Along Alaska's Great River
by Frederick Schwatka · English · Gutenberg #47402 · 621,376 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Along Alaska's Great River
Author: Frederick Schwatka
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALONG ALASKA'S GREAT RIVER ***
[Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF THE CHILKOOT PASS]
ALONG
ALASKA'S GREAT RIVER
A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE TRAVELS OF AN ALASKA
EXPLORING EXPEDITION ALONG THE GREAT
YUKON RIVER, FROM ITS SOURCE TO ITS
MOUTH, IN THE BRITISH NORTH-WEST
TERRITORY, AND IN
THE TERRITORY OF
ALASKA.
BY
FREDERICK SCHWATKA,
LAUREATE OF THE PARIS GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY AND OF THE IMPERIAL
GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF RUSSIA; HONORARY MEMBER
BREMEN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, ETC., ETC., COMMANDER
OF THE EXPEDITION.
TOGETHER WITH THE LATEST INFORMATION ON THE
KLONDIKE COUNTRY.
_FULLY ILLUSTRATED._
CHICAGO NEW YORK
GEORGE M. HILL COMPANY
MDCCCC
COPYRIGHT, 1898,
GEO. M. HILL CO.
PREFACE.
These pages narrate the travels, in a popular sense, of an Alaskan
exploring expedition. The expedition was organized with seven members
at Vancouver Barracks, Washington, and left Portland, Oregon, ascending
through the inland passage to Alaska, as far as the Chilkat country. At
that point the party employed over three score of the Chilkat Indians,
the hardy inhabitants of that ice-bound country, to pack its effects
across the glacier-clad pass of the Alaskan coast range of mountains to
the headwaters of the Yukon. Here a large raft was constructed, and on
this primitive craft, sailing through nearly a hundred and fifty miles
of lakes, and shooting a number of rapids, the party floated along the
great stream for over thirteen hundred miles; the longest raft journey
ever made on behalf of geographical science. The entire river, over two
thousand miles, was traversed, the party returning home by Bering Sea,
and touching the Aleutian Islands.
The opening up of the great gold fields in the region of the upper
Yukon, has added especial interest to everything pertaining to the
great North-west. The Klondike region is the cynosure of the eyes
of all, whether they be in the clutches of the gold fever or not.
The geography, the climate, the scenery, the birds, beasts, and even
flowers of the country make fascinating subjects. In view of the new
discoveries in that part of the world, a new chapter, Chapter XIII, is
given up to a detailed description of the Klondike region. The numerous
routes by which it may be reached are described, and all the details as
to the possibilities and resources of the country are authoritatively
stated.
CHICAGO, March, 1898.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. INTRODUCTORY 9
II. THE INLAND PASSAGE TO ALASKA 12
III. IN THE CHILKAT COUNTRY 36
IV. OVER THE MOUNTAIN PASS 53
V. ALONG THE LAKES 90
VI. A CHAPTER ABOUT RAFTING 131
VII. THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE YUKON 154
VIII. DOWN THE RIVER TO SELKIRK 175
IX. THROUGH THE UPPER RAMPARTS 207
X. THROUGH THE YUKON FLAT-LANDS 264
XI. THROUGH THE LOWER RAMPARTS AND END OF RAFT JOURNEY 289
XII. DOWN THE RIVER AND HOME 313
XIII. THE KLONDIKE REGIONS 346
XIV. DISCOVERY AND HISTORY 368
XV. The People and Their Industries 386
XVI. GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES 413
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
FRONTISPIECE (DRAWN BY WM. SCHMEDTGEN)
THE INLAND PASSAGE 12
SCENES IN THE INLAND PASSAGE 19
SITKA, ALASKA 29
CHILKAT BRACELET 36
PYRAMID HARBOR, CHILKAT INLET 43
CHILKAT INDIAN PACKER 53
METHODS OF TRACKING A CANOE UP A RAPID 64
CANOEING UP THE DAYAY 65
DAYAY VALLEY, NOURSE RIVER 73
SALMON SPEARS 76
DAYAY VALLEY, FROM CAMP 4 77
WALKING A LOG 80
CHASING A MOUNTAIN GOAT 82
ASCENDING THE PERRIER PASS 85
SNOW SHOES 87
IN A STORM ON THE LAKES 90
LAKE LINDEMAN 93
LAKE BENNETT 101
PINS FOR FASTENING MARMOT SNARES 112
LAKE BOVE 116
LAKE MARSH 121
"STICK" INDIANS 127
"SNUBBING" THE RAFT 131
AMONG THE "SWEEPERS" 134
BANKS OF THE YUKON 135
SCRAPING ALONG A BANK 140
PRYING THE RAFT OFF A BAR 145
COURSE OF RAFT AND AXIS OF STREAM 152
WHIRLPOOL AT LOWER END OF ISLAND 153
GRAYLING 154
GRAND CAÑON 163
THE CASCADES 169
ALASKA BROWN BEAR FIGHTING MOSQUITOS 174
IN THE RINK RAPIDS 175
CLAY BLUFFS ON THE YUKON 176
OUTLET OF LAKE KLUK-TAS-SI 184
THE RINK RAPIDS 191
LORING BLUFF 193
KITL-AH-GON INDIAN VILLAGE 197
INGERSOLL ISLANDS 201
THE RUINS OF SELKIRK 205
IN THE UPPER RAMPARTS 207
MOUTH OF PELLY RIVER 209
LOOKING UP YUKON FROM SELKIRK 213
AYAN GRAVE AT SELKIRK 217
AYAN INDIANS IN CANOES 221
AYAN AND CHILKAT GAMBLING TOOLS 227
PLAN OF AYAN SUMMER HOUSE 229
KON-IT'L AYAN CHIEF 230
AYAN MOOSE ARROW 231
AYAN WINTER TENT 233
A GRAVEL BANK 236
MOOSE-SKIN MOUNTAIN 243
ROQUETTE ROCK 250
KLAT-OL-KLIN VILLAGE 253
FISHING NETS 258
SALMON KILLING CLUB 259
BOUNDARY BUTTE 261
A MOOSE HEAD 264
MOSS ON YUKON RIVER 267
STEAMER "YUKON" 276
INDIAN "CACHE" 289
LOWER RAMPARTS RAPIDS 295
MOUTH OF TANANA 303
NUKLAKAYET 307
THE RAFT, AT END OF ITS JOURNEY 312
INDIAN OUT-DOOR GUN COVERING 313
FALLING BANKS OF YUKON 319
ANVIK 330
OONALASKA 344
THE KLONDIKE GOLD DISCOVERIES 348
AT THE FOOT OF CHILKOOT PASS 350
THE DESCENT OF CHILKOOT PASS 354
A MID-DAY MEAL 358
AT THE HEAD OF LAKE LA BARGE 360
INDIAN PACKERS FORDING A RIVER 364
THE WHITE HORSE RAPIDS 366
ALONG ALASKA'S GREAT RIVER.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
This Alaskan exploring expedition was composed of the following
members: Lieut. Schwatka, U.S.A., commanding; Dr. George F. Wilson,
U.S.A., Surgeon; Topographical Assistant Charles A. Homan, U.S.
Engineers, Topographer and Photographer; Sergeant Charles A. Gloster,
U.S.A., Artist; Corporal Shircliff, U.S.A., in charge of stores;
Private Roth, assistant, and Citizen J. B. McIntosh, a miner, who had
lived in Alaska and was well acquainted with its methods of travel.
Indians and others were added and discharged from time to time as
hereafter noted.
The main object of the expedition was to acquire such information of
the country traversed and its wild inhabitants as would be valuable to
the military authorities in the future, and as a map would be needful
to illustrate such information well, the party's efforts were rewarded
with making the expedition successful in a geographical sense. I
had hoped to be able, through qualified subordinates, to extend our
scientific knowledge of the country explored, especially in regard
to its botany, geology, natural history, etc.; and, although these
subjects would not in any event have been adequately discussed in a
popular treatise like the present, it must be admitted that little was
accomplished in these branches. The explanation of this is as follows:
When authority was asked from Congress for a sum of money to make such
explorations under military supervision and the request was disapproved
by the General of the Army and Secretary of War. This disapproval,
combined with the active opposition of government departments which
were assigned to work of the same general character and coupled with
the reluctance of Congress to make any appropriations whatever that
year, was sufficient to kill such an undertaking. When the military
were withdrawn from Alaska by the President, about the year 1878, a
paragraph appeared at the end of the President's order stating that
no further control would be exercised by the army in Alaska; and this
proviso was variously interpreted by the friends of the army and its
enemies, as a humiliation either to the army or to the President,
according to the private belief of the commentator. It was therefore
seriously debated whether any military expedition or party sent into
that country for any purpose whatever would not be a direct violation
of the President's proscriptive order, and when it was decided to
waive that consideration, and send in a party, it was considered too
much of a responsibility to add any specialists in science, with
the disapproval of the General and the Secretary hardly dry on the
paper. The expedition was therefore, to avoid being recalled, kept as
secret as possible, and when, on May 22d, it departed from Portland,
Oregon, upon the _Victoria_, a vessel which had been specially put on
the Alaska route, only a two or three line notice had gotten into
the Oregon papers announcing the fact; a notice that in spreading
was referred to in print by one government official as "a junketing
party," by another as a "prospecting" party, while another bitterly
acknowledged that had he received another day's intimation he could
have had the party recalled by the authorities at Washington. Thus the
little expedition which gave the first complete survey to the third[1]
river of our country stole away like a thief in the night and with far
less money in its hands to conduct it through its long journey than was
afterward appropriated by Congress to publish its report.
[1] The largest river on the North American continent so far as this
mighty stream flows within our boundaries.... The people of the United
States will not be quick to take to the idea that the volume of water
in an Alaskan river is greater than that discharged by the mighty
Mississippi; but it is entirely within the bounds of honest statement
to say that the Yukon river ... discharges every hour one-third more
water than the "Father of Waters."--Petroff's Government Report on
Alaska.
Leaving Portland at midnight on the 22d, the _Victoria_ arrived at
Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia the forenoon of the 23d, the
remaining hours of daylight being employed in loading with supplies for
a number of salmon canneries in Alaska, the large amount of freight for
which had necessitated this extra steamer. That night we crossed the
Columbia River bar and next morning entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca,
the southern entrance from the Pacific Ocean which leads to the inland
passage to Alaska.
CHAPTER II.
THE INLAND PASSAGE TO ALASKA.
[Illustration]
"The Inland Passage" to Alaska is the fjörd-like channel, resembling a
great river, which extends from the north-western part of Washington
Territory, through British Columbia, into south-eastern Alaska.
Along this coast line for about a thousand miles, stretches a vast
archipelago closely hugging the mainland of the Territories named
above, the southernmost important island being Vancouver, almost a
diminutive continent in itself, while to the north Tchichagoff Island
limits it on the seaboard.
From the little town of Olympia at the head of Puget Sound, in
Washington Territory, to Chilkat, Alaska, at the head of Lynn Channel,
or Canal, one sails as if on a grand river, and it is really hard to
comprehend that it is a portion of the ocean unless one can imagine
some deep fjörd in Norway or Greenland, so deep that he can sail on its
waters for a fortnight, for the fjörd-like character is very prominent
in these channels to which the name of "Inland Passage" is usually
given.
These channels between the islands and mainland are strikingly uniform
in width, and therefore river-like in appearance as one steams or
sails through, them. At occasional points they connect with the Pacific
Ocean, and if there be a storm on the latter, a few rolling swells may
enter at these places and disturb the equilibrium of sensitive stomachs
for a brief hour, but at all other places the channel is as quiet as
any broad river, whatever the weather. On the south we have the Strait
of Juan de Fuca and to the north Cross Sound as the limiting channels,
while between the two are found Dixon Entrance, which separates Alaska
from British Columbia, Queen Charlotte Sound, and other less important
outlets.
On the morning of the 24th of May we entered the Strait of Juan de
Fuca, named after an explorer--if such he may be called--who never
entered this beautiful sheet of water, and who owes his immortality
to an audacious guess, which came so near the truth as to deceive the
scientific world for many a century. To the left, as we enter, i.e.,
northward, is the beautiful British island of Vancouver, the name of
which commemorates one of the world's most famous explorers. Its high
rolling hills are covered with shaggy firs, broken near the beach into
little prairies of brighter green, which are dotted here and there with
pretty little white cottages, the humblest abodes we see among the
industrious, British or American, who live in the far west.
The American side, to the southward, gives us the same picture backed
by the high range of the Olympian Mountains, whose tops are covered
with perpetual snow, and upon whose cold sides drifting clouds are
condensed.
Through British Columbia the sides of this passage are covered with
firs and spruce to the very tops of the steep mountains forming them,
but as Northing is gained and Alaska is reached the summits are covered
with snow and ice at all months of the year, and by the time we cast
anchor in Chilkat Inlet, which is about the northernmost point of this
great inland salt-water river, we find in many places these crowns of
ice debouching in the shape of glaciers to the very water's level, and
the tourist beholds, on a regular line of steamboat travel, glaciers
and icebergs, and many of the wonders of arctic regions, although upon
a reduced scale. Alongside the very banks and edges of these colossal
rivers of ice one can gather the most beautiful of Alpine flowers and
wade up to his waist in grasses that equal in luxuriance the famed
fields of the pampas; while the singing of the birds from the woods and
glens and the fragrance of the foliage make one easily imagine that the
Arctic circle and equator have been linked together at this point.
Entering Juan de Fuca Strait a few hours were spent in the pretty
little anchorage of Neah Bay, the first shelter for ships after
rounding Cape Flattery, and here some merchandise was unloaded in the
huge Indian canoes that came alongside, each one holding at least a ton.
Victoria, the metropolis of British Columbia, was reached the same
day, and as it was the Queen's birthday we saw the town in all its
bravery of beer, bunting and banners. Our vessel tooted itself hoarse
outside the harbor to get a pilot over the bar, but none was to be
had till late in the day, when a pilot came out to us showing plainly
by his condition that he knew every bar in and about Victoria. With
the bar pilot on the bridge, as to save insurance should an accident
occur, we entered the picturesque little harbor in safety, despite the
discoveries of our guide that since his last visit all the buoys had
been woefully misplaced, and even the granite channel had changed its
course. But Victoria has many embellishments more durable than bunting
and banners, and most conspicuous among them are her well arranged and
well constructed roads, in which she has no equal on the Pacific coast
of North America, and but few rivals in any other part of the world.
On the 26th we crossed over to Port Townsend, the port of entry for
Puget sound, and on the 27th we headed for Alaska by way of the Inland
Passage.
For purposes of description this course should have been designated
the "inland passages," in the plural, for its branches are almost
innumerable, running in all directions like the streets of an irregular
city, although now and then they are reduced to a single channel or
fjörd which the steamer is obliged to take or put out to sea. At one
point in Discovery Passage leading from the Gulf of Georgia toward
Queen Charlotte Sound, the inland passage is so narrow that our long
vessel had to steam under a slow bell to avoid accidents, and at this
place, called Seymour Narrows, there was much talk of bridging the
narrow way in the grand scheme of a Canadian Pacific Railway, which
should have its western terminus at Victoria. Through this contracted
way the water fairly boils when at its greatest velocity, equaling
ten miles an hour in spring tides, and at such times the passage is
hazardous even to steamers, while all other craft avoid it until slack
water. Jutting rocks increase the danger, and on one of these the
United States man-of-war _Saranac_ was lost just eight years before
we passed through. At the northern end of this picturesque Discovery
Passage you see the inland passage trending away to the eastward,
with quite a bay on the left around Chatham Point, and while you are
wondering in that half soliloquizing way of a traveler in new lands
what you will see after you have turned to the right, the great ship
swings suddenly to the left, and you find that what you took for a
bay is after all the inland passage itself, which stretches once more
before you like the Hudson looking upward from West Point, or the
Delaware at the Water Gap. For all such little surprises must the
tourist be prepared on this singular voyage.
The new bend now becomes Johnstone Strait and so continues to Queen
Charlotte Sound, with which it connects by one strait, two passages
and a channel, all alike, except in name, and none much over ten miles
long. At nearly every point where a new channel diverges both arms take
on a new name, and they change as rapidly as the names of a Lisbon
street, which seldom holds the same over a few blocks. The south side
of Johnstone Strait is particularly high, rising abruptly from the
water fully 5,000 feet, and in grandeur not unlike the Yellowstone
Cañon. These summits were still covered with snow and probably on
northern slopes snow remains the summer through. One noticeable valley
was on the Vancouver Island side, with a conspicuous conical hill in
its bosom that may have been over a thousand feet in height. These
cone-like hills are so common in flat valleys in north-western America
that I thought it worth while to mention the fact in this place. I
shall have occasion to do so again at a later point in my narrative.
Occasionally windrows occur through the dense coniferous forests of
the inland passage, where the trees have been swept or leveled in a
remarkable manner. Such as were cut vertically had been caused by an
avalanche, and in these instances the work of clearing had been done as
faithfully as if by the hands of man. Sometimes the bright green moss
or grass had grown up in these narrow ways, and when there was more
than one of about the same age there was quite a picturesque effect of
stripings of two shades of green, executed on a most colossal plan.
These windrows of fallen trees sometimes stretched along horizontally
in varying widths, an effect undoubtedly produced by heavy gales
rushing through the contracted "passage."
One's notice is attracted by a species of natural beacon which
materially assists the navigator. Over almost all the shoals and
submerged rocks hang fields of kelp, a growth with which the whole
"passage" abounds, thus affording a timely warning badly needed where
the channel has been imperfectly charted. As one might surmise the
water is very bold, and these submerged and ragged rocks are in general
most to be feared. Leaving Johnstone Strait we enter Queen Charlotte
Sound, a channel which was named, lacking only three years, a century
ago. It widens into capacious waters at once and we again felt the
"throbbing of old Neptune's pulse," and those with sensitive stomachs
perceived a sort of flickering of their own.
One who is acquainted merely in a general way with the history and
geography of this confusing country finds many more Spanish names than
he anticipates, and to his surprise, a conscientious investigation
shows that even as it is the vigorous old Castilian explorers have
not received all the credit to which they are entitled, for many of
their discoveries in changing hands changed names as well: the Queen
Charlotte Islands, a good day's run to the north-westward of us, were
named in 1787 by an Englishman, who gave the group the name of his
vessel, an appellation which they still retain, although as Florida
Blanca they had known the banner of Castile and Leon thirteen years
before. Mount Edgecumbe, so prominent in the beautiful harbor of Sitka,
was once Monte San Jacinto, and a list of the same tenor might be given
that would prove more voluminous than interesting. American changes in
the great north-west have not been so radical. Boca de Quadra Inlet
has somehow become Bouquet Inlet to those knowing it best. La Creole
has degenerated into Rickreall, and so on: the foreign names have been
mangled but not annihilated. We sail across Queen Charlotte Sound as
if we were going to bump right into the high land ahead of us, but a
little indentation over the bow becomes a valley, then a bay, and in
ample time to prevent accidents widens into another salt-water river,
about two miles wide and twenty times as long, called Fitzhugh Sound.
Near the head of the sound we turn abruptly westward into the Lama
Passage, and on its western shores we see nearly the first sign of
civilization in the inland passage, the Indian village of Bella Bella,
holding probably a dozen native houses and a fair looking church, while
a few cattle grazing near the place had a still more civilized air.
[Illustration: SCENES IN THE INLAND PASSAGE.]
As we steamed through Seaforth Channel, a most tortuous affair, Indians
were seen paddling in their huge canoes from one island to another
or along the high, rocky shores, a cheering sign of habitation not
previously noticed.
