DOWN THE RIVER TO SELKIRK.
[Illustration: IN THE RINK RAPIDS.]
One evening about eight o'clock, while encamped below the cascades,
we could hear dull, heavy concussions occurring at intervals of two
or three minutes. The sound did not at all resemble that of distant
thunder, and moreover, the sky was cloudless. Earthquakes were
suggested, but the theory did not seem plausible, and we were compelled
to attribute it to the cascades, which, I believe, have been known to
cause earth tremblings and analogous phenomena.
I noticed that a Tahk-heesh Indian in arranging his head and breast
bands for a load to be carried on his back, adjusted them as follows:
The breast-band was grasped in the center by the palm of the hand,
and when pulled out taut if the elbow of the packer just touched the
load,--box, bag or bundle,--it was considered to be in proper condition
to carry. The breast band adjusted, the head band is also pulled out,
and between the two there must be the width of the packer's hand; the
headband, which is not always used, being the longer. I had hitherto
noticed this manner of arranging the load when among my Chilkat
packers; the most singular feature of it being that the breast band
passes over the arms so as to pinion them to the sides, making them
apparently useless when the most needed.
[Illustration: CLAY BLUFFS ON THE UPPER YUKON.]
On the 5th of July we again got under way on our raft. For the first
few miles, eight or ten, the river is very swift and occasionally
breaks into light rapids, although I believe a powerful light-draft
river steamer, such as are used on the shallow western rivers, could
easily surmount all the bad places we saw below the cascades of the
great rapids. If I am right in my conjectures upon this point, the
Yukon River is navigable for 1866 miles from the Aphoon or northernmost
mouth of its delta.
Shortly after noon we passed the mouth of the Tahk-heen'-a or Tahk
River coming in from the west, which is about two-thirds the size of
the Yukon. By following it to its head, where the Indians say is a
large lake, the traveler arrives at the Chilkat portage, the relation
of which with the Chilkoot trail has already been noticed. From this
point on my Chilkat guide, Indianne, was much more familiar with the
country, having been over the Chilkat trail many times, and over the
Chilkoot portage but once when a small boy. From the cascades to the
Tahk River, a distance of nearly twenty-five miles, the banks of the
Yukon are quite high and often broken into perpendicular bluffs of
white clay, whose rolling crescent-shaped crowns were densely covered
with pine and spruce. While the Tahk-heen'-a is the smaller stream,
its bed and valley apparently determine the general characteristics
of the river beyond its confluence, the high bold bluffs of clay just
mentioned being from this point succeeded by lower shores wooded to the
water's edge.
The Tahk-heen'-a, like all streams not interspersed with lakes on its
upper course, carries quite muddy water, and we all felt a little
uneasy about our fine grayling fisheries, a foreboding well founded,
for they diminished with an exasperating suddenness, our evenings
seldom being rewarded with more than two or three.
The last of the chain of lakes was reached the same day at 5 P.M.,
and we were prevented from taking advantage of a good wind by a three
hours' detention on a sand-bar that stretched almost entirely across
the river's mouth. This bar had a deep channel on either side of
it, and when our most strenuous efforts completely failed to get the
raft off, there was nothing to be done but to put the load ashore,
and as wading was impossible, the cottonwood canoe was brought into
action, slow as the method was. Not having been used much lately its
condition was unknown, and as soon as we launched it, the water came
pouring in from a dozen cracks where the gum had scaled off. One very
vicious looking hole was suddenly developed in the bow as the first
load went ashore, and "Billy" undertook to overcome this difficulty by
putting most of the load in the stern, taking his own place there so
as to allow the bow to stand well out of the water. With every load
the leak grew worse, and about the fourth or fifth trip there was a
most desperate struggle between the canoeman and the leak to see which
would conquer before they reached the shore, the result being a partial
victory for both, the canoe's head going under water just as it reached
the shore, upon which there was a hurried scramble to unload it without
damage.
