This shaded green of the mountains is a feature of Alaskan landscapes. Great landslides and windfalls cleave their way from summit to sea, mowing down the forests in their path. In time the new growth springs up and streaks the mountain side with lighter green.
Probably one-half of the trees in southeastern Alaska are the Menzies spruce, or Sitka pine. Their needles are sharp and of a bluish green.
The Menzies spruce was named for the Scotch botanist who accompanied Vancouver.
The Alaska cedar is yellowish and lacy in appearance, with a graceful droop to the branches. It grows to an average height of one hundred and fifty feet. Its wood is very valuable.
Arbor-vitæ grows about the glaciers and in cool, dim fiords. Birch, alder, maple, cottonwood, broom, and hemlock-spruce are plentiful, but are of small value, save in the cause of beauty.
The Menzies spruce attains its largest growth in the Alexander Archipelago, but ranges as far south as California. The Douglas fir is not so abundant as it is farther south, nor does it grow to such great size.
The Alaska cedar is the most prized of all the cedars. It is in great demand for ship-building, interior finishing, cabinet-making, and other fine work, because of its close texture, durable quality, and aromatic odor, which somewhat resembles that of sandalwood. In early years it was shipped to Japan, where it was made into fancy boxes and fans, which were sold under guise of that scented Oriental wood. Its lasting qualities are remarkable—sills having been found in perfect preservation after sixty years' use in a wet climate. Its pleasant odor is as enduring as the wood. The long, slender, pendulous fruits which hang from the branches in season, give the tree a peculiarly graceful and appealing appearance.
The western white pine is used for interior work. It is a magnificent tree, as seen in the forest, having bluish green fronds and cones a foot long.
The giant arbor-vitæ attains its greatest size close to the coast. The wood splits easily and makes durable shingles. It takes a brilliant polish and is popular for interior finishing. Its beauty of growth is well known.
Wherever there is sufficient rainfall, the fine-fronded hemlock may be found tracing its lacelike outlines upon the atmosphere. There is no evergreen so delicately lovely as the hemlock. It stands apart, with a little air of its own, as a fastidious small maid might draw her skirts about her when common ones pass by.
The spruces, firs, and cedars grow so closely together that at a distance they appear as a solid wall of shaded green, varying from the lightest beryl tints, on through bluish grays to the most vivid and dazzling emerald tones. At a distance canyons and vast gulches are filled so softly and so solidly that they can scarcely be detected, the trees on the crests of the nearer hills blending into those above, and concealing the deep spaces that sink between.
These forests have no tap-roots. Their roots spread widely upon a thin layer of soil covering solid stone in many cases, and more likely than not this soil is created in the first place by the accumulation of parent needles. Trees spring up in crevices of stone where a bit of sand has sifted, grow, fruit, and shed their needles, and thrive upon them. The undergrowth is so solid that one must cut one's way through it, and the progress of surveyors or prospectors is necessarily slow and difficult.
These forests are constantly drenched in the warm mists precipitated by the Kuro Siwo striking upon the snow, and in this quickening moisture they reach a brilliancy of coloring that is remarkable. At sunset, threading these narrow channels, one may see mountain upon mountain climbing up to crests of snow, their lower wooded slopes covered with mists in palest blue and old rose tones, through which the tips of the trees, crowded close together, shine out in brilliant, many-shaded greens.
After Arthur Passage is that of Malacca, which is dotted by several islands. "Lawyer's," to starboard, bears a red light; "Lucy," to port, farther north, a fixed white light. Directly opposite "Lucy"—who does not rival "Sarah," or who in the pilot's words "has nothing about her"—is old Metlakahtla.
CHAPTER III
The famous ukase of 1821 was issued by the Russian Emperor on the expiration of the twenty-year charter of the Russian-American Company. It prohibited "to all foreign vessels not only to land on the coasts and islands belonging to Russia, as stated above" (including the whole of the northwest coast of America, beginning from Behring Strait to the fifty-first degree of northern latitude, also from the Aleutian Islands to the eastern coast of Siberia, as well as along the Kurile Islands from Behring Strait to the south cape of the Island of Urup) "but also to approach them within less than one hundred miles."
After the Nootka Convention in 1790, the Northwest Coast was open to free settlement and trade by the people of any country. It was claimed by the Russians to the Columbia, afterward to the northern end of Vancouver Island; by the British, from the Columbia to the fifty-fifth degree; and by the United States, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, between Forty-two and Fifty-four, Forty. By the treaty of 1819, by which Florida was ceded to us by Spain, the United States acquired all of Spanish rights and claims on the coast north of the forty-second degree. By its trading posts and regular trading vessels, the United States was actually in possession.
By treaty with the United States in 1824, and with Great Britain in 1825, Russia, realizing her mistake in issuing the ukase of 1821, agreed to Fifty-four, Forty as the limit of her possessions to southward. Of the interior regions, Russia claimed the Yukon region; England, that of the Mackenzie and the country between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains; the United States, all west of the Rockies, north of Forty-two.
The year previous to the one in which the United States acquired Florida and all Spanish rights on the Pacific Coast north of Forty-two, the United States and England had agreed to a joint occupation of the region. In 1828 this was indefinitely extended, but with the emigration to Oregon in the early forties, this country demanded a settlement of the boundary question.
President Tyler, in his message to Congress in 1843, declared that "the United States rights appertain to all between forty-two degrees and fifty-four degrees and forty minutes."
The leading Democrats of the South were at that time advocating the annexation of Texas. Mr. Calhoun was an ardent champion of the cause, and was endeavoring to effect a settlement with the British minister, offering the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise on the boundary dispute, in his eagerness to acquire Texas without danger of interference.
The compromise was declined by the British minister.
In 1844 slave interests defeated Mr. Van Buren in his aspirations to the presidency. Mr. Clay was nominated instead. The latter opposed the annexation of Texas and advised caution and compromise in the Oregon question; but the Democrats nominated Polk and under the war-cry of "Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight," bore him on to victory. The convention which nominated him advocated the reannexation of Texas and the reoccupation of Oregon; the two significant words being used to make it clear that Texas had belonged to us before, through the Louisiana purchase; and Oregon, before the treaty of joint occupation with Great Britain.
President Polk, in his message, declared that, "beyond all question, the protection of our laws and our jurisdiction, civil and criminal, ought to be immediately extended over our citizens in Oregon."
He quoted from the convention which had nominated him that "our title to the country of Oregon as far as Fifty-four, Forty, is clear and