The great fault of the inland passage as a resort for tourists is in
the constant dread of fogs that may at any time during certain months
of the year completely obscure the grand scenery that tempted the
travelers thither. The waters of the Pacific Ocean on the seaboard of
Alaska are but a deflected continuation of the warm equatorial current
called the Kuro Siwo of the Japanese; from these waters the air is
laden with moisture, which being thrown by the variable winds against
the snow-clad and glacier-covered summits of the higher mountains,
is precipitated as fog and light rain, and oftentimes every thing
is wrapped for weeks in these most annoying mists. July, with June
and August, are by far the most favorable months for the traveler.
The winter months are execrable, with storms of rain, snow and sleet
constantly occurring, the former along the Pacific frontage, and the
latter near the channels of the mainland.
Milbank Sound gave us another taste of the ocean swells which spoiled
the flavor of our food completely, for although we were only exposed
for less than an hour that hour happened to come just about dinner
time; after which we entered Finlayson Passage, some twenty-five miles
long. This is a particularly picturesque and bold channel of water, its
shores covered with shaggy conifers as high as the eye can reach, and
the mountains, with their crowns of snow and ice, furnishing supplies
of spray for innumerable beautiful waterfalls. At many places in the
inland passage from here on, come down the steep timbered mountains
the most beautiful waterfalls fed from the glaciers hidden in the fog.
At every few miles we pass the mouths of inlets and channels, leading
away into the mountainous country no one knows whither. There are no
charts which show more than the mouths of these inlets. Out of or into
these an occasional canoe speeds its silent way perchance in quest of
salmon that here abound, but the secrets of their hidden paths are
locked in the savage mind. How tempting they must be for exploration,
and how strange that, although so easy of access, they still remain
unknown. After twisting around through a few "reaches," channels and
passages, we enter the straightest of them all, Grenville Channel, so
straight that it almost seems to have been mapped by an Indian. As you
steam through its forty or fifty miles of mathematically rectilinear
exactness you think the sleepy pilot might tie his wheel, put his heels
up in the spokes, draw his hat over his eyes and take a quiet nap. In
one place it seems to be not over two or three hundred yards wide, but
probably is double that, the high towering banks giving a deceptive
impression. The windrows through the timber of former avalanches of
snow or landslides, now become thicker and their effects occasionally
picturesque in the very devastation created. Beyond Grenville Channel
the next important stretch of salt water is Chatham Sound, which is
less like a river than any yet named. Its connection with Grenville
Channel is by the usual number of three or four irregular water-ways
dodging around fair sized islands, which had at one time, however, a
certain importance because it was thought that the Canadian Pacific
Railway might make Skeena Inlet off to our right its western terminus.
On the 29th of May, very early in the morning, we crossed Dixon
Entrance, and were once more on American soil, that is, in a commercial
sense, the United States having drawn a check for its value of
$7,200,000, and the check having been honored; but in regard to
government the country may be called no man's land, none existing in
the territory. Dixon Entrance bore once a Spanish name in honor of
its discoverer, a name which is heard no more, although a few still
call the channel by its Indian name, Kaiganee. Broad Dixon Entrance
contracts into the narrow Portland Inlet, which, putting back into
the mainland for some seventy-five miles, forms the water boundary
between Alaska and British Columbia. From here it becomes a thirty mile
wide strip drawn "parallel to tide-water," which continues with a few
modifications to about Mount St. Elias.
The forenoon of the same day we entered Boca de Quadra Inlet, where
a pioneer company had established a salmon cannery, for which we had
some freight. The cannery was about half completed and the stores were
landed on a raft made of only two logs, which impressed me with the
size of the Sitka cedar. The largest log was probably seventy-five feet
long and fully eight feet at the butt. It is said to be impervious to
the teredo, which makes such sad havoc with all other kinds of wood
sunk in salt water. Owing to its fine grain and peculiar odor, handsome
chests can be made of it in which that universal pest, the moth, will
not live. It is purely an Alaskan tree, and even north of Quadra Inlet
it is found in its densest growth. As around all white habitations
in frontier lands, we found the usual number of natives, although
in this case they were here for the commendable object of seeking
employment in catching salmon whenever the run should commence. Their
canoes are constructed of the great cedar tree, by the usual Indian
method of hollowing them out to a thin shell and then boiling water in
them by throwing in red hot stones in the water they hold, producing
pliability of the wood by the steaming process, when, by means of
braces and ties they are fashioned into nautical "lines." The peaks
of the prows are often fantastically carved into various insignia,
usually spoken of as "totems," and painted in wild barbaric designs
(see page 43,) the body of the boat being covered with deep black made
from soot and seal oil. Crawling along under the somber shadows of the
dense overhanging trees in the deep dark passages, these canoes can
hardly be seen until very near, and when a flash of the water from the
paddle reveals their presence, they look more like smugglers or pirates
avoiding notice than any thing else. The genial superintendent, Mr.
Ward, spoke of his rambles up the picturesque shores of the inlet and
his adventures since he had started his new enterprise. A trip of a
few days before up one of the diminutive valleys drained by a little
Alpine brook, had rewarded him with the sight of no less than eight
bears scurrying around through the woods. He had an Indian companion
who was armed with a flintlock, smooth bore Hudson Bay Company musket,
while the superintendent had a shot gun for any small game that might
happen along, and even with these arms they succeeded in bagging a
bear apiece, both being of the black--or small--variety. Hunting the
little black bear is not far removed from a good old-fashioned "coon"
hunt, and not much more dangerous. The dogs, mostly the sharp-eared,
sharp-nosed and sharp-barking Indian variety, once after a bear, force
him up a tree to save his hamstrings being nipped uncomfortably, and
then he is shot out of it, at the hunter's leisure, and if wounded is
so small and easily handled by the pack of dogs that he can hardly
be called dangerous. Not so, however, with the great brown bear, or
barren-ground bear of Alaska, so often spoken of in these parts as the
"grizzly" from his similarity in size and savageness to "the California
King of the Chaparral." Everywhere in his dismal dominions he is
religiously avoided by the native Nimrod, who declares that his meat
is not fit to be eaten, that his robe is almost worthless, and that he
constantly keeps the wrong end presented to his pursuers. Although he
is never hunted encounters with him are not altogether unknown, as he
is savage enough to become the hunter himself at times, and over some
routes the Indians will never travel unless armed so as to be fairly
protected from this big Bruin. This Indian fear of the great brown
bear I found to be co-extensive with all my travels in Alaska and the
British North-west Territory. Mr. Ward told me that wherever the big
bear was found, the little black variety made his presence scarce, as
the two in no way affiliate, and the latter occupies such country as
the abundance of his big brother will allow. These districts may be
intermixed as much as the black and white squares on a chess-board, but
they are as sharply, though not as mathematically, defined, each one
remaining faithfully on his own color, so to speak. A new repeating
rifle was on our vessel consigned to the sportsman superintendent, and
he expected to decrease the bear census during the summer, so far as
his duties would allow.
About noon, after much backing and putting of lines ashore, and working
on them from the donkey engines fore and aft, we succeeded in turning
our long steamer in the narrow channel, the pilot remarking in reply to
the captain's inquiries as to shoals, that he wished he could exchange
the depth for the width and he would have no trouble in turning around.
Through this part of the inland passage sea-otters are said to be
found, and it was thought that one or two were seen by some of the
people on board, but no one could vouch for the discovery.
The everlasting mountain scenery now commences to pall and offers
nothing in the way of the picturesque except the same old high
mountains, the same dense growth of timber on their steep sides, and
the same salt-water canals cutting through them. A valley putting off
any where would have been a relief, and breaks in the uniformly high
mountains that looked as if they might be ravines, so persistently
became other arms and canals of the great networks of passage, that we
were any thing but sorry when a fog bank settled down about two hundred
feet above our eyes and cut the fjörd as sharply at that height as if
it had been the crest line of a fortification extending off into miles
of bastions and covered ways.
Early morning on the 30th found us at the little port of Wrangell,
named after one of Russia's many famous explorers in northern regions.
It was the most tumble-down looking company of cabins I ever saw, the
"Chinese quarter" (every place on the Pacific coast has its "Chinese
quarter" if it is only a single house) being a wrecked river vessel
high and dry on the pebbly beach, which, however, was not much inferior
to the rest of the town. Not far from here comes in the Stickeen river,
the largest stream that cuts through the south-eastern or "tide-water
strip" of Alaska. About its headwaters are the Cassiar mines of British
Columbia, and as the Stickeen river is the nearest available way to
reach them, although the traveler's course is against the stream of
a mountain torrent, the circumstance has made something of a port of
Wrangell, which nearly ten years ago was at the height of its glory of
gold-dust and excitement. Even at this distance the dark green water of
the deep channel is tinged with a white chalky color ground from the
flanks of the calcareous hills by the eroding glaciers, then swept into
the swift river and by it carried far out into the tortuous passages.
Every stream, however small, in this part of the world, with glaciers
along its course or upon its tributaries, carries this milk-like water
in its current.
With all its rickety appearance there was no small amount of business
doing in Wrangell, no less than four or five fair sized backwoods
stores being there, all apparently in thrifty circumstances. Indian
curiosities of all kinds were to be had, from carved spoons of the
mountain goat at "two bits" (twenty-five cents) apiece to the most
elaborate idols or totemic carvings. A fair market is found for these
articles among the few visitors who travel in this out-of-the-way
corner of the earth, and when the supply is exhausted in any line the
natives will immediately set to work to satisfy the demand. One huge
carved horn spoon was evidently of very ancient make and very fine
workmanship, an old pioneer of these regions who had owned it for
many years having refused sixty dollars for it from some curiosity
collectors only the year before.
From Wrangell we debouched westward by Sumner Strait, the wide
salt-water river that continues the narrow fresh-water river of
Stickeen to the Pacific Ocean.
Between five and six in the afternoon we are rounding Cape Ommaney,
where our pilot tells us it storms eight days in the week. It certainly
gave us double rations of wind that day, and many retired early. Even
the old Spanish navigators who first laid eyes upon it must have borne
it a grudge to have called it _Punta Oeste de la Entrada del Principe_;
all its geographical characteristics and relations being shouldered on
it for a name.
Early next morning we were in the harbor of Sitka, or New Archangel,
as the Russians called it when they had it for their capital of this
province. The strong, bold bluffs of the interior passages now give
way to gentler elevations along the Pacific seaboard, but the country
gradually rises from the coast until but a few miles back the same old
cloud-capped, snow-covered peaks recur, and as we stand well out to sea
they look as abrupt as ever.
Sitka is a picturesque place when viewed from any point except from
within the town limits. From the south-west, looking north-east, Mount
Edgecumbe (of Cook) affords a beautiful background against the western
sky, and when that is full of low white clouds the abrupt manner in
which the point of the mountain is cut off gives it the appearance of
being buried in the clouds, thus seeming several times higher than it
really is.
[Illustration: SITKA, ALASKA].
The harbor of Sitka is so full of small islands that looking at it from
a height it seems as if it could only be mapped with a pepper-box, and
one wonders how any vessel can get to her wharf. Once alongside, the
water seems as clear as the atmosphere above, and the smallest objects
can be easily identified at the bottom, though there must have been
fully thirty or forty feet of water where we made our observations.
On one of the large islands in Sitka harbor, called Japanese Island, an
old Niphon junk was cast, early in the present century, and her small
crew of Japanese were rescued by the Russians. Sitka has been so often
described that it is unnecessary to do more than refer the reader to
other accounts of the place.
Ten o'clock in the forenoon of the 31st saw us under way steaming
northward, still keeping to the inland passage, and _en route_ to
deliver wrecking machinery at a point in Peril Straits where the
_Eureka_, a small steamer of the same line to which our ship belonged,
had formerly run on a submerged rock in the channel, which did not
appear upon the charts. The unfortunate boat had just time to reach
the shore and beach herself before she filled with water. The Eureka's
wreck was reached by two in the afternoon, and as our boat might be
detained for some time in assisting the disabled vessel, many of us
embraced the opportunity to go ashore in the wilds of the Alexander
Archipelago. The walking along the beach between high and low tide was
tolerable, and even agreeable for whole stretches, especially after our
long confinement on the ship, where the facilities for promenading were
poor. To turn inland from the shore was at once to commence the ascent
of a slope that might vary from forty to eighty degrees, the climbing
of which almost beggars description. The compact mass of evergreen
timber had looked dense enough from the ship, but at its feet grew a
denser mass of tangled undergrowth of bushes and vines, and at their
roots again was a solid carpeting of moss, lichens, and ferns that
often ran up the trees and underbrush for heights greater than a man's
reach, and all of it moist as a sponge, the whole being absolutely
tropical in luxuriance. This thick carpet of moss extends from the
shore line to the edges of the glaciers on the mountain summits, and
the constant melting of the ice through the warm summer supplies it
with water which it absorbs like a sponge. The air is saturated with
moisture from the warm ocean current, and every thing you see and touch
is like Mr. Mantalini's proposed body, "dem'd moist and unpleasant."
It is almost impossible to conceive how heavily laden with tropical
moisture the atmosphere is in this supposed sub-Arctic colony of ours.
It oozes up around your feet as you walk, and drips from overhead like
an April mist, and nothing is exempt from it. Even the Indians' tall,
dead "totem-poles" of hemlock or spruce, which would make fine kindling
wood any where else, bear huge clumps of dripping moss and foliage
on their tops, at heights varying from ten to thirty feet above the
ground. An occasional stray seed of a Sitka spruce may get caught in
this elevated tangle, and make its home there just as well as if it
were on the ground. It sprouts, and as its branches run up in the air,
the roots crawl down the "totem-pole" until the ground is reached, when
they bury themselves in it, and send up fresh sustenance to the trunk
and limbs, which until then have been living a parasitic sort of life
off the decayed moss. This is shown in illustration on page 19, being
a view at Kaigan Village. Imagine a city boy tossing a walnut from a
fourth story window, and its lodging on top of a telegraph pole, there
sprouting next spring, and in the course of a couple of years extending
its roots down the pole, insinuating themselves in the crevices and
splitting it open, then piercing the pavement; the tree continuing to
grow for years until the boy, as a man, can reach out from his window
and pick walnuts every fall, and the idea seems incredible; and yet
the equivalent occurs quite often in the south-eastern portions of our
distant colony. Nor is all this marshy softness confined to the levels
or to almost level slopes, as one would imagine from one's experience
at home, but it extends up the steepest places, where the climbing
would be hard enough without this added obstacle. In precipitous
slopes where the foot tears out a great swath of moist moss, it may
reveal underneath a slippery shingle or shale where nothing but a bird
could find a footing in its present condition. There is wonderful
preservative power in all these conditions, for nothing seems to rot in
the ground, and the accumulated timber of ages, standing and fallen,
stumps, limbs, and trunks, "criss-cross and tumble-tangled," as the
children say, forms a bewildering mass which, covered and intertwined
as it is with a compact entanglement of underbrush and moss, makes
the ascent of the steep hillsides a formidable undertaking. A fallen
trunk of a tree is only indicated by a ridge of moss, and should the
traveler on this narrow path deviate a little too far to the right
or left, he may sink up to his arm-pits in a soft mossy trap from
which he can scramble as best he may, according to his activity in
the craft of "backwoodsman-ship." Having once reached the tops of the
lower hills--the higher ones are covered with snow and glacier ice the
year round--a few small openings may be seen, which, if any thing, are
more boggy and treacherous to the feet than the hillsides themselves,
lagoon-like morasses, covered with pond lilies and aquatic plant life,
being connected by a network of sluggish canals with three or four
inches of amber colored water and as many feet of soft black oozy mud,
with here and there a clump of willow brake or "pussy-tails" springing
above the waste of sedge and flags. In these bayou openings a hunter
may now and then run across a stray deer, bear, or mountain goat,
but, in general, inland hunting in south-eastern Alaska is a complete
failure, owing to the scarcity of game and the labor of hunting.
The worst part of Peril Strait being ahead of us, we backed out with
our long unwieldy vessel and turned westward, passing out late in the
evening through Salisbury Strait to the Pacific Ocean, ours being,
according to the pilot, the first steam vessel to essay the passage. A
last night on the Pacific's rolling water, and early next morning we
rounded Cape Ommaney, and entered the inland passage of Chatham Strait,
our prow once more pointed northward, the sheet of water lying as quiet
as a mill pond. About 4 P.M. we reached Killisnoo, a pretty little port
in the Strait. Cod-fish abounding here in unusual numbers, a regular
fishery has been established by a company for the purpose of catching
and preserving the cod for the markets of the Pacific coast. Here I
saw many of the Kootznahoo Indians of the place, who do the principal
fishing for the white men. Their already ugly faces were plastered
over with black, for which, according to the superintendent, there
were two causes. A few of the Indians were clad in mourning, to which
this artificial blackness is an adjunct, while the remainder followed
the custom in order to protect their faces and especially their eyes
from the intense glare of the sun on the water while fishing. Chatham
Strait at its northern end subdivides into Icy Straits and Lynn Canal,
the latter being taken as our course. At its northern end it again
branches into the Chilkat and Chilkoot Inlets, the former being taken;
and at its head, the highest northing we can reach in this great inland
salt-water river, our voyage on the _Victoria_ terminated. Icy Straits
lead off to the westward and unite with the Pacific, by way of Cross
Sound, the most northern of these connecting passages, which marks the
point where the archipelago, and with it the inland passage, ceases,
for from here northward to St. Elias and beyond a bold bad coast faces
the stormy Pacific, and along its frowning cliffs of rock and ice even
the amphibious Indian seldom ventures.
CHAPTER III.
IN THE CHILKAT COUNTRY.
[Illustration: CHILEAT BRACELET MADE FROM SILVER COIN.]
The Chilkat country was reached on the morning of the 2d of June and we
dropped anchor in a most picturesque little port called Pyramid Harbor,
its name being derived from a conspicuous conical island that the
Chilkats call Schlay-hotch, and the few whites, Pyramid Island, shown
on page 43. There were two salmon canneries just completed, one on
each side of the inlet, awaiting the "run" or coming of salmon, which
occurred about two weeks later. Each cannery was manned by about a half
dozen white men as directors and workmen in the trades departments,
the Chilkats doing the rougher work, as well as furnishing the fish.
They differed in no material respect from the salmon canneries of the
great Columbia River, so often described. Just above them comes in the
Chilkat river, with a broad shallow mouth, which, at low water (sixteen
feet below high water) looks like a large sand flat forming part of the
shores of the harbor. On these bars the Indians spear the salmon when
the water is just deep enough to allow them to wade around readily.
Up this Chilkat river are the different villages of the Chilkat
Indians, one of fifteen or twenty houses being in sight, on the east
bank, the largest, however, which contains four or five times as many
houses, called Klukwan, being quite a distance up the river. These
Chilkats are subdivided into a number of smaller clans, named after the
various animals, birds and fishes. At about the time of my arrival the
chief of the Crow clan had died, and as he was a very important person,
a most sumptuous funeral was expected to last about a week or ten days.
