76 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
robed in heavy silk brocade, pressing her hands on the wound in her heart, the 
tears streaming from her eyes. Sometimes, before a severe storm, she makes her 
appearance in the little tower at the top of the building once used as a light¬ 
house. There she burns a light until dawn for the spirit of her lover at sea. 
Almost directly west from Sitka, about fifteen miles distant, is Mount Edge- 
cumbe, so named by Cook, it having previously been called Mount San Jacinto 
by Bodega in 1775, and Mount St. Hyacinth again by La Perouse. Tchirikov, 
before all others, I believe, got it chronicled as Mount St. Lazarus ; and it looked 
as if it would go through the whole calendar of the saints, and their different 
national changes, if it had not gotten pretty firmly rooted as Mount Edgecumbe. 
It is nearly '3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and looks like a peak of 5,000 
feet cut off by a huge shaving plane at its present height. This truncated apex 
is a crater, said to be, by those who have visited it, some 2,000 feet in diameter 
by one-tenth as deep. In the early and middle summer time, the snow from its 
table-like crown has partially disappeared, and the bright red volcanic rock 
projects in radiating ridges from the white covering that is disappearing, 
making a most beautiful crest to a mountain already picturesque by its singular 
isolation. When in this condition, with the western setting sun directly over it, 
and its golden beams radiating upward, and the royal red ridges radiating down¬ 
ward, both thrown against their background of blue sky and water and white 
snow, it makes a superb picture that the brush of a Turner could hardly copy, let 
alone a feeble pen describe. 
Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood, who visited this portion of Alaska-in 1877, and gave 
a graphic description of his travels in the Century Magazine of July, 1882, gives 
therein the following interesting Indian legend concerning Mount Edgecumbe: 
“ One drowsy eve we saw the peak of Edgecumbe for the last time. The 
great truncated cone caught the hues of the sunset, and we could note the 
gloom gathering deeper and deeper in the hollow of the crater. Our Indians 
were stolidly smoking the tobacco we had given them, and were resting after 
the labors of the day with bovine contentment. Tah-ah-nah-kleck related to us 
the T’linkit legend of Edgecumbe. 
“A long time ago the earth sank beneath the water, and the water rose and cov¬ 
ered the highest places, so that no man could live. It rained so hard that it was as 
if the sea fell from the sky. All was black, and it became so dark, that no man knew 
another. Then a few people ran here and there and made a raft of cedar logs; but 
nothing could stand against the white waves, and the raft was broken in two. 
“ On one part floated the ancestors of the T’linkits ; on the other, the parents 
of all other nations. The waters tore them apart, and they never saw each 
other again. Now their children are all different, and do not understand each 
other. In the black tempest, Chethl was torn from his sister Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon 
[The-woman-who-supports-the-earth]. Chethl [symbolized in the osprey] called 
aloud to her, ‘You will never see me again; but you will hear my voice forever ! * 
Then he became an enormous bird, and flew to southwest, till no eye could 
follow him. Ah-gish-ahn-ahkon climbed above the waters, and reached the 
