wash gravel and of terrace _débris_ and the great heights which they
occupy. While I have not myself observed such evidences of water
action on the very summit of the Dome, there is reason to believe that
they do or at least did exist. Most of this summit, in its narrowed
form and rapidly descending slopes, has been, if one may use the
expression, more than washed off, and could hardly be expected to
retain for any great length of time accumulations of loose fragmental
material. But at least its far-off continuation near the source (right
fork) of Eldorado Creek bears some of it on its shoulder, and I have
also seen it in an excavation on the loftily located Claim 71 of that
stream. Nearly abreast of the international boundary, the one hundred
and forty-first meridian of west longitude (Greenwich), McConnell and
Russell noted the terrace line of the Yukon River as high up as seven
hundred and thirty feet, which is still about four hundred feet below
the point where I obtained wash gravel on the peak back of Dawson; but
Dr. George Dawson found the terraces on Dease Lake to rise to
thirty-six hundred and sixty feet, and elsewhere he calls attention to
having come across water-rolled gravel at an elevation of forty-three
hundred feet, which would probably exceed by about six hundred feet
the culminating point of Dome Mountain. Such high water could, with
the existing configuration of the land surface, hardly define any
other feature than that of a large interior sea or of a series of lake
basins; and while it may be argued that there has been sufficient
degradation of the land surface since the period of the height of
water to permit us to reconstruct a contour that would be in harmony
with altered and reduced river courses, and relieve us from the
necessity of invoking the assistance of lacustrine bodies in a
solution of the problem, it does not seem to me likely that this has
been the case. The physiognomy of the upper Yukon Valley supports this
contention, and even to-day the river has not yet fully escaped from a
lacustrine condition which is merely fragmental of a previous state.
On one point bearing upon the succession of events in the upper Yukon
Valley, and which has its connection with the history of the Klondike
region, my conclusions differ somewhat from those that have been
expressed by Dawson. This pertains to the deposit of volcanic ash
which is so marked a feature of the accumulations of the river's
banks. For nearly three hundred miles by the course of the river a
stratum of pumiceous ash, ordinarily not more than four or six inches
in thickness, constitutes almost without break the top layer but one
of the banks on either side, and that which is above it is generally
only the insignificant soil or subsoil which immediately supports the
vegetation. So persistent is this ash layer, and so uniformly does it
hold to an even thickness and to its exact position beneath the
surface, that without further examination one would be tempted to
believe from a little distance that it was merely the ordinary subsoil
layer from which the color had been leached out by vegetable growths.
Here and there, where there have been local disturbances or water
washings have produced concentration, it may have acquired a
development of a few feet, and occasionally it has accommodated itself
to flexures or saggings of the deposits which it normally caps as a
horizontal zone. Dr. Dawson, in commenting upon its occurrence,
correctly assumes that it represents one continuous volcanic eruption,
the date of which might fall well within a period of a few hundred
years, and he speculates as to its being possibly associated with an
outbreak from Mount Wrangel or some active cone which is represented
by the Indians to exist in the region of the upper White River. Beyond
this, from the normality of its position, and the assumed fact that no
fluviatile or aqueous deposits have been found overlying it, the same
observer argues that the outbreak must have taken place subsequent to
the formation of the present river courses and their valleys, a
conclusion in which I do not see my way to concur. The only
satisfactory interpretation of this vast uniformly placed and
uniformly layered deposit of ash is to me that which assumes a
deposition in a widely extended lake basin, or in shallow lagoon
waters which already in part occupied the present valley surfaces. In
such waters precipitation from long-continued suspension would proceed
gradually and evenly, to the end of shaping a deposit of nearly
uniform development and of vast extent. Such depositions we find in
the valleys lying north of the City of Mexico (Zumpango, Tequixquiac)
and in the lacustrine area of Anahuac, also in the famous
fossiliferous basin of Florissant, in Colorado. With the subsequent
formation or reformation of the river's course we should have this
deposit cut through, with the result of presenting the even layer
which is so persistent in its following. This method would also
account for the anomalous position in which we find the ash deposits;
while still holding the same relation to the top surface, it
occasionally rises far above what might be assumed to be its normal
height or level above the water's surface--from four to ten feet--a
condition that would hardly be in consonance with the assumption that
the ash was deposited after the actual river channels had been cut.