These funerals are nothing but a series of feasts, protracted according
to the importance of the deceased, and as they are furnished at the
expense of the administrators or executors of the dead man's estate,
every Indian from far and wide, full of veneration for the dead and a
desire for victuals, congregates at the pleasant ceremonies, and gorges
to his utmost, being worthless for work for another week afterward. As
I urgently needed some three or four score of these Indians to carry my
effects on their backs across the Alaskan coast range of mountains to
the head waters of the Yukon river, this prolonged funeral threatened
seriously to prevent my getting away in good time. Ranking me as a
chief, I was invited to the obsequies and promised a very conspicuous
position therein, especially on the last day when the body was to be
burned on a huge funeral pyre of dry resinous woods. Cremation is the
usual method of disposing of the dead among these people, the priests
or medicine men being the only ones exempt. The latter claim a sort
of infallibility and all of their predictions, acts, and influences
capable of survival, live after them so long as their bodies exist,
but should these be lost by drowning, devouring, or cremation, this
infallibility ceases. Therefore these defunct doctors of savage
witch-craft inhabit the greatest portion of the few graveyards that
one sees scattered here and there over the shores of the channels and
inlets that penetrate the country. Cremation is not always resorted to,
however, with the laity, for whenever convenience dictates otherwise,
they too may be buried in boxes, and this practice, I understand, is
becoming more common. Cremation is a savage honor, nevertheless, and
slaves were not entitled to the rite. All the Indians were extremely
anxious that I should attend the obsequies of their dear departed
friend, for if I did they saw that they might also be present and
yet feel sure of employment on my expedition over the mountains. I
declined the invitation, however, and by being a little bit determined
managed to persuade enough strong sturdy fellows away to do my proposed
packing in two trips over the pass, which had the effect of inducing
the others to come forward in sufficient numbers to accomplish the
work in a single journey, and preparations were commenced accordingly.
These preparations consisted mostly in assorting our effects with
reference to every thing that we could possibly leave behind, taking
as little as we could make our way through with, and putting that
little into convenient bags, boxes, and bundles of about one hundred
pounds each, that being the maximum load the Indians could well carry
over such Alpine trails. Some boys, eight or ten, even came forward
to solicit a share in the arduous labor, and one little urchin of
not over fourteen, a son of the Chilkat chief, Shot-rich, manfully
assumed the responsibility of a sixty-eight pound box, the distance he
had to carry it being about thirty miles, but thirty miles equal to
any one hundred and thirty on the good roads of a civilized country.
There were a few slaves among my numerous Indian packers, slavery
having once flourished extensively among the Chilkats, but having
diminished both in vigor and extent, in direct ratio to their contact
with the whites. Formerly, slaves were treated in the many barbarous
ways common to savage countries, sacrificed at festivals and religious
ceremonies, and kept at the severest tasks. They were often tied in
huge leathern sacks stretched at full length on the hard stony ground
and trodden to death. The murderers, great muscular men, would jump up
and down on their bodies, singing a wild death chant, with their fists
clinched across their breasts, every cracking of a rib or bone being
followed by loud shouts of derisive laughter. Sometimes the slave was
bound to huge bowlders at the water's edge at low tide, and as the
returning waves came rolling in and slowly drowned the wretch, his
cries were deafened by the hideous shouts from the spectators on the
land. Of course, as with all slave-holders, an eye was kept open toward
mercenary views, and the sacrifices were nearly always of the aged,
infirm, or decrepit; those who had ceased to be useful as interpreted
by their own savage ideas of usefulness. Entering a Chilkat house
nowadays, one can hardly distinguish a slave from the master, unless
one is acquainted with the insignificant variations in dress which
characterize them, and while the slaves are supposed to do all the
work the enforcement of the rule appears to be very lax. Still it is
interesting to know that the fourteenth amendment to the United States
constitution is not held inviolable in all parts of that vast country.
As among nearly all savages, the women are brutalized, but they appear
to have one prerogative of the most singular character, that is well
worth relating. Nearly every thing descends on the mother's side, yet
a chattel may be owned, or at least controlled, by the men, although a
traveler will notice many bargains wherein the woman's consent is first
obtained. The royal succession is most oddly managed with reference
to women's rights. The heir-apparent to the throne is not the oldest
or any other child of the king and queen, but is the queen's nearest
blood relative of the male persuasion, although the relationship may
be no closer, perhaps, than that of cousin. As this curiously chosen
king may marry any woman of the tribe, it is easy to see that any one
may in this indirect way become the sovereign of the savages, and with
the help of luck alone, may acquire royal honors. One rich Indian woman
of Sitka who took a fancy to a slave, purchased him for the purpose of
converting him into a husband, at a cost of nearly a thousand dollars
in goods and chattels, and if he was not very expensive thereafter
he may have been cheaper than the usual run of such bargains. When a
couple of Chilkats tie the nuptial knot, they at once, if possible,
adopt a boy and a girl, although these can hardly be said to stand in
the place of adopted children, when it is understood that they are
really a conjugal reserve corps for the bride and bridegroom in case of
death. Should the man die the boy becomes the widow's husband without
further ceremony, and _vice versa_. Of course such conjugal mixtures
present the most incongruous aspects in the matter of age, but happily
these examples are infrequent.
This Chilkat country is most thoroughly Alpine in character, and in
the quiet, still evenings, far up on the steep hillsides, where the
dense spruce timber is broken up by natural clearings, one could
often see a brown or black bear come out and nose around to get at
some of the many roots and berries that there abound, and more than
once I was a spectator of a bear hunt, for as soon as Bruin put in an
appearance there was always some Indian hunter ambitious enough to
toil up the steep mountain sides after him. I have spoken of their
extreme fear of the great brown or cinnamon bear, which they seldom
attack. So great indeed is the Chilkats' respect for him that the most
aristocratic clan is called the Cinnamon Bears. Another high class
clan is the Crows, the plebeian divisions being the Wolves and Whales,
and the division line is so strong that it leads to feuds between the
clans that, in respect of slaughter, are almost entitled to the name
of wars, while between the high and low caste intermarriage is almost
unknown. As the Brown Bears, or Cinnamon Bears as they are generally
called, are the highest clan, so copper is their most highly prized
metal. With copper the Chilkats have always been familiar, gold and
silver coming with the whites; and therefore a brown bear's head carved
in copper is their most venerated charm. In regard to engraving and
sculpture it is not too much to say that the Chilkats stand well in
the front rank of savage artists. When civilization first came in
contact with these people they were in the Paleolithic stone age of
that material, and their carvings were marvels of design and execution,
although subserving the simplest wants of a simple people. Of metals
they possessed only copper, and that in such small quantities as to
be practically out of the account. With the whites came gold and
silver, and the latter from its comparative cheapness became their
favorite metal. Coins were hammered out into long slender bars, bent
into bracelets, and then beautifully engraved, some of their designs
having been borrowed from civilization and copied faithfully in detail,
although the old savage ideas of workmanship are for obvious reasons
preferred by most purchasers. Some of their women wear a dozen or more
bracelets on each arm, covering them up to the elbows and beyond, but
this seems to be only a means of preserving them until the arrival of
white customers, when they are sold at from one to five or six dollars
a pair according to their width. The initial piece of this chapter
is sketched from one in the possession of the author and made by one
of his hired Indians. Ear-rings, finger-rings, beads and ornamental
combs for the hair are made of silver and gold, mostly of silver; and
the Chilkats seem to be as imitative in respect to ideas and designs
as the Mongolians, whose talents are so much better known. It is in
wood and horn, however, that their best examples of this art have
been displayed, and so unique and intricate are they that language
is inadequate to describe them. Of wood carvings their "totem" poles
show the cleverest workmanship and variety of design. The exact
significance of these totem poles remains still undetermined, and the
natives themselves seem averse to throwing much light on the subject.
This fact alone would appear to indicate a superstitious origin. Some
say the totem poles represent family genealogies, life histories, and
tribal accounts, all of which conjectures may be well founded. They
are simply logs of wood standing on end in front of the houses, and
facing the water. This face is covered from top to bottom, for a
height of from five to thirty feet, with the most curious carvings, as
shown to a limited extent on page 19. The "totem" or tribal symbol,
which may be a wolf, a bear, a raven, or a fish, often predominates,
while representations of crouching human figures are favorite designs.
The making of totem poles has ceased among the Indians, although they
carefully preserve those that still exist. Still many of them fall
into the clutches of white men in compensation for a few dollars,
and hardly a museum of note in the country but displays a Tlinkit
totem pole or two, while some possess extensive collections. The best
carving is shown in the isolated poles standing in front of the houses,
but frequently the houses themselves are fantastically carved in
conspicuous places to suit the owner's fancy.
[Illustration: PYRAMID HARBOR, CHILKAT INLET. (Chilkat Indian Canoe in
the foreground.)]
Some of these houses are quite respectable for savage house-making,
the great thick puncheon planks of the floor being often quite well
polished, or at any rate neatly covered with white sand. Attempts at
civilization are made in the larger and more aristocratic abodes by
partitioning the huge hovel into rooms by means of draperies of cloth
or canvas. In some the door is made as high as it can be cut in the
wall and is reached by steps from the outside, while a similar flight
inside gives access to the floor. The fire occupies the center of the
room, enough of the floor being removed to allow it to be kindled
directly on the ground, the smoke escaping by a huge hole in the roof.
The vast majority of the houses are squalid beyond measure, and the
dense resinous smoke of the spruce and pine blackens the walls with a
funereal tinge, and fills the house with an odor which, when mingled
with that of decayed salmon, makes one feel like leaving his card at
the door and passing on. It takes no stretch of the imagination to
conceive that such architecture provides the maximum of ventilation
when least needed, and it is a fact that the winter hours of the
Chilkats are cold and cheerless in the extreme. They sit crouched
around the fire with their blankets closely folded about them and
even drawn over their heads, the house serving indeed as a protection
from the fierce wind and deep snow drifts, but no more. They look
on all this foolishness, however, with a sort of Spartan fortitude
as necessary to toughen them and inure them to the rough climate,
and at times, impelled by this belief, they will deliberately expose
themselves with that object in view. When the rivers and lakes are
frozen over the men and boys break great holes in the ice and plunge
in for a limited swim, then come out, and if a bank of soft snow is
convenient roll around in it like so many polar bears; and when they
get so cold that they can't tell the truth they wander leisurely
back to the houses and remark that they have had a nice time, and
believe they have done something toward making themselves robust
Chilkat citizens able to endure every thing. There is no wonder that
such people adopt cremation; and in fact one interpretation of its
religious significance is based on the idea of future personal warmth
in the happy hunting grounds, which they regard as a large island,
whose shores are unattainable except by those whose bodies have been
duly consumed by fire. Unless the rite of cremation has been performed
the unhappy shade shivers perpetually in outer frost. It is the
impossibility of cremation which makes death by drowning so terrible to
a Chilkat.
The reason that the _shamans_, or medicine men (whose bodies are not
cremated) have no such dread, is that their souls do not pass to the
celestial island, but are translated into the bodies of infants, and
in this way the crop of medicine men never diminishes, whatever may
be the status of the rest of the population. Dreams and divinations,
or various marks of the child's hair or face, are relied upon to
determine into which infant the supreme and mysterious power of the
defunct doctor of Tlinkit divinity has entered. To enumerate all of
these signs would consume more of my space than the subject is worth.
When a Chilkat dies the body is burned at sunrise, having first been
dressed for the ceremony in a costume more elaborate than any which
it ever wore in life. The corpse must not be carried out at the door,
which is deemed sacred, a superstition very common among savage races.
A few boards may be taken from the rear or side of the hovel, or the
body may be hoisted through the capacious chimney in the roof; but when
the Chilkat in his last illness sought his house to lie down and die
in it he passed over its threshold for the last time. Demons and dark
spirits hover around like vultures, and are only kept out of doors by
the dreaded incantations of the medicine men, and these may seize the
corpse as it passes out. So fiendishly eager are they to secure and
stab their prey that all that is needed is to lead out a dog from the
house, which has been brought into it at night, when the witches fall
upon it and exhaust their strength in attacking it before they discover
their mistake. The cremation is seldom perfect, and the charred bones
and remnants are collected and put into a small box standing on four
posts in the nearest graveyard. In the burial of medicine men, or
before cremation with others, the bodies are bent into half their
length, the knees drawn up to the breast and secured by thongs and
lashings.
A walk into the woods around Chilkat shows the traveling to be somewhat
better than in equally mountainous country near the coast, and where
paths had been cut through the dense timber to the charcoal pits formed
and maintained by the canneries, the walking was exceedingly agreeable
and pleasant, especially by way of contrast. As one recedes from the
coast and gets beyond the influence of the warm Japanese current with
its ceaseless fogs, rains and precipitation generally, the woods and
marshes become more and more susceptible of travel, and by the time the
Alaska coast range of mountains is crossed and the interior reached,
one finds it but little worse than the tangle-woods and swamps of
lower latitudes. The waters swarm with life, which is warmed by this
heat-bearing current, and I think I do not exaggerate in saying that
Alaska and its numerous outlying islands will alone, in the course of
a short time, repay us annually more than the original cost of the
great territory. By means of these industries the wedge has begun
to enter, and we may hope it will be driven home by means of a wise
administration of government, a boon which has been denied to Alaska
since the Russians left the territory.
The principal fisheries will always be those of salmon and cod, since
these fish are most readily prepared for export, while halibut, Arctic
smelt or candle-fish, brook trout, flounders and other species will
give ample variety for local use. The salmon has long been the staple
fish food of the Chilkats, but this is slowly giving way to the
products of civilization which they acquire in return for services at
the canneries and for loading and unloading the vessels which visit
the port. The salmon season is ushered in with considerable ceremony
by the Chilkats, numerous festivals mark its success and its close is
celebrated by other feasts. A Chilkat village during the salmon fishing
season is a busy place. Near the water, loaded with the fish, their
pink sides cut open ready for drying, are the scaffoldings, which are
built just high enough, to prevent the dogs from investigating too
closely; while out in the shallow water of the shoals or rapids, which
often determine the site of a village, may be seen fish-weirs looking
like stranded baskets that had served their purpose elsewhere and been
thrown away up the stream, and which had lodged here as they floated
down. Many of the salmon are converted into fish-oil, which is used
by the Chilkats as food, and resembles a cross between our butter and
the blubber of the Eskimo. Taking a canoe that is worn out, yet not
so badly damaged as not to be completely water-tight, it is filled
some six to eight inches deep with salmon, over which water is poured
until the fish are well covered. This being done on the beach there
are always plenty of stones around, and a number of these are heated
to as high a temperature as possible in an open fire alongside of the
canoe, and are then rapidly thrown into the water, bringing it to a
boiling heat, and cooking the mass. As the oil of the fat fish rises
to the surface it is skimmed off with spoons, and after all has been
procured that it is possible to obtain by this means, the gelatinous
mass is pressed so as to get whatever remains, and all is preserved
for winter food. The salmon to be dried are split open along the back
until they are as flat as possible, and then the flesh is split to
the skin in horizontal and vertical slices about an inch to an inch
and a half apart, which facilitates the drying process. Each little
square contracts in drying and makes a convenient mouthful for them
as they scrape it from the skin with their upper canine teeth like
a beaver peeling the bark from a cottonwood tree. In packing over
the Alaska coast range of mountains, a task which keeps the Indians
absent from three to five days, a single salmon and a quart of flour
are considered a sufficient ration per man for even that severe
trip. If they are working for white men the employers are supposed
to furnish the flour and the Indians the fish. While these Tlinkits
of south-eastern Alaska, of which the Chilkats and Chilkoots are
the most dreaded and war-like band, are a most jolly, mirth-making,
and oftentimes even hilarious crowd of people, yet any thing like a
practical joke played upon one of them is seldom appreciated by the
recipient with the sheepish satisfaction so common to civilization.
An army officer, Lieut. C. E. S. Wood, who spent some time among them
sketching and drawing something besides his pay, relates in the Century
Magazine the story of an Indian who laboriously crawled up on a band of
decoy ducks that somebody had allowed to remain anchored out near the
water's edge, and wasted several rounds of ammunition on them before
he discovered his mistake. Instead of sneaking back into the brush,
dodging through out-of-the-way by-paths to his home, and maintaining
a conspicuous silence thereafter, as we of a more civilized country
would have done under like circumstances, he sought out the owner of
the decoys and demanded direct and indirect damages for the injuries he
had suffered and the ammunition he had wasted, and was met by laughter,
which only increased his persistency until his demands were satisfied
to get rid of him.
At one of the two salmon canneries of which I have spoken as being
in Chilkat Inlet, there was also kept a trading store, and here
the Indians would bring their furs and peltries and barter for the
articles that were so temptingly displayed before their eyes; and
if the skins were numerous and valuable this haggling would often
continue for hours, as the Indian never counts time as worth any thing
in his bargains. While we were there an Indian brought in a few black
fox skins to barter for trading material, a prime skin of this kind
being worth about forty dollars in goods from the store, and grading
from that down to nearly one-fourth of the amount. At the time when
the Chilkats learned the great value of the black fox skins, not many
years back, they also learned, in some unaccountable way, the method of
making them to order by staining the common red fox or cross fox skin
by the application of some native form of blacking, probably made from
soot or charcoal. Many such were disposed of before the counterfeit was
detected, and even after the cheat was well known the utmost vigilance
was needed to prevent natives playing the trick in times of great
business activity. The method of detection was simply to place the skin
on any hard flat surface like the counter of a trader's store, and rub
the clean hand vigorously and with considerable pressure backward and
forward over the fur side of the skin, when, if the skin were dyed, the
fact would be shown by the blackened hand. This fact had been explained
to us by the trader, and the Doctor entering just as the conversation
as to the price became animated, and perceiving that the palmar surface
of his hand was well soiled and blackened, owing to his having been
engaged assorting packs for our Indians, he playfully stepped up to
the counter, ran his hand jauntily through the skin once or twice and
displayed to the two traders his blackened palm, to the surprise of
the white man and absolute consternation of the Indian. The former
rapidly but unavailingly tried to verify the Doctor's experiment, when
the latter broke out into a hearty laugh, in which the trader joined.
Not so with the Indian; when he recovered his senses he was furious
at the imputation on his character; and the best light he could view
it in, after all the explanations, was that it had been a conspiracy
between the two white men to get the skin at low rates, and the plot
having failed, according to their own confession, and he himself having
received his own price to quiet him, ought to be satisfied. The Doctor
remarked as he finished the story, that he did not believe there was
the remotest sense of humor among the whole band of Chilkat or Chilkoot
Indians. The constant life of the Tlinkits in their canoes when
procuring food or at other occupations on the water has produced, in
conformity with the doctrine of natural selection and the survival of
the fittest, a most conspicuous preponderating development of the chest
and upper limbs over the lower, and their gait on land, resembling that
of aquatic birds, is scarcely the poetry of motion as we understand
it. The Chilkats, however, are not so confined to a seafaring life,
and their long arduous trading journeys inland have assisted to make
this physical characteristic much less conspicuous among them than
among other tribes of Tlinkits, although even the Chilkats can not be
called a race of large men. While they may not compare with the Sioux
or Cheyennes, or a few others that might be mentioned, yet there are
scores of Indian tribes in the United States proper which are greatly
inferior to the Chilkats both in mental, physical, and moral qualities.
In warfare they are as brave as the average Indians of the United
States, and have managed to conduct their own affairs with considerable
order, in spite of governmental interference at times. I quote from a
correspondent writing from there as late as August, 1884, to the _New
York Times_ of November 23d: "The Indians have a great respect for a
man-of-war, with its strict discipline and busy steam launches that
can follow their canoes to the remote creeks and hiding places in the
islands, and naval rule has been most praiseworthy. The army did no
good for the country or the natives, and its record is not a creditable
one. The Tlinkits sneered openly at the land forces, and snapped their
fingers at challenging and forbidding sentries, and paddled away at
their pleasure."
CHAPTER IV.
OVER THE MOUNTAIN PASS.
[Illustration: CHILKAT INDIAN PACKER.]
