Hardly less important than the actual fruit of the expedition is its value as a sign-post to our multi-millionaires. A little while ago a Western man of vast wealth was heard to complain to a friend that he did not know how to spend his money satisfactorily.
…Mr. Harriman’s Alaska Expedition and its magnificent results seem to indicate
one true solution to the problem.…
—Will Dall, “Discoveries in Our Arctic Region”
Between October 1898 and April 1899 Harriman solidified his hold on the Union Pacific, launched his improvements program, went after the Short Line and Navigation companies, plunged into the intricate diplomacy of the North-west, secured control of the Alton, bought into the Gulf line, and joined the board of the B&O. He had formed an alliance with Schiff and Stillman in which the bankers furnished the capital for buying or merging railroads and put them in Harriman’s charge. Despite all these moves, Harriman was still largely unknown to the public. His name seldom appeared in the papers and attracted scant recognition when it did.
A summer earlier, fresh from his first tour of Union Pacific, Harriman sagged with fatigue and took refuge at Paul Smith’s. Since then his burdens had grown heavier and his pace even quicker. This time Harriman sought his relief in a two-month sabbatical that may have been the most remarkable vacation ever taken by a man of business. His idea of rest was to organize, underwrite, and direct what became the last major scientific expedition of the nineteenth century.
Of all the mysteries surrounding Harriman’s life, none is more elusive than the origins of the Alaskan expedition. Kennan, whose curiosity was always curbed by emotional reticence as well as allegiance, offered Harriman’s own simple explanation. In seeking relaxation, Harriman decided to take his family on a chartered cruise to Alaska. His attention had been drawn to the region by the prospect of hunting for the worlds largest bear, the Kodiak. When it became clear that the ship he required for comfort and safety could hold many more people, Harriman got the idea of inviting a party of scientists as well.1
Perhaps that was all there was to it. As Kennan has demonstrated, Harriman’s life can be interpreted at face value without probing into deeper motives. But this approach explains nothing, and there is much to explain. Why would a man of driving ambition who had, at the age of fifty, just burst into the highest circles of wealth and business power interrupt the busiest and most productive year of his life to undertake a diversion wholly unrelated to anything else he was doing? For Harriman to drop out of the business scene for two months at this critical point in his activities is more than curious; it is positively jarring. It was as if Caesar, approaching the Rubicon, stepped back and sailed instead to Egypt for a lengthy junket with a party of friends. There has to be some more compelling reason than doctors orders to seek rest, some deeper connection to Harriman’s inner landscape.2
Part of it was certainly the old appeal of wilderness. Having recently sampled the most spectacular scenery the United States had to offer, Harriman was naturally attracted to the stark, forbidding beauty of the North. No one knew how long its serenity would remain intact, for the gold rush of 1895 had already carved the first scars of civilization on its pristine landscape. Alaska was both a mystery and a treasure, a vast, rugged space filled with resources waiting to be cataloged and then exploited.
The business potential of Alaska interested Harriman, if only because of Navigation’s boat lines that plied the Northwest waters. Yet it is doubtful that the developer’s urge was what drew him north. In 1899 he already had his hands full of projects, and there is not a shred of evidence that he had already begun to think about the round-the-world transportation project that later occupied him. More likely it was the other way around: the journey north helped nurture the germ of such an idea.
What Harriman did need was time to reflect on the intricate web of enterprises into which he had plunged. The railroad industry was at a turning point that offered vast opportunities to those with the nerve to gamble huge commitments on tough strategic decisions that took them into uncharted legal and financial waters. Harriman was eager to commit, but he needed time to ponder and plan. To do that, he had to get away from the firing line, where the press of detail, meetings, and other demands interrupted constantly. He also needed his own particular brand of relaxation. For Harriman even diversion was a test, a challenge pitting him against nature or some competitor. Nature did more than nurture Harriman; it toughened and refreshed him for the plunge back into the business arena.3
This would explain why Harriman’sailed away to Alaska at this critical juncture, but not why he turned the trip into a full-blown scientific expedition. Alaskan cruises had already become a fad among the upper classes; Harriman and his family might simply have joined the procession of tourists. But Harriman was never an ordinary tourist, and he led processions rather than joining them. Like everything else, he wished to see Alaska in his own way on his own ship. Accordingly, he had an old Navigation Company steamer, the George W. Elder, refitted into a comfortable modern cruiser.4
Harriman’s keen interest in technology did not extend to science; he was always more attuned to the practical than the theoretical. But his mind was active and voracious. There was ample room aboard the Elder for scientists, and Alaska offered a bonanza of hidden treasures for exploration. The presence of scientists would turn the ship into a floating classroom, and the children would profit greatly from the experience. Society would benefit from the findings of the expedition, and Harriman himself would gain something he never admitted to wanting: public recognition. He could do something no individual—not even such profligate philanthropists as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller—had done and take an active personal role in it.
This was a side of Harriman rarely mentioned, partly because he liked to leave the impression that it did not exist. He wanted not only to do great things but to be known as a doer of great things, and preferably one indifferent to public recognition or his reputation. He was like a man pretending not to notice that other people are watching him or to care what they think of him. Occasionally, however, he let slip a clue that he did know and care about such things. During the train trip across the continent after his return from Alaska, Harriman basked quietly in the publicity given the expedition and submitted willingly to interviews on the subject. Once back in New York, he was quick to ask Omaha for copies of the articles in the local papers.5
If the expedition sprang from Harriman’s need for a little rest, he anticipated the need well in advance. The Alaska venture was no spontaneous event but a tightly planned outing put together months before the May 31 sailing. It began on March 25, when Harriman and his physician, Dr. Lewis R. Morris, called unannounced at the Washington office of C. Hart Merriam, head of the biological survey of the Department of Agriculture. In his matter-of-fact way Harriman’said that he was planning a trip along the Alaska coast in a private steamer and wished to take along a party of scientists. Would Merriam help select them?6
Merriam eyed him cautiously. He did not know Harriman, had never even heard of him, and so was inclined to think him a crank. Harriman mentioned casually that he was associated with railroads, and after his departure Merriam sounded a railroad official about him. Harriman was the real item, the officer assured him, a man of means and a rising power in the industry. When Harriman visited Merriam’s home later that day, therefore, the scientist took him seriously.