But other and more direct proof of aqueous occupation after the laying
of the ash is had in the fact that in one place at least, and
doubtless many more such will be found on closer investigation,
lacustrine or fluviatile shells (subfossils) occur in the layer
overlying the ash. A locality of this kind is found on the right bank
not many miles above the Five Finger Rapids. Here, at a height of not
more than four feet above the river, I had the pleasure of determining
species of _Limnea_ and _Physa_, associated singularly enough with
_Helix_, in the layers immediately above and below the ash bed, and in
both horizons the species were identical. This isolated fact speaks
volumes for itself. Had this been the region of Helena, Ark., I should
have been prompted to class the bed with a portion of the Mississippi
loess. What interested me further in this connection was the fact that
up to this time I had failed to bring to light one solitary mollusk
from the upper Yukon, and to all inquiries regarding the existence of
shellfish in this northern water invariably a negative reply was
received. Only on that day did I again obtain success in my
malacological effort, the almost icy waters rewarding my search with a
single specimen--unfortunately subsequently lost--of a _Bythinella_,
or some closely related type, so that even to-day my knowledge does
not permit me to state if the subfossil species of the banks have
their living representatives, either specific or generic, in the
almost wholly noncalcareous waters of the existing river. The question
from more points than one is interesting, and deserves more than
passing attention. It may be remarked in this place that the only
other fluviatile invertebrate which I found in these waters was a
white siliceous coating sponge, whose statoblasts were well visible to
the naked eye. Unfortunately, the loss of my specimens has prevented
determination, a circumstance the more to be deplored as these
fresh-water sponges are the most northern in habit known to the
zoölogist.[3]
[Footnote 3: Professor Russell, in discussing the flood-plain
deposits of the Yukon about the mouth of the Porcupine River, says
that "fresh-water shells were frequently observed in the finer
deposits." Unfortunately, no statement is made of the types which
they represent.]
There is evidence of another kind pointing to a comparative newness of
much of the present course of the Yukon. The feature has been noticed
alike by nongeographers and geographers, and by geologists as well,
that the arm which carries the greatest volume of water does not
everywhere occupy the main orographic valley. Thus, as Dawson has well
pointed out, in coming up the stream the valley of the Big Salmon
appears to be more nearly the continuation of the main valley below
than that which still (and properly) continues to be designated the
Lewes (Yukon) above; and this is still more markedly the case with the
Hootalinqua (Teslin-too or Newberry River) at the confluence with the
Thirty Mile. Even the valley of the Pelly at its junction with the
Yukon, near Fort Selkirk, would perhaps to most persons suggest itself
as the main channel of erosion. There is no hardship to geological
facts in invoking the aid of great displacements to account for a
condition which to my mind is well impressed upon the landscape; for,
even without the proper or fully satisfactory evidence in hand to
support the view, I fully believe that the greater part of the upper
Yukon tract only recently emerged from a lacustrine condition. Nor is
it to me by any means certain that this emergence or final
reconstruction of the land surface into valley tracts need be more
than a few hundred years old, or necessarily older than the deposition
of the volcanic ash, which is hypothetically carried back to Dawson to
a possible five hundred years or so. If it should be objected that we
know of no such rapid change in the configuration of a land surface
brought about by aqueous agencies, it might be answered that the
mechanics of erosion in a pre-eminently drift-covered region, under
subarctic conditions and with the influence of a most powerful and
energetic stream near by, have neither been studied nor observed.
[Illustration: SLUICING ON THE BONANZA.]
