low, sandy points, and dotted with small, well-timbered islands,
brought us to the Little Salmon (Daly of Schwatka), a small and
unimportant stream entering upon the east. One of the most remarkable
objects along the river, located just below the Little Salmon, is a
huge hemisphere of rock, called the “Eagle’s Nest,” rising abruptly
from a gravel slope on the east bank, to a height of about five hundred
feet. It is of a light grey colour, but what the character of the rock
is I could not determine, as I saw it only from the river, which is
about a quarter of a mile distant.
We passed the mouth of the Nordenskiold on the 9th of August. The river
here makes a loop of eight miles round a hill on the east bank named by
Schwatka, Tantalus Butte. The distance across from point to point is
only half a mile.
Early the next day we heard the booming of the Rink Rapids in the
distance, and it was not long before they were in sight. These rapids
are known to miners as Five Finger Rapids, from the fact that five
large, bold masses of rock stand in mid-channel. This obstruction backs
up the water so as to raise it about a foot, causing a swell below for
a few yards.
Six miles below Rink Rapids are what are known as “Little Rapids.” This
is simply a barrier of rocks which extends from the westerly side of
the river about half-way across. Over this barrier there is a ripple
which would offer no great obstacle to the descent in a good canoe.
About five miles above Pelly River there is another lake-like expanse
filled with islands. The river here is nearly a mile wide, and so
numerous and close are the islands that it is impossible to tell where
the shores of the river are. The current, too, is swift, leading one to
suppose the water shallow; but I think that even here a channel deep
enough for such boats as will navigate this part of the river, could
easily be found. Schwatka named this group “Ingersoll Islands.”
About a mile below the junction with the Lewes, and on the south side,
stands all that remains of the only permanent trading-post ever built
by white men in the district. This post was established by Robert
Campbell, for the Hudson’s Bay Company, in the summer of 1848. It was
built upon the point of land between the two rivers, but this location
proving untenable, on account of flooding by ice-jams in the spring,
it was, in the season of 1852, moved across the river to where the
ruins now stand. It appears that the houses composing the post were
not finished when the Indians from the coast on Chilkat and Chilkoot
Inlets, came down the river to put a stop to the competitive trade
which Mr. Campbell had inaugurated and which they found to seriously
interfere with their profits. Their method of trade appears to have
been then pretty much as it is now--very one-sided. What they found
convenient to take by force, they took; and what they found convenient
to pay for, they paid for--at their own price.
Rumours had reached the post that the coast Indians contemplated
a raid, and, in consequence, the friendly Indians in the vicinity
remained about nearly all summer. Unfortunately, they went away for
a short time, and, during their absence, the coast Indians arrived
and pillaged the place, and set fire to it, leaving nothing but the
remains of two chimneys, which are still standing. This raid and
capture took place on Sunday, the 1st of August, 1852. Mr. Campbell was
ordered to leave the country within twenty-four hours, and accordingly
he dropped down the river. On his way he met some of the local Indians,
and returned with them, but the robbers had made their escape. Mr.
Campbell went on down the river until he met the outfit for his post
on its way up from Fort Yukon. He turned it back. He then ascended
the Pelly, crossed to the Liard, and reached Fort Simpson, on the
Mackenzie, late in October.
Nothing more was ever done in the vicinity of Fort Selkirk by the
Hudson’s Bay Company after these events, and in 1869 the company
was ordered by Capt. Chas. W. Raymond, who represented the United
States Government, to evacuate the post at Fort Yukon, which he had
ascertained to be west of the 141st meridian. The post was occupied by
the company, however, for some time after the receipt of the order,
until Rampart House, which was intended to be on British territory,
and to take the trade previously done at Fort Yukon, was built. Under
present conditions the company cannot very well compete with the Alaska
Fur Company, whose agents do the only trade in the district, and they
appear to have abandoned--for the present at least--all attempts
to do any trade nearer to it than Rampart House, to which point,
notwithstanding the distance and difficulties in the way, many of the
Indians on the Pelly-Yukon make a trip every two or three years to
procure goods in exchange for their furs.
