This is a new, clean, wooden town, the first of any importance in Yukon
Territory. It has about fifteen hundred inhabitants, is the terminus of
the railroad, and is growing rapidly. The town is on the banks of Lewes
River, or, as they call it here, the Yukon.
There is an air of tidiness, order, and thrift about this town which is
never found in a frontier town in "the states." There are no old
newspapers huddled into gutters, nor blowing up and down the street. Men
do not stand on corners with their hands in their pockets, or whittling
out toothpicks, and waiting for a railroad to be built or a mine to be
discovered. They walk the streets with the manner of men who have work
to do and who feel that life is worth while, even on the outposts of
civilization.
All passengers, freight, and supplies for the interior now pass through
White Horse. The river bank is lined with vast warehouses which, by the
time the river opens in June, are piled to the roofs with freight. The
shipments of heavy machinery are large. From the river one can see
little besides these warehouses, the shipyards to the south, and the
hills.
Passing through the depot one is confronted by the largest hotel, the
White Pass, directly across the street. To this we walked; and from an
upstairs window had a good view of the town. The streets are wide and
level; the whole town site is as level as a parade-ground. The
buildings are frame and log; merchandise is fair in quality and style,
and in price, high. Mounted police strut stiffly and importantly up and
down the streets to and from their picturesque log barracks. One
unconsciously holds one's chin level and one's shoulders high the
instant one enters a Yukon town. It is in the air.
Excellent grounds are provided for all outdoor sports; and in the
evening every man one meets has a tennis racket or a golf stick in his
hand, and on his face that look of enthusiastic anticipation which is
seen only on a British sportsman's face. No American, however
enthusiastic or "keen" he may be on outdoor sports, ever quite gets that
look.
There was no key to our door. Furthermore, the door would not even close
securely, but remained a few hair breadths ajar. There was no bell; but
on our way down to dinner, having left some valuables in our room, we
reported the matter to a porter whom we met in the hall, and asked him
to lock our door.
"It doesn't lock," he replied politely. "It doesn't even latch, and the
key is lost."
Observing our amazed faces, he added, smiling:--
"You don't need it, ladies. You will be as safe as you would be at home.
We never lock doors in White Horse."
This was my first Yukon shock, but not my last. My faith in mounted
police has always been strong, but it went down before that unlocked
door.
"Possibly the people of White Horse never take what does not belong to
them," I said; "but a hundred strangers came in on that train. Might not
_one_ be afflicted with kleptomania?"
"He wouldn't steal here," said the boy, confidently. "Nobody ever
does."
There seemed to be nothing more to say. We left our door ajar and, with
lingering backward glances, went down to the dining room.
Never shall I forget that dinner. It was as bad as our lunch had been
good. The room was hot; the table-cloth was far from being immaculate;
the waitress was untidy and ill-bred; and there was nothing that we
could eat.
Nor were we fastidious. We neither expected, nor desired, luxuries; we
asked only well-cooked, clean, wholesome food; but if this is to be
obtained in White Horse, we found it not--although we did not cease
trying while we were there.
We went out and walked the clean streets and looked into restaurants,
and tried to see something good to eat, or at least a clean table-cloth;
but in the end we went hungry to bed. We had wine and graham wafers in
our bags, and they consoled; but we craved something substantial,
notwithstanding our hearty lunch. It was the air--the light, fresh,
sparkling air of mountain, river, and lake--that gave us our appetites.
When we had walked until our feet could no longer support us, we
returned to the hotel. On the way, we saw a sign announcing ice-cream
soda. We went in and asked for some, but the ice-cream was "all out."
"But we have plain soda," said the man, looking so wistful that we at
once decided to have some, although we both detested it.
He fizzed it elaborately into two very small glasses and led us back
into a little dark room, where were chairs and tables, and he gave us
spoons with which to eat our plain soda. "Let me pay," said my friend,
airily; and she put ten cents on the table.
The man looked at it and grinned. He did not smile; he grinned. Then he
went away and left it lying there.
We tried to drink the soda-water; then we tried to coax it through
straws; finally we tried to eat it with spoons--as others about us were
doing; but we could not. It looked like soap-bubbles and it tasted like
soap-bubbles.