By the 6th of June all of our many arrangements for departure were
fully completed, and the next day the party got under way shortly
before 10 o'clock in the forenoon. Mr. Carl Spuhn, the Manager of
the North-west Trading Company, which owned the western cannery in
the Chilkat Inlet, where my party had been disembarked, who had been
indefatigable in his efforts to assist me in procuring Indian packers,
and in many other ways aiding the expedition, now placed at my disposal
the little steam launch of the company, and behind it, tied one to
the other by their towing ropes, was a long string of from twelve
to twenty canoes, each containing from two to four Chilkat Indians,
our prospective packers. Some of the Indians who had selected their
packs carried them in the canoes, but the bulk of the material was
on the decks of the steam-launch "Louise." They disappeared out of
sight in a little while, steaming southward down the Chilkat Inlet,
while with a small party in a row-boat I crossed this channel and
then by a good trail walked over to the Haines Mission, in Chilkoot
Inlet, presided over by Mr. Eugene S. Willard and his wife, with a
young lady assistant, Miss Mathews, and maintained by the Presbyterian
Board of Missions as a station among the Chilkat and Chilkoot Indians.
Crossing the "mission trail," as it was called, we often traversed
lanes in the grass, which here was fully five feet high, while, in
whatever direction the eye might look, wild flowers were growing in the
greatest profusion. Dandelions as big as asters, buttercups twice the
usual size, and violets rivaling the products of cultivation in lower
latitudes were visible around. It produced a singular and striking
contrast to raise the eyes from this almost tropical luxuriance and
allow them to rest on the Alpine hills, covered, half way down their
shaggy sides, with snow and glacier ice, and with cold mist condensed
on their crowns. Mosquitoes were too plentiful not to be called a
prominent discomfort, and small gnats did much to mar the otherwise
pleasant stroll. Berries and berry blossoms grew in a profusion and
variety which I have never seen equaled within the same limits in lower
latitudes. A gigantic nettle was met with in uncomfortable profusion
when one attempted to wander from the beaten trail. This nettle has
received the appropriate name of "devil-sticks;" and Mr. Spuhn of the
party told me it was formerly used by the Indian medicine-men as a
prophylactic against witch-craft, applied externally, and with a vigor
that would have done credit to the days of old Salem, a custom which
is still kept up among these Indians. Gardens have been cultivated
upon this narrow peninsula, the only comparatively level track of
considerable size in all south-eastern Alaska, with a success which
speaks well for this part of the territory as far as climate and soil
are concerned, although the terribly rough mountainous character of
nearly all of this part of the country will never admit of any broad
experiments in agriculture. By strolling leisurely along and stopping
long enough to lunch under the great cedar trees, while the mosquitoes
lunched off us, we arrived at the mission on Chilkoot Inlet just in
time to see the little launch in the distance followed by its long
procession of canoes, heading for us and puffing away as if it were
towing the Great Eastern. It had gone down the Chilkat Inlet ten or
twelve miles to the southward, turned around the sharp cape of the
peninsula, Point Seduction, and traveled back northward, parallel to
its old course, some twelve to fifteen miles to where we were waiting
for it, having steamed about twenty-five miles, while we had come
one-fifth the distance to the same point. Here quite a number of
Chilkoot natives and canoes were added to the already large throng;
Mrs. Schwatka, who had accompanied me thus far, was left in the kind
care of the missionary family of Mr. Willard; adieus were waved and we
once more took our northward course up the Chilkoot Inlet.
[Illustration: Part I. Map of the Alaska Exploring Expedition of 1883.
Compiled and drawn by Mr. C. A. Homan, Topographical Assistant.]
After four or five miles the main inlet bears off to the westward, but
a much narrower one still points constantly to the north star, and up
the latter we continued to steam. It is called the Dayay Inlet and
gives us about ten miles of "straight-away course" before coming to the
mouth of the river of the same name. This Dayay Inlet is of the same
general character as the inland passages in this part of Alaska, of
which I have already spoken; a river-like channel between high steep
hills, which are covered with pine, cedar and spruce from the water's
line nearly to the top, and there capped with bare granite crowns that
in gulches and on the summits are covered with snow and glacier ice,
which in melting furnish water for innumerable beautiful cascades and
mountain torrents, many of them dashing from such dizzy precipitous
heights that they are reduced to masses of iridescent spray by the time
they reach the deep green waters of the inlet.
With a score of canoes towing behind, the ropes near the launch kept
parting so often that we were considerably delayed, and as the Indians
were seldom in any great hurry about repairing the damages, and treated
it in a most hilarious manner as something of a joke on the launch, the
master of that craft, when the rope had parted near the central canoe
for about the twentieth time, finally bore on without them, leaving the
delinquents to get along as best they could, there being about five
miles more to make. Fortunately just then a fair southern breeze sprang
up, so that most of the tardy canoes soon displayed canvas, and those
that could not, hastily improvised a blanket, a pea-jacket, or even a
a broad-shouldered pair of pantaloons, to aid their progress, for the
Indian in all sections of the country is much more ingenious than one
is apt to suppose, especially if his object be to save manual labor.
The mouth of the Dayay river being reached about six in the afternoon,
it was found to consist of a series of low swampy mud flats and a very
miry delta. Here it is necessary to ascend the swift river at least a
mile to find a site that is even half suitable for a camp. During the
time when the greatest sediment is brought down by the swift muddy
stream, _i.e._, during the spring freshets and summer high water, the
winds are usually from the south, and blow with considerable force,
which fact accounts for the presence of soft oozy deposits of great
extent so near the mouth of the stream. Through this shallow water the
canoes carried our effects. The river once reached the canoes proceeded
up the stream to camp, the launch whistled us adieu, and as she faded
from sight, the last link that bound us to civilization was snapped,
and our explorations commenced. The distance from the Haines' Mission
to the mouth of the Dayay where we disembarked was sixteen miles.
At this camp No. 2, we found a small camp of wandering _Tahk-heesh_
Indians, or as they are locally called by the few whites of the
country, the _Sticks_, a peaceful tribe whose home is over the Alaskan
coast range of mountains and along the headwaters of the great Yukon,
the very part of the very stream we desired to explore. It has only
been within the last few years that these Tahk-heesh Indians have
been allowed to cross over the mountains into the Chilkat country
for purposes of trade, the Chilkats and Chilkoots united having from
time immemorial completely monopolized the profitable commerce of the
interior fur trade, forbidding ingress to the whites and denying egress
to the Indians of the interior. From the former they bought their
trading goods and trinkets, and making them into convenient bundles
or parcels of about one hundred pounds each, they carried them on
their backs across the snow and glacier crowned mountains, exchanging
them for furs with the tribes of the interior for many hundreds of
miles around. These furs were again lashed in packs and carried back
over the same perilous paths to the coffers of the white traders, and
although they realized but a small fractional portion of their value,
yet prices were large in comparison with the trifling cost to the
venders. When the trade was at its best many years ago, these trips
were often made twice a year during the spring and summer, and so
great was the commerce in those days, that no less than from eight to
ten tons of trading material found its way into the interior by way
of these Alpine passes, and was exchanged for its equivalent in furs.
As a consequence, the Chilkat nation is the richest tribe of Indians
in the great North-west. Their chief, Shot-rich, alone is worth about
ten or twelve thousand dollars in blankets, their standard of wealth,
and others in proportion, according to their energy in the trade.
Shot-rich has three large native houses at Klukwan, the main Chilkat
town, two of which are filled with blankets worth from two to four
dollars apiece. The trail on which we were now plodding along is known
among the Indians as the Chilkoot trail to the interior, and takes
from two to four days, packing their goods on their backs, until the
headwaters of the Yukon are reached. It was monopolized solely by the
Chilkoots, who had even gone so far as to forbid the Chilkats, almost
brothers in blood, from using it, so that the latter were forced to
take a longer and far more laborious route. This route of the Chilkats
led them up the Chilkat River to near its head, where a long mountain
trail that gave them a journey of a week or ten days, packing on their
backs, brought them to a tributary of the Yukon, by means of which the
interior was gained. Once on this tributary no serious rapids or other
impediments were in their line of travel, while the Yukon, with its
shorter trail, had many such obstacles. The great Hudson Bay Company
with its well-known indomitable courage, attempted as early as 1850 to
tap this rich trading district monopolized by the Chilkat Indians, and
Fort Selkirk was established at the junction of the Yukon and Pelly,
but so far away from their main base of supplies on Hudson's Bay, that
it is said it took them a couple of years to reach it with trading
effects. The Indians knew of but one method of competition in business.
They went into no intricate inventories for reducing prices of stock,
nor did they put bigger advertisements or superior inducements before
their customers. They simply organized a war party, rapidly descended
the main Yukon for about five hundred miles, burned the buildings and
appropriated the goods.
As the Tahk-heesh or _Sticks_ were allowed to come abroad so the white
men were allowed and, in fact, induced to enter, for the coast Indians
found ample compensation in carrying the white men's goods over the
trail of about thirty miles at a rate which brought them from ten to
twelve dollars per pack of a hundred pounds in weight; and it was my
intention to take advantage of this opportunity to reach the head of
the river, and then fight my way down it, rather than against its well
known rapid current, of which I had heard so much from the accounts
of explorers on its lower waters. When it was known, however, that I
expected to do my explorations on a raft, the idea was laughed at by
the few white men of the country, as evincing the extreme of ignorance,
and the Indians seemed to be but little behind them in ridicule of the
plan. The latter emphatically affirmed that a hundred and fifty or two
hundred miles of lakes stretched before us, and what, they argued, can
be more helpless than a raft on a still lake? Eight or ten miles of
boiling rapids occurred at various points in the course of the stream,
and these would tear any raft into a shapeless wreck, while it would
be hard to find Indians to portage my numerous effects around them.
The unwieldiness of a great raft--no small one would serve for us and
our stores--in a swift current was constantly pointed out, and I must
confess I felt a little discouraged myself when I summed up all these
reasons. Why this or the Chilkat route was not attempted long ago
by some explorer, who might thereby have traversed the entire river
in a single summer, instead of combating its swift current from its
mouth, seems singular in the light of the above facts, and I imagine
the only explanation is that men who would place sufficient reliance
in Indian reports to insert in their maps the gross inaccuracies that
we afterward detected, would rely also upon the Indian reports that
from time immemorial have pronounced this part of the river to be
unnavigable even for canoes, except for short stretches, and as filled
with rapids, cañons, whirlpools and cascades.
After camping that night on the Dayay, bundles were all assorted
and assigned. The packs varied from thirty-six to a hundred and
thirty-seven pounds in weight, the men generally carrying a hundred
pounds and the boys according to their age and strength. The "Sticks"
or Tahk-heesh Indians camped near us were hunting black bear, which
were said to be abundant in this locality, an assertion which seemed
to be verified by the large number of tracks we saw in the valley.
From this band of Indians we completed our number of packers, a
circumstance which irritated the others greatly, for the Chilkats seem
to regard the _Sticks_ almost in the light of slaves. Here I also
secured a stout, sturdy fellow, at half rates, merely to go along in
case of sickness among my numerous retinue, in which event he would be
put on full wages. His onerous duties consisted in carrying the guidon,
or expedition flag, weighing four or five pounds, and he improvised
himself into a ferry for the white men at the numerous fords which the
tortuous Dayay River presented as we ascended. As every one gave him
a nickel or dime at each ford, and the guidon staff was simply a most
convenient alpenstock, he was the envy of all the others as he slowly
but surely amassed his gains; not so slowly either, for the river made
so many windings from one side of its high walled valley to the other,
that his receipts rivaled a western railroad in the matter of mileage,
but the locomotion was scarcely as comfortable as railroad travel.
[Illustration: METHODS OF TRACKING A CANOE UP A RAPID.]
During the still, quiet evening we could hear many grouse hooting in
the spruce woods of the hillsides, this time of day seeming to be their
favorite hour for concerts. The weather on this, the first day of our
trip, was splendid, with a light southern wind that went down with the
sun and gave us a few mist-like sprinkles of rain, serving to cool
the air and make slumber after our fatigue doubly agreeable. The head
of canoe navigation on the Dayay river, where it terminates abruptly
in a huge boiling cascade, is ten miles from the mouth of the stream,
although fully fifteen are traveled by the canoemen in ascending its
tortuous course, which is accomplished by the usual Indian method of
"tracking," with ropes and poles from the bank of the river. I observed
that they "tracked" their canoes against the current in two ways, each
method requiring two men to one canoe. The diagrams given will show
these methods; in No. 1, an Indian pulls the canoe with a rope, while
a companion just in his rear and following in his steps keeps the head
of the canoe in the stream, with a long pole, at just such distance as
he may desire according to the obstacles that are presented. If the
water from the bank for some distance out, say twelve or fifteen feet,
is clear of all obstacles, his companion will fall to the rear as far
as his pole will allow and assist the ropeman by pushing up stream, but
in shallow, swift places he has all he can do to regulate the canoe's
course through the projecting stones, and the burden of the draft falls
on the ropeman. In the other mode both the men use poles and all the
motive power is furnished by pushing. The advantage over the first
is that in "boiling" water full of stones, the bowman may steer his
end clear of all of these, only to have the seething waters throw the
stern against a sharp corner of a rock and tear a hole in that part, an
accident which can only be avoided by placing a pole-man at the stern.
It is readily apparent, however, that there is much more power expended
in this method of making headway against the current than in the other.
Some few of the Indians judiciously vary the two methods to suit the
circumstances. On long stretches of only moderately swift water the
tired trackers would take turns in resting in the canoe, using a paddle
to hold the bow out from the shore. The current of the Dayay is very
swift, and two days' "tracking" is often required to traverse the
navigable part of the stream. Every few hundred yards or so the river
needs to be crossed, wherever the timber on the banks is dense, or
where the circuitous river cuts deep into the high hillsides that form
the boundaries of its narrow valley. In these crossings from fifty to a
hundred yards would often be lost. The Indians seemed to make no effort
whatever to stem the swift current in crossing, but pointed the canoe
straight across for the other bank and paddled away as if dear life
depended on the result.
[Illustration: CANOEING UP THE DAYAY.]
The march of the 8th to Camp 3, brought us within a half mile or
a mile of the head of canoe navigation on the river, and here the
Indians desired to camp, as at that particular spot there is no dry
wood with which to cook their meals; although all they had to cook was
the little flour that I had issued, the salmon being dried and eaten
without further preparation. The Dayay Valley is well wooded in its
bottom with poplar and several varieties of willow, and where these
small forests did not exist were endless ridges of sand, gravel and
even huge bowlders cutting across each other at all angles, evidently
the work of water, assisted at times by the more powerful agency of
moving or stranded ice. All day we had been crossing bear tracks of
different ages, and after camping some of the white men paddled across
the river (here thirty-five or forty yards wide) to take a stroll up
the valley; and while returning a large black bear was seen perched
on a conspicuous granite ridge of the western mountain wall, probably
four hundred yards away and at an angle of twenty degrees above our
position in the river bottom. A member of the party got two shots at
him, but he disappeared in the dense underbrush, evidently afraid
that the sportsman might aim at something else and so hit him. Dr.
Wilson and Mr. Homan fished with bait and flies for a long distance
up and down the different channels of the river, but could not get a
single "rise" or "bite," although the Indians catch mountain trout in
their peculiar fish-weirs, having offered us that very day a number
thus captured. Like all streams rising in glacier bearing lands of
calcareous structure, its waters are very white and chalky, which may
account for the apparent reluctance of the fish to rise to a fly. The
pretty waterfalls on the sides of the mountains still continued and the
glaciers of the summits became more numerous and strongly marked, and
descended nearer to the bed of the stream.
I could not but observe the peculiar manifestations of surprise
characteristic of the Chilkats. Whenever one uttered a shout over
some trifle, such as a comrade's slipping on a slimy stone into the
water, or tumbling over the root of a log, or any mishap, comical or
otherwise, every one within hearing, from two to two hundred, would
immediately chime in, and such a cry would ensue as to strike us with
astonishment. This may be repeated several times in a minute, and the
abruptness with which it would begin and end, so that not a single
distinct voice can be heard at either beginning or ending, reminds
one somewhat of a gang of coyotes howling around a frontier camp or
the bayings of Indian dogs on moonlight serenades, from which one
would be strongly tempted to believe they had borrowed it. Withal they
are a most happy, merry-hearted and jovial race, laughing hilariously
at every thing with the least shadow of comicality about it, and
"guying" every trifling mishap of a companion in which the sufferer
is expected to join, just as the man who chases his hat in a muddy
street on a windy day must laugh with the crowd. Such characteristics
of good nature are generally supposed to be accompanied by a generous
disposition, especially as toward men of the same blood, but I was
compelled to notice an almost cruel piece of selfishness which they
exhibited in one point, and which told strongly against any such theory
as applied to Indians, or at least this particular band of them. When
we got to the mouth of the Dayay river, many of the packers had no
canoes in which to track their bundles or packs to the head of canoe
navigation, and their companions who owned such craft flatly and
decisively refused to take their packs, although, as far as I could
see, it would have caused them no inconvenience whatever. In many cases
this selfishness was the effect of caste, to which I have already
alluded and which with them is carried to an extreme hardly equaled in
the social distinctions of any other savage people. Nor was this the
only conspicuous instance of selfishness displayed. As I have already
said, the Dayay is very tortuous, wide and swift, and therefore has
very few fords, and these at inconvenient intervals for travelers
carrying a hundred pounds apiece on their backs, yet the slight service
of ferrying the packers and their packs across the stream was refused
by the canoemen as rigidly as the other favor, and where the river
cut deep into some high projecting bank of the mountain flanks, these
unfortunate packers would be forced to carry burdens up over some
precipitous mountain spur, or at least to make a long detour in search
of available fords. My readers can rest assured that I congratulated
myself on having taken along a spare packer in the event of sickness
among my numerous throng, for even in such a case I found them as
disobliging and unaccommodating as before, utterly refusing to touch
a sick man's load until he had promised them the lion's share of his
wages and I had ratified the contract.
Every afternoon or evening after getting into camp, no matter how
fatiguing the march had been, as soon as their simple meal was cooked
and consumed, they would gather here and there in little parties for
the purpose of gambling, and oftentimes their orgies would run far
into the small hours of the night. The gambling game which they called
_la-hell_ was the favorite during the trip over the Chilkoot trail,
although I understand that they have others not so complicated. This
game requires an even number of players, generally from four to twelve,
divided into two parties which face each other. These "teams" continue
sitting about two or three feet apart, with their legs drawn up under
them, _à la Turque_, the place selected being usually in sandy ground
under the shade of a grove of poplar or willow trees. Each man lays a
wager with the person directly opposite him, with whom alone he gambles
as far as the gain or loss of his stake is concerned, although such
loss or gain is determined by the success of the team as a whole. In
other words, when a game terminates one team of course is the winner,
but each player wins only the stake put up by his vis-à-vis. A handful
of willow sticks, three or four inches long, and from a dozen to a
score in number, are thrust in the sand or soft earth, between the two
rows of squatting gamblers, and by means of these a sort of running
record or tally of the game is kept. The implements actually employed
in gambling are merely a couple of small bone-bobbins, as shown on page
227, of about the size of a lady's pen-knife, one of which has one or
more bands of black cut around it near its center and is called the
king, the other being pure white. At the commencement of the game, one
of the players picks up the bone-bobbins, changes them rapidly from
one hand to the other, sometimes behind his back, then again under an
apron or hat resting on his lap, during all of which time the whole
assembly are singing in a low measured melody the words, "Oh! oh! oh!
Oh, ker-shoo, ker-shoo!--" which is kept up with their elbows flapping
against their sides and their heads swaying to the tune, until some
player of the opposite row, thinking he is inspired, and singing with
unusual vehemence, suddenly points out the hand of the juggler that,
in his belief, contains "the king." If his guess is correct, his
team picks up one of the willow sticks and places it on their side,
or, if the juggler's team has gained, any one of their sticks must
be replaced in the reserve at the center. If he is wrong then, the
other side tallies one in the same way. The bone "king and queen" are
then handed to an Indian in the other row, and the same performance
repeated, although it may be twice as long, or half as short, as no
native attempts to discern the whereabouts of the "king" until he
feels he has a revelation to that effect, produced by the incantation.