This lake was called by the Indians Kluk-tas'-si; and, as it was one of
the very few pronounceable names of Indian derivation in this section
of the country, I retained it, although it is possible that this may
be the Lake Labarge of some books, the fact that it is the first lake
above the site of old Fort Selkirk being the only geographical datum in
its favor, while all its other relations to equal points of importance
are opposed to the theory. In fact, it had evidently been mapped by the
merest guesswork from vague Indian reports.
I hope I shall be excused for again reviving the subject of conjectural
geography, so uncertain in its results and so prevalent in Alaskan
charts, especially those relating to the interior, even when they are
of an official character. If the self-satisfaction of these parlor
map-makers has been gratified in following unknown rivers and mountains
wherever their fancy and imagination led them, and no other harm
resulted, one conversant with the facts might dismiss the manifold
errors that occur in their charts with a contemptuous smile at the
method pursued. But that harm of the most serious nature can result
from these geographical conjectures is evident from the following
true story told me by the person interested. A party of miners had
crossed the Chilkoot trail and were on a "prospecting tour" down
the river and lakes. Discouraged at the outlook as to finding gold
or silver in paying quantities, there was considerable diversity of
opinion in regard to the propriety of any further advance in such
a wild unexplored country, the majority advocating a return. Among
their number was a young lawyer, a graduate of an eastern college, I
believe, who had joined the party in the hope of finding adventures
and of repairing his health, which had suffered from too close an
application to his professional studies. Having in his possession an
official government chart which pretended to map the route over which
he had come as well as that ahead of him, although he had received
proof of its untrustworthiness in the past, he resolved to trust it
once more. Numerous Indian villages and towns were shown upon the chart
at convenient intervals along the remainder of the route. He thought
the villages might not be just where they were marked, but believed
that in the main their number and positions were at least approximately
correct. Basing his expectations on the help to be obtained from these
numerous Indian villages, he announced to the party his determination
to continue his travels, whatever might be the conclusion to which
the others should come, pointing out the hospitality which they had
received from the Indians they had previously met, and expressing his
expectation of meeting many others as friendly. Whether his reasoning
influenced them or not I have forgotten, and it matters but little, but
at any rate the party gave up the idea of returning and continued on
drifting down the river and prospecting wherever the conditions seemed
favorable, until old Fort Selkirk was reached, when they ascended the
Pelly, upon the bars of which stream the prospect of finding gold was
greatest. During all this long journey not a single Indian was seen
by the party, and only one deserted house, with an occasional peeled
spruce pole at long intervals that marked the temporary camps of the
few wandering natives. Young C---- took the jokes of his companions
upon his chart and its Indian towns good-naturedly enough, and the
map was nailed to a big spruce tree and used for a target for rifle
practice, but he often spoke to me in a far different strain as he
recounted the chances of his taking the journey alone aided solely by
this worthless map. In fact there is not an official or government map
of Alaska, that, taken as a whole, is worth the ink with which it is
printed. Limited explorations and surveys in this vast territory, such
as those of Captain Raymond on the Yukon, Lieutenant Ray on the Arctic
Coast, Lieutenant Stoney on the Putnam river, and many others, are
undoubtedly excellent, second to none in the world made under similar
circumstances, and confined strictly to the country actually traversed
by each, with broken line delineations in surrounding districts,
indicating conjectures; but as soon as these or such portions of them
as the Washington compiler may see fit to take, are dumped into a great
map of Alaska, they are so mixed with conjectural topography and map
work that one must know the history of Alaskan exploration about as
well as the history of his own life to be able to discriminate between
the good and the worthless.
Like Lake Marsh, Kluk-tas-si is full of mudbanks along its shores; its
issuing waters being clear as a mountain stream, while its incoming
tributaries are loaded with earthy deposits. So full of these is
Kluk-tas-si, and so much more contracted is the waterway through them,
that we thought we could detect a slight current when making our way
along in the blue water. This was especially noticeable when the wind
died down to a calm. In spite of all this, Kluk-tas-si offered fewer
difficulties in the way of making landings than Lake Marsh. It seemed
to me that but a brief geological period must elapse before these lakes
are filled with deposits, their new shores covered with timber, and
their beds contracted to the dimensions of the river. Such ancient
lakes appear to occur in the course of the stream further on.
