snow field, but touched by the last light of the sun it was a frozen lake of wonderland, shimmering with silvery lights, and showing a pale ethereal green, and deep, pure blue, in all the rifts and crevasses in its icy front.