"He didn't see his ten cents," said my friend, gathering it up. "I
suppose one pays at the counter out there. I would cheerfully pay him an
extra ten if I had not gotten the taste of the abominable stuff in my
mouth."
She laid the ten cents on the counter grudgingly.
The man looked at it and grinned again.
"Them things don't go here," said he. "It's fifty cents."
There was a silence. I found my handkerchief and laughed into it,
wishing I had taken a second glass.
"Oh, I see," said she, slowly and sweetly, as a half-dollar slid
lingering down her fingers to the counter. "For the spoons. They were
worth it."
It was two o'clock before we could leave our windows that night. It was
not dark, not even dusk. A kind of blue-white light lay over the town
and valley, deepening toward the hills. In the air was that delicious
quality which charms the senses like perfumes. Only to breathe it in was
a drowsy, languorous joy. At White Horse one opens the magic, invisible
gate and passes into the enchanted land of Forgetfulness--and the gate
swings shut behind one.
Home and friends seem far away. If every soul that one loves were at
death's door, one could not get home in time to say farewell--so why not
banish care and enjoy each hour as it comes?
This is the same reckless spirit which, greatly intensified, possessed
desperate men when they went to the Klondike ten years ago. There was no
telegraph, then, and mails were carried in only once or twice a year.
Letters were lost. Men did not hear from their wives, and, discouraged
and disheartened, decided that the women had died or had forgotten; so
they went the way of the country, and it often came to pass that
Heartbreak Trail led to the Land of Heartbreak.
In the morning we learned that the boat for Dawson was not yet "in,"
and, even if it should arrive during the day,--which seemed to be as
uncertain as the opening of the river in spring,--would not leave until
some time during the night; so at nine o'clock we took the Skaguay train
for the Grand Canyon.
One "oldest" resident of White Horse told us that it was only a mile to
the canyon; another oldest one, that it was four miles; still another,
that it was five; all agreed that we should take the train out and walk
back.
"There's a tram," they told us, "an old, abandoned tram, and you can't
get lost. You've only to follow the tram. Why, a _goose_ couldn't get
lost. Norman McCauley built the tram, and outfits were portaged around
the canyon and the rapids two seasons; then the railroad come in and the
tram went out of business."
We took our bundles of mosquito netting and boarded the train. In summer
the travel is all "in," and we were the only passengers. When the White
Pass Railway Company was organized, stock was worth ten dollars a share;
now it is worth six hundred and fifty dollars, and it is not for sale.
Freight rates are five cents a pound, one hundred dollars a ton, or
fifty in car-load lots, from Skaguay to White Horse. Passenger rates are
supposed to be twenty cents a mile. We paid seventy-five cents to return
to the canyon which we passed the previous day. This rate should make
the distance four miles, and we barely had time to arrange our mosquito
veils, according to the instructions of the conductor, when the train
stopped.
We were told that we might not see a mosquito; and again, that we might
not be able to see anything else.
We were put off and left standing ankle-deep in sand, on the brink of a
precipice, four miles from any human being--in the wilds of Alaska. At
that moment the trainmen looked like old and dear friends.
"The path down is right in front of you," the collector called, as the
train started. "Don't be afraid of the bears! They will not harm you at
this time of the year."
Bears!
We had considered heat, mosquitoes, losing our way, hunger,
exhaustion,--everything, it appeared, except bears. We looked at one
another.
"I had not thought of bears."
"Nor had I."
We looked down at the bushes growing along the canyon; little heat-worms
glimmered in the still atmosphere.
"Perhaps it is an Alaskan joke," I suggested feebly.
We stood for some time trying to decide whether we should make the
descent or return to White Horse, when suddenly the matter was decided
for us. I was standing on the brink of the sandy precipice, down which a
path went, almost perpendicularly, without bend or pause, to the bank of
the river several hundred yards below.
The sandy soil upon which I stood suddenly caved and went down into the
path. I went with it. I landed several yards below the brink, gave one
cry, and then--by no will of my own--was off for the canyon.
The caving of the brink had started a sand and gravel slide; and I,
knee-deep in it, was going down with it--slowly, but oh, most surely.
There was no pausing, no looking back. I could hear my companion calling
to me to "stop"; to "wait"; to "be careful"--and all her entreaties were
the bitterest irony by the time they floated down to me. So long as the
slide did not stop, it was useless to tell me to do so; for I was
embedded in it halfway to my waist. We kept going, slowly and
hesitatingly; but never slowly enough for me to get out.