We started at seven in the morning and were occupied until eight in
rowing and sailing through the tortuous channel which led to blue water
in the deep portion of the lake. To keep this channel readily we sent
the Indians ahead in the canoe, who sounded with their long paddles,
and by signals indicated the deepest parts. In spite of their exertions
we stuck a couple of times, and had to lower sail and jump overboard.
The wind kept slowly increasing and by the time we set the full spread
of our sail in bold water, we were forging along at such a rate that
we put out a trolling spoon, but nothing was caught, the huge craft
probably frightening every thing away. The wind died down and sprang up
again several times during the day, but every time it arose it was in
our favor. That evening by the time we reached Camp 21, on the eastern
shore of the lake, we had scored about thirteen miles, a very good
reckoning for lake travel any time.
The west bank of this lake is very picturesque about fourteen or
fifteen miles from its southern entrance, large towers and bastion-like
projections of red rock upheaving their huge flanks upon what seems
to be a well-marked island, but which is in reality a part of the
mainland, as our Indians assured us. According to the same authorities
a river comes in here at this point, having shores of the same
formation, and called by them the Red River. The frequency of this name
in American geographical nomenclature was to me sufficient reason for
abandoning it; and I gave the name of Richthofen to the rocks and river
(the latter, however, not having been seen by us), after Freiherr von
Richthofen of Leipsic, well known in geographical science. The next
evening was a still and beautiful one, with the lake's surface like a
mirror, and the reflection of the red rocks in the quiet water made the
most striking scene on our trip; two warm pictures of rosy red in the
sinking sun joined base to base by a thread of silver, at the edge of
the other shore. The eastern shores of the lake seem to be formed of
high rounded hills of light gray limestone, picturesquely striped with
the foliage of the dark evergreen growing in the ravines. From the lake
the contrast was very pretty, and showed a regularity that scarcely
seemed the work of nature. I named them the Hancock Hills after General
Hancock of the army. A number of salmon-trout were caught in this
lake (the first one was caught in Lake Nares), the largest of which
weighed over eight pounds, that being the limit of the pocket scales of
the doctor. Saturday the 7th gave us the most conflicting winds, and
although we were upon the waters of Kluk-tas-si, for twelve hours we
made but nine miles, a head wind driving us into Camp 22.
We did not allow the 8th to tempt us on the lake so readily, and the
day was employed in taking astronomical observations, arranging our
photographic apparatus and similar work, until early afternoon. At 1.30
P.M. a favorable breeze from the south sprang up, and by 2 o'clock was
raging in a gale, blowing over the tent where we were eating our midday
meal, filling the coffee and eatables with sand and gravel, and causing
a general scampering and chasing after the lighter articles of our
equipment, which took flight in the furious wind. Most exasperating of
all, it quickly determined us to break camp, and in less than half an
hour we had all of our effects stored on the vessel, and were pulling
off the beach, when just as our sail was spread the wind died down to
a zephyr hardly sufficient to keep away the mosquitoes. At 7 o'clock
the lake was as quiet as can be imagined, and after remaining almost
motionless for another hour we pulled into the steep bank, made our
beds on the slanting declivity at a place where it was impossible
to pitch a tent, and went to sleep only to be awakened at night by
showers of rain falling upon our upturned faces. We congratulated
ourselves that we were in a place where the drainage was good.
In the shallow water near the shores of Lake Kluk-tas-si, especially
where a little bar of pretty white sand put out into the banks of
glacier mud, one could always find innumerable shoals of small
graylings not over an inch in length, and our Indians immediately
improvised a mosquito bar into a fish net, catching hundreds of the
little fellows, which were used so successfully as bait with the larger
fish of the lake that we finally thought the end justified the means.