On the 19th I resumed my journey northwards. Opposite Fort Selkirk, the
Pelly-Yukon River is about one-third of a mile broad; and it maintains
this width down to White River, a distance of ninety-six miles. Islands
are numerous, so much so that there are few parts of the river where
one or more are not in sight; many of them are of considerable size,
and nearly all are well timbered.
Between Stewart and White Rivers the river spreads out to a mile and
upwards in width, and is a maze of islands and bars. Stewart River,
which was reached on the following day, enters from the east in the
middle of a wide valley, with low hills on both sides, rising on the
north side in clearly marked steps or terraces to distant hills of
considerable height. The river, a short distance up, is two hundred
yards in width, the current slack, the water shallow and clear, but
dark-coloured; while at the mouth, I was fortunate enough to meet a
miner, named McDonald, who had spent the whole of the summer of 1887
on the river and its branches, prospecting and exploring. He gave me a
good deal of information, which I have incorporated in my map of the
district. This man had ascended two of the main branches of the river.
At the head of one of them he found a large lake, which he named Mayhew
Lake. On the other branch he found falls, which he estimated to be from
one to two hundred feet in height. McDonald went on past the falls to
the head of this branch, and found terraced gravel hills to the west
and north; he crossed them to the north and found a river flowing
northwards. On this he embarked on a raft, and floated down it for a
day or two, thinking it would turn to the west and join the Stewart,
but finding it still continuing north, and acquiring too much volume
to be any of the branches he had seen while passing up the Stewart, he
returned to his point of departure, and after prospecting among the
hills around the head of the river he started westwards, crossing a
high range of mountains composed principally of shales with many thin
seams of what is called quartz, ranging from one to six inches in
thickness. On the west side of this range he found the head-waters of
Beaver River, which he descended on a raft, taking five days to do so.
It is probable the river flowing northwards, on which he made a journey
and returned, is a branch of Peel River. The timber on the gravel
terraces of the water-shed, he described as small and open. He was
alone in this unknown wilderness all summer, not seeing even any of the
natives. There are few men, I think, so constituted as to be capable of
isolating themselves in such a manner.
On the 1st of September, we passed the site of the temporary
trading-post shown on the maps as Fort Reliance. Several days of
continuous rain now interrupted our work so that Forty Mile River (Cone
Hill River of Schwatka) was not reached till the 7th of September.
THE JORDAN
ANDREW ROBERT FAUSSET
The Jordan is two hundred miles long from its source at Antilebanon
to the head of the Dead Sea. It is not navigable, nor has it ever had
a large town on its banks. The cities Bethsham and Jericho on the
west, and Gerasa, Pella, and Gadara to the east of Jordan produced
intercourse between the two sides of the river. Yet it is remarkable
as the river of the great plain (_ha Arabah_, now el Ghor) of the Holy
Land, flowing through the whole from north to south. Lot, from the
hills on the north-west of Sodom, seeing the plain well watered by it,
as Egypt is by the Nile, chose that district as his home, in spite of
the notorious wickedness of the people.