A game will last any where from half an hour to three hours. Whenever
the game is nearly concluded and one party has gained almost all the
willow sticks, or at any other exciting point of the game, they have
methods of "doubling up" on the wagers, by not exchanging the bobbins
but holding both in one hand or leaving one or both on the ground under
a hat or apron, and the guesses are about both and count double, treble
or quadruple, for loss or gain. They wager the caps off their heads,
their shirts off their backs, and with many of them no doubt, their
prospective pay for the trip was all gone before it was half earned.
Men and boys alike entered the contest, and from half a dozen places
at once, in the woods near by, could be heard the everlasting refrain,
the never-ceasing chant of "Oh! oh! oh! Oh! ker-shoo, ker-shoo!" They
used also to improvise hats of birch bark (wherever that tree grew near
the evening camp) with pictures upon them that would prohibit their
passing through the mails. These habits do not indicate any great moral
improvement thus far produced by contact with civilization.
[Illustration: DAYAY VALLEY, LOOKING UP THE NOURSE RIVER VALLEY.
A glimpse of Baird Glacier covered with fog is given. The mountains
holding the glacier being twice as high as the one shown on the left,
their crests, if they had been visible, would not have been shown in
the photograph from which this illustration is made, being above the
line where it is cut off. It is only at night that the fog-banks lift,
when it is too late to take photographs.]
Two miles and a half beyond the head of canoe navigation, the
_Kut-lah-cook-ah_ River of the Chilkats comes in from the west.
This is really larger in volume and width than the Dayay, the two
averaging respectively fifty and forty yards in width by estimation. I
shortened its name, and called it after Professor Nourse of the United
States Naval Observatory. Large glaciers feed its sources by numerous
waterfalls, and its cañon-like bed is very picturesque. Like all such
streams its waters were conspicuously white and milk-like, and the most
diligent fisherman was unrewarded. At the head of the Nourse River
the Indians say there is a very large lake. The mountains that bound
its course on the west are capped by an immense glacier, which might
be traced along their summits for probably ten or twelve miles, and
was then lost in the lowering clouds of their icy crests. These light
fogs are frequent on warm days, when the difference of temperature at
the upper and lower levels is more marked, but they disappear at night
as the temperatures approach each other. This glacier, a glimpse of
which is given on page 73, was named after Professor Baird, of the
Smithsonian Institute at Washington. The march of the 9th of June took
us three miles and a half up the Dayay River, and while resting, about
noon, I was astonished to hear the Indians declare this was their
expected camp for the night, for we had really accomplished so little.
I was much inclined to anticipate that the rest of the journey was
not much worse, and would give a forcible example of the maxim that
"dangers disappear as they are approached." The rough manner in which
my illusions were dispelled will appear further on. Another inducement
to stop at this particular point was found in a small grove of spruce
saplings just across the river, which was so dense that each tree trunk
tapered as regularly as if it had been turned from a lathe. These
they desired for salmon-spears, cutting them on their way over the
trail, and collecting them as they returned, so as to give the poles
a few days to season, thus rendering them lighter for the dextrous
work required. These peculiar kinds of fish-spears are so common over
all the districts of Arctic and sub-Arctic America that I think them
worthy of description. The pole is from eight to twelve feet in length,
extending from P to P, as shown in the figure on this page. Two arms
A A are made of elastic wood, and at their ends they carry incurved
spikes of iron or steel, S S, which act as barbs on a fish-hook.
Another sharpened spike projects from the tip of the pole P, and the
three together make the prongs of the spear or gig. When the fish is
speared the arms A A bend out as the spikes "ride" over its back, and
these insert themselves in its sides, the pole spike penetrating its
back. In the figure there is represented the cross-section of a fish
(its dorsal-fin D) just before the spear strikes. Among the Eskimo of
King William's Land I found the spear-handles made of driftwood thrown
on the beach, the arms A A made of very elastic musk-ox horn, and the
spikes of copper taken from the abandoned ships of Sir John Franklin's
ill-fated expedition. Again at this camp (No. 4), the fishing-tackle of
various kinds was employed vigilantly, but although the water seemed
much clearer there were no results, the doctor advancing the theory
that trout will not rise to a fly in streams where salmon are spawning,
as they then live on the salmon roe to the exclusion of every thing
else.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: A VIEW IN THE DAYAY VALLEY. (FROM CAMP 4.) A finger of
the Saussure Glacier is seen peeping round the mountain, the rest being
covered with fog.]
At this camp I saw the Chilkat boy packers wrestling in a very singular
manner, different from any thing in that branch of athletics with which
I am acquainted. The two wrestlers lie flat on their backs upon the
ground or sand and against each other, but head to foot, or in opposite
directions. Their inner legs, _i.e._, those touching their opponents,
are raised high in the air, carried past each other, and then locked
together at the knee. They then rise to a sitting posture, or as nearly
as possible, and with their nearest arms locked into a firm hold at the
elbows, the contest commences. It evidently requires no mean amount of
strength to get on top of an equal adversary, and the game seems to
demand considerable agility, although the efforts of the contestants,
as they rolled around like two angle worms tied together, appeared more
awkward than graceful.
[Illustration: POSITION OF THE FEET IN WALKING A LOG, AS PRACTICED BY
THE CHILKAT INDIANS.]
Northward from this camp (No. 4), lying between the Nourse and Dayay
Rivers, was the southern terminal spur of a large glacier, whose upper
end was lost in the cold drifting fog that clung to it, and which can
be seen on page 77. I called it the Saussure Glacier, after Professor
Henri de Saussure, of Geneva, Switzerland. The travels in the Dayay
Inlet and up the valley of the river had been reasonably pleasant, but
on the 10th of June our course lay over the rough mountain spurs of the
east side for ten or twelve miles, upon a trail fully equal to forty or
fifty miles over a good road for a day's walking. Short as the march
was in actual measurement, it consumed from 7:30 in the morning until
7:15 in the evening; nearly half the time, however, being occupied
in resting from the extreme fatigue of the journey. In fact, in many
places it was a terrible scramble up and down hill, over huge trunks
and bristling limbs of fallen timber too far apart to leap from one to
the other, while between was a boggy swamp that did not increase the
pleasure of carrying a hundred pounds on one's back. Sometimes we would
sink in almost to our knees, while every now and then this agony was
supplemented by the recurrences of long high ridges of rough bowlders
of trachyte with a splintery fracture. The latter felt like hot iron
under the wet moccasins after walking on them and jumping from one to
the other for awhile. Some of these great ridges of bowlders on the
steep hillsides must have been of quite recent origin, and from the
size of the big rocks, often ten or twelve feet in diameter, I infer
that the force employed must have been enormous, and I could only
account for it on the theory that ice had been an important agent in
the result. So recent were some of the ridges that trees thirty and
forty feet high were embedded in the débris, and where they were not
cut off and crushed by the action of the rocks they were growing as if
nothing had happened, although half the length of their trunks in some
cases was below the tops of the ridges. I hardly thought that any of
the trees could be over forty or fifty years old. Where these ridges
of great bowlders were very wide one would be obliged to follow close
behind some Indian packer acquainted with the trail, which might easily
be lost before re-entering the brush.
That day I noticed that all my Indians, in crossing logs over a stream,
always turned the toes of both feet in the same direction (to the
right), although they kept the body square to the front, or nearly so,
and each foot passed the other at every step, as in ordinary walking.
The advantage to be gained was not obvious to the author; as the
novice, in attempting it, feels much more unsafe than in walking over
the log as usual. Nearing Camp 5, we passed over two or three hundred
yards of snow from three to fifteen feet deep. This day's march of the
10th of June brought us to the head of the Dayay river at a place the
Indians call the "stone-houses." These _stone-houses_, however, are
only a loose mass of huge bowlders piled over each other, projecting
high above the deep snow, and into the cave-like crevices the natives
crawl for protection whenever the snow has buried all other tracts, or
the cold wind from the glaciers is too severe to permit of sleep in
the open. All around us was snow or the clear blue ice of the glacier
fronts, while directly northward, and seemingly impassable, there
loomed up for nearly four thousand feet the precipitous pass through
the mountains, a blank mass of steep white, which we were to essay on
the morrow.
[Illustration: CHASING A MOUNTAIN GOAT IN THE PERRIER PASS.]
Shortly after camping I was told that the Indians had seen a mountain
goat nearly on the summit of the western mountain wall, and I was able
to make out his presence with the aid of field-glasses. The Indians
had detected him with their unaided eyes, in spite of his white coat
being against a background of snow. Had the goat been on the summit of
a mountain in the moon I should not have regarded him as any safer than
where he was, if the Indians were even half as fatigued as I felt, and
they had carried a hundred pounds over the trail and I had not. But the
identity of the goat was not fully established before an Indian, the
only one who carried a gun, an old flintlock, smooth bore, Hudson Bay
musket, made preparations for the chase. He ran across the valley and
soon commenced the ascent of the mountains, in a little while almost
disappearing on the white sides, looking like a fly crawling over the
front of a house. The Indian, a "Stick," finally could be seen above
the mountain goat and would have secured him, but that a little black
cur dog which had started to follow him when he was almost at the
summit, made its appearance on the scene just in time to frighten the
animal and started him running down the mountain side toward the pass,
the "Stick" closely following in pursuit, assisted by the dog. Just
as every one expected to see the goat disappear through the pass, he
wheeled directly around and started straight for the camp, producing
great excitement. Every one grabbed the first gun he could get his
hands on and waited for the animal's approach. A shot from camp sent
him flying up the eastern mountains, which were higher than those of
the west, closely followed almost to the summit by the indefatigable
"Stick," who finally lost him. I thought it showed excellent endurance
for the mountain goat, but the Indian's pluck was beyond all praise,
and as he returned with a jovial shake of the head, as if he met such
disappointments every day, I felt sure that I would not have undertaken
his hunt for all the goat meat in the country, even with starvation at
hand.
On the morning of the next day about five o'clock, we commenced the
toilsome ascent of this coast range pass, called by the Indians Kotusk
Mountains, and by seven o'clock all my long pack train was strung up
the precipitous pass, making one of the prettiest Alpine sights that I
have ever witnessed, and as seen from a distance strangely resembling a
row of bowlders projecting from the snow. Up banks almost perpendicular
they scrambled on their hands and knees, helping themselves by every
projecting rock and clump of juniper and dwarf spruce, not even
refusing to use their teeth on them at the worst places. Along the
steep snow banks and the icy fronts of glaciers steps were cut with
knives, while rough alpenstocks from the valley helped them to maintain
their footing. In some such places the incline was so steep that those
having boxes on their backs cut scratches in the icy crust with the
corners as they passed along, and oftentimes it was possible to steady
one's self by the open palm of the hand resting against the snow. In
some of these places a single mis-step, or the caving in of a foot-hold
would have sent the unfortunate traveler many hundred feet headlong
to certain destruction. Yet not the slightest accident happened, and
about ten o'clock, almost exhausted, we stood on the top of the pass,
enveloped in a cold drifting fog, 4,240 feet above the level of the
sea (a small portion of the party having found a lower crossing at
4,100 feet above sea-level). How these small Indians, not apparently
averaging over one hundred and forty pounds in weight, could carry one
hundred pounds up such a precipitous mountain of ice and snow, seems
marvelous beyond measure. One man carried one hundred and thirty-seven
pounds, while boys from twelve to fourteen carried from fifty to
seventy pounds. I called this the Perrier Pass after Colonel J. Perrier
of the French Geographical Society.
[Illustration: ASCENDING THE PERRIER PASS.] [Illustration: CHILKAT
HUNTING AND PACKING SNOW-SHOES.
The usual thongs are used to fasten them to the feet, but are not shown
in the illustration.]
Once on top of the Pass the trail leads northward and the descent is
very rapid for a few hundred yards to a lake of about a hundred acres
in extent, which was yet frozen over and the ice covered with snow,
although drainage from the slopes had made the snow very slushy. Over
the level tracks of snow many of the Indians wore their snow-shoes,
which in the ascent and steep descent had been lashed to their packs.
These Indians have two kinds of snow-shoes, a very broad pair used
while packing, as with my party, and a narrower and neater kind
employed while hunting. The two kinds are figured below. This small
lake, abruptly walled in, greatly resembled an extinct crater, and such
it may well have been. From this resemblance it received its name of
Crater Lake, a view of which figures as the frontispiece. Here there
was no timber, not even brush, to be seen; while the gullies of the
granite hills, and the valleys deeply covered with snow, gave the
whole scene a decidedly Arctic appearance. I noticed that my Indian
packers, in following a trail on snow, whether it was up hill, on a
level, or even a slight descent, always stepped in each other's tracks,
and hence our large party made a trail that at first glance looked
as if only five or six had passed over; but when going down a steep
descent, especially on soft snow, each one made his own trail, and they
scattered out over many yards in width. I could not but be impressed
with the idea that this was worth considering should it ever be
necessary to estimate their numbers. From the little crater-like lake
at the very head of the Yukon, the trail leads through a valley that
converges to a gorge; and while crossing the snow in this ravine we
could hear the running water gurgling under the snow bridge on which we
were walking. Further down the little valley, as it opened at a point
where these snow-arches were too wide to support their weight, they
had tumbled into the stream, showing in many places abutments of deep
perpendicular snow-banks often twenty to twenty-five feet in height.
Where the river banks were of stone and perpendicular the packers were
forced to pass over the projecting abutments of snow, undermined by
the swift stream. It was hazardous for many to attempt the passage
over the frail structure at the same time. Passing by a few small
picturesque lakes on our left, some still containing floating cakes of
ice, we caught sight of the main lake in the afternoon, and in a few
hours were upon its banks at a point where a beautiful mountain stream
came tumbling in, with enough swift water to necessitate crossing
on a log. Near the Crater Lake a curlew and a swallow were seen,
and a small black bear cub was the only other living thing visible,
although mountain goats were abundant a short distance back in the high
hills. We had gotten into camp quite late in the evening and here the
contracts with our Indian packers expired.
Imagine my surprise, after a fatiguing march of thirteen miles that had
required fourteen hours to accomplish, and was fully equal to forty
or fifty on any good road, at having the majority of my packers, men
and boys, demand payment at once with the view of an immediate return.
Some of them assured me they would make the mouth of the Dayay before
stopping, and would then only stay for a short rest. It should be
remembered that we were so far north and the sun so near his northern
solstice that it was light enough even at midnight, for traveling
purposes, especially on the white snow of the worst portion of the
journey, Perrier Pass. I had no reason to doubt their assurances, and
afterward learned that one of them went through to the mission without
stopping, in spite of a furious gale which was raging on the Dayay and
Chilkoot Inlets.
CHAPTER V.
ALONG THE LAKES.
[Illustration: IN A STORM ON THE LAKES.]
This large lake near the head of the Yukon I named in honor of Dr.
Lindeman, of the Bremen Geographical Society. The country thus far,
including the lake, had already received a most thorough exploration
at the hands of Dr. Aurel Krause and Dr. Arthur Krause, two German
scientists, heretofore sent out by the above named society, but I was
not aware of the fact at that time. Looking out upon Lake Lindeman a
most beautiful Alpine-like sheet of water was presented to our view.
The scene was made more picturesque by the mountain creek, of which
I have spoken, and over which a green willow tree was supposed to do
duty as a foot-log. My first attempt to pass over this tree caused it
to sink down into the rushing waters and was much more interesting
to the spectators than to me. Lake Lindeman is about ten miles long,
and from one to one and a-half wide, and in appearance is not unlike
a portion of one of the broad inland passages of south-eastern Alaska
already described. Fish were absent from these glacier-fed streams and
lakes, or at least they were not to be enticed by any of the standard
allurements of the fishermen's wiles, but we managed to kill a few
dusky grouse and green-winged teal ducks to vary the usual government
ration; though all were tough beyond measure, it being so near their
breeding season.
Over the lake, on quiet days, were seen many gulls, and the graceful
little Arctic tern, which I recognized as an old companion on the
Atlantic side. A ramble among the woods next day to search for raft
timber revealed a number of bear, caribou and other game tracks,
but nothing could be seen of their authors. A small flock of pretty
harlequin ducks gave us a long but unsuccessful shot. The lakes of the
interior, of which there were many, bordered by swampy tracts, supplied
Roth, our cook, with a couple of green-winged teal, duck and drake, as
the reward of a late evening stroll, for, as I have said, it was light
enough at midnight to allow us to shoot, at any rate with a shot-gun.
While the lakes were in many places bordered with swampy tracts, the
land away from them was quite passable for walking, the great obstacle
being the large amount of fallen timber that covered the ground in all
directions. The area of bog, ubiquitous beyond the Kotusk range, was
now confined to the shores of the lakes and to streams emerging from or
emptying into them, and while these were numerous enough to a person
desiring to hold a straight course for a considerable distance, the
walking was bearable compared with previous experience.
Two of the _Tahk-heesh_ or "Stick" Indians, who had come with us as
packers, had stored away in this vicinity under the willows of the
lake's beach, a couple of the most dilapidated looking craft that
ever were seen. To call them canoes, indeed, was a strain upon our
consciences. The only theory to account for their keeping afloat at all
was that of the Irishman in the story, "that for every hole where the
water could come in there were a half a dozen where it could run out."
These canoes are made of a species of poplar, and are generally called
"cottonwood canoes;" and as the trees from which they are made are
not very large, the material "runs out" so to speak, along the waist
or middle of the canoe, where a greater quantity is required to reach
around, and this deficiency is made up by substituting batten-like
strips of thin wood tacked or sewed on as gunwales, and calking the
crevices well with gum. At bow and stern some rude attempt is made
to warp them into canoe lines, and in doing this many cracks are
developed, all of which are smeared with spruce gum. The thin bottom is
a perfect gridiron of slits, all closed with gum, and the proportion
of gum increases with the canoe's age. These were the fragile craft
that were brought to me with a tender to transport my effects (nearly
three tons besides the _personnel_ of the expedition) almost the whole
length of the lake, fully seven or eight miles, and the owners had the
assurance to offer to do it in two days. I had no idea how far it was
to the northern end or outlet of Lake Lindeman, as I had spent too many
years of my life among Indians to attempt to deduce even an approximate
estimate from the assurances of the two "Sticks" that "it was just
around the point of land" to which they pointed and which may have been
four or five miles distant. I gave them, however, a couple of loads
of material that could be lost without serious damage, weighing three
hundred to four hundred pounds, and as I did not know the length of
the lake I thought I would await their return before attempting further
progress. Even if they could accomplish the bargain in double the time
they proposed I was quite willing to let them proceed, as I understood
the outlet of the lake was a narrow river full of cascades and rocks
through which, according to Indian reports, no raft of more than a few
logs could possibly float. I did not feel disposed to build a couple
of such cumbersome craft to traverse so short a distance. A southern
gale setting in shortly after their departure, with waves running on
the lake a foot or two high, was too terrible a storm for the rickety
little boats, and we did not see any thing of them or their owners
until three days later, when the men came creeping back overland--the
gale still raging--to explain matters which required no explanation.
[Illustration: LAKE LINDEMAN. CAPE KOLDEWEY ON THE RIGHT.
The view is taken from the upper (southern) end of Payer Portage,
looking (south) toward Kotusk Mountains. Perrier Pass is on the extreme
left wrapped in fog. Named after Captain Koldewey of the German Navy.]