[Illustration: OUTLET OF LAKE KLUKTASSI.
Terminal Butte of the Hancock Hills (on the right).]
Instead of dying down as we spread sail early in the morning of the
9th, the wind actually freshened, upsetting all our prognostications,
and sending us along at a rate that allowed us to enter the river
early in the forenoon, and I doubt if the besiegers of a fortress
ever saw its flag go down with more satisfaction than we saw the rude
wall-tent sail come down forever, and left behind us the most tedious
and uncertain method of navigation an explorer was ever called upon to
attempt--a clumsy raft on a motionless lake, at the sport of variable
winds. Our joy was somewhat dampened at sticking several times on the
bars, one of which delayed us over half an hour.
In all these rivers just after emerging from the lakes the current was
quite swift, and so shallow in many places as almost to deserve the
name of rapids. This was particularly the case where the swift stream
cut into the high banks that loomed some forty to sixty feet above us
as we rushed by, a top stratum that rested upon the stiff yellow clay
being full of rounded bowlders, which, when undermined, were letdown
into the river's bed, choking it partially with most dangerous-looking
obstacles.
During the whole day we were passing through burned districts of heavy
timber that looked dismal enough, backed, as they were, by dense clouds
of black smoke rising ahead of us, showing plainly that the devastation
was still going on. Many of these sweepings of fire were quite old;
so old, in fact, that the dark rotting trunks had become mere banks
of brown stretched along the ground, the blackened bark of the stumps
being the only testimony as to the manner of its destruction. Others,
again, were so recent that the last rain had not yet beaten the white
ashes from their blackened limbs, while late that evening we dashed
through the region of smoke and flame we had discerned earlier in the
day. It is wonderful what great wide strips of river these flames will
cross, probably carried by the high winds, when light bunches of dry,
resinous matter are in a blaze. We saw one instance which, however,
must be a rare one, of a blazing tree that fell into the water, where
it immediately found a hydrostatic equilibrium, so that its upper
branches continued on fire, blazing and smoking away like a small steam
launch. It might readily have crossed the river as it floated down,
and becoming entangled in the dry driftwood of the opposite bank, have
been the nucleus of a new conflagration, the limits of which would have
been determined by the wind and the nature of the material in its path.
Of course, in such an intricate wilderness of black and brown trunks
and stumps, any kind of game that approaches to black in color, such
as a moose or black or brown bear; in fact, any thing darker than a
snow-white mountain-goat, can easily avoid the most eagle-eyed hunter,
by simply keeping still, since it could scarcely be distinguished at
any distance above a hundred yards.
The western banks at one stretch of the river consisted of high
precipitous banks of clay, fringed with timber at the summit. In one of
the many little gullies that cleft the top of the bank into a series
of rolling crescents, a member of the party perceived and drew our
attention to a brown stump which seemed to have an unusual resemblance
to a "grizzly bear," to use his expression. The resemblance was marked
by all to such an extent that the stump was closely watched, and when,
as we were from four to six hundred yards away, the stump picked up its
roots and began to walk down the slope, there was a general scrambling
around for guns, giving the stump an intimation that all was not
right, and with one good look from a couple of knots on its side, it
disappeared among the rest of the timber before a shot at a reasonable
distance could be fired. Thereafter our guns were kept in a more
convenient position for such drift timber.