A ship had already been engaged and was being fitted out, Harriman told him. While his plans were still in their infancy, he liked the idea of having two top men from every field along with an assistant for each one. Merriam remarked delicately that he doubted many scientific men could stand the expense of such a trip. Harriman brushed the objection aside; they would all be his guests. Merriam then offered two names at once: paleontologist Will Dall, whose trips to Alaska had made him an authority on the region, and G. K. Gilbert, an eminent geologist and explorer of the West. Fine, replied Harriman, bring them to my hotel room.7
The next day in Harriman’s room, the scientists were so impressed by his frank, no-nonsense way of doing things that they joined the expedition on the spot. After some more meetings, Harriman brought Merriam and Dall to New York for a lengthy discussion over dinner at the Metropolitan Club. There he entrusted Merriam with the task of choosing the other expedition members. With such associates, Harriman’said later, “there was much pleasure and recreation in working out the details of the expedition, and almost imperceptively its scope expanded and its membership grew.”8
In seeking out the best men in each field, Merriam leaned heavily on those he knew personally from the Academy of Sciences and from the Cosmos Club in Washington, which had been a meeting place for top scientists since its founding in 1878. His roster included twenty-three scientists from a dozen fields, two photographers, three artists, two taxidermists, and a scout. To this list Harriman added two physicians (Morris and his old friend E. L. Trudeau), a chaplain, his own family, William Averell (Mary’s brother), his wife and daughter, two secretaries, and three maids. In all the passenger list totaled fifty.9
Merriam did not limit himself to the academy. Two of his choices were renowned “naturalists,” that breed of amateur belonging to an earlier, simpler America when credentials and formalisms did not yet dominate the professions. John Muir and John Burroughs, the “two Johnnies” of the expedition, were beloved public figures. Muir’s writings had awakened many Americans to the importance of wilderness and its preservation, while the gentle prose of Burroughs had charmed even Theodore Roosevelt, whose way with nature was anything but gentle. The suspicious Muir had to be coaxed into accepting the largesse of an unknown businessmen, but he was eager to go after learning the ship would visit parts of Alaska he had never seen. The elderly Burroughs, a devout homebody who had been a boyhood chum of Jay Gould, was even more reluctant but agreed to go as the expeditions historian.10
Nothing like it had ever been conceived. No individual or even government had gathered together experts from so many fields on a private ark and taken them to explore wilderness from their own perspectives in a setting where they were free to interact, exchange ideas, and determine their own agenda. Even more remarkable, the benefactor who had made the venture possible was himself going along to share the adventure.
The expedition brought more men closer to Harriman for a longer period of time than any other episode of his life. For two months this phalanx of scientists were cooped up aboard ship with Harriman and his family. Given the events that followed his return as well as Harriman’s legendary power of persuasion, it is tantalizing to wonder what course railroad history might have taken if the passengers aboard the Elder had been top railroad men and bankers instead of scientists.
The Elder was scheduled to sail from Seattle on May 31. While Merriam put together the team of scientists, Harriman took care of the travel arrangements. For those journeying west from New York, he turned the trip itself into an adventure. The Omaha officers scrambled to put together a special train of Pullman cars and arrange its passage over other lines from New York to Omaha. After some juggling they hired two sleepers, a diner, and a combination baggage car/smoker from Pullman, adding to it Union Pacific business car number 100 for Harriman’s personal use.11
Harriman did not yet own his own railway car. He was having one built, but it would not be ready until the return trip. He planned to call it the Arden, as if it, like the estate, would be a pleasant, fanciful retreat from the pressures of the world. On the special he installed a library of books and maps in the smoking car along with several brands of fine cigars. The car had comfortable wicker chairs and settees for reading or gazing at the scenery or conversing quietly. It was called the Utopia.12
The name had an ironic twist. Harriman was embarking on a venture that would test his inner landscape no less than his stamina. A man of quick, decisive action with a nose for the practical, he had for thirty-five years dealt with men as hard and knowing as himself. Now he had caged himself up with a cargo of academics and artists, woolly thinkers and sensitive souls who had never cut a deal or met a payroll. They were men who liked to ruminate and contemplate, who understood every aspect of an egg except how to cook it. Harriman knew the breed, but the knowledge touched painful chords of memory. In some respects, especially their blend of naïveté and impracticality, they were men very much like his father.
