The Yukon is a mighty and a beautiful river, and its memory becomes more
haunting and more compelling with the passage of time. From the slender
blue stream of its source, it grows, in its twenty-three hundred miles
of wandering to the sea, to a width of sixty miles at its mouth. In its
great course it widens, narrows, and widens; cuts through the foot-hills
of vast mountain systems, spreads over flats, makes many splendid
sweeping curves, and slides into hundreds of narrow channels around
spruce-covered islands.
It is divided into four great districts, each of which has its own
characteristic features. The valley extending from White Horse to some
distance below Dawson is called the "upper Yukon," or "upper Ramparts,"
the river having a width of half a mile and a current of four or five
miles an hour, and the valley in this district being from one to three
miles in width.
Following this are the great "Flats"--of which one hears from his first
hour on the Yukon; then, the "Ramparts"; and last, the "lower Yukon" or
"lower river."
The Flats are vast lowlands stretching for two hundred miles along the
river, with a width in places of a hundred miles. Their very monotony is
picturesque and fascinates by its immensity. Countless islands are
constantly forming, appearing and disappearing in the whimsical changes
of the currents. Indian, white, and half-breed pilots patrol these
reaches, guiding one steamer down and another up, and by constant
travel keeping themselves fairly familiar with the changing currents.
Yet even these pilots frequently fail in their calculations.
At Eagle a couple of gentlemen joined our party down the river on the
_Campbell_, expecting to meet the same day and return on the famous
_Sarah_--as famous as a steamer as is the island of the same name on the
inland passage; but they went on and on and the _Sarah_ came not. One
day, two days, three days, went by and they were still with us. One was
in the customs service and his time was precious. Whenever we approached
a bend in the river, they stood in the bow of the boat, eagerly staring
ahead; but not until the fourth day did the cry of "_Sarah_" ring
through our steamer. Hastening on deck, we beheld her, white and
shining, on a sand-bar, where she had been lying for several days,
notwithstanding the fact that she had an experienced pilot aboard.
Throughout the Flats lies a vast network of islands, estimated as high
as ten thousand in number, threaded by countless channels, many of which
have strong currents, while others are but still, sluggish sloughs.
Mountains line the far horizon lines, but so far away that they
frequently appear as clouds of bluish pearl piled along the sky; at
other times snow-peaks are distinctly visible. Cottonwoods, birches, and
spruce trees cover the islands so heavily that, from the lower deck of a
steamer, one would believe that he was drifting down the single channel
of a narrow river, instead of down one channel of a river twenty miles
wide.
It is within the Arctic Circle that the Yukon makes its sweeping bend
from its northwest course to the southwest, and here it is entered by
the Porcupine; twenty miles farther, by the Chandelar; and just above
the Ramparts, by the Dall. These are the three important rivers of this
stretch of the Yukon.
Many complain of the monotony of the Flats; but for me, there was not
one dull or uninteresting hour on the Yukon. In my quiet home on summer
evenings I can still see the men taking soundings from the square bow of
our steamer and hear their hoarse cries:--
"Six feet starboard! Five feet port! Seven feet starboard! Five feet
port! Five feet starboard! Four feet port!" At the latter cry the silent
watchers of the pilot-house came to attention, and we proceeded under
slow bell until a greater depth was reached.
On the shores, as we swept past, we caught glimpses of dark figures and
Indian villages, or, farther down the river, primitive Eskimo
settlements; and the stillness, the pure and sparkling air, the
untouched wilderness, the blue smoke of a wood-chopper's lonely fire,
the wide spaces swimming over us and on all sides of us, charmed our
senses as only the elemental forces of nature can charm. One longs to
stay awake always on this river; to pace the wide decks and be one with
the solitude and the stillness that are not of the earth, as we know it,
but of God, as we have dreamed of him.
The blue hills of the Ramparts are seen long before entering them. The
valley contracts into a kind of canyon, from which the rampart-like
walls of solid stone rise abruptly from the water. The hills are not so
high as those of the Upper Ramparts, which bear marked resemblance to
the lower; and although many consider the latter more picturesque, I
must confess that I found no beauty below Dawson so majestic as that
above. Many of the hills here have a rose-colored tinge, like the hills
of Lake Bennett.
In places the river does not reach a width of half a mile and is deep
and swift. The shadows between the high rock-bluffs and pinnacled cliffs
take on the mysterious purple tones of twilight; many of the hills are
covered with spruce, whose dark green blends agreeably with the gray
and rose color. The bends here are sharp and many; at the Rapids the
current is exceedingly rapid, and Dall reported a fall of twelve feet to
the half mile, with the water running in sheets of foam over a granite
island in the middle of the stream. This was on June 1, 1866. In August,
1883, Schwatka, after many hours of anxiety and dread of the reputed
rapids, inquired of Indians and learned that he had already passed them.
They were not formidable at the time of our voyage,--August,--and it is
only during high stages of water that they present a bar to navigation.
We reached Rampart at six o'clock in the morning. After Tanana, this is
the loveliest place on the Yukon. Its sparkling, emerald beauty shone
under a silvery blue sky. There was a long street of artistic log houses
and stores on a commanding bluff, up which paths wound from the water.
Roofs covered with earth and flowers, carried out in brilliant bloom
over the porches, added the characteristic Yukon touch. Every door-yard
and window blazed with color. Narrow paths ran through tall fireweed and
grasses over and around the hill--each path terminating, like a winding
lane, in a pretty log-cabin home. There was an atmosphere of
cleanliness, tidiness, and thrift not found in other settlements along
the Yukon.
Captain Mayo, who, with McQuesten, founded Rampart in 1873, still lives
here. The two commercial companies have large stores and warehouses; and
residences were comfortably, and even luxuriously, furnished.
Rampart is two hundred and thirty miles below Fort Yukon, and is about
halfway between Dawson and the sea. It has a population of four or five
hundred people--when they are in from the mines!--and almost as many
fighting, hungry dogs. Its street winds, and the buildings follow its
windings; sometimes it stops altogether, and the buildings stop with
it--then both go on again; and in front of all the public buildings are
clean rustic benches, where one may sit and "look to the rose about
him." The river here is half a mile wide, and on its opposite shore the
green fields of the government experimental station slope up from the
water.
Gold was discovered on Minook Creek, half a mile from town, in 1895, and
the camp is regarded as one of the most even producers in Alaska. In
1906, despite an unusually dry season, the output of the district was
three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
In the afternoon of the same day we reached Tanana, which is, as I have
said, the most beautiful place on the Yukon. It has a splendid site on a
level plateau; and all the springlike greenness, the cleanliness and
order, the luxuriant vegetation, of Dawson, are outdone here. One walks
in a maze of delight along streets of tropic, instead of arctic, bloom.
The log houses are set far back from the streets, and the deep dooryards
are seas of tremulous color, through which neat paths lead to
flower-roofed homes. Cleanliness, color, and perfume are everywhere
delights, but on the lonely Yukon their unexpectedness is enchanting.
In 1900 Fort Gibbon was established here, and this post has the most
attractive surroundings of any in Alaska. Tanana is situated at the
mouth of the Tanana River, seventy-five miles below Rampart, and
passengers for Fairbanks connect here with luxurious steamers for a
voyage of three hundred miles up the Tanana. It is a beautiful voyage
and it ends at the most progressive and metropolitan town of the North.