After we had made a good forty miles that day, we felt perfectly
justified in going into camp and about seven o'clock we commenced
looking for one. The river was uniformly wide, without a break that
would give slack water where we could decrease our rapid pace, and that
day commenced an experience such as I have treated of in the chapter
on rafting. Not knowing the efficacy of this method at the time, we
did not find a camp until 8:15, but back of us lay over forty-five
miles of distance traversed, which amply compensated us for the slight
annoyance. Ahead of us there still hung dense clouds of smoke which
seemed as if the whole world was on fire in that direction. An hour or
so after camping (No. 24) a couple of miners came into camp, ragged
and hungry, the most woe-begone objects I ever saw. They belonged to a
party that numbered nearly a dozen and who had started about a month
ahead of us. These two had left a third at camp about a mile up the
river (from which point they had seen us float by), and were returning
to civilization in order to allow the rest of the party food sufficient
to enable them to continue prospecting. The party, at starting, had
intended to eke out their civilized provisions with large game from
time to time, in order to carry them through the summer. They were
well armed and had several practical hunters with them, who had often
carried out this plan while prospecting in what seemed to be less
favored localities for game. Their experience confirmed the Indian
reports that the caribou and moose follow the snow-line as it retreats
up the mountains in the short summer of this country, in order to avoid
the mosquitoes, with the exception only of a few stragglers here and
there, on which no reliance can be placed. It was certainly a most
formidable undertaking for these ragged, almost barefooted men to walk
back through such a country as I have already described, with but a
mere pittance of food in their haversacks. Possessing no reliable maps,
they were obliged to follow the tortuous river, for fear of losing it,
since it was their only guide out of the country. Large tributaries
coming in from the west, which was the side they had chosen, often
forced them to go many weary miles into the interior before they could
be crossed. They hoped to find an Indian canoe by the time the lakes
were reached, but from the scarcity of these craft I doubt if their
hopes were ever realized. I heard afterward that they had suffered
considerably on this return trip, especially in crossing through the
Perrier Pass, and had to be rescued in the Dayay Valley by Indians from
the Haines Mission.
The country was constantly getting more open as we proceeded, and now
looked like the rolling hill-land of old England. By the word open,
however, I do not mean to imply the absence of timber, for the growth
of spruce and pine on the hills and of the deciduous trees in the
valleys continued as dense as ever, and so remained nearly to the mouth
of the river, varying, however, in regard to size and species.
Upon the 10th, the current did not abate a jot of its swiftness, and
although we started tolerably late, yet when Camp 25 was pitched, at
8:15 P.M., in a thick grove of little poplars (there being no prospect
of a better camp in sight), we had scored 59 miles along the axis of
the stream, the best record for one day made on the river. About 10
o'clock, that morning, we again passed through forest fires that were
raging on both sides of the river, which averages at this point from
300 to 400 yards in width. A commendable scarcity of mosquitoes was
noticed on this part of the river.
Shortly after noon we passed the mouth of a large river, from 150
to 200 yards in width, which my Chilkat Indians told me was called
the Tah-heen'-a by them. The resemblance of this name to that of the
Tahk-heen'-a made me abandon it, and I called it after M. Antoine
D'Abbadie, Membre d'Institut, the French explorer. In regard to Indian
names on this part of the Yukon River, I found that a white man labors
under one difficulty not easy to overcome. The Chilkats, who are,
as it were, the self-appointed masters over the docile and degraded
"Sticks," while in the country of the latter, have one set of names
and the "Sticks," or Tahk-heesh, have another. Oftentimes the name of
a geographical object is the same in meaning, differing only according
to the language. More often the names are radically different, and what
is most perplexing of all, the Sticks will give the same name as the
Chilkats in the presence of the latter, thus acknowledging in the most
humble and abject way their savage suzerainty.
For some time before reaching the mouth of the D'Abbadie high hills
had been rising on the eastern slope, until near this tributary their
character had become truly mountainous. I called them the Semenow
Mountains, after Von Semenow, President of the Imperial Geographical
Society of Russia. They extend from the D'Abbadie River on the north
to the Newberry River (after Professor Newberry, of New York), on the
south. Between them and the Hancock Hills is located an isolated and
conspicuous butte which I named after M. Charles Maunoir, of the Paris
Geographical Society. A very similar hill between the Tahk River and
the Yukon was named after Professor Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, Germany.
The mouth of the D'Abbadie marks an important point on the Yukon River,
as being the place at which gold begins to be found in placer deposits.