The special was scheduled to depart from Grand Central Station on the afternoon of May 23. At the appointed hour the expedition members threaded their way through the bustling crowd to an unmarked gate where the doorman let them through when told who they were. When Harriman arrived, artist Frederick Dellenbaugh was struck by the way he “walked in as unconcernedly as if this sort of princely tour were an everyday matter with him.” It never occurred to Dellenbaugh how often Harriman boarded a special train with special guests for a long-distance journey.13
As the train chugged out of the station and the scientists settled back in their seats, Harriman came through the car to greet them. Some were too eager to make a good impression and banged their heads on the upper berth as they jumped up from their seats. When botanist Thomas Kearney did so, Harriman laughed and said, “You are the fifth man who has done that.” Most of the scientists were impressed at once with Harriman’s sharp, penetrating gaze and his peculiar blend of calm and bristling energy. The next day they were introduced to the Harriman’style of management.14
Calling the group together, Harriman emphasized that he did not want to interfere with anyone’s work. He wanted the decisions about route, itinerary, and other matters made by those who knew most about them. To facilitate this task, he proposed creating an executive committee and several special committees. Before the train reached Chicago, this had been done and every member assigned a place. Dr. Morris marveled at how he managed this “without any Member feeling that it was thrust upon him.”15
While his guests enjoyed the scenery, Harriman’sent a steady stream of telegrams to Omaha taking care of last-minute details. Horace Burt arranged a special trolley to take them to the Omaha Exposition, then hitched his car aboard the train for the ride to Cheyenne. Overnight the billowing prairie turned into a raw, rugged landscape that struck Burroughs as “the dumping ground of creation, where all the refuse had been gathered.” In Idaho Bancroft rigged up a trip to the spectacular Shoshone Falls even though the hotel there had not yet opened for the season. They jounced merrily across the lava plain in a motley assortment of horses, buckboards, wagons, even a stagecoach, to the canyon, then boarded a ferry for the ride to the towering falls. After their return, Harriman took everyone to Boise for a dip in the natatorium.16
At Pendleton, Oregon, Harriman arranged another side trip. The train looped through the Palouse country to Colfax, Washington, where a Northern Pacific special took everyone to Lewiston, Idaho. There Mohler met them with a stern-wheel steamer for a cruise down the Snake River. While the scientists reveled in the beauty of nature, Harriman and Mohler studied a different sort of scenery. This area was part of the battleground between Navigation and Northern Pacific, where Mohler was laying branch lines to counter Mellen’s. Harriman wanted a look at the work and was not above mixing business with pleasure even on this jaunt.17
The steamer glided through the long canyon of the Snake River to a bridge near its junction with the Columbia River, where the travelers found their train waiting to carry them along the magnificent river route to Portland. The West Coast members of the expedition climbed aboard at Portland for the trip to Seattle. One of the newcomers was John Muir, who met Harriman for the first time. Despite his reluctance to be beholden to anyone, Muir’s dark suspicions about businessmen began to thaw. “I soon saw that Mr. Harriman was uncommon,” he admitted later. “He was taking a trip for rest, and at the same time managing his exploring guests as if we were a grateful soothing essential part of his rest-cure, though scientific explorers are not easily managed, and in large mixed lots are rather inflammable and explosive.”18
At Seattle the sense of anticipation grew keener as the departure time drew near. Beneath the damp fog and drizzle Harriman’stood on the dock watching a steady stream of supplies and equipment pour onto the Elder: baggage, cameras, canoes, painting and surveying equipment, guns, ammunition, lantern slide projectors, traps, a piano, books, cases of cigars and champagne, a graphophone capable of both playing and recording voices, a menagerie of horses, chickens, steers, turkeys, sheep, and a milk cow, giving the whole scene a flavor of Noah’s ark. Up the gangplank strode the scientists two by two and behind them the Harriman entourage with the little boys in sailor suits.19
“Since Vitus Hehrings [sic] set out in 1725,” burbled an Omaha paper, “… there have been many expeditions to the Land of the Midnight Sun, but none probably have been more novel or important than that now nearing the Alaska coast.” This bit of puffery, like some others, was orchestrated from Omaha, where the officer in charge urged his underling to “lay great stress upon the scientific importance of this excursion and what they hope to accomplish.”20
Once the gangplank lifted, however, and the Elder steamed up Puget Sound, Harriman threw himself into the expedition with a zest that no amount of puffery could exaggerate. Whether it was a lifeboat drill or a trek across a glacier, Harriman was always ready for the outing. The scientists did not know what to expect from such a man, but they did not expect what they found. His energy and enthusiasm were unquenchable, his stamina astounding. On the train trip he had displayed his ability as a swimmer and diver as well as a hiker and mountaineer. Aboard ship he relished the daily sports on deck or the board games below, especially his favorite—Crokinole.21
Throughout the voyage he remained alert and venturesome, exposing himself to every hardship and taking risks the others thought no one in his position should take. “If anything were worth seeing he wanted to see it,” marveled Merriam. “If a difficult or dangerous trip were to be taken, by launch or foot, he was almost certain to be in the lead.” He took a childlike glee even in small things. Muirs most vivid image of Harriman was his keeping trot-step with little Roland (then only three) while helping him drag a toy canoe along the deck with a string.22
Burroughs watched Harriman race his children along the deck and decided that he was a man to like. “He seems very democratic,” Burroughs wrote, “and puts on no airs.” In the cramped quarters of a ship, his unaffected manner and willingness to shoulder any responsibility deeply impressed the scientists. They encountered the enigma that puzzled everyone who came to know Harriman: he seemed so ordinary yet separated himself out by his ability to do so much so quickly without fumbling or complaint. He was a man of strong views yet knew how to listen and to digest what he heard so rapidly that it seemed as if he had known it all along. His presence seemed unassuming until he swung into action; then his dynamism made him loom like a giant.23
The rest of the family also confounded the scientists’ expectations. Those who think of Victorian women as staid, sedentary creatures will have their assumptions jolted by the behavior of the Harrimans during the expedition. Mary and her daughters endured every hardship willingly and thought nothing of tramping two or three miles across a glacier or braving icy winds to visit a mine or Indian village. Their eagerness to learn impressed the scientists as much as their hardiness. A father as formidable as Harriman might overwhelm his children, but he did not allow them to be passive or withdrawn.