It was eighty in the shade, and the sand was hot. I was wearing a white
waist, a dark blue cheviot skirt, and patent-leather shoes; and my
appearance, when I finally reached level ground and cool alder trees,
may be imagined. Furthermore, our trunks had been bonded to Dawson, and
I had no extra skirts or shoes with me.
My companion, profiting by my misfortune, had armed herself with an
alpenstock and was "tacking" down the slope. It was half an hour before
she arrived.
I have never forgiven her for the way she laughed.
We soon forgot the bears in the beauty of the scene before us. We even
forgot the comedy of my unwilling descent.
The Lewes River gradually narrows from a width of three or four hundred
yards to one of about fifty yards at the mouth of the Grand Canyon,
which it enters in a great bore.
The walls of the canyon are perpendicular columns and palisades of
basalt. They rise without bend to a height of from one to two hundred
feet, and then, set thickly with dark and gloomy spruce trees, slope
gradually into mountains of considerable height. The canyon is
five-eighths of a mile long, and in that interval the water drops thirty
feet. Halfway through, it widens abruptly into a round water chamber, or
basin, where the waters boil and seethe in dangerous whirlpools and
eddies. Then it again narrows, and the waters rush wildly and
tumultuously through walls of dark stone, veined with gray and lavender.
The current runs fifteen miles an hour, and rafts "shooting" the rapids
are hurled violently from side to side, pushed on end, spun round in
whirlpools, buried for seconds in boiling foam, and at last are shot
through the final narrow avenue like spears from a catapult--only to
plunge madly on to the more dangerous White Horse Rapids.
The waves dash to a height of four or five feet and break into vast
sheets of spray and foam. Their roar, flung back by the stone walls, may
be heard for a long distance; and that of the rapids drifts over the
streets of White Horse like distant, continuous thunder, when all else
is still.
We found a difficult way by which, with the assistance of alpenstocks
and overhanging tree branches, we could slide down to the very water,
just above Whirlpool Basin. We stood there long, thinking of the
tragedies that had been enacted in that short and lonely stretch; of the
lost outfits, the worn and wounded bodies, the spirits sore; of the
hearts that had gone through, beating high and strong with hope, and
that had returned broken. It is almost as poignantly interesting as the
old trail; and not for two generations, at least, will the perils of
those days be forgotten.
It was about noon that, remembering our long walk, we turned reluctantly
and set out for White Horse.
Somewhere back of the basin we lost our way. We could not find the
"tram"; searching for it, we got into a swamp and could not make our way
back to the river; and suddenly the mosquitoes were upon us.
The underbrush was so thick that our netting was torn into shreds and
left in festoons and tatters upon every bush; yet I still bear in my
memory the vision of my friend floating like a tall, blond bride--for my
dark-haired Scotch friend was not with me on the Yukon voyage--through
the shadows of that swamp before her bridal veil went to pieces.
Her bridal glory was grief. In a few moments we were both as black as
negroes with mosquitoes; for, desperately though we fought, we could
not drive them away. The air in the swamp was heavy and still; our
progress was unspeakably difficult--through mire and tall, lush grasses
which, in any other country on earth, would have been alive with snakes
and crawling things.
The pests bit and stung our faces, necks, shoulders, and arms; they even
swarmed about our ankles; while, for our hands--they were soon swollen
to twice their original size.
We wept; we prayed; we said evil things in the hearing of heaven; we
asked God to forgive us our sins, or, at the very least, to punish us
for them in some other way; but I, at least, in the heaviest of my
afflictions, did not forget to thank Him because there are no snakes in
Alaska or the Yukon. It seemed to me, even, in the fervor of my
gratitude, that it had all been planned aeons ago for our special benefit
in this extreme hour.
But I shall spare the reader a further description of our sufferings.
I had always considered the Alaskan mosquito a joke. I did not know that
they torture men and beasts to a terrible death. They mount in a black
mist from the grass; it is impossible for one to keep one's eyes open.
Dogs, bears, and strong men have been known to die of pain and nervous
exhaustion under their attacks.