[Illustration: THE JORDAN]
Its sources are three. The northernmost near Hasbeya between Hermon and
Lebanon; the stream is called Hasbany. The second is best known, near
Banias, _i. e._, Cæsarea Philippi, a large pool beneath a high cliff,
fed by gushing streamlets, rising at the mouth of a deep cave; thence
the Jordan flows, a considerable stream. The third is at Dan, or Tel el
Kady (Daphne); from the north-west corner of a green eminence a spring
bursts forth into a clear wide pool, which sends a broad stream into
the valley. The three streams unite at Tel Dafneh, and flow sluggishly
through marshland into Lake Meron. Captain Newbold adds a fourth, _wady
el Kid_ on the south-east of the slope, flowing from the springs Esh
Shar. Indeed Antilebanon abounds in gushing streams which all make
their way into the swamp between Banias and Huleh and become part of
the Jordan. The traditional site of Jacob’s crossing Jordan at his
first leaving Beersheba for Padan Aram is a mile and a half from Merom,
and six from the Sea of Galilee: in those six its descent with roaring
cataracts over the basaltic rocks is 1,050 feet. This, the part known
to Naaman in his invasions, is the least attractive part of its course;
and was unfavourably contrasted with Abana and Pharpar of his native
land. From the Sea of Galilee, it winds 200 miles in the sixty miles
of actual distance to the Dead Sea. Its tortuous course is the secret
of the great depression (the Dead Sea being 663 feet below the lake of
Galilee) in this distance.
Three banks may be noted in the Ghor or Jordan valley, the upper or
first slope (the abrupt edge of a wide table land reaching to the
Hauran Mountains on the east and the high hills on the west side), the
lower or middle terrace embracing the strip of land with vegetation,
and the true banks of the river bed, with a jungle of agnus castus,
tamarisks, and willows and reed and cane at the edge, the stream
being ordinarily thirty yards wide. At the flood, the river cannot be
forded, being ten or twelve feet deep east of Jericho; but in summer it
can, the water being low. To cross it in the flood by swimming was an
extraordinary feat performed by the Gadites who joined David; this was
impossible for Israel under Joshua with wives and children. The Lord
of the whole earth made the descending waters stand in a heap very far
from their place of crossing, viz: by the town of Adam, that is beside
Zarthan or Zaretan, the moment that the feet of the priests bearing the
ark dipped into the water. The priests then stood in the midst of the
dry river bed till all Israel crossed over. Joshua erected a monument
of twelve large stones in the river bed where the priests had stood,
near the east bank of the river. This would remain at least for a time
as a memorial to the existing generation besides the monument erected
at Gilgal.
By this lower ford, David passed to fight Syria, and afterwards in his
flight from Absalom to Mahanaim, east of Jordan. Thither Judah escorted
him and we crossed in a ferry boat. Here Elijah and Elisha divided the
waters with the prophets’ mantle. At the upper fords Naaman washed off
his leprosy. Here too the Syrians fled, when panic-struck by the Lord.
John the Baptist “first” baptized at the lower ford near Jericho,
whither all Jerusalem and Judea resorted, being near; where too, our
Lord took refuge from Jerusalem, and where many converts joined Him,
and from whence He went to Bethany to raise Lazarus. John’s next
baptisms were at Bethabara; thither out of Galilee the Lord Jesus and
Andrew repaired after the baptisms in the south, and were baptized.
His third place of baptism was near Ænon and Salim, still farther to
the north, where the water was still deep though it was summer, after
the passover, for there was no ford there; he had to go thither, the
water being too shallow at the ordinary fords. John moved gradually
northwards towards Herod’s province, where ultimately he was beheaded;
Jesus, coming from the north southwards, met John half-way.
The overflow of Jordan dislodged the lion from its lair on the wooded
banks. Between Merom and Lake Tiberias the banks are so thickly wooded
as often to shut out the view of the water.
Four-fifths of Israel, nine tribes and a half, dwelt west, and
one-fifth, two and a half, dwelt east of Jordan. The great altar built
by the latter was the witness of the oneness of the two sections. Of
the six cities of refuge three were east, three west of Jordan at equal
distances.
Jordan enters Gennesareth two miles below the ancient city Julias,
or Bethsaida, of Gaulonitis on the east bank. It is seventy feet
wide at its mouth, a sluggish, turbid stream. The lake of Tiberias
is 653 feet below the Mediterranean level. The Dead Sea is 1,316
feet below the Mediterranean, the springs of Hasbeya are 1,700 above
the Mediterranean, so that the valley falls more than 3,000 feet in
reaching the north end of the Dead Sea. The bottom descends 1,308 feet
lower, in all 2,600 below the Mediterranean. The Jordan, well called
“the Descender,” descends eleven feet every mile. Its sinuosity is
less in its upper course. Besides the Jabbok it receives the Hieromax
(_Yarmuk_) below Gennesareth. From Jerusalem to Jordan is only a
distance of twenty miles; in that distance the descent is 3,500 feet,
one of the greatest chasms in the earth; Jerusalem is 2,581 feet above
the Mediterranean.