On its way north the Elder paused at Victoria on Vancouver Island for some sight-seeing, then headed toward Princess Royal Island, where the expedition got its first look at two starkly contrasting scenes: a small Indian village and a salmon cannery manned by Chinese workers. At their next stop, New Metla-kahtla, they observed what chaplain George F. Nelson called a unique experiment in “civilizing the savages.” A Scottish missionary named William Duncan had brought a group of fierce Indians there to teach them the ways of religion and free enterprise, erecting a cannery as well as a church and making both prosper under his stern supervision. Harriman was impressed by the natives’ industry and intelligence. If they could learn to speak English, he remarked, they could be useful in the development of the territory.24
From New Metlakahtla the ship threaded its way northward through the tangle of islands and inlets to Wrangell, Farragut Bay, Taku Village, and Douglas Island across from Juneau. As they floated through the icy waters with whales splashing and diving playfully near the ship, the beauty of this natural spectacle was shattered by the deafening roar of machinery and explosions from the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island. A quick tour of the island showed its once dense forest hacked into forlorn stumps by the expanding mine operations.25
As the expedition members climbed gratefully aboard the Elder and steamed away, Harriman noticed a stray dog wandering about the deck. Told that the animal had followed a crewman, he decreed, “As long as this dog remains on board, he is our guest.” He hunted up the dog’s friend and ordered him to feed the animal until he could be returned to Juneau. The dog was assured of hospitality, for as entomologist Trevor Kincaid noted, Harriman was a man “of the type that issues orders and expects them to be obeyed.”26
The expedition pushed on to Skagway, one of the boom towns spawned by the mad rush for gold. Harriman had arranged for the group to ride the newly completed White Pass Railroad, which carried prospectors and supplies twenty-one miles into the rough interior. As the ship docked, a throng of men and boys swarmed onto its deck to welcome the startled visitors. Gratefully they headed for the railroad to ride along one of the most infamous routes in Alaska: the Dead Horse Trail.27
The new rail line tamed the horrors of a route drenched in tragedy and defeat only a winter earlier, when it was jammed with eager prospectors unprepared for the hardships facing them. Disease and exposure had thinned their ranks and broken their spirits, and the harsh climate still preserved the carcasses of horses littering the trail. Harriman and his guests stared aghast at what looked like the frozen rubble of a battlefield. At the top of White Pass Ridge the expedition found a forlorn village of shanties and tattered flags marking the boundary between the United States and Canada.28
The bleak, jagged landscape stunned them all. “I felt,” murmured Burroughs, “as if I were seeing for the first time the real granite ribs of the earth…. Here were the primal rocks … that held the planet together.” The railway officials hosted a lavish picnic in one of the ramshackle buildings. Afterward, as the train eased back down the pass, someone noticed a prominent face was missing. The cars hurried back up the track to find Harriman and William Averell, who had wandered off to explore the area around the ridge.29
After leaving Skagway, the Elder steamed through the network of islands toward Glacier Bay, where the ship would anchor for five days. Muir knew the region, had discovered a glacier there that bore his name. The small cabin he had built on his earlier trip still stood beneath a wall of ice soaring two hundred feet high. Enormous chunks of ice snapped off the glacier and crashed into the water with a frightening roar. While the scientists set out eagerly to gather specimens, the hunters readied an expedition—lured on by Muirs tale of wolves and bear he had seen at a place called Howling Valley. Harriman led a party of six hunters and six packers across the jagged, treacherous glacier while his wife and four of the girls joined another group in a three-mile hike along the glacier.30
Lugging twenty-pound packs, the hunters and packers trudged all day across thick, jagged ridges of ice and collapsed in exhaustion only to be driven from their sleep by cold that penetrated the sleeping bags. Wearily they resumed the hike despite being pelted by freezing rain. After tramping sixteen miles Luther “Yellowstone” Kelly, who had once scouted for General George Custer, knew a bad bargain when he saw it and turned back, but Harriman insisted doggedly on continuing until they reached the valley Muir had described. Roping themselves together as protection from crevices in the deep snow, they slogged onto a divide that looked down on Howling Valley. Seeing no sign of animals, Harriman gave up and they dejectedly retraced their steps.31
After covering twenty-four miles on foot, the soaked and exhausted hunters arrived back just in time to witness the birth of a new iceberg. Enormous chunks weighing hundreds of tons slid downward, sending even more colossal bergs, some of them two hundred feet above the water, crashing into the sea with a roar. “The dancing, clashing, clapping, lapping of bergs, big and little,” exulted Muir, “welcoming the newborn as it slid ahead … were sublime, glorious.” Merriam thought otherwise after seeing a tsunami-like wave spawned by the crash roll toward two photographers in a frail canoe and the spectators along the shore.32
Three small boats lay less than a mile from the waves. The photographers were closest and seemed doomed as the huge wave curled toward them. But the dancing bergs dissipated some of its power, and the men boldly paddled into its face and rode up to the crest and down again. They handled each wave the same way, saving themselves at the expense of the negatives in their gear. Behind them the spectators fled as the waves crashed thunderously on the gravel shore.
The futile trek put Merriam in bed to rest his swollen, arthritic knees, but Harriman lured him out the next day for some sight-seeing in the launch while the girls remained on the glacier helping Henry Gannett, chief geographer of the U.S. Geological Survey, place his measuring instruments. Muir took a small party to camp on Hugh Miller glacier and in his wanderings discovered that the Grand Pacific glacier had split into three smaller ones. With a flourish he named one of the newborns “Harriman glacier.” Some of Harriman’s business associates would find the image all too apt: a looming presence of ice nearly a mile wide.33
After three days on the glacier the scientists were eager to get back to the Elder, but they got delayed on the hike back to shore and missed the rendezvous time. Harriman’sent out two of the launches to find them, piloting one himself through the ice until he located the missing party. “Running the launch was one of his favorite diversions,” said Merriam, “and … we were not long in learning that we were safest when in his hands.” The scientists were soon back aboard the Elder nursing sunburns along with a glass of wine or whiskey before dinner. At the evening lecture session Muir took the podium to report the new glacier named in their host’s honor. A cheer went up, followed by the chant that became the expeditions war cry: “Who are we? Who are we? We are, we are, the H. A. E.!”34
A strong bond of camaraderie had developed among the expedition members, tested by the usual petty rifts and annoyances but seldom strained by them. For this Harriman deserved much of the credit. On the voyage no less than in the office he had forged a strong organization through intelligent planning, careful attention to detail, and the sheer imprint of his personality. The only difference, and an important one aboard a crowded ship, was that the cold, detached side of his personality did not emerge when he attended to business—in part because this business, with all its perils, was a source of great pleasure for him.