After an hour of torture we forced our way through the network of
underbrush back to the river, and soon found a narrow path. There was a
slight breeze, and the mosquitoes were not so aggressive. There was
still a three-mile walk, along the shore bordering the rapids, before we
could rest; and during the last mile each step caused such agony that we
almost crawled.
When we removed our shoes, we found them full of blood. Our feet were
blistered; the blisters had broken and blistered again.
[Illustration: Copyright by E. A. Hegg, Juneau Courtesy of Webster &
Stevens, Seattle
TELLER]
But we had seen the Grand Canyon of the Yukon--which Schwatka in an evil
hour named Miles, for the distinguished army-general--and White Horse
Rapids; and seeing them was worth the blisters and the blood. And we
know how far it is from the head of the canyon to White Horse town. No
matter what the three "oldest" settlers, the railway folders, Schwatka,
and all the others say,--_we know_. It is fifteen miles! Also, among
those who scoff at Rex Beach for having the villain in his last novel
eaten up by mosquitoes on the Yukon, we are not to be included.
* * * * *
Numerous and valuable copper mines lie within a radius of fifteen miles
from White Horse. The more important ones are those of the Pennsylvania
syndicate, The B. N. White Company, The Arctic Chief, The Grafter, the
Anaconda, and the Best Chance. The Puebla, operated by B. N. White, lies
four miles northwest of town. It makes a rich showing of magnetite,
carrying copper values averaging four and five per cent, with a small
by-product of gold and silver.
In the summer of 1907 this mine had in sight two hundred and fifty
thousand tons of pay ore. The deepest development then obtained had a
hundred-foot surface showing three hundred feet in width, and stripped
along with the strike of the vein seven hundred feet, showing a solid,
unbroken mass of ore. Tunnels and crosscuts driven from the bottom of
the shaft showed the body to be the same width and the values the same
as the surface outcrop.
The Arctic Chief ranks second in importance; and extensive development
work is being carried on at all the mines. The railway is building out
into the mining district.
Six-horse stages are run from White Horse to Dawson after the river
closes. The distance is four hundred and thirty-five miles; the fare in
the early autumn and late spring is a hundred and twenty-five dollars;
in winter, when sleighing is good, sixty dollars.
White Horse was first named Closeleigh by the railway company; but the
name was not popular. At one place in the rapids the waves curving over
rocks somewhat resemble a white horse, with wildly floating mane and
tail of foam. This is said to be the origin of the name.
White Horse is only eight years old. The hotel accommodations, if one
does not mind a little thing like not being able to eat, are good. The
rooms are clean and comfortable and filled with sweet mountain and river
air.
At eight o'clock that evening the steamer _Dawson_ struggled up the
river and landed within fifty yards of the hotel. We immediately went
aboard; but it was nine o'clock the next morning before we started, so
we had another night in White Horse.
The Yukon steamers are four stories high, with a place for a roof
garden. I could do nothing for some time but regard the _Dawson_ in
silent wonder. It seemed to glide along on the surface of the water,
like a smooth, flat stone when it is "skipped."
The lower deck is within a few inches of the water; and high above is
the pilot-house, with its lonely-looking captain and pilot; and high,
oh, very high, above them--like a charred monarch of a Puget Sound
forest--rises the black smoke-stack, from which issue such vast funnels
of smoke and such slow and tremendous breathing.
This breathing is a sound that haunts every memory of the Yukon. It is
not easy to describe, it is so slow and so powerful. It is not quite
like a cough--unless one could cough _in_ instead of _out_; it is more
like a sobbing, shivering in-drawing of the breath of some mighty
animal. It echoes from point to point, and may be heard for several
miles on a still day. Day and night it moves through the upper air, and
floats on ahead, often echoing so insistently around some point which
the steamer has not turned, that the "cheechaco" is deluded into the
belief that another steamer is approaching.
The captains and pilots of the Yukon are the loneliest-looking men!
First of all, they are so far away from everybody else; and second,
passengers, particularly women, are not permitted to be in the
pilot-house, nor on the texas, nor even on the hurricane-deck, of
steamers passing through Yukon Territory.
Between White Horse and Lake Lebarge the river is about two hundred
yards wide. The water is smooth and deep. It loiters along the shore,
but the current is strong and bears the steamer down with a rush,
compelling it to zigzag ceaselessly from shore to shore.