Bitumen wells are not far from the Hasbeya in the north. Hot springs
abound about Tiberias; and other tokens of volcanic action, tufa, etc.,
occur near the Yarmuk’s mouth and elsewhere. Only on the east border
of Lake Huleh, the land is now well cultivated, and yields largely
wheat, maize, rice, etc. Horses, cattle, and sheep, and black buffaloes
(the “bulls of Bashan”) pasture around. West of Gennesareth are seen
corn, palms, vines, figs, melons, and pomegranates. Cultivation is rare
along the lower Jordan, but pink oleanders, arbutus, rose hollyhocks,
the purple thistle, marigold, and anemone abound. Tracks of tigers
and wild boars, flocks of wild ducks, cranes, and pigeons have been
seen by various explorers. There are no bridges earlier than the
Roman. The Saracens added or restored some. The Roman bridge of ten
arches, was on the route from Tiberias to Gadara. In coincidence with
Scripture, the American survey sets down three fords: that at Tarichæa,
the second at the Jabbok’s confluence with the Jordan, and that at
Jericho. The Jordan seldom now overflows its banks; but Lieutenant
Lynch noticed sedge and driftwood high up in the overhanging trees on
the banks, showing it still at times overflows the plains. The flood
never reaches beyond the lower line of the Ghor, which is covered with
vegetation. The plain of the Jordan between the Sea of Galilee and the
Dead Sea is generally eight miles broad, but at the north end of the
Dead Sea the hills recede so that the width is twelve miles, of which
the west part is named “the plains of Jericho.” The upper terrace
immediately under the hills is covered with vegetation; under that is
the Arabah or desert plain, barren in its southern part except where
springs fertilize it, but fertile in its northern part and cultivated
by irrigation. Grove remarks of the Jordan: “So rapid that its course
is one continued cataract, so crooked that in its whole lower and
main course it has hardly a half mile straight, so broken with rapids
that no boat can swim any distance continuously, so deep below the
adjacent country that it is invisible and can only be with difficulty
approached; refusing all communication with the ocean, and ending in
a lake where navigation is impossible, unless for irrigation, it is
in fact what its Arabic name signifies, nothing but a ‘great watering
place,’ _Sheriat el Khebir_.”
THE CONCORD
HENRY D. THOREAU
The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably as old as the
Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place in civilized history,
until the fame of its grassy meadows and its fish attracted settlers
out of England in 1635, when it received the other but kindred name
of Concord from the first plantation on its banks, which appears to
have been commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony. It will be
Grass-ground River as long as grass grows and water runs here; it will
be Concord River only while men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To
an extinct race it was grass-ground, where they hunted and fished,
and is still perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who own the
great meadows, and get the hay from year to year. “One branch of it,”
according to the historian of Concord, for I love to quote so good
authority, “rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and another from
a pond and a large cedar-swamp in Westborough,” and flowing between
Hopkinton and Southborough, through Framingham, and between Sudbury
and Wayland, where it is sometimes called Sudbury River, it enters
Concord at the south part of the town, and after receiving the North
or Assabeth River, which has its source a little farther to the north
and west, goes out at the north-east angle, and flowing between Bedford
and Carlisle, and through Billerica, empties into the Merrimack at
Lowell. Between Sudbury and Wayland the meadows acquire their greatest
breadth, and when covered with water, they form a handsome chain of
shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by numerous gulls and ducks. Just
above Sherman’s Bridge, between these towns, is the largest expanse,
and when the wind blows freshly in a raw March day, heaving up the
surface into dark and sober billows or regular swells, skirted as it is
in the distance with alder-swamps and smoke-like maples, it looks like
a smaller Lake Huron, and is very pleasant and exciting for a landsman
to row or sail over. The farmhouses along the Sudbury shore, which
rises gently to a considerable height, command fine water prospects at
this season. The shore is more flat on the Wayland side and this town
is the greatest loser by the flood. Its farmers tell me that thousands
of acres are flooded now, since the dams have been erected, where they
remember to have seen the white honeysuckle or clover growing once, and
they could go dry with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but
blue-joint and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all the
year round. For a long time, they made the most of the driest season to
get their hay, working sometimes till nine o’clock at night, sedulously
paring with their scythes in the twilight round the hummocks left by
the ice; but now it is not worth the getting when they can come at
it and they look sadly round to their wood-lots and upland as a last
resource.