A night’s run down Peril Strait brought the Elder to the town of Sitka, where the group disembarked in a driving rain. Then capital of Alaska, Sitka was a regular tourist stop where visitors could buy Indian trinkets in the store of the Alaska Commercial Company. It was also an outpost of civility with a core population of educated elite (the governor was a Yale man). Most of the old buildings built by Russian traders had been replaced with charmless American structures. An old Russian church still survived, however, and the expedition members flocked inside to inspect its lavish decor.35
That same evening the governor and other local notables dined aboard the Elder, where the conversation soon turned to the local Tlinkit Indians. Fascinated, Harriman asked that their chief and some other tribe members be invited to a reception at the governor’s mansion. He brought along the graphophone and persuaded the chief and his friends to talk and sing into the machine. Afterward Harriman’startled the Indians by playing back their voices, which so intrigued the governor that he asked to make a speech into the gadget.36
The next day, before leaving Sitka, Harriman gave the Indians another chance to hear their voices. The Indians in turn surprised Harriman by marching on him with a brass band playing the same tunes he had recorded. Harriman yelped with glee and captured the renditions to play back for the band. As the Elder steamed out, the band stood on the dock in the rain saluting the ship with snappy versions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue.”37
During the stay at Sitka a tourist ship arrived, bringing mail for the expedition and flooding the town with visitors prowling the shops and dickering with the native peddlers. Sitka was the northernmost stop for the tourist ships, but the Elder had only begun its journey. For the first time the steamer left the sheltered coastal channels and headed into the Pacific for a long day’s cruise to Yakutat Bay. Gradually the thick spruce forests and rolling green mountains around Sitka gave way to a bleak landscape of rock and ice. Harriman’spotted a glacier that interested him and, joined by a gaggle of the scientists, put down a launch to investigate it.38
Towing a smaller boat in case of emergency, Harriman eased the launch toward the face of the glacier. Nothing went right on the approach. One of the boats got caught on rocks and sprang a leak, spraying the men with ice water. In trying to maneuver the boat, Harriman gashed his hand on a nail and spent most of the trip using the other hand to staunch the bleeding. After a futile effort to repair the damage, the group retreated wearily to the Elder and confined their viewing of glaciers to the deck chairs for a time.
At midnight the ship reached the entrance of Yakutat Bay, which was lined with glaciers. One of them, the Malaspina, boasted a face fifty miles wide. The ship anchored opposite a tiny village settled by Indians under the care of a Swedish missionary. Next day the Elder dropped off a party on the north shore near Malaspina to scout the moraine for bear and other game. Another group headed by Merriam landed nearby to collect specimens. Harriman took the steamer deeper into the bay to a small inlet called Disenchantment Bay. As the Elder tried to skirt thick ice floes, some Indians paddled out to sell the visitors furs and skins.39
Delighted at their presence, Harriman invited them aboard and quickly struck up a friendship with one named James, who wore a bright red patch over his left eye and a weathered, broad-rimmed felt hat. Impressed by James’s knowledge of the region, Harriman asked him to stay on as adviser to the pilot. He then hauled out the graphophone and entertained the Indians by playing the recordings made earlier at Sitka. Finally, the ice opened enough for the Elder to crawl into Disenchantment Bay. At dinner that night Captain Peter A. Doran informed the others that the Elder was the first large ship to enter the bay. So deep were its waters that he could not drop anchor until “Indian Jim” suggested a place.40
It was worth the trip. Around the bay lay an incongruous blend of tree-covered mountains and islands drenched with wildflowers with a scent so powerful Muir could smell them half a mile away. For five days the group frolicked in the area, hiking and climbing or collecting samples. Cornelia and her cousin Elizabeth Averell helped Dall and Gannett with their measurements and in the bargain learned the rudiments of surveying, struggling across rough ground undeterred by the trail of their long skirts. Harriman went off looking for the elusive Kodiak and came back with only a fine pelt bought from an Indian who drove a harder bargain than some of Harriman’s business foes.
By the time the Elder left Disenchantment Bay, the ice had closed in again, isolating the two parties still camped on the shore near Malaspina. The Elder circled about in a vain search for an opening while the scientists waited anxiously, seeing only the ship’s stacks and smoke. Finally, Harriman ordered two small boats lowered and took command of one of them. Threading his way laboriously through the sharp floes and grounded bergs, he rowed a circuitous route to shore against a pounding surf. Half a century later Thomas Kearney still recalled the blisters he got from rowing. The men and gear were loaded aboard, and the boats maneuvered their way back through the dangerous pack ice.41
Harriman was beginning to relish his role as rescuer, having only the day before braved a roaring surf to fetch Muir and three others stranded near an Indian village. As the Elder headed out of Yakutat Bay for Prince William Sound, a huge albatross floated in the sky above it, dipping and soaring in the wind until it tired of the sport, its flight so effortless that it struck Burroughs as “weird … like the spirit of the deep taking visible form and seeking to weave some spell upon us or lure us away to destruction.”42
At Prince William Sound the ship docked at Orca, a small town dominated by a large salmon cannery. Mounds of salmon heads and fins clogged the waters for miles along the shore, and the air reeked with the stench of rotting fish. A disgusted Muir watched the Chinese toiling long hours for low wages in the cannery, faces stolid and thin, sharp knives flashing in swift, precise strokes against the army of fish marching at them. “Men in the business,” he muttered privately, “are themselves canned.” There were also miners in the town, many of them gaunt survivors of a scurvy epidemic that had ravaged the trail from Valdez to the Klondike. Stranded without money, the ragged men waited forlornly until a steamer captain agreed to take them to San Francisco.43
Harriman invited officers from the Pacific Steam Whaling Company and Alaska Commercial Company aboard for the cruise along Prince William Sound. Under clear blue skies the Elder steamed a leisurely course, depositing scientists on shore before anchoring at Golofnin Bay. Harriman went ashore with “Indian Jim” for a day’s hike over the mountains in search of bear. Next day he nosed the Elder toward the northeast corner of the sound, where a narrow channel near Port Wells was supposed to harbor huge glaciers and hidden animal life. The spectacle was magnificent. “We were in another great ice chest,” enthused Burroughs, peering down a lengthy fjord at a procession of glaciers. With a touch of whimsy the scientists dubbed it College Fjord and named the glaciers around them Harvard, Yale, Radclifife, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, and Amherst.44
The glaciers were the most active they had seen, discharging volley after volley of ice into the channel with deafening thunder, clogging it with pack ice so thick the Elder could get no closer than twenty miles to its head. They tried the launch and still got only to within ten miles of the most active glacier. The ship backed away and veered instead into an arm of Port Wells west of College Fjord. To starboard loomed the mighty Barry Glacier. Captain Doran informed Harriman that, according to the U.S. Coastal Survey maps, navigable waters ended there.45
Since the Barry Glacier extended across the head of the fjord, there seemed to be no reason to go farther. It was a formidable barrier with a high sea wall two miles long that pushed farther out into the water than any they had seen before. Undaunted, Harriman had Doran ease the ship deeper into the fjord. As they drew closer, a sliver of open water popped into view beyond the glacier. They approached the Barry to examine its caves and pinnacles and saw to their surprise that the open water beyond stretched for miles, with two other glaciers breaking its surface in the distance.