Going down the Yukon for the first time, one's heart stands still nearly
half the time. The steamer heads straight for one shore, approaches it
so closely that its bow is within six inches of it, and then swings
powerfully and starts for the opposite shore--its great stern wheel
barely clearing the rocky wall.
The serious vexations and real dangers of navigation in this great
river, from source to mouth, are the sand and gravel bars. One may go
down the Yukon from White Horse to St. Michael in fourteen days; and one
may be a month on the way--pausing, by no will of his own, on various
sand-bars.
The treacherous current changes hourly. It is seldom found twice the
same. It washes the sand from side to side, or heaps it up in the
middle--creating new channels and new dangers. The pilot can only be
cautious, untiringly watchful--and lucky. The rest he must leave to
heaven.
It is twenty-seven miles from White Horse to Lake Lebarge. Midway, the
Tahkeena River flows into the Lewes, running through banks of clay.
Lake Lebarge is thirty-two miles long and three and a half wide. The day
was suave. The water was silvery blue, and as smooth as satin; gray,
deeply veined cliffs were reflected in the water, whose surface was not
disturbed by a ripple or wave; the air was soft; farther down the river
were forest fires, and just sufficient haze floated back to give the
milky old-rose lights of the opal to the atmosphere. There is one small
island in the lake. It was not named; and it received the name--as
Vancouver would say--of Fireweed Isle, because it floated like a rosy
cloud on the pale blue water.
The Indians called this lake Kluk-tas-si, and Schwatka favored retaining
it; but the French name has endured, and it is not bad.
The Lake Lebarge grayling and whitefish are justly famed. Steamers stop
at some lone fisherman's landing and take them down to Dawson, where
they find ready sale. At Lower Lebarge there is a post-office and a
telegraph station. Our steamer paused; two men came out in a boat,
delivered a large supply of fish, received a few parcels of mail, and
went swinging back across the water.
A dreary log-cabin stood on the bank, labelled "Clark's Place." A woman
in a scarlet dress, walking through the reeds beside the beach, made a
bit of vivid color. It seemed very, very lonely--with that kind of
loneliness that is unendurable.
A quarter of a mile farther, around a bend in the shore, the boat landed
at the telegraph station, where the Canadian flag was flying.
The different reaches of the Yukon are called locally by very confusing
names. The river rising in Summit Lake on the White Pass railway is
called both Lewes and Yukon; the stretch immediately below Lake Lebarge
is called Lewes, Thirty-Mile, and Yukon. When we reach the old Hudson
Bay post of Selkirk, however, our perplexities over this matter are at
an end. The Pelly River here joins the Lewes, and all agree that the
splendid river that now surges on to the sea is the Yukon.
It is daylight all the time, and no one should sleep between White Horse
and Dawson. Not an hour of this beautiful voyage on the Upper Yukon
should be wasted.
The banks are high and bold, for the most part springing sheer out of
the water in columns and pinnacles of solid stone. There are also
forestated slopes rising to peaks of snow; and the same kind of clay
cliffs that we saw at White Horse, white and shining in the bluish light
of morning, but more beautiful still in the mysterious rosy shadows of
midnight.
There are some striking columns of red rock along Lake Lebarge, and
their reflections in the water at sunset of a still evening are said to
be entrancing: "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."
There are many high hills of soft gray limestone, veined and shaded with
the green of spruce; vast slopes, timbered heavily; low valleys and
picturesque mouths of rivers.
Five-Finger, or Rink, Rapids is caused by a contraction of the river
from its usual width to one of a hundred and fifty yards. Five bulks of
stone, rising to a perpendicular height of forty or fifty feet, are
stretched across the channel. The steamer seems to touch the stone walls
as it rushes through on the boiling rapids.
The Upper Ramparts of the Yukon begin at Fort Selkirk. Here the waters
cut through the lower spurs of the mountains, and for a distance of a
hundred and fifty miles, reaching to Dawson, the scenery is sublime.
"Quiet Sentinel" is a rocky promontory which, seen in profile, resembles
the face and entire figure of a woman. She stands with her head slightly
bowed, as if in prayer, with loose draperies flowing in classic lines to
her feet, and with a rose held to her lips. One of the greatest singers
of the present time might have posed for the "Quiet Sentinel."