Let us examine the possibilities of the case. As an initiatory premise
it might be assumed, without much chance of either affirmation or
denial, that the degradation of the land surface in the immediate
valleys of the main streams is or has been in the past taking place at
the rate of half a line per day; so far as the eye and ordinary
instruments of measurement are concerned this is a quite inappreciable
amount, and I see no reason why it may not be assumed as the working
power of the Yukon. With this rate of erosion a valley trough or
contour of about a foot and a third might be formed in the period of a
single year, or of nearly seven hundred feet in five hundred years;
and if we lessen the daily erosion to one quarter of the amount
stated--i. e., to an eighth of a line--we should still have in this
same period of five hundred years, speaking broadly, a trough of about
one hundred and seventy-five feet depth, quite sufficient to have
brought about most marked changes in the aspect of a drift-covered
lagoon region, and perhaps ample to account for those physiognomic
peculiarities which have been discovered. I am fully impressed with
the magnitude of the distance which separates the amount of erosion
which I have assumed--an eighth of a line daily--from the "one foot in
six thousand years," which has been preached categorically from
lecturn and text-book for the better part of a quarter of a century
and threatens to make dogma for still another period of equal length;
but the conditions here are entirely different from those of average
continental denudation--in fact, have as nearly nothing in common as
they can have. My observations in the tropics and subtropics have most
impressively taught me the lesson of rapid changes, and with the
conditions that are and have been associated with the Yukon, I am
prepared for the lesson of equal change in the north. But, as a matter
of fact, are we not taught of a removal in the west central United
States of some twelve thousand feet of rock strata in a period not
impossibly considerably less than two hundred thousand years? The one
foot in sixteen years has here likewise nothing in common with the
"prevailing" rate of continental destruction.
While stalled on a bar on the Yukon River, about two miles above Fort
Selkirk, I was much impressed with the mechanical work of the stream.
The gravel and pebbles were being hurried along rapidly under the lash
of a five to six mile current, and their groans were audible
frequently when they themselves were invisible. Every few minutes our
steamer would swerve from her seemingly fixed position by the
undercutting of the bar, and perhaps it would be not far from the
truth in saying that we should be to-day in very nearly the same
position that we were in then had it not been for this undermining
action of the stream. Let it be remembered that the Yukon has a
current ranging up to seven miles, or to eight, as some of the
navigators say, and that in certain months it is swiftly ice-bound
both on top and at the bottom, and heavily charged with bowlders, and
one may well realize the work of which it is capable. That with which
I have debited it is purely hypothetical or conjectural, but it may
serve a purpose in the elucidation of the main problem.
In its more distinctively geological relations the Klondike region may
be broadly defined as one composed in the main of schists and
schistose rocks, defining an area of considerable disturbance. Owing
to the limited number of outcrops, by far the greater part of the
surface being still buried beneath vegetation of one kind or another,
the variety of rocks included within the region can best be told from
an examination of creek bowlders or the different dumps that mark
hundreds of diggings and prospect holes along the various valleys and
gulches. Some of this output, in which may be found fragments of
quartz and quartzitic schist, of mica, hornblende, and chloritic
schists and slates, of granitic gneiss and gneissose granite,
porphyry, diabase, diorite, and quartz (quartzite), is probably
extra-territorial, having been washed in at a time when a more
extensive foreign water had access to the region; but there is enough
of outcrop to show that most, and perhaps all, of the types here
indicated are really a part of the tract. The schists and schistose
rocks, whose age from direct evidence in the field I was unable to
determine, but which are almost certainly the equivalents in greater
part of the Birch Creek series, as described by Spurr from the
American side (Birch Creek and Forty Mile districts), constitute the
kernel of the region. Observation is as yet too limited to permit of a
positive classification of these schists according to their natural
relations, and the reasons that have prompted some to consider them as
being in part of pre-Paleozoic age are not quite clear to me, although
they may easily be such. Of granite and true gneiss in position I saw
practically nothing, and the limestones and marble were not sufficient
in quantity to permit me to identify the heavy beds which are
considered to be the distinguishing element of the Forty Mile series.