Was this a new and unknown fjord? A wave of excitement swept through the ship as everyone rushed on deck for a glimpse at the teasing waters. Without hesitation Harriman ordered Doran to steer toward the open space, crying, “We shall discover a new Northwest Passage!” The pilot balked. “Here, take your ship,” he told Doran. “I am not going to be responsible for her if she is to run into every unsounded uncharted channel and frog marsh.” Doran also objected to being responsible for navigating uncharted waters. What was the point, added Captain Omar Humphrey of the whaling company, in charging recklessly into “every little fish pond” where hidden rocks could scuttle the ship? He knew the area, and in his expert opinion there was nothing worth chasing.46
This one moment loomed as a microcosm of both Harriman’s character and his career. He knew what it was to play safe and had done so most of his life. During the past year, however, he had burst from the cocoon of caution to become the most daring of butterflies, as if something had impressed upon him that great things could not be accomplished without great risks. He had always been willing to risk, but never in so many ways and on such a scale. The boldness that had galvanized him in recent months was not confined to his career but extended to everything he did, and the success that flowed from it infused his every action with a fearless confidence.
In this sense the expedition was not a departure from his business activities but merely an extension of them. The same brash confidence that vaulted him to power could be seen in Alaska, and his success there in turn presaged the still more daring deeds he would perform on his return. For Harriman, business and pleasure sprang from the same wellspring: an insatiable zest for living life to its fullest, staring down its challenges with a glee bordering on insolence.47
Doran crept to within half a mile of the glacier face, then stopped. Harriman asked Muir if he had seen all he wished and was ready to turn back. “Judging from the trends of this fjord and glacier there must be a corresponding fjord or glacier back of the headland, to the southward,” replied Muir, “and although the ship has probably gone as far as it is safe to go, I wish you would have a boat lowered and let me take a look into the hidden half of the landscape.”
“We can perhaps run the boat in there,” said Harriman. Since Doran wanted no part of it, Harriman took the wheel himself and headed slowly into the dangerously narrow passage. Everyone stood tense, their ears straining to catch the sound of unseen rocks scraping against the hull. A chilling clang told them that contact had been made. It cost the ship one of its propellers, but Harriman pushed forward. Gradually the passage widened until it revealed a beautiful fjord twelve miles long with a phalanx of stately glaciers stretching as far as the eye could see. Rugged, snow-capped mountains rimmed the fjord like sentinels guarding its isolation.
It proved to be the most spectacular geographical find of the expedition. Later it went onto the map as the Harriman Fjord, and its largest glacier would be known as the Harriman Glacier. Eagerly Muir led a party of scientists ashore to camp and collect for a few days on the edge of a forest of thick mountain hemlock. After they had gone, a sudden snowstorm isolated the ship from the wall of mountains. On board, the group celebrated with a dinner of Welsh rarebit while Captain Doran pondered how to ease his way back through the strait to Orca for repairs.48
Cautiously the captain hugged the side of the Barry as he eased through the passage to Port Wells, wincing every time he heard the hull scrape ice. Below deck Harriman relaxed by playing a vigorous game of Crokinole with doctors Morris and Trudeau, seemingly oblivious to the tension around him. Just before the Elder cleared the passage, the incoming tide caught the ship and shoved her toward the glacier wall. Doran pushed the rudder hard to port but got a sluggish response. For a few minutes it looked as if the ship would slam against the ice; then it broke free of the tide’s grip and crawled toward Orca with a school of dolphins playing in its wake.49
While the propeller was being repaired, Harriman took his family on a picnic to a nearby bay. When the ship was ready, they returned to pick up the party camping at the fjord and then steamed toward Cook Inlet in search of bear. Harriman paused to inspect a copper mine on LaTouche Island before moving to Saldovia Point. When a Russian native told him that Kodiak Island offered both a nicer climate and a better chance to bag a bear, Harriman promptly turned the ship toward the island. After dropping a group of scientists at Kulak Bay on the Alaska Peninsula and depositing some of the hunters at Uyak Bay on Kodiak, the Elder anchored opposite the village of Kodiak, nestled against rolling green hills that startled the visitors in their contrast to the bleak, rugged fjord.50
It was, murmured Burroughs, a “pastoral paradise” in the North. While he basked in the lush greenery, Harriman took his daughter Mary, Elizabeth Averell, and Merriam to set up camp at Eagle Bay, eight miles from the village. Others streamed back and forth from the camp, but Harriman ignored them as he did the mosquitoes, which Merriam called “fearful.” He left almost at once in quest of a bear, the supreme trophy that had so far eluded him. The others knew this was the main reason he had come and were loath to see him disappointed. Harriman took along a large party, including a Russian villager who was an expert bear hunter.51
This time they found a bear, a small female and her cub. Harriman’saw her munching grass like a cow; nevertheless, he wanted her. The hunters drove them into a narrow gorge, where Harriman’stood poised with his Winchester. The others, anxious for his safety, stationed themselves around him with enough firepower to rip the bear to shreds. But when the bear charged, Harriman coolly dropped her with one shot while one of the others shot the cub. Merriam thought it was the first Kodiak ever measured and photographed in the flesh.52
The next day was the fourth of July, giving the celebration an even more joyous tone. On the Elder the crew stuffed rags into a small brass cannon and shot them off in lieu of fireworks. The graphophone blared out “Stars and Stripes Forever” as prelude to the program of speeches, music, and recitations arranged by the Committee on Music and Entertainment. Afterward the group went over to Wood Island to watch two teams of natives play a baseball game. When the competition turned to boats, Harriman joined a four-man canoe team to race a naptha launch and barely lost. The host was in fine spirits, buoyed by his new trophy and holiday festivities that were marred only by an ill-timed denunciation of American policy in the Philippines by Charles Keeler.53