In the meantime, having surmised the failure of our Indian contractors,
the best logs available, which were rather small ones of stunted spruce
and contorted pine, had been floated down the little stream and had
been tracked up and down along the shores of the lake, and a raft made
of the somewhat formidable dimensions of fifteen by thirty feet, with
an elevated deck amidships. The rope lashings used on the loads of the
Indian packers were put to duty in binding the logs together, but the
greatest reliance was placed in stout wooden pins which united them by
auger holes bored through both, the logs being cut or "saddled out"
where they joined, as is done at the corners of log cabins. A deck was
made on the corduroy plan of light seasoned pine poles, and high enough
to prevent ordinary sized waves from wetting the effects, while a pole
was rigged by mortising it into one of the central logs at the bottom
and supporting it by four guy ropes from the top, and from this was
suspended a wall tent as a sail, the ridge pole being the yard arm,
with tackling arranged to raise and lower it. A large bow and stern oar
with which to do the steering completed the rude craft. On the evening
of the 14th of June the raft was finished, when we found that, as a
number of us had surmised, it was not of sufficient buoyancy to hold
all our effects as well as the whole party of whites and natives.
The next day only three white men, Mr. Homan, Mr. McIntosh and Corporal
Shircliff, were placed in charge. About half the stores were put on the
deck, the raft swung by ropes into the swift current of the stream so
as to float it well out into the lake, and as the rude sail was spread
to the increasing wind, the primitive craft commenced a journey that
was destined to measure over thirteen hundred miles before the rough
ribs of knots and bark were laid to rest on the great river, nearly
half a thousand miles of whose secrets were given up to geographical
science through the medium of her staunch and trusty bones. As she
slowly obeyed her motive power, the wind began blowing harder and
harder, until the craft was pitching like a vessel laboring in an ocean
storm; but despite this the middle of the afternoon saw her rough
journey across the angry lake safely completed, and this without any
damage to her load worth noticing. The three men had had an extremely
hard time of it, and had been compelled to take down their wall tent
sail, for when this was lashed down over the stores on the deck to
protect them from the deluge of flying spray breaking up over the
stern there was ample surface presented to the furious gale to drive
them along at a good round pace, especially when near the bold rocky
shores, where all their vigilance and muscle were needed to keep them
from being dashed to pieces in the rolling breakers. They had started
with a half dozen or so good stout poles, but in using them over the
rocks on the bottom one would occasionally cramp between a couple of
submerged stones and be wrested violently from their hands as the raft
swept swiftly by before it could be extricated. The remainder of the
_personnel_, white and native, scrambled over the rough precipitous
mountain spurs on the eastern side of the lake, wading through bog
and tangled underbrush, then up steep slippery granite rocks on to
the ridge tops bristling with fallen burned timber, or occasionally
steadying themselves on some slight log that crossed a deep cañon,
whose bed held a rushing stream where nothing less than a trout could
live for a minute, the one common suffering every where being from the
mosquitoes. The rest of the stores not taken on the raft found their
way along slowly by means of the two dilapidated canoes, previously
described, in the hands of our own Indians.
As we neared Camp 7, at the outlet of Lake Lindeman, on the overland
trail we occasionally met with little openings that might be described
by an imaginative person as _prairies_, and for long stretches, that
is, two and three hundred yards, the walking would really be pleasant.
An inspection of the locality showed that the lake we had just passed
was drained by a small river averaging from fifty to seventy-five feet
in width and a little over a mile long. It was for nearly the whole
length a repetition of shallow rapids, shoals, cascades, ugly-looking
bowlders, bars and network of drift-timber. At about the middle of its
course the worst cascade was split by a huge projecting bowlder, just
at a sudden bend of the stream, and either channel was barely large
enough to allow the raft to pass if it came end on, and remained so
while going through, otherwise it would be sure to jam. Through this
narrow chute of water the raft was "shot" the next day--June 16th--and
although our predictions were verified at this cascade, a few minutes'
energetic work sufficed to clear it, with the loss of a side-log or
two, and all were glad to see it towed and anchored alongside the
gravelly beach on the new lake, with so little damage received. Here
we at once commenced enlarging its dimensions on a scale commensurate
with the carrying of our entire load, both _personnel_ and _materiel_.
Around this unnavigable and short river the Indian packers and
traders portage their goods when making their way into the interior,
there being a good trail on the eastern side of the stream, which,
barring a few sandy stretches, connects the two lakes. I called these
rapids and the portage Payer Portage, after Lieutenant Payer, of the
Austro-Hungarian expedition of 1872-74.
By the 17th of June, at midnight, it was light enough to read print,
of the size of that before my readers, and so continued throughout the
month, except on very cloudy nights. Many bands of pretty harlequin
ducks were noticed in the Payer Rapids, which seemed to be their
favorite resort, the birds rarely appearing in the lakes, and always
near the point at which some swift stream entered the smoother water.
Black and brown bears and caribou tracks were seen in the valley of a
small stream that here came in from the west. This valley was a most
picturesque one as viewed from the Payer Portage looking westward, and
was quite typical of the little Alpine valleys of this locality. I
named it after Mr. Homan, the topographer of the expedition. We were
quite fortunate in finding a number of fallen logs, sound and seasoned,
which were much larger than any in our raft, the only trouble being
that they were not long enough. All of the large trees tapered rapidly,
and at the height of twenty or twenty-five feet a tree was reduced to
the size of the largest of its numerous limbs, so that it did not offer
surface enough at the small end to use with safety as the side-log or
bottom-log of a well-constructed craft. We soon had a goodly number
of them sawed in proper lengths, or, at any rate, as long as we could
get them, their numerous limbs hacked off, and then, with much labor,
we made log-ways through the brush and network of trunks, by means of
which we plunged them into the swift river when they were floated down
to the raft's position. One of the delights of this raft-making was
our having to stand a greater part of the day in ice-water just off
the mountain tops, and in strange contrast with this annoyance, the
mosquitoes would come buzzing around and making work almost impossible
by their attacks upon our heads, while at the same time our feet would
be freezing. When the larger logs were secured, they were built into
the raft on a plan of fifteen by forty feet; but, taking into account
the projections outside of the corner pins, the actual dimensions were
sixteen by forty-two. These were never afterward changed.
Two elevated decks were now constructed, separated by a lower central
space, where two cumbersome oars might be rigged, that made it possible
to row the ponderous craft at the rate of nearly a mile an hour, and
these side-oars were afterward used quite often to reach some camping
place on the beach of a lake when the wind had failed us or set in
ahead. The bow and stern steering-oars were still retained, and we thus
had surplus oars for either service, in case of accident, for the two
services were never employed at once under any circumstances. There was
only one fault with the new construction, and that was that none of
the logs extended the whole length of the raft, and the affair rather
resembled a pair of rafts, slightly dove-tailed at the point of union,
than a single raft of substantial build.
The new lake on which we found ourselves was named Lake Bennett, after
Mr. James Gordon Bennett, a well-known patron of American geographical
research. While we were here a couple of canoes of the same dilapidated
kind as those we saw on Lake Lindeman came down Lake Bennett, holding
twice as many Tahk-heesh Indians who begged for work, and whom we
put to use in various ways. I noticed that one of them stammered
considerably, the first Indian I ever met with an impediment in his
speech.
Among my Chilkat packers I also noticed one that was deaf and dumb,
and several who were afflicted with cataract in the eye, but none were
affected with the latter disease to the extent I had observed among
the Eskimo, with whom I believe it is caused by repeated attacks of
snow-blindness.
[Illustration: LAKE BENNETT FROM PAYER PORTAGE.
Iron-capped mountains on the right, covered with fog.]
On the summits of high mountains to the right, or eastward of Lake
Bennett, were the familiar blue-ice glaciers, but in charming relief to
these were the red rocks and ridges that protruded amid them. Specimens
of rocks very similar in color were found on the lake beach and in the
terminal moraines of the little glaciers that came down the gulches,
and these having shown iron as their coloring matter, I gave to this
bold range the name of the Iron-capped Mountains.
On the morning of the 19th of June the constructors reported that their
work was done, and the raft was immediately hauled in closer to shore,
the load put on and carefully adjusted with reference to an equitable
weight, the bow and stern lines cast loose, and after rowing through a
winding channel to get past the shallow mudflats deposited by the two
streams which emptied themselves near here, the old wall tent was again
spread from its ridge-pole, lashed to the top of the rude mast, and our
journey was resumed.
The scenery along this part of Lake Bennett is very much like the
inland passages of Alaska, except that there is much less timber on the
hills.
I had started with four Chilkat Indians, who were to go over the
whole length of the Yukon with me. One of them was always complaining
of severe illness, with such a wonderful adaptation to the amount
of labor on hand that I discharged him at Lake Bennett as the only
method of breaking up the coincidence. The best workman among them
discharged himself by disappearing with a hatchet and an ax, and I was
left with but two, neither of whom, properly speaking, could be called
a Chilkat Indian; in fact one was a half-breed Tlinkit interpreter,
"Billy" Dickinson by name, whose mother had been a Tsimpsean Indian
woman and whose father kept the store of the North-west Trading
Company in Chilkat Inlet. "Billy," as we always called him, was a
rather good-looking young fellow of about twenty-five years, who
understood the Tlinkit language thoroughly, but had the fault of
nearly all interpreters of mixed blood, that when called on for duty
he considered himself as one of the high contracting parties to the
bargain to be made; a sort of agent instead of an interpreter, and
being a wonderfully poor agent he became still worse as an interpreter.
He was as strong as two or three ordinary men of his build and in any
sort of an emergency with a sprinkle of dangerous excitement about
it he put all his strength to use and proved invaluable, but in the
hum-drum, monotonous work of the trip, such as the steering of the raft
or other continuous labor, his Indian nature came to the front, and he
did every thing in the world on the outskirts of the work required,
but would not be brought down to the main issue until compelled to do
so by the application of strong language. Our other native companion
was named _Indianne_, a Chilkat Tahk-heesh Indian, whose familiarity
with the latter language, through his mother, a Tahk-heesh squaw, made
him invaluable to us as an interpreter while in the country of this
tribe, which stretches to the site of old Fort Selkirk at the mouth
of the Pelly River. Physically, Indianne was not all that might be
required in an Indian, for they are generally supposed to do twice as
much out-of-door work as a white man, but he was well past fifty years
and such activity was hardly to be expected of him. Besides being a
Tahk-heesh, or Stick interpreter, he was fairly familiar with the
ground as a guide, having traveled over parts of it much oftener than
most Indians, owing to the demand for his services as an interpreter
among the Sticks. Through the medium of our two interpreters, and the
knowledge found in each tribe of the language of their neighbors,
we managed to get along on the river until English and Russian were
again encountered, although we occasionally had to use four or five
interpreters at once.
There was a fair wind in our favor as we started, but it was
accompanied with a disagreeable rain which made things very unpleasant,
as we had no sign of a cover on our open boat, nor could we raise one
in a strong wind. Under this wind we made about a mile and a half an
hour, and as it kept slowly increasing we dashed along at the noble
rate of two or two and a half miles an hour. This increasing wind,
however, also had its disadvantages, for on long, unprotected stretches
of the lake the water was swelling into waves that gave us no small
apprehension for our vessel. Not that we feared she might strike a
rock, or spring a leak, but that in her peculiar explorations she might
spread herself over the lake, and her crew and cargo over its bottom.
By three in the afternoon the waves were dashing high over the stern,
and the raft having no logs running its entire length, was working in
the center like an accordion, and with as much distraction to us. Still
it was important to take advantage of every possible breath of wind in
the right direction while on the lakes; and we held the raft rigidly to
the north for about two hours longer, at which time a perfect hurricane
was howling, the high waves sweeping the rowing space so that no one
could stand on his feet in that part, much less sit down to the oars,
and as a few of the faithful pins commenced snapping, we headed the
vessel for the eastern shore at as sharp an angle as it was possible
to make running before the wind, and which I do not think was over two
points of the compass, equal to an angle of about twenty degrees.
This course brought us in time to a rough, rocky beach strewn with big
bowlders along the water's edge, over which the waves were dashing
in a boiling sheet of water that looked threatening enough; but a
line was gotten ashore through the surf with the aid of a canoe, and
while a number of the crew kept the raft off the rocks with poles,
the remainder of the party tracked it back about a half a mile along
the slippery stones of the beach, to a crescent-shaped cove sheltered
from the waves and wind, where it was anchored near the beach. We at
once began looking around for a sufficient number of long logs to run
the whole length of the raft, a search in which we were conspicuously
successful, for the timber skirting the little cove was the largest and
best adapted for raft repairing of any we saw for many hundred miles
along the lakes. Four quite large trees were found, and all the next
day, the 20th, was occupied in cutting them down, clearing a way for
them through the timber to the shore of the lake, and prying, pulling,
and pushing them there, and then incorporating them into the raft. Two
were used for the side logs and two for the center, and when we had
finished our task it was evident that a much needed improvement had
been made. It was just made in time, too, for many of our tools were
rapidly going to pieces; the last auger had slipped the nut that held
it in the handle, so that it could not be withdrawn from the logs to
clear it of the shavings, but a small hand-vise was firmly screwed on
as a substitute, and this too lost its hold and fell overboard on the
outer edge of the raft in eight or ten feet of water, and ice-water
at that. A magnet of fair size was lashed on the end of a long pole,
and we fished for the invisible implement, but without avail. "Billy"
Dickinson, our half-breed Chilkat interpreter, of his own free will and
accord, then stripped himself and dived down into the ice-cold water
and discovered that near the spot where it had sunk was a precipitous
bank of an unknown depth, down which it had probably rolled, otherwise
the magnet would have secured it. Other means were employed and we got
along without it.
The day we spent in repairing the raft a good, strong, steady wind from
the south kept us all day in a state of perfect irritation at the loss
of so much good motive power, but we consoled ourselves by observing
that it did us one service at least--no mean one, however--in keeping
the mosquitoes quiet during our labors.
Across Lake Bennett to the north-westward was a very prominent cape,
brought out in bold relief by the valley of a picturesque stream,
which emptied itself just beyond. I called it Prejevalsky Point after
the well-known Russian explorer, while the stream was called Wheaton
River after Brevet Major-General Frank Wheaton, U. S. Army, at the time
commanding the Military Department (of the Columbia) in which Alaska is
comprised, and to whose efforts and generosity the ample outfit of the
expedition was due.
On the 21st we again started early, with a good breeze behind us
that on the long stretches gave us quite heavy seas, which tested the
raft very thoroughly, and with a result much to our satisfaction. It
no longer conformed to the surface of the long swelling waves, but
remained rigidly intact, the helmsman at the steering oar getting
considerably splashed as a consequence. The red rocks and ridges of
the ice-covered mountain tops that I have mentioned finally culminated
in one bold, beetling pinnacle, well isolated from the rest, and quite
noticeable for many miles along the lake from either direction. This I
named Richards' Rock, after Vice-Admiral Richards, of the Royal Navy.
The country was becoming a little more open as we neared the northern
end of Lake Bennett, and, indeed, more picturesque in its relief to
the monotonous grandeur of the mountain scenery. Lake Bennett is
thirty miles long. At its north-western extremity a couple of streams
disembogue, forming a wide, flat and conspicuous valley that, as we
approached it, we all anticipated would prove our outlet. Several well
marked conical buttes spring from this valley, and these with the
distant mountains give it a very picturesque appearance, its largest
river being sixty to seventy-five yards wide, but quite shallow. It
received the name of Watson Valley, for Professor Sereno Watson, of
Harvard University.
About five o'clock the northern end or outlet of the lake was reached.
As the sail was lowered, and we entered a river from one hundred to two
hundred yards wide, and started forward at a speed of three or four
miles an hour--a pace which seemed ten times as fast as our progress
upon the lake, since, from our proximity to the shore, our relative
motion was more clearly indicated, our spirits ascended, and the
prospects of our future journey when we should be rid of the lakes were
joyfully discussed, and the subject was not exhausted when we grounded
and ran upon a mud flat that took us two hours of hard work to get
clear of. This short stretch of the draining river of Lake Bennett,
nearly two miles long, is called by the natives of the country "the
place where the caribou cross," and appears on the map as Caribou
Crossing.
At certain seasons of the year, so the Tahk-heesh Indians say, these
caribou--the woodland reindeer--pass over this part of the river in
large numbers in their migrations to the different feeding grounds,
supplied and withdrawn in turn by the changing seasons, and ford its
wide shallow current, passing backward and forward through Watson
Valley. Unfortunately for our party neither of these crossings occurred
at this time of the year, although a dejected camp of two Tahk-heesh
families not far away from ours (No. 10) had a very ancient reindeer
ham hanging in front of their brush tent, which, however, we did not
care to buy. The numerous tracks of the animals, some apparently as
large as oxen, confirmed the Indian stories, and as I looked at our
skeleton game score and our provisions of Government bacon, I wished
sincerely that June was one of the months of the reindeers' migration,
and the 21st or 22d about the period of its culmination.
The very few Indians living in this part of the country--the
"Sticks"--subsist mostly on these animals and on mountain goats, with
now and then a wandering moose, and more frequently a black bear. One
would expect to find such followers of the chase the very hardiest
of all Indians, in compliance with the rule that prevails in most
countries, by which the hunter excels the fisherman, but this does not
seem to be the case along this great river. Here, indeed, it appears
that the further down the stream the Indian lives, and the more he
subsists on fish, the hardier, the more robust, the more self-asserting
and impudent he becomes.
After prying our raft off the soft mud flat we again spread our sail
for the beach of the little lake and went into camp, after having been
on the water (or in it) for over thirteen hours.
The country was now decidedly more open, and it was evident that we
were getting out of the mountains. Many level spots appeared, the hills
were less steep and the snow was melting from their tops. Pretty wild
rose-blossoms were found along the banks of the beach, with many wild
onions with which we stuffed the wrought-iron grouse that we killed,
and altogether there was a general change of verdure for the better.
There were even a number of rheumatic grasshoppers which feebly jumped
along in the cold Alpine air, as if to tempt us to go fishing, in
remembrance of the methods of our boyhood's days, and in fact every
thing that we needed for that recreation was to be had except the fish.
Although this lake (Lake Nares, after Sir George Nares) was but three
or four miles long, its eastern trend delayed us three days before we
got a favorable wind, the banks not being good for tracking the raft.
Our old friend, the steady summer south wind, still continued, but
was really a hindrance to our progress on an eastern course. Although
small, Lake Nares was one of the prettiest in the lacustrine chain,
owing to the greater openness of country on its banks. Grand terraces
stretching in beautiful symmetry along each side of the lake plainly
showed its ancient levels, these terraces reaching nearly to the tops
of the hills, and looking as if some huge giant had used them as
stairways over the mountains. Similar but less conspicuous terraces had
been noticed on the northern shores of Lake Bennett.
Although we could catch no fish while fishing with bait or flies, yet
a number of trout lines put out over night in Lake Nares rewarded us
with a large salmon trout, the first fish we had caught on the trip. I
have spoken of the delay on this little lake on account of its eastward
trend, and the next lake kept up the unfavorable course, and we did not
get off this short eastern stretch of ten or fifteen miles for five or
six days, so baffling was the wind. Of course, these protracted delays
gave us many chances for rambles around the country, some of which we
improved.
Everywhere we came in contact with the grouse of these regions, all of
them with broods of varying numbers, and while the little chicks went
scurrying through the grass and brush in search of a hiding place,
the old ones walked along in front of the intruder, often but a few
feet away, seemingly less devoid of fear than the common barn fowls,
although probably they had never heard a shot fired.
The Doctor and I sat down to rest on a large rock with a perturbed
mother grouse on another not over three yards away, and we could
inspect her plumage and study her actions as well as if she had been in
a cage. The temptation to kill them was very great after having been so
long without fresh meat, a subsistence the appetite loudly demands in
the rough out-of-door life of an explorer. A mess of them ruthlessly
destroyed by our Indian hunters, who had no fears of the game law, no
sportsman's qualms of conscience, nor in fact compassion of any sort,
lowered our desire to zero, for they were tougher than leather, and
as tasteless as shavings; and after that first mess we were perfectly
willing to allow them all the rights guaranteed by the game laws of
lower latitudes.