* * * * *
Rivers and their valleys are more famed in the northern interior than
towns. Teslin, Tahkeena, Teslintoo, Big and Little Salmon, Pelly,
Stewart, White, Forty-Mile, Indian, Sixty-Mile, Macmillan, Klotassin,
Porcupine, Chandlar, Koyukuk, Unalaklik, Tanana, Mynook,--these be names
to conjure with in the North; while those south of the Yukon and
tributary to other waters have equal fame.
As for the Klondike, it is the only stream of its size, being but the
merest creek and averaging a hundred feet in width, which has given its
name to one whole country and to a portion of another country. During
the past decade it has not been unusual to hear the name Klondike
Country applied to all Alaska and that part of Canada adjacent to the
Klondike district. The tiny, gold-bearing creeks, from ten to twenty
feet wide, tributary to the Klondike, are known by name and fame in all
parts of the world to-day. They are Bonanza, Hunker, Too-Much-Gold,
Eldorado, Rock, North Fork, All-Gold, Gold-Bottom, and others of less
importance. The Bonanza flows into the Klondike at Dawson, and it is but
a half-hour's walk to the dredge at work in this stream.
In 1833 Baron Wrangell directed Michael Tebenkoff to establish Fort St.
Michael's on the small island in Norton Sound to which the name of the
fort was given. Three years later it was attacked by natives, but was
successfully defended by Kurupanoff, who was in charge.
In 1836 a Russian named Glasunoff entered the delta of the Yukon,
ascending the river as far as the mouth of the Anvik River. In 1838
Malakoff extended the exploration as far as Nulato, where he established
a Russian post and placed Notarmi in command.
When the garrison returned to St. Michael's on account of the failure of
provisions, the following winter, natives destroyed the fort and all
buildings which had been erected. It was rebuilt and again destroyed in
1839. In 1841 it once more arose under Derabin, who remained in command.
The following year Lieutenant Zagoskin reached Nulato, ascending to
Nowikakat in 1843.
The Russians were therefore established on the lower Yukon several years
before the English established themselves upon the upper river.
In 1840 Mr. Robert Campbell was sent by Sir George Simpson to explore
the Upper Liard River. Mr. Campbell ascended the river to its head
waters, crossed the mountains, and descended the Pelly River to the
Lewes, where, eight years later, he established Fort Selkirk.
This famous trading post was short-lived. In 1851 it was attacked by a
band of savage Chilkahts and was surrendered, without resistance, by Mr.
Campbell, who had but two men with him at the time. They were not
molested by the Indians, who plundered and burned the warehouses and
forts.
Only the chimneys of the fort were found by Lieutenant Schwatka in 1883.
As late as 1890 this point was considered the head of navigation on the
Yukon.
In 1847 Fort Yukon was established by Mr. A. H. McMurray, of the Hudson
Bay Company. Following McMurray and Campbell, came Joseph Harper, Jack
McQuesten, and A. H. Mayo, who established a trading post on the Yukon
at Fort Reliance, six miles below the mouth of the Klondike.
In 1860 Robert Kennicott reached Fort Yukon, and in the following spring
descended to a point that was for several years known as "the Small
Houses"--the most attractive name in the Yukon country. In 1865 an
expedition was organized in San Francisco by the Western Union Telegraph
Company for the purpose of building a telegraph line from San Francisco
to Behring Strait--which was to be crossed by cable to meet the Russian
government line at the mouth of the Amoor River. One party, headed by
Robert Kennicott, was sent by ocean to the mouth of the Yukon; and
another, in charge of Michael Byrnes, up the inside route to the Stikine
River. Going from that river to the head waters of the Taku, they
followed the chain of lakes and the Hootalinqua River to the Lewes,
which they reached on the Tahco Arm of Lake Tagish. At that time it
became known that the Atlantic cable had proven to be a success, and the
daring and hazardous northern project was abandoned.
As late as the date of this expedition it was not determined positively
whether the Kwihkpak was one of the mouths of the Yukon, or a separate
river. Upon the recall of the telegraph expedition, the only portion of
the great river that had not been explored was the short distance
between Lake Tagish and Lake Lebarge.