Unruffled, Harriman looked next to an excursion across the Bering Strait to Siberia. As the Elder turned toward the Aleutian Islands seeking passage into the Bering Sea, strange mirages danced over the chain of islands, creating bizarre effects none of the scientists could explain. The ship anchored at Sand Point to deposit five of the scientists, who went to gather specimens at a remote village, then steamed to Unalaska Island, where a town called Dutch Harbor had arisen to serve a firm dealing in seal fur, the North American Commercial Company. The town was a strange mix of contrasts, brightened by a profusion of flowers through which flowed a steady stream of prospectors defeated in their struggle with the implacable Yukon. It was, marveled Merriam, “a veritable flower garden—like all the rest of this country.”54
From Unalaska the Elder pushed on to the craggy volcanic Bogoslof Islands, where Harriman piloted a launch to shore to observe the breeding grounds of sea lions and murres. The scientists shot some specimens before moving on to the Pribilof Islands, where the North American company harvested seals at a government-controlled rookery. Harriman had secured a permit to visit the rookery on St. Paul Island, and he followed with keen interest the company guides who showed them where the seals bred and the company gathered its quota of kills allowed by the government. Merriam had been there eight years earlier and saw to his dismay that the number of animals had shrunk to less than a quarter of what had been there before. The senseless slaughter had devastated the seal population until the government stepped in with regulations mostly written by Merriam himself. After the tour they retired to a nearby village to discuss the problem with the company officials over whiskey and cigars.55
A thick fog had closed in by the time the Elder lifted anchor to head for Plover Bay in Siberia. Everyone was at dinner, the ship running full speed, when suddenly a series of rough jolts climaxed in a rasping crash. The ship had struck a reef. Fear of shipwreck swept through the dining saloon; Harriman rose calmly from his seat and went on deck, followed by the alarmed scientists despite the stewards plea that they remain seated. Merriam was convinced the ship’s hull had been smashed and asked the engineer for assurance that it would not sink.
As the group milled about anxiously on deck, someone suggested that Harriman be taken off in a boat for his own safety. He gave the person a scornful reply, then muttered to Merriam, “Can you conceive of such a suggestion? What would a man want to live for if his family were drowned?” He stayed with Doran and the pilot, who finally eased the ship off the rocks and found to their relief that the hull had not been damaged. Those who hoped the incident might induce Harriman to turn back were quickly disappointed. He ordered Doran to proceed on a new course despite the treacherous Bering Sea and dense fog. All night long the expedition members were jolted awake by the shrill cry of the ship’s whistle bellowing its warning through the thick mist.56
After missing St. Matthew Island because of the fog, the ship put in at Plover Bay on the Siberian coast. Scarcely had the anchor dropped when several boatloads of Eskimos paddled toward it, eager to sell their wares. The scientists fetched out their cameras and took pictures before heading ashore in the launch. The small village at Plover was a dismal sight, its inhabitants pocked and scarred by syphilis, the gift of visiting Russian whalers. While his comrades shivered in the icy wind that sliced through their cloth coats, Harriman’stood proudly in a warm reindeer coat he had bought at Unalaska.57
There was little to see at the grim village. The natives were friendly and allowed themselves to be photographed. Harriman gave them gifts of tobacco and glass beads, and some of the scientists did a little trading. But the novelty of a foreign shore vanished quickly in what Merriam called “the most barren and desolate place of its size” he had ever seen. Gratefully the scientists hurried back to the Elder. That night, as the ship made for the whaling outpost of Port Clarence, some of the group sat up on deck all night to enjoy the midnight sun and listen to Will Dall’s endless supply of tales about the Siberian natives.58
Finding no less than ten whaling ships at Port Clarence, the Elder dropped anchor several miles away. Still the indefatigable natives paddled out to greet them with furs for sale. Their lively, cheerful disposition reminded Muir of “a merry gypsy crowd.” Harriman allowed some of the whalers to come aboard but not the Eskimos. While he bounded off to tour a whaling ship, his family went to Port Clarence in a surf so rough they had to be carried ashore. When Harriman returned to the Elder at half past six that evening, he learned that Merriam and two of the other scientists had gone ashore to visit the Eskimos and were still there. Wearily he took the launch to shore, found his friends, and started back.59
The sea was running high from a strong offshore wind, and the Elder lay fourteen miles away. About halfway there, with only the masts and stack of the Elder visible, a crewman told Harriman that the supply of gasoline was so low it might not get the launch home. The wind grew stronger, reaching gale force and driving waves large enough to capsize the boat if it lost power and drifted. Harriman’stayed grimly at the wheel, using the wind to push through the waves. His luck held and the launch made it to the Elder, but he could not get too close or the sea would smash the launch against the larger ship. Using poles to keep the launch away, the crewmen tossed down a rope ladder and helped pull everyone aboard.
Exhausted but relieved, Harriman’started toward his quarters when someone told him that his family was still ashore along with a few others. Without a murmur he fetched a fresh supply of gasoline and jumped back into the launch. Twice again he made the dangerous run to shore in gale-force winds and pitching waves until he had brought both shore parties safely home. It was past nine o’clock by the time he returned from the second run, but no one had eaten dinner. The others were not about to sit down at table before their host and his passengers were ready to join them.
Harriman’s love of horses and prowess with them was well known, but his skill as a sailor was less familiar. The Alaska expedition honed and challenged those skills in precisely the sort of confrontation with nature Harriman loved. He came to be as home on the sea as he was on the surging iron horses he used to roam the vast American interior. The great advantage offered by the sea was that he did not have to follow the straight and narrow but could change course and direction whenever he pleased.