From the D'Abbadie almost to the very mouth of the great Yukon, a
panful of "dirt" taken with any discretion from almost any bar or bank,
will when washed give several "colors," to use a miner's phrase. The
Daly River comes in from the east some forty miles further on, measured
along the stream, forming, with the Newberry and D'Abbadie, a singular
trio of almost similar streams. The last-mentioned river I have named
after Chief Justice Daly, of New York, a leading patron of my Franklin
Search expedition. The frequent occurrence of large tributaries flowing
from the east showed this to be the main drainage area of the Upper
Yukon, a rule to which the sole exception of the Nordenskiöld River
(after Baron von Nordenskiöld, the celebrated Swedish explorer of the
Arctic), which comes in from the west, fifty miles beyond the Daly,
and is the peer of any of the three just mentioned. Immediately after
passing those rivers, the Newberry especially, the Yukon became very
much darker in hue, showing, as I believe, that the tributaries
drained a considerable amount of what might be called--possibly
inappropriately--"tundra" land, _i.e._, where the water, saturated
with the dyes extracted from dead leaves and mosses, is prevented by
an impervious substratum of ice from clarifying itself by percolating
through the soil, and is carried off by superficial drainage directly
into the river-beds. Where we camped on the night of the 25th I
noticed that many of the dead seasoned poplars with which we built our
camp-fire and cooked our food had been killed in previous winters by
the hares, that had peeled the bark in a circle around the trunk at
such a uniform height of from twenty to twenty-four inches from the
ground, measured from the lower edge of the girdle, that I could not
but think that this was about the average depth of the winter snow,
upon which the hares stood at the time. On the 11th we drifted over
fifty miles. Shortly after starting we passed the mouth of the Daly,
already referred to, while directly ahead was a noticeable hill named
by the Chilkats Eagles' Nest, and by the Tahk-heesh Otter Tail, each
in their own language. I easily saw my way out of the difficulty by
changing its name to Parkman Peak, after Professor Francis Parkman, the
well-known American historian.
[Illustration: LOOKING BACK AT THE RINK RAPIDS.]
[Illustration: LORING BLUFF.
(Looking up the Yukon River from Von Wilczek Valley)]
We passed the mouth of the Nordenskiöld River on the afternoon of the
11th, and the same day our Indians told us of a perilous rapid ahead
which the Indians of the country sometimes shot in their small rafts;
but they felt very anxious in regard to our bulky vessel of forty-two
feet in length, as the stream made a double sharp bend with a huge
rock in the center. We started late on the morning of the 12th, and
at 10 o'clock stopped our raft on the eastern bank in order to go
ahead and inspect the rapids which we were about to shoot. I found
them to be a contraction of the river bed, into about one-third its
usual width of from four to six hundred yards, and that the stream
was also impeded by a number of massive trap rocks, thirty to forty
feet high, lying directly in the channel and dividing it into three
or four well marked channels, the second from the east, being the one
ordinarily used by the Indians. We rejected this, however, on account
of a sharp turn in it which could not be avoided. These rapids were
very picturesque, as they rushed between the fantastically formed trap
rocks and high towers, two of which were united by a slender natural
bridge of stone, that spanned a whirlpool, making the whole look
like an old ruined stone bridge with but one arch that had withstood
the general demolition. We essayed the extreme right-hand (eastern)
passage, although it was quite narrow and its boiling current was
covered with waves running two and three feet high, but being the
straightest was the best for our long craft. Thousands of gulls had
made the top of these isolated towers their breeding places, for
nothing but winged life could ever reach them, and here, safe from all
intrusion, they reared their young. As we shot by on the raft they
rose in clouds and almost drowned the noise of the roaring waters with
their shrill cries. This extreme right-hand channel through which we
shot, could, I believe, be ascended by a light-draft river steamer
provided with a steam windlass, a sharp bend in the river bank just
before it is entered giving a short and secure hold for a cable rope;
and if I am not too sanguine in my conjectures, the cascades below
the Grand Cañon mark the head of navigation on the Yukon River, as
already noted. I named this picturesque little rapid after Dr. Henry
Rink, of Christiana, a well-known authority on Greenland. After the
Yukon receives the many large tributaries mentioned, it spreads into
quite a formidable magnitude; interspersed with many islands, all of
which at their upper ends, are so loaded with great piles of driftwood,
oftentimes fifteen to twenty feet high, as to make the vista in one of
these archipelagoes quite different according as one looks up or down
the river, the former resembling the picturesque Thousand Isles of the
St. Lawrence, while the latter reveals only a dreary stretch of felled
timber, lying in unpicturesque groups, with the bright green of the
island foliage making the dreariness more conspicuous.