The beds where exposed show in most parts steep dips--in places
standing almost vertically--but in how far these dips are uniform or
the reverse, or in any way define a line of strike with anticlinals
and synclinals, must be left for future close examination to
ascertain.
[Illustration: APPROXIMATE MAP OF THE KLONDIKE REGION]
Great lumps of white or pinkish quartz, some of them _in situ_, others
washed or rolled down the open slopes, occur at many points of some of
the mountain elevations, indicating the presence of dikes and gash
veins, and in part of interstratified beds containing this material. I
found much of it at several "horizons" of the slope back of French
Hill, and also as a cap overlying the badly cleaved and fragmented
schists of the summit (three thousand feet?) of the prominent knob
which dominates this region. The same type of "kidney" quartz appears
at repeated intervals on the slope leading up to the Dome, almost
immediately after leaving the junction of Carmack's Fork with the
Bonanza, and also on the saddle ridge which might properly be
considered to be a part of the summit of Dome Mountain. Prospectors
have in nearly all cases staked these assumed outcrops of quartz,
recognizing them as ledges, and in a number of them have claimed the
discovery of the "mother lode." So far as visible gold is concerned, I
have in nearly all cases found them to be absolutely barren, and I do
not think at this time that there is much chance of finding anything
materially valuable in them, although events might prove the reverse.
Most of the quartz that has so far been discovered in direct
association with the gold--that is to say, wrapped up with or within
itself, as in the case of the quartz-gold nuggets of French Hill--is
of a gray-blue or pinkish tint and of a granular and nonspathic type,
therefore differing materially in aspect and structure from the quartz
of the hillsides and from the greater number of the quartz bowlders
that are contained in the dumps or have been removed from bed rock.
Some of the bowlders or rolled pebbles containing coarse gold are of
the same character of quartz as the quartz of the hillsides. Notably
one such was shown to me as coming from a high-bench claim (Millett's)
on Adams Hill (left "limit" [bank] of Bonanza, between Little Skookum
and Adams Creek), and other similar fragments taken from the rock _in
situ_ were observed on Gay Gulch and the ridge which separates the
head waters of this stream from those of Eldorado. In a dump at the
mouth of Gay Gulch (a right-hand tributary of Eldorado abreast of
Claim 37) I found fragments of rotted quartz which were well sprinkled
with fine gold.
It does not by any means appear so conclusive to me as seemingly it
does to Professor Spurr that because in some gulches the gold heads up
in increasing quantities the nearer we approach the beginnings (heads)
of these gulches, and that with this approach the coarseness of the
grains and nuggets likewise increases, we are necessarily forced to
assume that the travel of the gold at large has been confined within
the boundaries of the gulches in which it is at present contained, or
that its source is to be sought near by. A number of the most "solid"
streams of the Klondike region, such as the Bonanza and Eldorado, if
we are permitted to judge from the evidence of outputs and of
prospects up to the present time, hardly sustain the conditions of
the American creeks. The richest claims on the Eldorado are, starting
from its mouth--the junction of the Bonanza--4, 5, 12, 13, 29, 30, 31,
36, with other claims abundantly rich between these. Number 30 is, I
believe, generally considered to be the banner claim, and it is
situated about three miles up--far enough, perhaps, to sustain in a
superficial way Professor Spurr's generalization as to location--and
above it 36 is not unlikely to show up as well as any of the other
creek claims below. But the valley of Eldorado, whether constricted or
open, continues for miles beyond either of its two head forks--that
which is known as Eldorado proper, and the one, Chief, or Chief Isaac
Gulch, which is geographically the continuation. So little has been
found above 36 or 37 that the stream in that part is ordinarily spoken
of as being barren. Again, so far as the tributaries on either side of
Eldorado are concerned, and the possibility that they are responsible
for the gold that is contained in the main stream between 37 and 1
rather than the Eldorado itself--a condition in no way impossible or
improbable--it can only be said for them that up to this time they
have, with the possible exception of Oro Grande (tributary to Eldorado
abreast of Claim 31), yielded very little gold themselves, and have
hardly given indication of containing much of a supply. I have used
the words "up to this time" advisedly, because I am aware upon how
little the evil reputation of a gulch rests, and how prospectors
deceive themselves by the character of their defective prospect holes.