Port Clarence marked the northernmost point reached by the expedition. Beyond it pack ice closed the way to the Arctic Ocean. On July 13 the Elder turned south to begin the trip home. During a brief pause at St. Lawrence Island the Harriman daughters joined the scientists in gathering more specimens while Merriam chased eagerly after two polar bears that turned out on closer inspection to be swans. The hunters tried again at St. Matthew Island, then resigned themselves to the fact that the Smithsonian would not have its halls lined with the looming presence of fresh bears.60
As the ship plowed southward, the mood of the group swung between relief at going home and nostalgia for the unique adventure they had shared. Already each member had begun to assess the value of the project. Harriman made it clear that he wanted all photographs given to him so that he could prepare souvenir albums for everyone. He also asked that no articles on the expedition be written without his approval so that advance publicity would not undercut the two volumes he planned to publish.61
Privately Muir thought the two volumes would amount to “much twaddle about a grand scientific monument of this trip.” What it boiled down to, he added scornfully, was that “game-hunting, the chief aim, has been unsuccessful. The rest of the story will be mere reconnaissance.” Time would prove him spectacularly wrong. The series of studies subsidized by Harriman continued long after his death and reached a total of thirteen volumes. Merriam was to devote twelve years of his life to this project, transforming it into a scientific team effort that extended far beyond the expedition itself.62
Harriman himself was well satisfied with the results. After one of the evening lectures he followed the speaker to the podium. “Let nobody think anything about repaying Mr. Harriman,” he said in his crisp way. “Mr. Harriman has been amply repaid by the pleasure he has had out of it.” But he was also growing restless. Once the ship turned south and the adventure began to wind down, his mind in his usual fashion raced more and more to the intricate web of business matters awaiting him. Gradually his focus shifted from the wilderness to the hard decisions that lay ahead.63
Few stops were scheduled on the return run. One of them was Dutch Harbor, where Harriman invited Joseph Stanley-Brown of the North American Company to return with them to Seattle. Stanley-Brown did and later became Harriman’s secretary. The Elder also paused at Kodiak Island, where Harriman’savored his earlier conquest of the bear and helped Cornelia celebrate her fifteenth birthday. A few days later her mother was honored in the same way with champagne toasts and entertainments prepared by the expedition members.64
Harriman joined in heartily, but his mood swings grew more frequent. At the Malaspina Glacier Harriman ran the ship in close and led a hunting party ashore. They returned empty-handed and in a sour mood. “No bears, no bears, O Lord!” chided Muir privately. “No bears shot! What have thy servants done?” Next day, as the ship cruised past the magnificent Fairweather mountain range, Harriman’sat with his wife on the opposite deck while the others marveled at the majestic sight. Merriam came to fetch them, shouting, “You are missing the most glorious scenery of the whole trip!”
Harriman glared at him. “I don’t care a dam [sic],” he snapped, “if I never see any more scenery!”65
But the mood did not linger. As the Elder sailed through the straits south of Juneau, Harriman recalled a story he had heard from Fred Dellenbaugh about a deserted Indian village and decided to investigate. Drawing the launches up on a smooth white beach north of Cape Fox, the group found an entire village of abandoned cabins fronted by a row of nineteen beautifully carved totem poles. There were no signs of life; no one knew why the inhabitants had fled. Decorations, crockery, even clothing could be found inside the cabins, but the poles were the prize.66
While the scientists ransacked the cabins for artifacts, Harriman brought deck hands ashore to dig out several of the totem poles. Everyone sweltered in muggy heat they never expected to find in Alaska. Some of the scientists claimed poles for their institutions; Harriman helped himself to a pair of large carved bears adorning graves. It took an entire day to gather the treasures and float them back to the Elder. Afterward Harriman brought everyone back to the village for a group photograph.67
That evening the group celebrated with an entertainment that turned into what Dall wryly called a “love feast” as one speaker after another rose to praise Harriman amid cries of the familiar “H. A. E.” chant. Harriman acknowledged the cheers with thanks and admitted that he had not dreamed how huge an undertaking the expedition would be when the train first left Grand Central Station. It was, noted Muir, a night of “wild glee and abandon,” a fitting capstone for a unique and remarkable expedition.68
More than three decades later, a grown Averell Harriman, introduced to Josef Stalin, startled the dictator by saying that the first time he had stepped foot on Russian soil it was without passport. All the Harriman children bore the imprint of this experience in later years, as did most of the others. The scientific results of the expedition proved even more enduring than the lavish supply of anecdotes and tall tales it produced. The bond formed among the participants was renewed in periodic reunions over the years. “What a tie the trip furnished,” Burroughs later enthused. “What a peculiar interest we are likely always to have in each other!”69
The Elder steamed into Seattle on July 31, its hold empty of animals except for the still productive milk cow. After stevedores unloaded its groaning cargo of luggage, specimens, totem poles, and artifacts, the ship pushed on to Portland. The Harrimans and a few others made the trip by rail and greeted the Elder at the dock. The expedition members said their farewells and went their separate ways. The easterners climbed aboard Harriman’s special train for the return trip, but Harriman took a different train to tour the battlefield of eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana with Mohler.70
Newspapers across the country heaped praise on the expedition. It was this publicity after the ship’s return that first thrust Harriman into the public limelight. Before then he was barely known outside of business and financial circles. The New York Times introduced him to the public as a man who “has had an influential voice recently in shaping the relations and policies of certain Western railroads.” That voice was about to grow much louder and attract considerably more attention. Harriman’stepped off the ship and plunged directly into what soon emerged as a major turning point in the nation’s railroad history. Harriman would do much to shape its course. To all appearances, he had come back from Alaska rested and fit, ready to take up the wars without missing a beat. In fact, much more had happened.71
The Alaska expedition was more than a vacation or even a scientific milestone. It had toughened and hardened Harriman in ways few other experiences could. Time and again he had pitted himself against nature’s wrath and come away bloodied but triumphant. The ordeal had whetted his competitive edge, fed his zest for challenge, and broadened his already expansive vision of what could be done. Nothing would ever seem as difficult to him again. Compared to the elemental clashes of will with the frozen North, Wall Street and the business arena were soft adversaries for his renewed spirit