From Lake Kluk-tas-si almost to old Fort Selkirk we observed along
the steep banks of the river a most conspicuous white stripe some two
or three inches in width. After our attention had been attracted to
this phenomenon for two or three days, we proceeded to investigate
it. It averaged about two or three feet below the surface, and seemed
to separate the recent alluvial deposits from the older beds of clay
and drift below, although occasionally it appeared to cut into both,
especially the alluvium. Occasionally, although at very rare intervals,
there were two stripes parallel to each other and separated by a few
inches of black earth, while oftentimes the stripe was plain on one
side of the river and wholly wanting on the other. A close inspection
showed it to be volcanic ash, sufficiently consolidated to have the
consistency of stiff earth, but nevertheless so friable that it could
be reduced to powder by the thumb and fingers. It possibly represents
the result of some exceptionally violent eruption in ancient times from
one or more of the many volcanic cones, now probably extinct, with
which the whole southern coast of Alaska is studded. The ashes were
carried far and wide by the winds, and if the latter then, as now,
blew almost persistently from the southward during the summer (and I
understand the reverse is the case in the winter), we could reasonably
fix the eruption at that time of the year.
[Illustration: INDIAN VILLAGE OF KITL-AH-GON IN THE VON WILCZEK
VALLEY.]
The Yukon River as it widens also becomes very tortuous in many places,
and oftentimes a score of miles is traversed along the axis of the
stream while the dividers on the map hardly show half a dozen between
the same points. In the region about the mouth of the Nordenskiöld
River a conspicuous bald butte could be seen directly in front of
our raft no less than seven times, on as many different stretches of
the river. I called it Tantalus Butte, and was glad enough to see it
disappear from sight.
The day we shot the Rink Rapids, and only a few hours afterward, we
also saw our first moose plowing through the willow brush on the
eastern bank of the stream like a hurricane in his frantic endeavors
to escape, an undertaking in which he was completely successful. When
first seen by one of the party on the raft, his great broad palmated
horns rolling through the top of the willow brake, with an occasional
glimpse of his brownish black sides showing, he was mistaken for an
Indian running down a path in the brake and swaying his arms in the
air to attract our attention. My Winchester express rifle was near me,
and as the ungainly animal came into full sight at a place where a
little creek put into the stream, up the valley of which it started,
I had a fair shot at about a hundred yards; took good aim, pulled
the trigger--and the cap snapped,--and I saved my reputation as a
marksman by the gun's missing fire. This moose and another about four
hundred miles further down the river were the only two we saw in the
Yukon Valley, although in the winter they are quite numerous in some
districts, when the mosquitoes have ceased their onslaughts.