Hence, while my argument is drawn from existing evidence, it can not
be assumed that this evidence is by any means sufficient to warrant a
conclusion. It is by no means unlikely that some of the lateral
gulches will really be found to be largely gold-bearing, and of such
Gay Gulch and the left-fork ascending of Eldorado (Eldorado proper
above 47) appear to me the most promising.[4]
[Footnote 4: Since writing the above intelligence has been
received of the location of a rich pay streak on Gay Gulch.]
The condition of the Bonanza is very similar to that of the Eldorado.
Its greatest wealth, as so far determined, is concentrated in its
middle course, beginning about five miles above its mouth and
terminating some six miles below its source. But very little gold, if
the information given to me is correct, has been taken out from or
determined to exist in the tract lying above Claim 42 above Discovery,
or the mouth of Victoria Gulch (left-hand tributary, whose source is
found on a ridge from the opposite side of which Gay Gulch descends to
the Eldorado), and yet the valley continues open and without material
change for at least two miles, and with a certain contraction for four
miles more. Barring the Eldorado and the streams coming in from the
same side nearest to it--Big Skookum, Little Skookum, and Adams--few
if any of the side gulches of the Bonanza are known to be really rich
in gold, and for the moment, at least, they can hardly be looked upon
as having furnished the main supply to the main stream.
THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES.
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,
PRINCIPAL OF THE TUSKEGEE NORMAL INSTITUTE.
I have been asked a number of times during the last few months the
cause of and the cure for the riots that have taken place recently in
North Carolina and South Carolina. I am not at all sure that what I
shall say will answer these questions in a satisfactory way, nor shall
I attempt to narrow my expressions to a mere recital of what has taken
place in these two States. I prefer to discuss the problem in a
broader manner.
In the first place, in politics I am a Republican, but have always
refrained from activity in party measures, and expect to pursue this
policy in the future; so in this article I shall refrain, as I always
have done, from entering upon any discussion of mere party politics,
in the narrow and usual sense. What I shall say of politics will bear
upon the race problem and the civilization of the South in the larger
sense. In no case would I permit my political relations to stand in
the way of my speaking and acting in the manner that I believe is
going to be for the permanent interest of my race and the whole South,
regardless of mere party name and organization.
In 1873 the negro in the South had reached the point of greatest
activity and influence in public life, so far as the mere holding of
elective office was concerned. From this date those who have kept up
with the history of the South have noticed that the negro has steadily
lost in the number of elective offices held. In saying this I do not
mean that the negro has gone backward in the real and more fundamental
things of life. On the contrary, he has gone forward faster than has
been true of any other race in history, under anything like similar
circumstances.
If we can answer the question as to why the negro has lost ground in
the matter of holding elective office in the South, perhaps we shall
find that our reply will prove to be our answer also as to the cause
of the recent riots in North Carolina and South Carolina. Before
beginning a discussion of the question I have asked, I wish to say
that this change in the political influence of the negro has continued
from year to year, notwithstanding the fact that for a long time he
was protected politically, by force of Federal arms and the most rigid
Federal laws, and still more effectively, perhaps, by the voice and
influence in the halls of legislation of such advocates of the rights
of the negro race as Charles Sumner, Benjamin F. Butler, James A.
Garfield, Oliver P. Morton, Carl Schurz, and Roscoe Conkling; and on
the stump and through the public press by those great and powerful
negroes, Frederick Douglass, John M. Langston, Blanche K. Bruce, John
R. Lynch, P. B. S. Pinchback, Robert Browne Elliot, and many others;
but the negro has continued for twenty years to have fewer
representatives in the State and national legislatures. The reduction
has continued until now it is to the point where, with few exceptions,
he is without representatives in the lawmaking bodies of the State and
of the nation.