[Illustration: THE CONCORD]
It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go no
farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in the rear
of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farmhouses, and barns,
and haystacks, you never saw before, and men everywhere. Sudbury,
that is _Southborough_ men, and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men,
and Bound Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river,
Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves are there agitated by
the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds
and rushes waving; ducks by the hundred, all uneasy in the surf, in
the raw wind, just ready to rise, and now going off with a clatter
and a whistling like riggers straight from Labrador, flying against
the stiff gale with reefed wings, or else circling round first, with
all their paddles briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre
you before they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats
swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm them by that
you know of; their laboured homes rising here and there like haystacks;
and countless mice and moles and winged titmice along the sunny, windy
shore; cranberries tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach,
their little red skiffs beating about among the alders;--such natural
tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand. And there stands all
around the alders, and birches, and oaks, and maples, full of glee and
sap, holding in their buds, until the waters subside. You shall perhaps
run aground on Cranberry Island, only some spires of last year’s
pipe-grass above water, to show where the danger is, and get as good
a freezing there as anywhere on the North-west Coast. I never voyaged
so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard of before,
whose names you don’t know, going away down through the meadows with
long ducking-guns, with watertight boots wading through the fowl-meadow
grass, on bleak, wintry, distant shores, with guns at half-cock, and
they shall see teal, blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers,
black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild and noble sights before
night, such as they who sit in parlours never dream of. You shall see
rude and sturdy, experienced men, keeping their castles, or teaming up
their summer’s wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk
and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of
meat; who were out not only in ’75 and 1812, but have been out every
day of their lives; greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare,
only they never got time to say so; they never took to the way of
writing. Look at their fields, and imagine what they might write, if
ever they should put pen to paper. Or what have they not written on
the face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and scratching,
and harrowing, and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and
out, and over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already
written for want of parchment.
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of to-day
is present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi-experiences of the
life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside
to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.
The respectable folks,--
Where dwell they?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay;
Summer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadow, there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they never mend,
To every asker readily lend;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors, and all their friends.
Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which
is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the
proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in
the Revolution, and on later occasions. It has been proposed, that
the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the
Concord circling nine times around. I have read that a descent of an
eighth of an inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our river
has, probably, very near the smallest allowance. The story is current,
at any rate, though I believe that strict history will bear it out,
that the only bridge ever carried away on the main branch, within the
limits of the town, was driven up stream by the wind. But wherever
it makes a sudden bend it is shallower and swifter, and asserts its
title to be called a river. Compared with the other tributaries of
the Merrimack, it appears to have been properly named Musketaquid, or
Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part, it creeps through
broad meadows, adorned with scattered oaks, where the cranberry is
found in abundance, covering the ground like a moss-bed. A row of
sunken dwarf willows borders the stream on one or both sides, while
at a greater distance the meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and
other fluviatile trees, overrun with the grape-vine, which bears fruit
in its season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. Still farther from
the stream, on the edge of the firm land, are seen the gray and white
dwellings of the inhabitants.