That same evening--the 12th, we encamped near the first Indian village
we had met on the river, and even this was deserted. It is called by
them Kitl-ah-gon (meaning the place between high hills), and consists
of one log house about eighteen by thirty feet, and a score of the
brush houses usual in this country; that is, three main poles, one
much longer than the rest, and serving as a ridge pole on which to
pile evergreen brush to complete the house. This brush is sometimes
replaced by the most thoroughly ventilated reindeer or moose skin, and
in rare cases by an old piece of canvas. Such are the almost constant
habitations of these abject creatures. When I first saw these rude
brush houses, thrown together without regard to order or method, I
thought they were scaffoldings or trellis work on which the Indians,
who lived in the log house, used to dry the salmon caught by them
during the summer, but my guide, Indianne, soon explained that theory
away. In the spring Kitl-ah-gon is deserted by its Indian inmates, who
then ascend the river with loads so light that they may be carried
on the back. By the time winter approaches they have worked so far
away, accumulating the scanty stores of salmon, moose, black bear, and
caribou, on which they are to subsist, that they build a light raft
from the driftwood strewn along banks of the river, and float toward
home, where they live in squalor throughout the winter. These rafts
are almost their sole means of navigation from the Grand Cañon to old
Fort Selkirk, and the triangular brush houses almost their only abodes;
and all this in a country teeming with wood fit for log-houses, and
affording plenty of birch bark from which can be made the finest of
canoes. Kitl-ah-gon is in a beautiful large valley, as its Indian name
would imply (I named it Von Wilczek Valley, after Graf von Wilczek of
Vienna), and I was surprised to see it drained by so small a stream
as the one, but ten or twenty feet wide, which empties itself at the
valley's mouth. Its proximity to the Pelly, twenty miles further on,
forbids its draining a great area, yet its valley is much the more
conspicuous of the two. Photographs of this and adjacent scenes on
the river were secured by Mr. Homan before departing, and a rough
"prospect" in the high bank near the river showed "color" enough to
encourage the hope of some enthusiastic miner in regard to finding
something more attractive. Looking back up the Yukon a most prominent
landmark is found in a bold bluff that will always be a conspicuous
point on the river, and which is shown on page 193. I named this bluff
after General Charles G. Loring, of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
[Illustration: UPPER END OF THE INGERSOL ISLANDS.
(Looking down the river from Von Wilczek Valley).]
From Von Wilczek valley to old Fort Selkirk is but a little over twenty
miles; and the river is so full of islands in many places that for
long stretches we could hardly see both banks at a time, while it was
nothing unusual to have both out of sight at points where the islands
were most numerous. This cluster of islands (named after Colonel
Ingersoll, of Washington), is, I think, situated in the bed of one of
the ancient lakes of which I have spoken, although the opinion of a
professional geologist would be needed to settle such a matter.
At 3 P.M. we reached the site of old Fort Selkirk. All our maps, some
half a dozen in number, except one, had placed the site of Selkirk
at the junction of the Pelly and Yukon between the two, the single
exception noted placing it on the north bank of the Pelly where the
streams unite. Noticing this discrepancy I asked Indianne for an
explanation, and he told me that neither was correct, but that the
chimneys of the old ruins would be found on the south side of the
river about a mile below the junction, and I found him correct, the
chimneys being visible fully a mile before we reached them. Here we
were on land familiar to the footsteps of white men who had made
maps and charts, that rough and rude though they were, were still
entitled to respect, and accordingly at this point I considered that
my explorations had ceased, although my surveys were continued to the
mouth of the river; making the distinction that the first survey only
is an exploration, a distinction which I believe is rapidly coming into
vogue. Altogether on the Yukon River, this far, there had been taken
thirty-four astronomical observations, four hundred and twenty-five
with the prismatic compass, and two for variation of compass. I have no
doubt that these are sufficiently accurate at least for all practical
purposes of geographical exploration in this country, until more exact
surveys are demanded by the opening of some industry or commerce,
should that time ever come. The total length of this portion of the
river just traversed from Haines Mission to Selkirk was five hundred
and thirty-nine miles; the total length of the raft journey from its
commencement at the camp on Lake Lindeman being four hundred and
eighty-seven miles; while we had sailed and "tracked" and rowed across
seven lakes for a distance aggregating one hundred and thirty-four
miles.
[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD FORT SELKIRK.
The sharp bluff across the river, shown between the two right-hand
chimneys, is the same figured more closely on page 209 as being at the
mouth of the Pelly]