[Illustration: CARVED PINS FOR FASTENING MARMOT SNARES.]
Quite a number of marmots were seen by our Indians, and the hillsides
were dotted with their holes. The Indians catch them for fur and food
(in fact, every thing living is used by the Indians for the latter
purpose) by means of running nooses put over their holes, which choke
the little animal to death as he tries to quit his underground home. A
finely split raven quill, running the whole length of the rib of the
feather, is used for the noose proper and the instant this is sprung
it closes by its own flexibility. The rest is a sinew string tied to
a bush near the hole if one be convenient, otherwise to a peg driven
in the ground. Sometimes they employ a little of the large amount of
leisure time they have on their hands in cutting these pegs into
fanciful and totemic designs, although in this respect the Sticks, as
in every thing else pertaining to the savage arts, are usually much
inferior to the Chilkats in these displays, and the illustrations give
on page 112 are characteristic rather of the latter tribe than of the
former. Nearly all the blankets of this Tahk-heesh tribe of Indians
are made from these marmot skins, and they are exceedingly light
considering their warmth. Much of the warmth, however, is lost by the
ventilated condition in which the wearers maintain them, as it costs
labor to mend them, but none to sit around and shiver.
The few Tahk-heesh who had been camped near us at Caribou Crossing
suddenly disappeared the night after we camped on the little lake, and
as our "gum canoe" that we towed along behind the raft and used for
emergencies, faded from view at the same eclipse, we were forced to
associate the events together and set these fellows down as subject
to kleptomania. Nor should I be too severe either, for the canoe had
been picked up by us on Lake Lindeman as a vagrant, and it certainly
looked the character in every respect, therefore we could not show the
clearest title in the world to the dilapidated craft. It was a very
fortunate circumstance that we were not worried for the use of a canoe
afterward until we could purchase a substitute, although we hardly
thought such a thing possible at the time, so much had we used the one
that ran away with our friends.
The 23d of June we got across the little lake (Nares), the wind dying
down as we went through its short draining river, having made only
three miles.
The next day, the 24th, the wind seemed to keep swinging around in
a circle, and although we made five miles, I think we made as many
landings, so often did the wind fail us or set in ahead.
This new lake I called after Lieutenant Bove of the Italian navy. Here
too, the mountainous shores were carved into a series of terraces
rising one above the other, which probably indicated the ancient
beaches of the lake when its outlet was closed at a much higher level
than at present, and when great bodies of ice on their surface plowed
up the beach into these terraces. This new lake was nine miles long.
The next day again we had the same fight with a battling wind from half
past six in the morning until after nine at night, nearly seventeen
hours, but we managed to make twelve miles, and better than all, regain
our old course pointing northward. During one of these temporary
landings on the shores of Lake Bove our Indians amused themselves in
wasting government matches, articles which they had never seen in such
profusion before, and in a little while they succeeded in getting some
dead and fallen spruce trees on fire, and these communicating to the
living ones above them, soon sent up great billows of dense resinous
smoke that must have been visible for miles, and which lasted for
a number of minutes after we had left. Before camping that evening
we could see a very distant smoke, apparently six or seven miles
ahead, but really ten or twenty, which our Indians told us was an
answering smoke to them, the Tahk-heesh, who kindled the second fire,
evidently thinking that they were Chilkat traders in their country,
this being a frequent signal among them as a means of announcing their
approach, when engaged in trading. It was worthy of note as marking
the existence of this primitive method of signaling, so common among
some of the Indian tribes of the plains, among these far-off savages,
but I was unable to ascertain whether they carried it to such a degree
of intricacy with respect to the different meanings of compound smokes
either as to number or relative intervals of time or space. It is very
doubtful if they do, as the necessity for such complex signals can
hardly arise.
This new lake on which we had taken up our northward course, and which
is about eighteen miles long, is called by the Indians of the country
Tahk-o (each lake and connecting length of river has a different name
with them), and, I understand, receives a river coming in from the
south, which, followed up to one of its sources, gives a mountain pass
to another river emptying into the inland estuaries of the Pacific
Ocean. It is said by the Indians to be smaller than the one we had just
come over, and therefore we might consider that we were on the Yukon
proper thus far.
Lake Tahk-o and Lake Bove are almost a single sheet, separated only
by a narrow strait formed by a point of remarkable length (Point
Perthes, after Justus Perthes of Gotha), which juts nearly across to
the opposite shore. It is almost covered with limestones, some of them
almost true marble in their whiteness, a circumstance which gives a
decided hue to the cape even when seen at a distance.
[Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS LAKE BOVE FROM PERTHES POINT.
Field Peak in the far distance. (Named for Hon. David Dudley Field.)]
Leaving the raft alongside the beach of Lake Tahk-o at our only camping
place on it (Camp No. 13), a short stroll along its shores revealed
a great number of long, well-trimmed logs that strongly resembled
telegraph poles, and would have sold for those necessary nuisances in
a civilized country. They were finally made out to be the logs used by
the Indians in rafting down the stream, and well-trimmed by constant
attrition on the rough rocky beaches while held there by the storms.
Most of these were observed on the northern shores of the lakes, to
which the current through them, slight as it was, coupled with the
prevailing south wind, naturally drifts them. I afterward ascertained
that rafting was quite a usual thing along the head waters of the
Yukon, and that we were not pioneers in this rude art by any means,
although we had thought so from the direful prognostications they
were continually making as to our probable success with our own. The
"cottonwood" canoes already referred to are very scarce, there probably
not existing over ten or twelve along the whole length of the upper
river as far as old Fort Selkirk. Many of their journeys up the swift
stream are performed by the natives on foot, carrying their limited
necessities on their backs. Upon their return a small raft of from two
to six or eight logs is made, and they float down with the current in
the streams, and pole and sail across the lakes. By comparing these
logs with telegraph poles one has a good idea of the usual size of the
timber of these districts. The scarcity of good wooden canoes is also
partially explained by this smallness of the logs; while birch bark
canoes are unknown on the Yukon until the neighborhood of old Fort
Selkirk is reached.
This same Lake Tahk-o, or probably some lake very near it, had been
reached by an intrepid miner, a Mr. Byrnes, then in the employ of the
Western Union Telegraph Company. Many of my readers are probably not
acquainted with the fact that this corporation, at about the close
of our civil war, conceived the grand idea of uniting civilization
in the eastern and western continents by a telegraph line running by
way of Bering's Straits, and that a great deal of the preliminary
surveys and even a vast amount of the actual work had been completed
when the success of the Atlantic cable put a stop to the project.
The Yukon River had been carefully examined from its mouth as far as
old Fort Yukon (then a flourishing Hudson Bay Company post), some
one thousand miles from the mouth, and even roughly beyond, in their
interest, although it had previously been more or less known to the
Russian-American and Hudson Bay trading companies. Mr. Byrnes, a
practical miner from the Caribou mines of British Columbia, crossed the
Tahk-o Pass, already cited, got on one of the sources of the Yukon, and
as near as can be made out, descended it to the vicinity of the lake
of which I am writing. Here it appears he was recalled by a courier
sent on his trail and dispatched by the telegraph company, who were now
mournfully assisting in the jubilee of the Atlantic cable's success,
and he retraced his steps over the river and lakes, and returned to his
former occupation of mining.
Whether he ever furnished a map and a description of his journey,
so that it could be called an exploration, I do not know, but from
the books which purport to give a description of the country as
deduced from his travels, I should say not, considering their great
inaccuracy. One book, noticing his travels, and purporting to be a
faithful record of the telegraph explorers on the American side, said
that had Mr. Byrnes continued his trip only a day and a half further
in the light birch-bark canoes of the country, he would have reached
old Fort Selkirk, and thus completed the exploration of the Yukon. Had
he reached the site of old Fort Selkirk, he certainly would have had
the credit, had he recorded it, however rough his notes may have been,
but he would never have done so in the light birch-bark canoes of the
country, for the conclusive reason that they do not exist, as already
stated; and as to doing it in a day and a half, our measurements from
Lake Tahk-o to Fort Selkirk show nearly four hundred and fifty miles,
and observations proved that the Indians seldom exceed a journey of
six hours in their cramped wooden craft, so that his progress would
necessarily have demanded a speed of nearly fifty miles an hour. At
this rate of canoeing along the whole river, across Bering Sea and up
the Amoor River, the telegraph company need not have completed their
line along this part, but might simply have turned their dispatch over
to these rapid couriers, and they would have only been a few hours
behind the telegraph dispatch if it had been worked as slowly as it is
now in the interest of the public.
We passed out of Lake Tahk-o a little after two o'clock in the
afternoon of the 26th of June, and entered the first considerable
stretch of river that we had yet met with on the trip, about nine
miles long. We quitted the river at five o'clock, which was quite an
improvement on our lake traveling even at its best. The first part of
this short river stretch is full of dangerous rocks and bowlders, as is
also the lower portion of Tahk-o Lake.
On the right bank of the river, about four miles from the entrance,
we saw a tolerably well-built "Stick" Indian house. Near it in the
water was a swamped Indian canoe which one of our natives bailed out
in a manner as novel as it was effectual. Grasping it on one side, and
about the center, a rocking motion, fore and aft, was kept up, the
bailer waiting until the recurrent wave was just striking the depressed
end of the boat, and as this was repeated the canoe was slowly lifted
until it stood at his waist with not enough water in it to sink an
oyster can. This occupied a space of time not much greater than it
has taken to relate it. This house was deserted, but evidently only
for a while, as a great deal of its owner's material of the chase and
the fishery was still to be seen hanging inside on the rafters. Among
these were a great number of dried salmon, one of the staple articles
of food that now begin to appear on this part of the great river,
nearly two thousand miles from its mouth. This salmon, when dried
before putrefaction sets in, is tolerable, ranking somewhere between
Limburger cheese and walrus hide. Collecting some of it occasionally
from Indian fishermen as we floated by, we would use it as a lunch in
homeopathic quantities until some of us got so far as to imagine that
we really liked it. If smoked, this salmon is quite good, but by far
the larger amount is dried in the open air, and, Indian like, the best
is first served and soon disappears.
Floating down the river, and coming near any of the low marshy points,
we were at once visited by myriads of small black gnats which formed a
very unsolicited addition to the millions of mosquitoes, the number of
which did not diminish in the least as we descended the river. The only
protection from them was in being well out from land, with a good wind
blowing, or when forced to camp on shore a heavy resinous smoke would
often disperse a large part of them.
When we camped that evening on the new lake the signal smoke of the
Tahk-heesh Indians--if it was one--was still burning, at least some six
or seven miles ahead of us, which showed how much we had been mistaken
in estimating its distance the day before. A tree has something
definite in its size, and even a butte or mountain peak has something
tangible on which a person can base a calculation for distance,
but when one comes down to a distant smoke I think the greatest
indefiniteness has been reached, especially when one wants to estimate
its distance. I had often observed this before, when on the plains,
where it is still worse than in a hilly country, where one can at least
perceive that the smoke is beyond the hill, back of which it rises, but
when often looking down an open river valley no such indications are to
be had. I remember when traveling through the sand hills of western
Nebraska that a smoke which was variously estimated to be from eight to
twelve or possibly fifteen miles away took us two days' long traveling
in an army ambulance, making thirty-five or forty miles a day, as the
winding road ran, to reach its site.
[Illustration: LOOKING SOUTHWARD FROM CAMP 14 ON LAKE MARSH
On the left is the Tahk-o Pass, on the right the Yukon Pass in the
mountains, directly over the point of land. Between this point and the
Yukon Pass can be seen the Yukon River coming into the lake.]
The shores of the new lake--which I named Lake Marsh, after Professor
O. C. Marsh, a well-known scientist of our country--was composed of all
sizes of clay stones jumbled together in confusion, and where the water
had reached and beat upon them it had reduced them to a sticky clay of
the consistency of thick mortar, not at all easy to walk through. This
mire, accompanied by a vast quantity of mud brought down by the streams
that emanated from grinding glaciers, and which could be distinguished
by the whiter color and impalpable character of its ingredients, nearly
filled the new lake, at least for wide strips along the shores where
it had been driven by the storms. Although drawing a little less than
two feet of water, the raft struck several times at distances from the
shore of from fifty to a hundred yards, and the only alternative was
to wade ashore in our rubber boots (the soft mud being deeper than the
water itself) and tie the raft by a long line whenever we wanted to
camp.
One night, while on this lake, a strong inshore breeze coming up, our
raft, while unloaded, was gradually lifted by the incoming high waves,
and brought a few inches further at a time, until a number of yards had
been made. The next morning when loaded and sunk deep into the mud,
the work we had to pry it off is more easily imagined than described,
but it taught us a lesson that we took to heart, and thereafter a
friendly prod or two with a bar was generally given at the ends of the
cumbersome craft to pry it gradually into deeper water as the load
slowly weighed it down. When the wind was blowing vigorously from some
quarter--and it was only when it was blowing that we could set sail
and make any progress--these shallow mud banks would tinge the water
over them with a dirty white color that was in strong contrast with
the clear blue water over the deeper portion, and by closely watching
this well-defined line of demarcation when under sail, we could make
out the most favorable points at which to reach the bank, or approach
it as nearly as possible. This clear-cut outline between the whitened
water within its exterior edges and the deep blue water beyond, showed
in many places an extension of the deposits of from four hundred to
five hundred yards from the beach. It is probable that the areas of
water may vary in Lake Marsh at different seasons sufficiently to lay
bare these mud banks, or cover them so as to be navigable for small
boats; but at the time of our visit there seemed to be a most wonderful
uniformity in the depth of the water over them in every part of the
lake, it being about eighteen inches.
Camping on the lakes was generally quite an easy affair. There was
always plenty of wood, and, of course, water everywhere, the clear,
cold mountain springs occurring every few hundred yards if the lake
water was too muddy; so that about all that we needed was a dry place
large enough to pitch a couple of tents for the white people and a tent
fly for the Indians, but simple as the latter seemed, it was very often
quite difficult to obtain. It was seldom that we found places where
tent pins could be driven in the ground, and when rocks large enough to
do duty as pins, or fallen timber or brush for the same purpose could
not be had, we generally put the tent under us, spread our blankets
upon it, crawled in and went to sleep. The greatest comfort in pitching
our tent was in keeping out the mosquitoes, for then we could spread
our mosquito bars with some show of success, although the constantly
recurring light rains made us often regret that we had made a bivouac,
not particularly on account of the slight wettings we got, but because
of our constant fear that the rain was going to be much worse in
reality than it ever proved to be. I defy any one to sleep in the open
air with only a blanket or two over him and have a great black cloud
sprinkle a dozen drops of rain or so in his face and not imagine the
deluge was coming next. I have tried it off and on for nearly twenty
years, and have not got over the feeling yet. If, after camping, a
storm threatened, a couple of stout skids were placed fore and aft
under the logs of the raft nearest the shore to prevent their breaking
off as they bumped on the beach in the waves of the surf, a monotonous
music that lulled us to sleep on many a stormy night. The baggage on
the raft, like that in an army wagon or upon a pack train of mules, in
a few days so assorted itself that the part necessary for the night's
camping was always the handiest, and but a few minutes were required
after landing until the evening meal was ready.
So important was it to make the entire length of the river (over 2000
miles) within the short interval between the date of our starting and
the probable date of departure of the last vessel from St. Michaels,
near the mouth of the river, that but little time was left for rambles
through the country, and much as I desired to take a hunt inland, and
still more to make an examination of the country at various points
along the great river, I constantly feared that by so doing I might
be compromising our chances of getting out of the country before
winter should effectually forbid it. Therefore, from the very start
it was one constant fight against time to avoid such an unwished for
contingency, and thus we could avail ourselves of but few opportunities
for exploring the interior.
On the 28th of June a fair breeze on Lake Marsh continuing past
sunset (an unusual occurrence), we kept on our way until well after
midnight before the wind died out. At midnight it was light enough
to read common print and I spent some time about then in working out
certain astronomical observations. Venus was the only star that was
dimly visible in the unclouded sky. Lake Marsh was the first water
that we could trust in which to take a bath, and even there--and for
that matter it was the same along the entire river--bathing was only
possible on still, warm, sunny days.
Below old Fort Selkirk on the Yukon, at the mouth of the White River
(so-called on account of its white muddy water), bathing is almost
undesirable on account of the large amount of sediment contained in the
water; its swift current allowing it to hold much more than any river
of the western slope known to me, while its muddy banks furnish a ready
base of supplies. Its temperature also seldom reaches the point that
will allow one to plunge in all over with any degree of comfort. One
annoyance in bathing in Lake Marsh during the warmer hours of the day
was the presence of a large fly, somewhat resembling the "horse-fly,"
but much larger and inflicting a bite that was proportionately more
severe. These flies made it necessary to keep constantly swinging a
towel in the air, and a momentary cessation of this exertion might be
punished by having a piece bitten out of one that a few days later
would look like an incipient boil. One of the party so bitten was
completely disabled for a week, and at the moment of infliction it was
hard to believe that one was not disabled for life. With these "horse"
flies, gnats and mosquitoes in such dense profusion, the Yukon Valley
is not held up as a paradise to future tourists.
The southern winds which had been blowing almost continuously since
we first spread our sail on Lake Lindeman, and which had been our
salvation while on the lakes, must prevail chiefly in this region,
as witness the manner in which the spruce and pine trees invariably
lean to the northward, especially where their isolated condition and
exposure on flat level tracts give the winds full play, to influence
their position. Near Lake Lindeman a dwarfed, contorted pine was
noticed, the fibers of which were not only twisted around its heart two
or three times, in a height of fifteen or twenty feet, but the heart
itself was twisted in a spiral like a corkscrew that made two or three
turns in its length, after which, as if to add confusion to disorder,
it was bent in a graceful sweep to the north to conform to the general
leaning of all the trees similarly exposed to the action of the winds.
There was a general brash condition of all the wood which was very
apparent when we started to make pins for binding the raft, while it
was seldom that a log was found large enough for cutting timber. The
little cove into which we put on the 19th of June, when chased by a
gale, by a singular freak of good fortune had just the logs we needed,
both as to length and size, to repair our raft, and I do not think
we saw a good chance again on the upper waters of the Yukon. Further
down, every island--and the Yukon has probably as many islands as any
half-dozen rivers of the same size in the world put together--has its
upper end covered with enough timber to build all the rafts a lively
party could construct in a summer.
Lake Marsh also had a few terraces visible on the eastern hillsides,
but they were nearer together and not so well marked as those we
observed on some of the lakes further back. Along these, however, were
pretty open prairies, covered with the dried, yellow grass of last
year, this summer's growth having evidently not yet forced its way
through the dense mass. More than one of us compared these prairies,
irregular as they seemed, with the stubble fields of wheat or oats
in more civilized climes. I have no doubt that they furnish good
grazing to mountain goats, caribou and moose, and would be sufficient
for cattle if they could keep on friendly terms with the mosquitoes.
According to the general terms of the survival of the fittest and the
growth of muscles the most used to the detriment of others, a band of
cattle inhabiting this district in the far future would be all tail and
no body unless the mosquitoes should experience a change of numbers.
[Illustration: TYPICAL TAHK-HEESH OR "STICK" INDIANS.
From sketches by Sergeant Gloster.]
At Marsh a few miserable "Stick" Indians put in an appearance, but not
a single thing could be obtained from them by our curiosity hunters.
A rough-looking pair of shell ear-rings in a small boy's possession
he instantly refused to exchange for the great consideration of
a jack-knife offered by a member of the party, who supposed the
ornaments to be purely local in character and of savage manufacture.