There have been several claimants for the honor of having been the first
white man to cross the divide between Lynn Canal and the head waters of
the Yukon. The first was a mythological, nameless Scotchman employed by
the Hudson Bay Company, who is supposed to have reached Fort Selkirk in
1864, and to have proceeded alone over the old "grease-trail" of the
Chilkahts to Lynn Canal. He fell into the hands of the Indians and was
held until ransomed by the captain of the _Labouchere_. Because he had
long, flowing locks of red hair, he was supposed to be a kind of white
shaman, and his life was spared by the savages. This story is doubted
by many authorities.
The honor was claimed, also, by George Holt, who is known to have
crossed one of the passes in 1872, and twice in later years. James Wynn,
of Juneau, went over in 1879 and returned in 1880.
About this time the Indians seemed to realize that packing over the
trail might become more profitable than acting as middlemen between the
coast Indians and those of the interior. In 1881 and 1882 small parties
of miners, and even one or two travelling alone, crossed unmolested. In
1883 Lieutenant Schwatka had his outfit packed over the Dyea--Taiya, or
Dayay, it was then called--Trail; and then, dismissing his packers,
built rafts and made his perilous way down the unknown river--portaging,
"shooting" the Grand Canyon, White Horse, and Rink Rapids, sticking on
sand-bars, almost dying of mosquitoes, and, saddest of all for us who
come after him, naming every object that met his eyes with the
deplorable taste of Vancouver.
Of a river, called Kut-lah-cook-ah by the Chilkahts, he complacently
remarks:--
"I shortened its name and called it after Professor Nourse, of the
United States Naval Observatory."
Nourse, Saussure, Perrier, Payer, Bennett, Wheaton, Prejevalsky,
Richards, Watson, Nares, Bove, Marsh, McClintock, Miles, Richthofen,
Hancock, d'Abbadie, Daly, Nordenskiold, Yon Wilczek; these be the choice
namings that he bestowed upon the beautiful objects along the Yukon. It
is, perhaps, a cause for thankfulness that he did not rename the Yukon
_Schwatka_ or _Ridderbjelka_! However, many of his namings have died a
natural death.
The name Yukon is said to have first been applied to the river in 1846
by Mr. J. Bell, of the Hudson Bay Company, who went over from the
MacKenzie and descended the Porcupine to the great river which the
Indians called Yukon. He retained the name, although for some time it
was spelled Youkon. For this, may he ever be of blessed memory. I should
like to contribute to a monument to perpetuate his name and fame.
To-day Fort Selkirk is of some importance as a trading post and because
of the successful farming of the vicinity, and all passing steamers call
there. Joseph Harper was located there at the time of George Carmack's
brilliant discovery of gold on Bonanza Creek, in August, 1896. Harper
and Joseph Ladue, who was settled as a trader at Sixty-Mile, immediately
transferred their stocks to the junction of the Yukon, Klondike, and
Bonanza, and established the town which they named Dawson, in honor of
Dr. George M. Dawson.
In 1887 Mr. William Ogilvie headed a Canadian exploring party into the
Yukon. His boats were towed up to Taiya Inlet by the United States naval
vessel _Pinta_; and while waiting there for supplies, he, having asked
for, and received, authority from Commander Newell, made surveys at the
heads of the inlets. It was only through the intercession of the
commander, furthermore, that Mr. Ogilvie was permitted by the Chilkahts
to proceed over the pass. "I am strongly of the opinion," Mr. Ogilvie
says in his report, "that these Indians would have been much more
difficult to deal with if they had not known that Commander Newell
remained in the inlet to see that I got through in safety."
Miners had been going over the trail for several years, but the
Chilkahts were enraged at the British because employees of the Hudson
Bay Company had killed some of their tribe.
In the meantime Dr. George M. Dawson, heading another Dominion party,
was working along the Stikine River.
Dr. Dawson and Mr. Ogilvie--afterward governor of Yukon territory--made
extensive surveys and explorations throughout the Yukon district; their
reports upon the country are voluminous, thorough, and of much interest.
They were both men of superior attainments, and their influence upon the
country and upon the people who rushed into the new mining district was
great. To-day the name of ex-Governor Ogilvie is heard more frequently
in the Klondike than that of any other person, even though his residence
is elsewhere. He served as governor during the reckless and picturesque
days when to be a governor meant to be a man in the highest sense of the
word.