Another trinket was added to the jack-knife and still refused, and
additions were made to the original offer, until just to see if there
was any limit to the acquisitiveness of these people, a final offer was
made, I believe, of a double-barreled shot-gun with a thousand rounds
of ammunition, a gold watch, two sacks of flour and a camp stove, and
in refusing this the boy generously added the information that its
value to him was based on the fact that it had been received from the
Chilkats, who, in turn, had obtained it from the white traders.
A few scraggy half-starved dogs accompanied the party. An unconquerable
pugnacity was the principal characteristic of these animals, two of
them fighting until they were so exhausted that they had to lean up
against each other to rest. A dirty group of children of assorted sizes
completed the picture of one of the most dejected races of people on
the face of the earth. They visited their fish lines at the mouth of
the incoming river at the head of Lake Marsh, and caught enough fish to
keep body and soul together after a fashion. This method of fishing is
quite common in this part of the country, and at the mouth of a number
of streams, or where the main stream debouches into a lake, long willow
poles driven far enough into the mud to prevent their washing away are
often seen projecting upward and swayed back and forth by the force
of the current. On closer examination they reveal a sinew string tied
to them at about the water-line or a little above. They occasionally
did us good service as buoys, indicating the mud flats, which we could
thereby avoid, but the number of fish we ever saw taken off them was
not alarming. The majority of those caught are secured by means of the
double-pronged fish-spears, which were described on page 76. I never
observed any nets in the possession of the Tahk-heesh or "Sticks," but
my investigations in this respect were so slight that I might easily
have overlooked them. Among my trading material to be used for hiring
native help, fish-hooks were eagerly sought by all of the Indians,
until after White River was passed, at which point the Yukon becomes
too muddy for any kind of fishing with hook and line. Lines they were
not so eager to obtain, the common ones of sinew sufficiently serving
the purpose. No good bows or arrows were seen among them, their only
weapons being the stereotyped Hudson Bay Company flintlock smooth-bore
musket, the only kind of gun, I believe, throwing a ball that this
great trading company has ever issued since its foundation. They also
sell a cheap variety of double-barreled percussion-capped shot-gun,
which the natives buy, and loading them with ball--being about No. 12
or 14 gauge--find them superior to the muskets. Singular as it may
appear, these Indians, like the Eskimo I found around the northern
part of Hudson's Bay, prefer the flintlock to the percussion-cap gun,
probably for the reason that the latter depends on three articles of
trade--caps, powder and lead--while the former depends on but two of
these, and the chances of running short of ammunition when perhaps at
a distance of many weeks' journey from these supplies, are thereby
lessened. These old muskets are tolerably good at sixty to seventy
yards, and even reasonably dangerous at twice that distance. In all
their huntings these Indians contrive by that tact peculiar to savages
to get within this distance of moose, black bear and caribou, and thus
to earn a pretty fair subsistence the year round, having for summer a
diet of salmon with a few berries and roots.
The 28th we had on Lake Marsh a brisk rain and thunder shower, lasting
from 12.45 P.M. to 2.15 P.M., directly overhead, which was, I believe,
the first thunderstorm recorded on the Yukon, thunder being unknown
on the lower river, according to all accounts. Our Camp 15 was on a
soft, boggy shore covered with reeds, where a tent could not be pitched
and blankets could not be spread. The raft lay far out in the lake,
a hundred yards from the shore, across soft white mud, through which
one might sink in the water to one's middle. When to this predicament
the inevitable mosquitoes and a few rain showers are added, I judge
that our plight was about as disagreeable as could well be imagined.
Such features of the explorer's life, however, are seldom dwelt upon.
The northern shores of the lake are unusually flat and boggy. Our
primitive mode of navigation suffered also from the large banks of
"glacier mud" as we approached the lake's outlet. Most of this mud
was probably deposited by a large river, the McClintock (in honor of
Vice-Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, R. N.), that here comes in from
the north-east--a river so large that we were in some doubt as to its
being the outlet, until its current settled the matter by carrying us
into the proper channel. A very conspicuous hill, bearing north-east
from Lake Marsh, was named Michie Mountain after Professor Michie of
West Point.
CHAPTER VI.
A CHAPTER ABOUT RAFTING.
[Illustration: "SNUBBING" THE RAFT.]
Lake Marsh gave us four days of variable sailing on its waters,
when, on the 29th of June, we emerged from it and once more felt the
exhilaration of a rapid course on a swift river, an exhilaration that
was not allowed to die rapidly away, by reason of the great amount
of exercise we had to go through in managing the raft in its many
eccentric phases of navigation. On the lakes, whether in storm or
still weather, one man stationed at the stern oar of the raft had been
sufficient, as long as he kept awake, nor was any great harm done if
he fell asleep in a quiet breeze, but once on the river an additional
oarsman at the bow sweep was imperatively needed, for at short turns or
sudden bends, or when hearing half-sunken bowlders or tangled masses of
driftwood, or bars of sand, mud or gravel, or while steering clear of
eddies and slack water, it was often necessary to do some very lively
work at both ends of the raft in swinging the ponderous contrivance
around to avoid these obstacles, and in the worst cases two or three
other men assisted the oarsmen in their difficult task. Just how much
strength a couple of strong men could put on a steering sweep was a
delicate matter to gauge, and too often in the most trying places our
experiments in testing the questions were failures, and with a sharp
snap the oar would part, a man or two would sit down violently without
stopping to pick out the most luxurious places, and the craft like
a wild animal unshackled would go plowing through the fallen timber
that lined the banks, or bring up on the bar or bowlder we had been
working hard to avoid. We slowly became practical oar makers, however,
and toward the latter part of the journey had some crude but effective
implements that defied annihilation.
As we leisurely and lazily crept along the lakes somebody would be
driving away _ennui_ by dressing down pins with a hatchet, boring holes
with an auger and driving pins with an ax, until by the time the lakes
were all passed I believe that no two logs crossed each other in the
raft that were not securely pinned at the point of juncture with at
least one pin, and if the logs were large ones with two or three. In
this manner our vessel was as solid as it was possible to make such
a craft, and would bring up against a bowlder with a shock and swing
dizzily around in a six or seven mile current with no more concern than
if it were a slab in a mill race.
I believe I have made the remark in a previous chapter that managing a
raft--at least our method of managing a raft--on a lake was a tolerably
simple affair, especially with a favorable wind, and to tell the truth,
one can not manage it at all except with a favorable wind. It was
certainly the height of simplicity when compared with its navigation
upon a river, although at first sight one might perhaps think the
reverse; at least I had thought so, and from the conversation of the
whites and Indians of south-eastern Alaska, I knew that their opinions
coincided with mine; but I was at length compelled to hold differently
from them in this matter, as in many others. Especially was this
navigation difficult on a swift river like the Yukon, and I know of
none that can maintain a flow of more even rapidity from source to
mouth than this great stream. It is not very hard to keep a raft or any
floating object in the center of the current of a stream, even if left
alone at times, but the number of things which present themselves from
time to time to drag it out of this channel seems marvelous.
Old watermen and rafting lumbermen know that while a river is rising
it is hard to keep the channel, even the driftwood created by the rise
clinging to the shores of the stream. Accordingly they are anxious
for the moment when this driftwood begins to float along the main
current and out in the middle of the stream, for then they know the
water is subsiding, and from that point it requires very little effort
to keep in the swiftest current. Should this drift matter be equally
distributed over the running water it is inferred that the river is
at "a standstill," as they say. An adept can closely judge of the
variations and stage of water by this means.
In a river with soft or earthy banks (and in going the whole length
of the Yukon, over two thousand miles, we saw several varieties of
shores), the swift current, in which one desires to keep when the
current is the motive power, nears the shores only at points or curves,
where it digs out the ground into steep perpendicular banks, which if
at all high make it impossible to find a camping place for the night,
and out of this swift current the raft had to be rowed to secure a camp
at evening, while breaking camp next morning we had to work it back
into the current again. Nothing could be more aggravating than after
leaving this swift current to find a camp, as evening fell, to see no
possible chance for such a place on the side we had chosen and to go
crawling along in slack water while trees and brushes swept rapidly
past borne on the swift waters we had quitted.
[Illustration: AMONG THE SWEEPERS.]
If the banks of a river are wooded--and no stream can show much denser
growth on its shores than the Yukon--the trees that are constantly
tumbling in from these places that are being undermined, and yet
hanging on by their roots, form a series of _chevaux de frise_ or
_abatis_, to which is given the backwoods cognomen of "sweepers," and
a man on the upper side of a raft plunging through them in a swift
current almost wishes himself a beaver or a muskrat so that he can dive
out and escape.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
Not only is the Yukon equally wooded on its banks with the average
rivers of the world, but this fringe of fallen timber is much greater
in quantity and more formidable in aspect than any found in the
temperate zones. I think I can explain this fact to the satisfaction of
my readers. Taking fig. 1 on this page as representing a cross-section
perpendicular to the trend of a bank of a river in our own climate, the
stumps ss representing trees which if undermined by the water as far as
c will generally fall in along the line cd, and carry away a few trees,
two or three at most, then, as the roots of no more than one such tree
are capable of holding it so as to form an _abatis_ along the bank,
trees so held will lean obliquely down stream and any floating object
will merely brush along on their tips without receiving serious damage.
Figure 2, above, represents a similar sketch of a cross-section on the
banks of the Yukon, especially along its numerous islands, these banks,
as we saw them, being generally from six to eight feet above the level
of the water. This is also about the depth to which the moist marshy
ground freezes solid during the intense cold of the Alaskan winter in
the interior districts, and the banks therefore have the tenacity of
ice to support them; and it is not until the water has excavated as far
as _c_ (five or six times as far as in Figure 1), that the overhanging
mass _csd_ becomes heavy enough to break off the projecting bank along
_cd_. This as a solid frozen body falls downward around the axis _c_,
being too heavy for the water to sweep away, it remains until thawed
out by the river water already but little above freezing, by reason
of the constant influx of glacier streams and from running between
frozen banks. I have roughly attempted to show this process in Fig. 3.
I think any one will acknowledge that the raft R, carried by a swift
current sweeping toward _c_ is not in a very desirable position. Such
a position is bad enough on any river which has but a single line of
trees along its scarp and trending down stream, but on the Yukon it is
unfortunately worse, with every branch and twig ferociously standing at
"charge bayonets," to resist any thing that floats that way. In Fig. 3,
the maximum is depicted just as the bank falls or shortly after; and it
requires but a few days, possibly a week or a fortnight, for all the
outer and most dangerous looking trees to be more or less thoroughly
swept away by the swift current, and a less bristling aspect presented,
the great half frozen mass acting somewhat as a breakwater to further
undermining of the bank for a long while. In many places along the
river, these excavations had gone so far that the bank seemed full of
deep gloomy caves; and as we drifted close by, we could see, and, on
quiet days hear, the dripping from the thawing surface, _c s_ (fig.
2). In other places the half polished surface of the ice in the frozen
ground could be seen in recent fractures as late as July, or even
August.
Often when camped in some desolate spot or floating lazily along,
having seen no inhabitants for days, we would be startled by the sound
of a distant gun-shot on the banks, which would excite our curiosity
to see the savage sportsman; but we soon came to trace these reports
to the right cause, that of falling banks, although not until after we
had several times been deceived. Once or twice we actually saw these
tremendous cavings in of the banks quite near us, and more frequently
than we wanted we floated almost underneath some that were not far from
the crisis of their fate, a fate which we thought might be precipitated
by some accidental collision of our making. By far the most critical
moment was when both the current and a strong wind set in against one
of these banks. On such occasions we were often compelled to tie up to
the bank and wait for better times, or if the danger was confined to a
short stretch we would fight it out until either the whole party was
exhausted or our object was attained.
Whenever an island was made out ahead and it appeared to be near
the course of our drifting, the conflicting guesses we indulged in
as to which shore of the island we should skirt would indicate the
difficulty of making a correct estimate. It takes a peculiarly well
practiced eye to follow with certainty the line of the current of the
stream from the bow of the raft beyond any obstruction in sight a
fair distance ahead, and on more than one occasion our hardest work
with the oars and poles was rewarded by finding ourselves on the very
bar or flat we had been striving to avoid. The position of the sun,
both vertical and horizontal, its brightness and the character of
the clouds, the clearness and swiftness of the water, the nature and
strength of the wind, however lightly it might be blowing, and a dozen
other circumstances had to be taken into account in order to solve this
apparently simple problem. If we could determine at what point in the
upper end of the island the current was parted upon either side (and
at any great distance this was often quite as difficult a problem as
the other), one could often make a correct guess by projecting a tree
directly beyond and over this point against the distant hills. If the
tree crept along these hills to the right, the raft might pass to the
left of the island, and vice versa; this would certainly happen if
the current was not deflected by some bar or shoal between the raft
and the island. And such shoals and bars of gravel, sand and mud are
very frequent obstructions in front of an island--at least it was so
on the Yukon--indeed the coincidence was too frequent to be without
significance. These bars and shoals were not merely prolongations from
the upper point of the island, but submerged islands, so to speak, just
in front of them, and between the two a steamboat could probably pass.
Using tall trees as guides to indicate on which side of the island the
raft might pass was, as I have said, not so easy as appears at first
sight, for unless the tree could be made out directly over the dividing
point of the current, all surmises were of little value. The tall
spruce trees on the right and left flanks of the island in sight were
always the most conspicuous, being fewer in number, and more prominent
in their isolation, than the dense growth of the center of the island,
as it was seen "end on" from above. People were very prone to use these
convenient reference marks in making their calculations, and one can
readily perceive when the trees were near and the island fairly wide,
both of the outer trees would appear to diverge in approaching, and
according as one selected the right or the left of the two trees, one
would infer that our course was to the left or right of the island. As
one stood on the bow--as we always called the down-stream end of the
raft, although it was shaped no differently from the stern--and looked
forward on the water flowing along, the imagination easily conceives
that one can follow up from that position to almost any thing ahead
and see the direction of the current leading straight for it. Eddies
and slack currents, into which a raft is very liable to swing as it
rounds a point with an abrupt turn in the axis of the current, are
all great nuisances, for though one may not get into the very heart
of any of them, yet the sum total of delay in a day's drift is often
considerable, and by a little careful management in steering the raft
these troubles may nearly always be avoided. Of course, one is often
called upon to choose between these and other impediments, more or less
aggravating, so that one's attention is constantly active as the raft
drifts along.
[Illustration]
In a canal-like stream of uniform width, which gives little chance for
eddies or slack water--and the upper Yukon has many long stretches that
answer to this description--every thing goes along smoothly enough
until along toward evening, when the party wishes to go into camp
while the river is tearing along at four or five miles an hour. I defy
any one who has never been similarly situated, to have any adequate
conception of the way in which a ponderous vessel like our raft,
constructed of large logs and loaded with four or five tons of cargo
and crew, will bring up against any obstacle while going at this rate.
If there are no eddies into which it can be rowed or steered and its
progress thereby stopped or at least slackened, it is very hard work
indeed to go into camp, for should the raft strike end on, a side log
or two may be torn out and the vessel transformed by the shock into a
lozenge-shaped affair. Usually, under these circumstances, we would
bring the raft close in shore, and with the bow oar hold its head well
out into the stream, while with the steering oar the stern end would
be thrown against the bank and there held, scraping along as firmly as
two or three men could do it (see diagram above), and this frictional
brake would be kept up steadily until we slowed down a little, when one
or two, or even half-a-dozen persons would jump ashore at a favorable
spot, and with a rope complete the slackening until it would warrant
our twisting the rope around a tree on the bank and a cross log on the
raft, when from both places the long rope would be slowly allowed to
pay out under strong and increasing friction, or "snubbing" as logmen
call it, and this would bring the craft to a standstill in water so
swift as to boil up over the stern logs, whereupon it would receive a
series of snug lashings. If the position was not favorable for camping
we would slowly "drop" the craft down stream by means of the rope to
some better site, never allowing her to proceed at a rate of speed that
we could not readily control. If, however, we were unsuccessful in
making our chosen camping ground and had drifted below it, there was
not sufficient power in our party, nor even in the strongest rope we
had, ever to get the craft up stream in the average current, whether by
tracking or any other means, to the intended spot.
Good camping places were not to be had in every stretch of the river,
and worse than all, they had to be selected a long way ahead in order
to be able to make them, with our slow means of navigation, from the
middle of the broad river where we usually were.
Oftentimes a most acceptable place would be seen just abreast of it,
having until then been concealed by some heavily wooded spur or point,
and then of course it would be too late to reach it with our slow
craft, while to saunter along near shore, so as to take immediate
advantage of such a possible spot, was to sacrifice a good deal of our
rapid progress. To run from swift into slacker water could readily be
accomplished by simply pointing the craft in the direction one wanted
to go, but the reverse process was not so easy, at least by the same
method. I suppose the proper way to manage so clumsy a concern as a
raft, would be by means of side oars and rowing it end on (and this
we did on the lakes in making a camp or in gaining the shore when a
head wind set in), but as our two oars at bow and stern were the most
convenient for the greater part of the work, we used them entirely,
always rowing our bundle of logs broadside on to the point desired,
provided that no bars or other obstacles interfered. We generally kept
the bow end inclined to the shore that we were trying to reach, a plan
that was of service, as I have shown, in passing from swift to slack
water, and in a three mile current by using our oars rowing broadside
on we could keep at an angle of about thirty degrees from the axis of
the stream as we made shoreward in this position. The knowledge of this
fact enabled us to make a rough calculation as to the point at which
we should touch the bank. The greater or less swiftness of the current
would of course vary this angle and our calculations accordingly.
Our bundles of effects on the two corduroy decks made quite high piles
fore and aft, and when a good strong wind was blowing--and Alaska in
the summer is the land of wind--we had by way of sail power a spread
of broadside area that was incapable of being lowered. More frequently
than was pleasant the breeze carried us along under "sweepers" or
dragged us over bars or drove us down unwelcome channels of slack
water. In violent gales we were often actually held against the bank,
all movement in advance being effectually checked. A mild wind was
always welcome, for in the absence of a breeze when approaching the
shore the mosquitoes made existence burdensome.
During hot days on the wide open river--singular as it may seem so
near the Arctic Circle--the sun would strike down from overhead with
a blistering effect and a bronzing effect from its reflection in the
dancing waters that made one feel as though he were floating on the
Nile, Congo or Amazon, or any where except in the very shadow of the
Arctic Circle. Roughly improvised tent flies and flaps helped us to
screen ourselves to a limited extent from the tropical torment, but
if hung top high, the stern oarsman, who had charge of the "ship,"
could see nothing ahead on his course, and the curtain would have
to come down. No annoyance could seem more singular in the Arctic
and sub-Arctic zones than a blistering sun or a swarm of mosquitoes,
and yet I believe my greatest discomforts in those regions came from
these same causes, certainly from the latter. Several times our
thermometer registered but little below 100° Fahrenheit in the shade,
and the weather seemed much warmer even than that, owing to the bright
reflections that gleamed from the water upon our faces.
"Cut offs" through channels that led straight across were often most
deceptive affairs, the swifter currents nearly always swinging around
the great bends of the river. Especially bad was a peculiarly seductive
"cut-off" with a tempting by swift current as you entered it, caused
by its flowing over a shallow bar, whereupon the current would rapidly
and almost immediately deepen and would consequently slow down to a
rate that was provoking beyond measure, especially as one saw one's
self overtaken by piece after piece of drift-timber that by keeping
to the main channel had "taken the longest way around as the shortest
way home," and beaten us by long odds in the race. And worse than all
it was not always possible to avoid getting in these side "sloughs
of despond," even when we had learned their tempting little tricks of
offering us a swifter current at the entrance, for this very swiftness
produced a sort of suction on the surface water that drew in every
thing that passed within
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